TwitZip: Twitter’s Unofficial Hyperlocal News Network
This is brilliant. Ever heard of TwitZip? It’s a network of hyperlocal Twitter accounts, each one based on local ZIP codes, that sends out tweets around the clock with the latest news from that zip code. But it doesn’t just send out automated tweets, it also lets Twitter users report news to Twitzip for retweeting.
It’s the brainchild of a couple guys named Nathan Heinrich and Aaron Donsbach, who grabbed all the ZIP code-based Twitter accounts they could get their hands on a couple years ago. (Guys: You missed 99302 for Pasco, Washington.) Here’s a look at one my local ZIP codes, twitter.com/99352:
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TwitZip has partnered with Outside.in to get its hyperlocal news feeds running through each Twitter account. TwitZip’s home page says it has a partnership with Groupon to post local deals, and that local weather and government alerts are coming next.
TwitZip & Hyperlocal Blogging
On one hand, TwitZip competes with hyperlocal bloggers as a source of local news. But local news isn’t a zero-sum game, so I think it’s shortsighted to focus on that aspect of what TwitZip is doing. Instead, think of how TwitZip can help your hyperlocal blog. Here are four ways I can think of off the top of my head:
- As a news source. The first thing I did was add all of the local TwitZip accounts to my Tri-Cities Twitter list. This is the list I monitor to keep track of what’s happening around town — it’s my Twitter news feed, and TwitZip will make it better.
- As a distribution channel. (part 1) If TwitZip is getting content from Outside.in, here’s my millionth recommendation that you add your local blog to Outside.in’s system. That should get your blog content into TwitZip and could increase your Twitter exposure.
- As a distribution channel. (part 2) TwitZip is setup to automatically retweet messages that are sent as @ replies to it from Twitter followers. In other words, follow your local ZIP code and then include an @ message to it and it’ll retweet your message. (Wonder how TwitZip will handle spam/junk that comes through via this method….)
- As content for your blog. Beyond getting news tips (#1 above), you can take the RSS feed(s) from your local TwitZip accounts and add them to your hyperlocal newswire if you added one to your blog.
You can learn more about TwitZip via their web site, and also via this article last week on Silicon Prairie News.
Your turn: Is TwitZip something you’d use in conjunction with your local blog? What are your thoughts on it? Comments are open.
Using Facebook to Promote a Local Blog
[Ed. note: While I've written briefly on Facebook as a marketing tool in the past, I don't have any specific experience using Facebook ads. I've asked Geordie Romer to write up some of his thoughts on using Facebook ads and Facebook's other promotional opportunities for local bloggers.]
(This is a guest post from Geordie Romer, a real estate agent in Leavenworth WA. You can find his writing on his Leavenworth Real Estate blog and, if you “like,” you can join his fans on Facebook.)
Matt asked if I would write a guest post about how I use Facebook in my business. I don’t profess to be a Facebook expert and certainly not a guru. I’m just small business owner trying to find my way in the world. (I’m a real estate agent in a vacation destination with a population of about 7,000.)
With that caveat in mind:
1. Create a page.
Lots of other folks have written great guides on the how and the why of creating a separate page for your business or blog. If you are a real pro, you should have a dedicated “landing page” or welcome tab instead of sending everyone to your wall. I’ll admit to not being there quite yet.
There are a lot of great articles about creating a fan page. Smashing Magazine published one of the most comprehensive.
2. PPC fan ads
If I had known I was going to write a blog post about my experiment, I would have taken better notes. Luckily, Facebook does a pretty good job of keeping records for me on my “Insights” page.
On June 7th, we had 30 total “likes” or fans. A month later, we had 40. Apparently we were doing something right since we had organic growth.
On July 11th, I started my experiment with Facebook ads. I had done some advertising earlier with Facebook, but not much for the fan page. I set my budget for $3.00 a day and up to $1 per click.
Though I’d love to have thousands of fans, I’d rather have past clients, future clients, and readers of my blog. I set my Facebook ads to reach a very specific demographic.
