Social Media

Creating a Hyper-Local Monster: Mix A Blog Energy Drink

Published

12 years ago

October 14, 2008

Carson Coots

A Blog Energy Drink

Photo by: Jayjay402

It’s Alive

I’ve been in the shadows for a while now, building the monster I call a hyper-local news blog. I had promised a series of articles chronicling the trials and tribulations of getting it going and making it a success. What I have found is that success is hard to define, but it has something to do with traffic statistics.

I was inspired to go local purely for the challenge. I defined my target geographic area, decided on a platform (WordPress), and launched the site. What I didn’t count on was how hard it would be to populate that thing with meaningful content. It’s a big job.

Like all big jobs, I took it one step at a time… which means one post at a time. My first post was the formal site announcement. I felt I needed to define what the site was all about… and I did. But that post was pretty meaningless since it did nothing but lie to my audience. I promised them relevant local news and information… and sadly weeks passed and I hadn’t published diddly squat.

Make a Source List

So I decided to mix my first ‘local blog energy drink’: A set of hand-picked bookmarks I compiled under one handy drop-down menu that contained almost every local website with any updated local news and information. It took a few hours to compile my first concoction. I had about 25 sites in my brew, and all easily accessible with one click from my browser toolbar. Why not an RSS reader? Because fortunately for me most of the local sites are not taking advantage of the wonderful world of RSS. Here are some source ideas:

Local Newspapers – this is a no-brainer, but there are quite a few more than I originally knew about. We have the city-wide paper which has a local section just for my area of the city, and even a blog to go along with it.
Local EDC – The economic development council always has a nice juicy set of press releases published in it’s own news section
Local Chambers and Clubs – I was surprised to find that we have 2 chamber of commerce sites covering my area, a Rotary Club, and Exchange Club, Toastmasters, Charity organizations, and a handful of other ‘networking’ groups with websites that contain events calendars and local news releases. These are great sources.
Local ‘free’ publications – We have a couple of local magazines and free weeklies that circulate in print, but also have an online presence.
School District PR Department – The press and communications section of the local school district sites has a ton of press-releases circulating every week. When I say a ton, I mean 3-5 per week.
Local Real Estate Blogs – Of all of the businesses out there, It was safe to say that real estate agents are the ones that are really blogging their hearts out. Although the numbers are still low, it was rare to find a local blogger in my area that was actively publishing that wasn’t a real estate agent. In my area, there are quite a few that are caught up in the Localism fever. Hey, whatever works… but I would prefer to host my own blog.
Other Local Blogs – There are a few local businesses that maintain blogs not related to real estate. A majority of small business and personal blogs were ‘mommy blogs’ having to do with perenting and kids activities. Beleive it or not, these are some of my favorite news sources. They tend to focus on fun stuff, events, and ways to save money in the area.
HOA Sites – Compile a list of neighborhood HOA sites for a grab bag of sometimes petty but still useful news and information. This is the stuff that great news is made of if you can compile the calendars for the month and re-post this information.
Church Websites – Some church sites contain event calendars, and some church event turn-outs are not too shabby.

After I referred to my list, finding subject matter for local content was easy. I just bit the bullet and started to write. One post turned into two, and now we are publishing up to 4 articles per day with no problem.

Be a Link Journalist

I refer to my site list almost daily, and I am never at a loss for things to post. Press releases are extremely helpful, because you can legally post them in their entirety and add your own unique flavoring in the form of a paragraph at the beginning or end… or re-word them like a bonafide journalist.

Compiling this list is not unlike what a real journalist does for story research. Many times I will find tht multiple sources will cover the same story or announcement. This presents a great opportunity for combining the best information form multiple sources, quoting, and practicing good link journalism.

Events and Longevity

You may be saying to yourself… an event post will not be relevant when the event is over… It would be a waste of time. You are right and wrong. Articles announcing events are not-relevant after the event has passed, but some of my largest traffic spikes are due to event posts. Events posts take less time to write, since a press release usually covers every detail and they are straight forward. Another benefit to publishing upcoming events is that they make great link-bait. I have acquired quite a few inbound links because of event articles.

What to Cover

A local blog can cover a lot. New developments, business openings, community events, school awards and recognition, sports coverage, job market changes, freeway and road developments, city meetings, chamber events, accomplishments by local people, top 10 lists, restaurant reviews, neighborhood profiles, and all kinds of other things.

Some experts suggest that a real estate blog should stick to real estate. All I can say is, the local blog covering anything and everything that has to do with my little corner of the earth in Katy, Texas is averaging over 250 unique (and local) visitors per day in a little over 4 months. Although every visitor is not looking to buy or sell a home, there are many stages in the customer life cycle. Sean Purcell at Bloodhound Blog offers another perspective:

The goal of almost all real estate marketing has been, and continues to be, relating your expertise in the community. The question you want to put in their head is: who better to help them sell their home than you? You know the neighborhood inside and out. More important still is the conversation they will have with a family member, friend or co-worker. It begins with the future client saying: “I have been thinking about moving to your neighborhood. I hear the schools are great, the homes are beautiful and everyone turns out for the 4^th of July parade.”

