Local Business Marketing Blog

April 20, 2010 – A “hyperlocal” blog is one that focuses on one or more specific neighbourhoods within a region. In a hyperlocal blog you publish material of specific interest to people in those neighbourhoods. We refer to these neighbourhoods as “communities”.

Why specific communities? Why “hyper” local? One reason for this is to gain search engine traction for those specific communities. Keywords such as “Lakeshore Village Kingston” are much less competitive than “Kingston”.

But this is really a secondary reason for focusing on the smaller community. The truth is you will get very little search engine traffic from hyperlocal keywords, even if you dominate them in the search results. As I have said in many other places, relying on SEO to get local blog traffic is both frustrating and disappointing and it is doomed to failure.

The far more important reason is to focus on hyperlocal communities is to become a resource for the people of the community – to become an online destination for people interested in reading about or seeing photos and videos featuring people and events in their community.

And, of course, in the process you build your own profile as someone active in the community.

What is a “community”?

In the case of real estate blogs a “community” within a city will usually be a subdivision or neighbourhood. If you are a real estate agent you know exactly what I’m talking about.

In a rural area like I live in, my township (Woolwich, Ontario) has a fairly strong identity, but most people in the township more closely identify with the specific village or town they live in. So the communities one would focus on with a “hyperlocal blog” about Woolwich township would be villages such as Conestogo, St. Jacobs, Breslau, Bloomingdale, Linwood, Elmira, etc.

What does a hyperlocal blog look like?

Some real estate agents active in hyperlocal blogging feel it is best to create a separate blog for each community or neighbourhood they service. For an example and discussion of this approach see the series by Matt McGee called Starting a Hyperlocal Blog: The Series.

Frankly, this seems like overkill to me. As long as you have clearly identified sections within your blog for each local community you service you will accomplish your goal.

In fact I would say it would be much easier to manage if you had just one blog dedicated to the city or area of the city you want to focus on, and then sections within that blog for each “community”.

In Wordpress you can manage this by creating categories for each community, and/or a separate “page” for each community with links to the appropriate posts.

Content is what matters

Regardless of how you approach the organization of your hyperlocal blog it is absolutely essential to remember that this exercise is not about impressing the search engines. If that works, then fine. It is much much much more important to publish items that will interest the people in your communities.

Photographs are the easiest – Take a few hours and drive through your communities taking photographs of interesting buildings, schools, churches, playgrounds, community centers.

Take off your real estate agent hat for a few hours and think of yourself as a photographer or reporter. Shoot some pictures from interesting angles.

Then run some simple little contests – possibly one a week for each community – “Identify this building/person/tree/bird house/window/etc. and win a prize”. Get a local coffee shop or restaurant to donate some $5 gift certificates, or if they won’t donate them, buy them.

Be sure to run your contests on the level. Plan them carefully, make sure the winners are selected in a fair way, and be sure to award the prizes as you said you would. Ask the winners for a photo of themselves and publish them along with the names of the winners each week.

The whole point is to get people involved and show your face in the communities to a broader audience. You want to get people coming to your blog and participating.

This is just one idea among many that others have successfully used. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

April 18, 2010 – There’s an interesting article in today’s Financial Post about the morphing of blogs from amateur and “personalized” to commercial and professional. The three blogs featured in this article are crushable.com, thegloss.com and blisstree.com – all aimed at young women “fixated on sassy information about celebrities, fashion, health and well-being.”

Together they pull in more than 3 million viewers a month. They have discoverd that the old off-the-cuff, amateur, personalized model of blogging was not translatable into commercial success – mainly because the quality of the writing in amateur blogs is generally poor and it is impossible to build reader loyalty with that type of content.

If that is the case, how can a part time blogging real estate agent, or local business person compete for viewers? The answer is pretty obvious once you get past the experimentation stage…

1. Don’t try to compete with the big boys. Unless you want to go into the publishing business you don’t need 3 million viewers from all across the continent. Learn from them, but don’t try to compete with them.

2. Focus on specialization. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Concentrate on providing quality content for one (or maybe two or three) narrow niches.

3. Focus on hyperlocal content. This is something a large publication or blog can never adequately cover. Publish local features about local events, places of interest, people, schools, libraries, churches, sports teams, companies, and so on.

4. Make your writing as interesting, competent, professional as you can without making it tedious. Give your content character – your own character.

Having a blog is just another way to get involved in social networking. But a good blog is more than that. It should be at the core of your social marketing strategy. It is where you can define yourself and your business in the terms you choose.

You need an objective for your blog, and I think the best one is to:
“Promote Your Corporate Brand”. Not just to promote your brand, but to actually fashion it the way you want it.

Of course promoting your brand will also include introducing, explaining and promoting your products and services. But most good blogs are not just a series of ads for the company. They present interesting and helpful information.

“Promoting Your Corporate Brand” is a fancy way of saying use your blog to give your business a distinctive personality – what used to be called your “image”.