- Over 30 years old
- Lives in Washington State
- Who are not already fans…
- But… who have friends who ARE fans
I think this last criterion is critical. Friends of friends are a great target audience. You don’t need to target income, education, ZIP codes or religion. We all tend to like people who like the same things we like.
Facebook doesn’t give you much room to work with when creating an ad, but here’s what worked for us.
My partner Allyson and I have stronger “personal brands” than our website. We took advantage of our personal name recognition in these ads.
So, is it working?
I have been pleased with the steady growth that advertising has helped with. As of August 9, we’re up to 103 fans. (And only 35 of those fans are Facebook friends of mine.)
(click for larger version)
We have had 168 clicks, but we’re only paying $0.51 per average click for a total of $86. Let’s assume that 10 of these new fans are organic and not PPC generated. The average fan only cost $1.62.
I was curious what $100 would buy me. I’ve been happy to see very measurable results.
Other Tools
1.) It’s now possible to have Facebook “Like” buttons for blog posts. If a reader likes a particular article and decides to “like” it, the link can appear on their Facebook wall and is shared with their friends. For Wordpress users, here is a free plug-in from the folks at Homequest.
2.) Since email is so ubiquitous, it seems silly not to have a link to your fanpage from your email signature. I use an image provided by Facebook – it seems so much cooler to click on a button than a url.
3.) It makes sense that you might tell your blog readers about your Facebook page too. Certainly a post inviting them to join you on Facebook isn’t a bad idea. Facebook has created “badges” for you to place on your blog which link back to your fan page. They show how many fans you have and also a snippet of your most recent activity.
I use one that fits nicely in my sidebar without being too distracting.
How are you using Facebook with your hyperlocal blog? Are you driving traffic to your blog from Facebook or are you turning loyal readers into Facebook fans?
MapQuest Dropping Local Blog Support
In one of the first articles on Hyperlocal Blogger, I showed and wrote about an opportunity for local bloggers to get exposure through the popular MapQuest web site: MapQuest Wants Your Local Content.
They don’t want it anymore.
Greg Sterling first mentioned in passing that MapQuest Local — the company’s excellent local start page — is going away, and that immediately made me wonder if the local blog content would be, too. I spoke today with MapQuest GM Christian Dwyer and he confirmed that it is … although MapQuest may bring it back in the future.
Background
If you’re not familiar, take a look at local.mapquest.com and you’ll see what this is about. That’s the home page for MapQuest Local, and it should default to your current location. You should see, somewhere near the top, a “Blogs in…” widget like this one from the Seattle page:
You can see that there’s an “Add Your Blog” button, and some real estate agent has wisely taken MapQuest up on that offer. I don’t know how much exposure she’s received, but this was always a pretty brain-dead simple thing to do. Even if it didn’t lead to a ton of new visitors to your hyperlocal blog, it also didn’t require a ton of effort to setup … so any exposure was a fair trade.
Current Situation
MapQuest Local will eventually go away, Dwyer tells me, and the support for accepting local blog content will go with it. He says there’s no timetable for this to happen, though; it depends on how quickly MapQuest users adopt the new MapQuest home page at new.mapquest.com. When there’s substantial adoption there, the “classic” version of MapQuest, along with MapQuest Local, will go away.
For now, MapQuest is bringing in local blog content … but, as an AOL-owned property, it’s focusing on content from AOL’s growing Patch network. Dwyer showed me Maplewood, NJ, restaurant listings in MapQuest’s system that are pulling business information from the Patch hyperlocal site covering Maplewood.
Future Possibilities
But all isn’t lost for local bloggers. Dwyer did say that MapQuest is thinking about how to capture local blog content from non-Patch sources and make it part of the main experience on the new MapQuest.com. A likely addition to come sooner than that will be local news sourced from AOL’s news property.
Bottom line: It may be many months before MapQuest Local goes away, so if you want to submit your blog to the local site covering your area … go for it. Just be aware that it won’t be around forever.
(PS – while you’re on MapQuest, do check out the new site. It’s got some pretty darn cool mapping tools that I’ve not seen on Google Maps or anywhere else.)