There is more to the story… but I am happy with the results so far.

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Carson Coots

Writer for national real estate opinion column AgentGenius.com, focusing on the improvement of the real estate industry by educating peers about technology, real estate legislation, ethics, practices and brokerage with the end result being that consumers have a better experience.

18 Comments

Jim Duncan

October 14, 2008 at 7:58 am

Carson –

Thanks for this. I’m in the process of building another hyper local blog from scratch, and I’d forgotten just how much work it is to get started and to populate it. It’s a lot of work and time! What’s frustrating for me is that this new one doesn’t have local bloggers with whom to network … but that’s just another opportunity.

Now … to sign up for the school pressers …

Reply
Jonathan Dalton

October 14, 2008 at 8:39 am

Here’s my question … why a full-on blog and not just a blogsite? Is there sufficient competition in this hyper local area that it’s the only way to differentiate yourself?

Not trying to be argumentative, in all honesty. But I’ve come to believe you can accomplish as much in terms of lead generation with a hyper local blogsite with the only dynamic changes being the listings than you can by killing yourself searching for content.

At least, that’s what I’m seeing here.

Reply
Ryan Hukill

October 14, 2008 at 8:41 am

Carson, thanks for the in-depth explanation of your thought process and how you got there. I have a similar blog in my area, and also struggle with what to post at times, so your list here gave me a few ideas. Sounds like you’re approach is working.

Reply
Kim Wood

October 14, 2008 at 8:42 am

Perfect timing, Carson. I am in the process of building a few neighborhood focused blogs.

Your source list is awesome! Lots of work to set up, lots of work to keep content flowing… but hopefully the benefits will roll in! I’m hoping to find one or two local bloggers/residents that will help to post as well.

Reply
Susan Milner

October 14, 2008 at 8:44 am

Ok, I need to do this. Wow, what a lot of work.

Reply
ines

October 14, 2008 at 8:48 am

Congratulations – I know it can be a lot of work. There is a hyperlocal blog here in Miami (not real estate related) but has become the place to go for news that pulls links from all kinds of sources. The author posts 3 times or more per day – a morning sift with interesting news from local blogs, a water cooler with links to actual news from the media and an evening sift (sometimes he even does personal posts with his take on things). – Talk about work!!! but he has become the place to go for the latest and greatest.

Reply
Mark Eckenrode

October 14, 2008 at 9:44 am

the blog looks great.. nice content, too.

now, i need to echo dalton’s comments and ask why a full blown local events blog? if the purpose of the blog (and i may have this wrong) is to build your real estate business, then why create a site that functions as a newspaper of sorts? i’m not seeing how the blog builds your real estate name or funnels clicks to your real estate blog.

if your purpose was to build a good looking blog with great content about your local area, i think you’ve succeeded. if the purpose was to build a blog that builds your brand name and generates leads, i’m sorry but i don’t see it.

Reply
Bob

October 14, 2008 at 10:16 am

Echoing Mark and Jonathan here. Why re-create Topix? It is a huge time and labor commitment, but the biggest concern I see is that this commitment never ends. If you could generate the same traffic and business, would you still do it this way?

Reply
Kay Baker Wilmington NC Real Estate

October 14, 2008 at 5:03 pm

Truly loved ideas for blogging. They really work, too!

Reply
Jason Sandquist

October 14, 2008 at 5:12 pm

The site has definitely come along way since I last visited, looks good BTW.

Not going to repeat what Jonathan and Mark said, but don’t see the branding. Are any of the realtors seeing any clicks thru to their sites, any successes? How is the workload trying to keep up on everything?

Reply
Daniel Bates

October 14, 2008 at 5:17 pm

Carson, I’m a hard person to impress but I am truly amazed by your website. I’ve been hyper blogging for over a year now and I’ve learned a lot of the same sources you’ve provided. I’d also add that forums are a great source for traffic. I think you’re doing a great job at taking a tool like blogging to the next level with things like advertising, video, multiple authors, etc.

I noticed that you come up on the first page of Google for “Katy TX’ and “Katy Texas” searches. I’ve achieved the same thing in my town and found that while not every visitor is a current buyer you are building a great long term marketing strategy. It’s also great place to advertise the vacation rentals that I manage. Most readers are either going to be local (in which case statistics show they’ll probably sell their home in the next 7 years), visiting (need a place to stay), or considering moving there (want to buy or rent a home). That is every aspect of our profession covered with one effort.

