Promoting Local Blogs Offline: MOO Cards
by Matt McGee on Nov 20, 2008 in Promotion
One thing that separates us local bloggers from many other bloggers is that we absolutely must promote our local blogs offline, in our local communities. If you expect to grow a local blog with nothing but online promotions, I think you’ll be disappointed with your growth rate.
In part five of my Starting A Hyperlocal Blog series, I mentioned that one of our failures was the local of offline promotion of our four hyperlocal blogs. Now, a couple months later, we’ve finally taken the first step toward changing that:
These are MOO Business Cards, made from a selection of my own Tri-Cities photos already posted on Flickr. Awesome.
(They’re printed by Moo.com over in England. We ordered them nine days ago and they arrived today. I’m such a fan that the link in the previous paragraph is an affiliate link. The printing is top-notch and the card paper stock is higher quality than any business card I’ve ever touched. I ordered 50 cards for $22; you can get 200 for $70.)
When Cari and I attend local events going forward, we’ll have these cards with us to give out to people we meet. I’d like to think the local photography will catch someone’s eye and hold their interest; these cards should be conversation pieces. And the local blog promotion happens on the back side of each card:
We made the decision to promote all four local blogs on each card. I don’t know yet if that’s the right way to do it. Part of me wonders if we should promote each blog on the back of separate cards; i.e., show the West Richland Real Estate Blog URL only on the back of cards with photos of West Richland. Maybe we’ll do that with the next batch of MOO business cards. I think having all four on each card will be okay because the Tri-Cities is small enough that what happens in Pasco is also interesting to people in Kennewick, and so forth.
Those details aside, I’m excited to start sharing these cards with others in our area and seeing if it helps promote our local blogs. I’ll report any good stories in future blog posts.
Your Turn: How do you promote your local blog offline? Do you have business cards, or do you use other methods?
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Promoting Local Blogs Offline: MOO Cards…
One thing that separates us local bloggers from many other bloggers is that we absolutely must promote our local blogs offline, in our local communities. If you expect to grow a local blog with nothing but online promotions, I think you’ll be disappoi…
The MOO cards are pretty awesome. I got some of their mini-cards, which are also pretty cool, and seem to attract attention because of their non-standard size. If you’re only promoting one or two blogs/websites at a time, the mini-cards will work very well.
I love that you can get different images on the backs of the cards, instead of being limited to just one image. And you’re right, the quality is outstanding.
Looking forward to hearing about your experiences using the cards to promote your blogs!
[...] Promoting Local Blogs Offline: MOO Cards [...]
Hey, I started up a Hyperlocal blog whistlerwatch.com. It’s been getting a steady 30 hits a day, sometimes spikes, but nothing too much. it’s only a month or two old, but i’ve been planning it for about 5 months, and I don’t plan on letting it wither.
I haven’t done much outside promotion other than word of mouth, but business cards are in the works.
I also sometimes do event photos and tell people to visit the site to check their events.
Whistler is a transient population. most people are tourists so it gets a little harder to actually get people to regularly check it out, but if someone has tips, that’d be cool.
let me know, shoot me an email or post a comment.
It looks like you’re off to a good start, Nick. You’re posting a lot, which is a great sign. That’s been one of my struggles — finding time to post regularly on our local blogs.
To attract tourists, you should make sure you’re following SEO best practices and targeting appropriate keywords with some of your posts. There are some good SEO plugins, too, if you’re using WordPress.
Good luck, and keep us posted on your progress!
Thanks for this post. I have been going back and forth on the idea of business cards, and this has helped sway the vote.