Fwix Looks Cool, Unless You Live in a Small Town
Fwix is a pretty compelling local content provider … unless you live in a smaller metro area like me (and millions of others). Fwix covers cities in the US, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It’s basically an aggregator of local news and content from a variety of sources:
- local papers, radio, and TV news
- local blogs – see below
- official government data sources
- Weather Underground
- Flickr, Twitter, and other social sites/tools
- Yelp, Foursquare, and Gowalla
- real estate listings from Trulia
- etc.
Look at the Seattle or even the Spokane pages, and you’ll probably agree they make a pretty strong news and content hub for those cities. I might love Fwix if I lived there.
But I live in Tri-Cities, WA (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland) and Fwix actually thinks we’re a suburb of Spokane, which is about 150 miles away. Oh, if the locals see that, no one will ever visit Fwix again. I’ve used this form to request that Fwix add my city, and stop listing us as a Spokane suburb.
Until that happens, I can’t use some of the cool stuff Fwix is offering. Like…
Fwix Widgets
Fwix recently started offering widgets that can be customized and embedded into any web site. Here’s the Spokane widget, for example:
I’ve customized that to NOT show status updates from Twitter, but it does show pretty much everything else: news, events, photos, reviews, weather, and deals. If you’re more of a programmer, you might prefer the Fwix API.
In addition to widgets, Fwix users can create custom feeds/pages made up only of the stuff you care about — sort of like how My Yahoo or iGoogle works.
How Can Fwix Help Your Hyperlocal Blog
Two ways I can think of immediately:
- As a news dashboard for your own coverage. If Fwix has enough good content sources in your hometown, it should provide a good, daily snapshot of what’s going on around town and provide ideas/tips for things you can/should cover on your site, too.
- As a potential traffic source. Local bloggers can submit to the Add Your Blog page. I’ve just submitted via this form within the last couple days, so I don’t know how soon submissions are processed, what kind of review process there is, and so forth. (And since Fwix doesn’t really cover my area, it may be a while before I find out.) But if Fwix grows, it could become a good opportunity for more exposure.
Your turn: Have you checked out Fwix? What are your thoughts? How’d it go when you submitted your blog? Comments are open.
Is Your Blog on CNN’s home page? Mine is
If you go to CNN.com right now, wait for the page to load (wow, it’s slow), and then use the LOCAL NEWS & WEATHER widget on the right side, you can see a couple links to one of our local blogs. Just put in our local zip code and here’s what you’ll see:
I don’t know who or what WIVB is, but the other two links there both point to the West Richland Real Estate blog, one of the four that my wife and I write.
How on Earth Did That Happen?
What you’re looking at is one of the initial integrations of Outside.in’s partnership with CNN, which dates back to December when CNN sank some money into Outside.in.
Peter Krasilovsky reports that Outside.in content is also showing up now on CNN’s weather page and on user profile pages, too. I see the Outside.in headlines on the weather page, but they’re not nearly as targeted/accurate as the screenshot above. On the weather page, the “local” headlines below the West Richland weather mostly come from Seattle sources (with one from Kansas City, too).
How do I get my local blog on CNN, too?
Pretty simple: Submit your site to Outside.in for Bloggers, which was formerly known as the Outside.in GeoToolkit.
By the way, there’s no SEO value from these links; they first pass through the Outside.in API, then through your feed URL, and then to your blog. But CNN is (obviously) a hugely popular site, so I’ll be watching to see if there’s any traffic increase in the coming days and weeks.
Go Hyperlocal Maps US & UK Blogs
Here’s a new site that offers both inspiration and exposure for hyperlocal bloggers: Go Hyperlocal. It’s a hyperlocal blog directory that bills itself as “Ideas and Examples from the Best Hyperlocal News Sites.” And even on a super quick glance, I see a couple familiar HLB commenters already have their blogs listed: Kyle from Yellowknife Online and Mike from Go Burley.
The site offers a US map and a UK map of hyperlocal blogs, both of which are obviously far from complete. But you can do your part to help out by using this link to suggest a site for the directory.
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