I’d like to offer my answer to everyone’s question: Yes, it is a lot of time and work (but it beats paying for leads or costly mailouts and print advertising) and it IS worth it because readers can tell the difference between quality articles and regurgitated feeds from other sites. Topix is hardly all inclusive and is watered down with useless information. Running a blog like this allows you to filter the news and provide relevant material to your readers and build a larger following.

PS – Once you’ve been blogging for a year and cover reoccurring events you can link to the new post from the old post and often gain very high search results. My suggestion to the naysayers is to never under estimate the power of helping people, because it will be returned to you.

Reply
Carson Coots

October 15, 2008 at 5:39 am

Thanks for the compliments on the site…

Daniel – Thank you for addressing some of the issues with the strategy, your answer aligns with my reasoning also.

I mentioned the customer life-cycle in the post to explain why I think this approach is worthwhile. The news-style blog building I am describing helps you create an online resource that would/could be noted, bookmarked and hopefully returned to repeatedly by residents in your local area…the ones you would be wanting to target if you were to spend money on an ad. The repeat exposure is exactly what an agent needs…

It definitely doesn’t present itself as a real estate site. Of the people who land on the site looking for various local topics, many can tell right away that it is serving as a ‘media’ outlet first, on par with the local paper or magazines. This gives it “3rd party” street cred. So we get credibility combined with repeat exposure.

I notice real estate companies and builders placing ads month after month in local publications. They are aiming to catch readers in the market and hopefully increase name recognition. The scope of content is going way beyond real estate, but it presents more opportunities to publish relevant stories. It’s no different than running an ad or renting billboard space on a local street.

My #1 goal has been to build a base of local traffic… not sure what I am going to do with it outside of placing ads yet. It’s a work in progress. But I bet a real estate agent would like to own it if I were to offer it.

One thing is for sure… it’s a ton of work. I am not a Realtor, but have local writers contributing on the site so they trade content for exposure…and the aggregate of the efforts benefit the group as a whole when it comes to traffic – much like AG. The content would not flow as well without them. I have not added a home search feature or any messages aiming to convert real estate leads yet.

I’m working through the process and sharing what I have learned so far.

Reply
tony - forsalebylocals

October 15, 2008 at 6:41 am

One of the things that we’ve come up with to help is a local content feed for just about every town in the US – here’s the page for Miami Shores, FL for instance:

https://forsalebylocals.com/localdata/m/english/united+states/fl/miami+shores

There is an RSS feed in the upper right hand corner to which anyone can subscribe and a search mechanism to find your local area at the bottom of the page. All of the the marketing reporting reports are geolocated by lat/long so they know where they are in relation to other content. We have a process that works in the background to constantly improve initial results based on 5 relevance measures – you can see examples of changes that have been made by the automatic process at https://forsalebylocals.com/tools/selfcorrectingcontent.asp.

Hopefully, this can be make the list as another free resource to help those looking for local content.

Tony

Reply
Kim Wood

October 15, 2008 at 9:31 am

I do believe the neighborhood focused blogs can be successful. It’s not about us, as agents or whomever to just talk about the community. It’s about getting the community itself talking to each other – but using your blog to do so.

It is imperative that it does not scream “advertisement” or “real estate agent trying to sell a house”, however.

Also agreed, that maybe not a “full blown blog” where you update content constantly – but to stay on top, you do have to update periodically.

Reply
Vicki Moore

October 15, 2008 at 8:53 pm

I like to add posts that are unrelated to real estate. Although the main topic of my blog is real estate, there’s more to me thus more to my blog than that.

I “re-posted” an article from the local online paper that has gotten more interest/comments than a lot of others. I just need to get in front of people. If a post about the police does it, I’ll take it. Each person knows – what 300 people? I don’t make a habit of it, but I get tired of talking/writing about real estate.

I read my blog more than anybody else. I want to enjoy it and want others to as well. I think if readers see my enthusiasm it will be contagious.

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We watched The Social Dilemma – here are some social media tips that stuck with us

(SOCIAL MEDIA) Here are some takeaways from watching Netflix’s The Social Dilemma that helped me to eliminate some social media burnout.

Published

4 hours ago

September 23, 2020

Taylor Leddin, Staff Writer

Last weekend, I made the risky decision to watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix. I knew it was an important thing to watch, but the risk was that I also knew it would wig me out a bit. As much as I’m someone who is active “online,” the concept of social media overwhelms me almost more than it entertains (or enlightens) me.

The constant sharing of information, the accessibility to information, and the endless barrage of notifications are just a few of the ways social media can cause overwhelm. The documentary went in deeper than this surface-level content and got into the nitty gritty of how people behind the scenes use your data and track your usage.

Former employees of high-profile platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and Pinterest gave their two cents on the dangers of social media from a technological standpoint. Basically, our data isn’t just being tracked to be passed along for newsletters and the like. But rather, humans are seen as products that are manipulated to buy and click all day every day in order to make others money and perpetuate information that has astronomical effects. (I’m not nearly as intelligent as these people, so watch the documentary to get the in-depth look at how all of this operates.)

