Generating awareness of your hyperlocal site

[Lisa Reeves]

Sorry for this late post but I'd be really interested in a session
looking at ways to increase awareness of your hyperlocal website
within the community - with limited spend.

At alderleyedge.com we've had a lot of support from local schools,
restaurants, shops, sports clubs etc who have distributed/displayed
our leaflets and posters. I've also delivered leaflets door to door to
every household but this has generated a mixed response.

alderleyedge.com is now pretty well established within the village but
it is smaller and therefore relatively easy to spread the word. A
coffee shop in the heart of the village has had a pile of our leaflets
next to the till since we launched and our photo gallery has also
helped generate a considerable number of new users when we have
created a gallery for a local event, such as the summer fete.

However wilmslow.co.uk, Wilmslow is only 1 1/4 miles down the road
from Alderley Edge, has proved much more of a challenge. Granted I'm
not there every day and it is 6 times the size but I am keen to learn
what has worked for people, what hasn't and share my experiences.

Saying that, we have found that the biggest drivers of traffic are big
stories, and we haven't had anything particularly controversial or
shocking happen in Wilmslow since we launched the site. Whilst very
disturbing, on alderleyedge.com we were able to break a murder story,
thanks to our relationship with the police, and yesterday we sadly had
a fatal road collision right in the centre of the village, which we
covered very quickly.

[Ed Walker]

I think this would be an excellent creative session, see how people
are raising awareness of their sites but also brainstorm some ideas
for what could be done. Make sure you pop it on a post-it at the start
of the day when they ask for session ideas, I think there's a lot of
people who would be interested.

--
Subscription settings: http://groups.google.com/group/tal-unconference-april-2010/subscribe?hl=en-GB

[william perrin]

sounds great - i found running a local campaign was a great way to drive local traffic - people needed to come to the site to find out what was going on. 

bugger the 'objective journalist' guff - start a fight on behalf of the community, be partisan without being unreasonable and they come in behind you

cheers

w

--
William Perrin
http://talkaboutlocal.org
http://www.twitter.com/TalkAboutLocal
http://www.linkedin.com/in/wperrin
+44 (0) 7899068411

[MattyB]

Thats a good example, I unwittingly did it with "Save Tunstall Pool"
http://mytunstall.co.uk/savetunstallpool and it did bring a lot of new
traffic (it wasn't the aim, but still, it worked)

I know a lot of awareness can be created via word of mouth, or posters
in your local chippy, but I think it might be worth doing 5 minutes
worth of SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimisation and Search engine
marketing) theory, because a little bit of this can really help your
site, force it's way up the google ranks.

Unless of cause your sites targeting people in Tunstall, and Katy
Bloody Tunstall, keeps getting in the way, but again there are ways
around this to, so instead of just targeting the keyword Tunstall, you
write some articles about "take-aways in tunstall" or "Tunstall
Takeaways"

So if anyone is up for this I've got one or two little tips that might
help.

Matt

On Apr 16, 2:55 pm, william perrin <will...@talkaboutlocal.org> wrote:
> sounds great - i found running a local campaign was a great way to drive
> local traffic - people needed to come to the site to find out what was going
> on.
>
> bugger the 'objective journalist' guff - start a fight on behalf of the
> community, be partisan without being unreasonable and they come in behind
> you
>
> cheers
>
> w
>

> >http://groups.google.com/group/tal-unconference-april-2010/subscribe?...
>
> --
> William Perrinhttp://talkaboutlocal.orghttp://www.twitter.com/TalkAboutLocalhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/wperrin
> +44 (0) 7899068411