First, consider how you would like your public (customers, contacts, prospects, site visitors, etc.) to think about you. For example, if you’re a real estate agent do you want people to think of you as

- the friendly guy
- the helpful guy
- the knowledgeable guy
- the smart guy
- the reliable guy
- the experienced guy

Do you want to reflect your area of specialization in what you do? For example, if you’re an internet marketer or online entrepreneur do you have a clearly defined area of specialization? Are you

- the blogging girl
- the video girl
- the affiliate sales guru
- the list building expert
- the link building professional
- the SEO guy
- the creative web designer
- the clever copywriter

Whatever you choose, this should always (or almost always) be reflected somehow in all your blog posts. Each of your posts should clearly say “This is the voice of experience speaking when it comes to commercial real estate” or “Our web design is not only creative, but it will give you an edge when it comes to convincing people they should deal with you” or “I will work my tail off to make sure I get the best price for your home.”

Often the decision about the character or personality of your business has already been made for you. It is usually a reflection of your personal character and is simply the way you conduct your business.

But don’t assume your people know this. Make it explicit in how you promote yourself. In other words, turn your persona into a “brand”. Because of the personal nature of blogging, that makes your blog the perfect place to refine and promote your brand.

Copyright Linknet Promotions

The other day I followed a link in one of the many internet marketing pitches I seem to receive on a daily basis. It offered me yet another reason why I should join a “fantastic new membership site” that would show me how I could get tons of traffic to my blog.

The pitch was in the form of a blog post and the claim was that if I received less than 1000 visitors a day and 300 subscribers then I obviously needed help. One of the topics was “How to write posts that get comments.”

I had a closer look at the blog and I noticed that the very post that I was reading had only two comments.

So how could this be? If this person is using her own strategy she should be getting at least 1000 visits to her blog every day. If she is applying her own strategies for generating comments how could a post have only two comments? Shouldn’t this post have hundreds of comments? It doesn’t make sense, does it?

Well, yes it does. Because she was obviously bending the truth. The 1000 visitors a day was just another figment of the fertile imagination of a “successful” internet marketer.

That single article entirely changed my attitude to this blogger. She could no longer be trusted. She was just another exaggerating, truth-stretching internet marketer.

Rules 1 and 2 – Be Truthful

If you are considering creating a personal or corporate blog you should give some thought to developing your own “code of ethics”. I’m not big on strict formal rules, but there is definitely a place for knowing what ethical principles you think are important. Here’s a start:

Rule #1 – Always tell the truth

Rule #2 – Don’t exaggerate your product claims (See Rule #1).

These two rules are a great place to start. The fact is your blog will (or should) become your voice, your channel, and to a large degree the shaper of your identity. So it is important that you think about how you intend to conduct yourself.

As with all channels of communication your first commitment should be to honesty and sincerity. That means there is very little room for exaggeration and misrepresentation – no matter how badly you want to sell your products.

Rules 3 and 4 – Don’t Copy Material Without Permission

The third and fourth rules have to do with creating content and using material provided (or previously published) by others.

Rule #3 – Don’t Use Published Material Without Permission

Rule #4 – Give Credit to the Author when Re-Publishing Material

Generally speaking, content created by other authors should not be copied or reproduced unless it specifically says you can do so. That goes for newspaper or magazine articles, and posts from other blogs.

Two good examples where you do not have to ask for permission (because it is assumed) are the use of articles from article directories, and the embedding of videos from sites like Youtube.

In these cases the creators of this content are making it available for republishing because they want increased exposure. That means you must give them credit as the author (and not act as though you created it), you must not change the content, and you must leave embedded links in place as they were put there by the author.

Rule 5 – Spread the Links Around

When blogs first broke on the scene one of their primary purposes was for bloggers to share links to content they found interesting. That way bloggers could create a rich web of interlinked resources. So this leads us to,

Rule #5 – Link to External Sources

This practice not only honours your sources, but also is advantageous to you. When you link to other bloggers or websites, or when you link back to resources you refer to in your own posts, you are identifying yourself with a larger community of bloggers.

Not only does this help generate traffic (for the blogs you link to), but it helps to generate inbound links from other bloggers (who return the favor), and it improves your standing in Google because you become associated with the other blogs you are inter-linked with.

Copyright Linknet Promotions

Get this Free Report about creating a successful blog.

You’ve probably heard that you should consider starting a blog. The purpose of a blog is to create interesting content to build a following of regular readers.

Real Estate Agents can use a blog to create an identity, reinforce their expertise and stay in touch with clients and prospects.

But the truth is, most blogs do not work. No matter how good the content is, if it isn’t promoted properly it is basically a waste of time and energy.

This report offers tips on how to come up with interesting things to write about. But much more importantly it provides a common sense way to get targeted traffic to your blog.

Without traffic a blog is pointless. This report describes how to create a blog that your most important people will read.

AgentMapIt members can download Blogs That Work from the members area.

Non-members can sign up for the report here.