One of the major elements that stuck with me was the end credits of The Social Dilemma where they asked interviewees about the ways they are working to eliminate social media overwhelm in their own lives. Some of these I’ve implemented myself and can attest to. Here’s a short list of things you can do to keep from burning out online.

Turn off notifications – unless there are things you need to know about immediately (texts, emails, etc.) turn it off. Getting 100 individual notifications within an hour from those who liked your Instagram post will do nothing but burn you (and your battery) out.
Know how to use these technologies to change the conversation and not perpetuate things like “fake news” and clickbait.
Uninstall apps that are wasting your time. If you feel yourself wasting hours per week mindlessly scrolling through Facebook but not actually using it, consider deleting the app and only checking the site from a desktop or Internet browser.
Research and consider using other search tools instead of Google (one interviewee mentioned that Qwant specifically does not collect/store your information the way Google does).
Don’t perpetuate by watching recommended videos on YouTube, those are tailored to try and sway or sell you things. Pick your own content.
Research the many extensions that remove these recommendations and help stop the collection of your data.

At the end of the day, just be mindful of how you’re using social media and what you’re sharing – not just about yourself, but the information you’re passing along from and to others. Do your part to make sure what you are sharing is accurate and useful in this conversation.

Social Media

WeChat ban blocked by California judge, but for how long?

(SOCIAL MEDIA) WeChat is protected by First Amendment concerns for now, but it’s unclear how long the app will remain as pressure mounts.

Published

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September 22, 2020

Allison Yano, Staff Writer

WeChat barely avoided a US ban after a Californian judge stepped in to temporarily block President Trump’s executive order. Judge Laurel Beeler cited the effects of the ban on US-based WeChat users and how it threatened the First Amendment rights of those users.

“The plaintiffs’ evidence reflects that WeChat is effectively the only means of communication for many in the community, not only because China bans other apps, but also because Chinese speakers with limited English proficiency have no options other than WeChat,” Beeler wrote.

WeChat is a Chinese instant messaging and social media/mobile transaction app with over 1 billion active monthly users. The WeChat Alliance, a group of users who filed the lawsuit in August, pointed out that the ban unfairly targets Chinese-Americans as it’s the primary app used by the demographic to communicate with loved ones, engage in political discussions, and receive news.

The app, along with TikTok, has come under fire as a means for China to collect data on its users. U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has stated, “At the President’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of U.S. laws and regulations.”

This example is yet another symptom of our ever-globalizing society where we are learning to navigate between connectivity and privacy. The plaintiffs also pointed out alternatives to an outright ban. One example cited was in Australia, where WeChat is now banned from government officials’ phones but not others.

Beeler has said that the range in alternatives to preserving national security affected her decision to strike down the ban. She also explained that in regards to dealing with national security, there is “scant little evidence that (the Commerce Department’s) effective ban of WeChat for all US users addresses those concerns.”

Social Media

Instagram makes IGTV videos more accessible with automatic closed captions

(SOCIAL MEDIA) This new feature for Instagram opens avenues for viewers who don’t or can’t use audio on IGTV videos, creating more accessibility for all.

Published

6 days ago

September 17, 2020

Allison Yano, Staff Writer

Instagram live being recorded will now feature auto captions.

In an effort to expand accessibility efforts, IGTV videos on Instagram will now include an auto captions option. While its parent company, Facebook, has included auto captions on uploaded videos since 2017, this new-for-Instagram feature is expected to widen audience viewership and increase potential viewing by those who prefer watching sans-audio.

In a statement by Facebook, the company states: “While there is no shortage of information, not everyone can access it. It needs to be available to the hundreds of millions of people in the world who are deaf or hard of hearing. According to the World Health Organization, over 5% of the world’s population – or 466 million people – have disabling hearing loss, and that is projected to increase to over 900 million by 2050.”

Current events have made the need for auto captions even more critical for inclusion. “The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a spike in both the supply and demand of public health information. Several local and state governments, that were accustomed to holding live press conferences but didn’t have the resources, staff or technology to record, stream, and caption their live events, turned to Facebook Live. Several governments also discovered that video captioning was not just a nice-to-have, but imperative, especially in the absence of available sign language interpreters,” states the company.

Currently, Facebook provides auto captions for videos in 16 languages and has announced that Instagram’s IGTV will have access to the same features. The caption accuracy is determined by the video’s audio quality, although AI technology is constantly improving in both precision and speed.

Additionally, branded content ads are likely to see an increase in consumer interaction. Recently published data by Facebook shows ads visually designed for watching with the sound off have 48% more relevance to viewers and a 42% higher purchase intent. As auto captions normalize across social media, users can expect ad content to utilize this feature to the fullest.