5 Ways to Promote A Local Blog

One of the projects I work on is called the Mayor of Concord. I started this back in Aug. 2008 and wasn’t quite sure how it was going to take shape. I am very interested in the news of my area and sometimes the mainstream outlets don’t cover my city as much as I would like. I thought that starting a local blog was important.

Becoming the Mayor of Concord (online) was a bit of a challenge. Many of the typical rules of internet marketing do not apply to a hyper-local blog. It’s not a primary focus to get people from all over the US or the world reading the site. I had to find other outlets that could be used to spread the word about my local blog and still keep the focus on a local audience. I have pulled together 10 ways to promote your local blog to a hyper-local audience.

TOPIX

Topix is the leading news community on the Web, connecting people to the information and discussions that matter to them in every U.S. town and city.

A Top 10 online newspaper destination (comScore, March 2008), the site links news from 50,000 sources to 360,000 lively user-generated forums. Topix also works with the nation’s major media companies to grow and engage their online audiences through forums, classifieds, publishing platforms and RSS feeds.

Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Topix LLC is a privately held company with investment from Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) and Tribune Company.

Your Street

YourStreet transforms the way you experience local news by indexing and mapping thousands of articles, blogs, and discussions down to the street level. YourStreet connects you to the local information that impacts you most – what’s going on in your town, your neighborhood and even your block.

YourStreet scans thousands of newspaper sites and local blogs each day to bring you the most comprehensive local news available anywhere. Our algorithm interprets the articles, identifies specific locations in the text, and plots them on an interactive map.

Twitter

Using Twitter can help grab the attention of people in your area as well as other news outlets that are looking for ways to expand their reach in the virtual world.Using some common tools using the Twitter API, you can find and follow people in your area that may be interested. I had the opportunity of meeting people from the Contra Costa Times and learn about how a newspaper works. I have been in contact with other local news agencies like cbs5 and KTVU. The best part is that these larger news agencies are more than willing to have a short conversation with you as well. They understand and appreciate the social aspect of Twitter and know that building a following is important.

Craigslist

Craigslist is a way to get local traffic to your website. With more than 12 billion page views per month, Craigslist has more than 50 million people using it’s site each month. Using Craigslist is free and ther are multiple sections you can post to that can get people over to your local blog. One way to do this is to write up a short piece in the Rant and Raves section with a link back to your site.

Get the Community Involved

One of the best things I did when I started a local blog was reach out to local businesses that I frequented. From restaurants to movie theaters, I let the managers/owners know that I was writing a local blog (I had to explain what a blog was) and told them to check the site in a couple days when my post went live. I do this for free. I’ve been paid for a couple but it’s not about the money. Its nice to get to know others in the community and spread the word about their businesses online.

Besides businesses, getting the people of the community involved can draw attention to your local blog like a wild fire. I am a one man show but I get information from people all over the area on events and stories they would like to see given some attention. The network is small but growing. Now I get some pictures from people in the area that I can use in posts I write.