Getting your local blog noticed

Getting your blog read by a larger audience is a daunting task. Getting a massive flow of traffic is a job within itself and could take a year or more depending on your skill set. I recently started a local blog called the Mayor of Concord. Doing this was not as easy I initially thought. After starting the new local blog, I wanted to get some new readers and I got some help from other local bloggers. Well…some of them sent me new readers by not playing so nice and trying to get me removed.

Instead of leaving the site to organic sources of traffic, I branched out and learned what I could about getting included into other news sites and found some great places to spread the word about your blog on a very local level. Here are a couple sites that I am working with that other local bloggers could be apart of. There are MANY other sites like these and I have gotten great results from a lot of them. These are the two places I got my start. If you are still interested, leave me a comment letting me know you want to know more.

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.

Getting your local blog noticed by new readers is key to growth. Using sites like these and others can bring you new visitors to your local blog in mass. To see how many readers you can get and the quality of sources like these, you should check out the Mayor of Concord.