This article will be short and sweet, but very important to your hyperlocal blog.
Twitter. Plain and simple. Go to Twitter and sign up. Start using it. There are a zillion articles written about Twitter, so I will not go into the details here. It’s easy enough to find out, just Google it.
Twitter will send traffic to your site. Every time I post an article on the Monroe Scoop, I will tweet a link to the article maybe 2 or 3 times that day spaced out so as not to aggravate those following me. When I check my stats, I do get traffic. I don’t get a ton of traffic but that’s ok. For the most part, the majority of my followers are not from my hometown and I’m sure many of the links I post on Twitter would not be of interest to them. Those folks are not my target either. If you only have 10 people from your community following you on Twitter, those readers are your target audience.
In my case, I joined Twitter over a year ago and didn’t really understand the principal behind it. I use my own name as my Twitter handle. You can view my Twitter Page here. Now that I understand Twitter a bit more, I use it quite often. There is a bit of a learning curve. The premise question behind Twitter is “What are you doing?” Many people take it literally and all they ever post is what they are doing. Do not fall into that. People will “unfollow” you if you never add any value. I could care less if you are at Target buying some shampoo.
Here is my advice to you if you are just starting a new hyperlocal blog. Take out a Twitter name the same as your hyperlocal blog. You can have as many Twitter accounts as you like so I recommend that you take one in your personal name and also a Twitter name for your hyperlocal blogging efforts. For every new site that I start I will certainly take out a new Twitter account and use it with my site.
I have taken out a Twitter account for this blog. @Hyperlocalblog. I have not posted a single remark to it yet, but it’s there waiting on me when I do.
Right now, if you have not already done so, go get a Twitter Account in the name of your hyperlocal blog.
Copyright 2009 bloggerlens.com Hyperlocal Blogging & Citizen Journalism
Check out these awesome articles while you are here:
Hi Steve Sherron,
I learned about you and your hyper local blogging expertise on http://BloggerIllustrated.net/. (Allyn Hane is a a great guy, isn’t he?) You might say the story there about you lit my fire, and thank the Lord that it did. I have been floundering around trying to find something to do on the internet that would serve a good purpose and interest people.
As you can see, if you go to http://mpidirect.com, I have started a personal blog that may generate a nice following in time, but . . . a local press blog like you have on http://monroescoop.com is, if done right, a can’t miss way to do what I want and need to do: something for people that they will find interesting and intriguing, which will then translate into an income flow as the blog is developed and embraced by the local reading public.
I can see that Allyn was right. You know what you are doing and it is a much needed resource for its intended audience.
It will be a little while before I can put a plan into action–I am living in the Philippines but will be coming home to America sometime in July, if all goes as planned. Meanwhile I will start boning up on how to do hyper local blogging right here on BloggerLens.com and on MonroeScoop.com.
Thanks for being there Steve.
Cheers
Steve,
I guess I forgot to mention that in this post that you showed me a worthwhile reason to have a Twitter account. I have a Facebook account and a Linkedin account, too. I have up until now never bothered to put any of these accounts to good use. I think I will give them all a closer look now that I have read this post.
Thanks
@medic To answer your first question. Yes, Allyn Hane is an awesome and unique man. He selflessly shares his knowledge. I predict greatness for him. I’m glad a fire is lighting under you because there is no drawback, only good will come of it as I see things.
I would offer this advice. Don’t let where you presently live keep you from starting right now. Now is a great time to start and you will be rolling along when you come back state side. Take a look at this post I recently put up. http://bloggerlens.com/how-to-start-a-hyperlocal-blog-and-keep-your-full-time-job/. Just change the title to How to start a hyperlocal blog while living in the Philippines.
Thanks for your kind words about my sites and I really do appreciate your active involvement and your questions.
I will be following your advice closely as a get into hyper local blogging.
It will have to wait, however, until we decide for sure where we are going to live long term in America. We will be living in Wichita, KS for short while, settling some family affairs. I will start the blog from there.
@medic Hopefully I can steer you in the right direction for what works for me. It’s a funny coincidence that I just used Kansas randomly when I wrote the article about keeping your full time job. I have no idea if there is a Bakersfield, Kansas however. There are some long, long stretches of highway in Kansas. I drove across the state in 2003 on my way to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. I remember driving for miles through green fields and not even seeing a sign for miles and miles. A beautiful state.
Yeah, I noticed that you used Bakersfield, KS as a random location and I wondered it there was such a place.
That brings up a good question. What is the ideal size city or town for a local blog? I see your community is quite small, but I assume it is part of a relatively large area. After all, it takes some people to support an Ikea store.
A large city within driving distance will be desirable for my wife and I. I like to be near a large city, but I like to be out a ways, when possible.
In any event, I wonder if a city like Wichita might be too large a place to start a local blog.
You can see from the typos that it is probably time for me to sleep. It is 11:06 pm here.
@Lawrence I don’t think there is a good answer for that question. If your community or town is small, I would probably look at the county you are in as a whole. If you check Google for search terms related to your area, I’m betting that the highest searched terms are for variations of your city and county. For example, in Google there are 3200 searches per month for Bakersfield, Kansas. 2500 searches for Bakersfield, KS. 5700 searches for Bakersfield County, KS.
Based on this, I would make my hyperlocal blog with a county-wide focus. I would call it BakersfieldCountyScoop.com. When I wrote my articles, I would use keyword search terms in my articles to capture traffic from the other variations that folks are searching. Starting out I would only focus on about 4 keyword variations and that’s all. In your natural writing about your community, you will start ranking for tons of terms related to all aspects of your city and county.
Your entire county will soon be the focus on your hyperlocal blog.