Keep it local when blogging? I disagree in most cases.

2006 November 15
by Genuine

As I sipped my morning coffee and ran quickly through my morning ritual of reading RSS feeds, email and my mandatory blog reading, I ran across a post by Mike Manuel of WebProNews. It was early yet so I made sure to again read the article to make sure I had reads the content correctly. After determining that I had not imagined that I read something I hadn’t, I decided that I needed to respond diligently to the remarks made and to debate Mike’s wisdom. Mike’s post is sweet and to the point which is what I like in blog posts when I have a thousand articles to skim in a day.

Small business owners, a tip:

Some blowhard bloggers will have you believe that blogging is the best way to buddy up with the search engines and boost your business on the web.

Please-don’t-buy-it.

The ratio of time invested to return in awareness and sales just doesn’t net out in your favor, at least not for most owners.

Instead, invest your energy and effort in local search services and recommendation engines. These will have an immediate and measurable return for your business online. To do this, simply encourage your customers to share their experiences with your business with local search engines like Yahoo! Local or Google Local.

Customer comments, ratings, reviews, and recommendations are increasingly the first results people see when they do location-based searches. They’re also, arguably, the most influential…

[Disclosure: Yahoo! is a client of mine]

Thanks for the brevity Mike and my counterpoint will be as equally brief.

Obviously if Mike has Yahoo as a client, he is an expert in his field and probably has a lot of experience and know how, and I would in no way question his ability to advise people like Yahoo. My advice is to ignore Mike’s article and disregard its discussion of small businesses staying regional. I want to make sure that Mike is credited with adding that blogging does not net a “return on awareness” for most owners. I’m not sure which “owners” mike refers to but I disagree with his reasoning, but agree that a very small percentage of businesses would not see a benefit of blogging if they were spending a large portion of their advertising budget to garner attention.

I suppose I’m one of the “blowhards” Mike refers to and I suppose it stands to reason that I am a proponent of small businesses blogging, one because that is how I feed my kids, but also because I strongly believe in blogs as a tool to stay ahead of your competition. I don’t see where blogging might help the local dog grooming shop in your town, as their client’s would probably not travel outside the local area to have Rex of FiFi groomed. Understood. Where I disagree is the local travel agent that relies heavily on Mom and Pop Downtown to stop by and book their cruise for that retirement celebration. Yeah this agent services her local clients, but this agent can also benefit from providing travel services to people all over the country. If I’m in Cleveland and the agent is in the small town of Estes Park, Colorado and I want to travel to see an Elk, I might not book that with the local agent in my suburb of Parma, Ohio, but I might get online with my computer and Google travel to Estes Park. As a result of the power of blogs and their ability to produce stellar organic results, my small local travel agency found a new client. The return on awareness? I’m not sure at that moment I really care Mike, but the cost of blogging was paid for when I captured the attention of that potential customer and made a sale. I wasn’t just a local vendor but I was now a national agency. Limiting the vision of small business also limits its ability to compete as a small business on the large business scale.

Mike Manuel also blogs at Marketing Guerilla.

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from → Blogging and SEO, Blogging and Usability, Blogging as a Marketing Tool, Blogging in the News, Business Blogging

5 Comments leave one →
2006 November 15
Mike Manuel permalink

Hey Jim, first and most important, you definitely are *not* a blowhard, the logic and reasoning used in you retort here is enough to justify that fact:)

Second, I think you’re approaching small businesses blogging from a macro perspective, me from a micro one.

Your travel business example is great. It’s a local shop but it has services with a macro appeal, so you’re right, blogging may have a measurable return. But for a local pizza joint, like the example I used, it’s all about a micro appeal, and blogging doesn’t make any sense for that sort of business.

Appreciate your perspective on this…

2006 November 18
Dave permalink

I agree with you Jim. Like you, I posted a reply on my blog, and Mike and I have gone back-and-forth a bit in the comments. I believe that even for strictly local (micro) businesses, blogging is important. In this day and age of advertising overload, business owners understand that to grow their businesses, they must connect with their present and potential customers in a very personal and engaging way. Other than first-person contact, there is no better way than a blog.

I also think that this is particularly true for small businesses that offer near-commodities (dry cleaners, hardware store, dog groomers, etc). They MUST differentiate themselves, and their customers must perceive them as different from the alternative. A blog is a far better tool for doing that than a few reviews on a local search engine.

2006 November 20
Mike Sansone permalink

Search: cannoli pittsburgh
Or: patent attorney iowa’
Or: yachts maine

Does blogging make a business more findable? Approachable?

I think there are many ways a pizza joint can use blogging to improve their bottom line. I also think Mike’s suggestions are solid – but to ignore blogging could prove unwise down the road.

2006 November 22
Joerg Weisner permalink

Just one more point of view:

I just convinced a group of small business owners to start their business blogs – each company a blog for themselves.

The good thing about this:
Even if the companies are only dealing with local or at least regional customers, they belong to a nationwide franchise-group.

Adding to all the advantages, mentioned above, come the point: That whenever a customers come to one of their blogs, and gets interested in the philosophy of the company and the group, he can easily klick on to that local company, which is next to him.

2006 November 22
Anne-Marie Nichols permalink

Blogging for small business people is all about providing their customers with extra value and positioning themselves as an expert and “go to” person/company in that field.

It’s another form of customer service, because it’s another way to “touch” their customers and provide additional services.

As for trying to “encourage your customers to share their experiences with your business with local search engines like Yahoo! Local or Google Local.” Yeah, sure. It’s hard enough to get them to fill out a customer survey even when you offer incentives.

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