Several weeks ago I tweeted about the importance of bloggers becoming active on BizSugar and offering small business advice. One of my regular followers asked WHY is it important.
(I would have linked him here, but alas Twitter search does not go back that far and I can not recall who asked. If you let me know I will link to you.)
Up until now, bloggers have primarily been writing about how to blog, how to use social media, and how to make money online. The most active readers, commentators, and distributors of blog content are other bloggers.
Now is the time for us to take what we learned and
apply that to creating a better world for everyone.
One thing that has become readily apparent over the past several years I’ve been blogging is that blogging is complicated. Only those who either have technical skills or the resources to hire them should install their own blogs. Once the blog is up and running, WordPress (or any other blogging platform) must be kept up to date, plugins need to be managed, and whenever one is updated it can cause technical difficulties with others.
Beyond the blog itself, there is even more to know and do from link building to developing social media best practices to growing communities of readers, followers and collaborators. All of this takes time, knowledge and especially wisdom, but unless you do it all well bloggers are highly unlikely to earn a living wage UNLESS they can reach a specific audience.
Reaching a specific niche geo-targeted
audience is the logical next step for bloggers.
WHY is focusing on growing a geo-targeted niche blog important?
Let me count the reasons:
- Because shopping locally is the solution to global economic decline, reducing environmental damage, and creating a better standard of living for all involved.
- Shopping locally requires being able to find the best small businesses locally – and they are primarily operating off-line and are not particularly Internet savvy.
- Those businesses need to be found soon or they won’t exist, but it is not logical for them to carry the overhead or acquire the expertise needed to have their own blogs.
- Bloggers who are interested in sustainable living are interested in and need to find those businesses anyway – so why not offer them your much-needed services and share what you find?
- Since you’re going to be sharing those local businesses, it just makes sense to grow a local, niche audience for your blog.
- If your [existing or new] blog is heading in that direction and reaching your local, niche audience it is the perfect place for the Web presence of those small businesses to “live”.
- You could go it alone, but aren’t we all starting to publish and contribute more guest posts anyway? When a group is involved there can be more content and more promotion so you can grow more efficiently.
IMPORTANT: You need to get involved in BLOG COLLABORATIONS
See Blogging Collaboration Best Practices for details.
I’m going to kick this idea off by adding a BizMeme section here at GrowMap with a Dallas Metro page (Dallas Ft. Worth and surrounding cities, counties and communities). Within that section I will create pages for specific areas
If you are in the Dallas Metro area
please follow me on Twitter @DallasMetro.
Everyone can assist me in spreading the word. We are going to find out how much reach a geo-targeted Twitter account can provide and see just how viable a business idea being the go-to blogger for your location and niche is.
If you have a blog or business that is related to the entire DFW Metro contact me to discuss collaborating.
Here is the bottom line:
- Bloggers need to earn a living – ideally for most from blogging and social media.
- Small businesses need to reach their local audience.
- If the blogger can reach that audience, it makes sense for related small businesses to have bloggers provide them services from advertising to blog outreach to social media.
Most small businesses do NOT need to install their own blogs. What they need is a presence on ours. If they’re so inclined they could write their own posts, but most of them are more likely to need bloggers to do that for them. They could also use assistance setting up social media accounts and learning to use them.
There is a reason we have learned all that we have learned and have the reach and influence we have. Isn’t it about time we put it to good use?
Twitter for Business: How to Geo Target Twitter
for Small Business Local Social Media #smallbusiness
