Tampa-based blogger SarahInTampa recently posted about a business blog she has helped create for a local furniture store. As she states in her post, inspired DECOR is not a standard cookie-cutter furniture store so they decided not to go with the traditional web site. Instead they created a blog.
Blogs and web sites are obviously a great way to reach a national or global audience, but some business aren't capable of providing services outside their local area. In this case, how can a local business blog generate traffic in a local market, or convert traffic from across the globe to local sales?
As I commented on Sarah's blog, Tampa has a very strong local blogging community. I frequently mention Sticks of Fire, but just head over to TampaBLAB to see a list of other Tampa bloggers. In the case of inspired DECOR they have a large local blogging community that they can tap into. But what if you're in a town like Orlando that lacks a large, local blogging community?
Traditional advertising can be used to drive local residents to a web site or blog, but that can be quite costly and is a shotgun approach. Pay-per-click advertising on Yahoo or Google is another solution and can help jump-start traffic at a lower cost. Hopefully you can rely upon compelling content to keep first-time users coming back.
The long term play though is the natural SEO benefits that a blog can provide. By continually posting good content that is somewhat keyword and geography sensitive (and getting those precious links) the results should come. You always need to consider the market you're in though. Keywords such as real estate, mortgages are always a saturated market. In Florida there is obviously a great deal of tourism related SEO as well.
We're also still at a point where there is still some 'buzz' surrounding blogs, so local reporters are always contacting me for stories about blogs. The reporters always want a list of local blogs, both business and personal. The personal blogs are easy to come up with, providing them a list of local business blogs is somewhat more difficult. My friends at Websolvers and RedRocket have both received local press since they had 'local business blogs'.
Does anybody have some good case examples of successful local blogs that aren't in a community with an active blogging community (i.e. not San Fran, Atlanta, NYC, etc)?
