Community Interviews
May 12th, 2007 by JeremyI was working with a client over the phone, and he was having a hard time thinking of content to write for his city page. It was a new town, without much history he could find without some serious research.
I came back to him with the idea of doing some interviews with people from the community of what they like about their city and why they live there.
It’s beneficial because it is going to definately be unique content, that you don’t have to come up with ther verbiage yourself, just input whatever they said. It also would be good for people earnestly searching for a new community to see what residents like about the area.
The client then also had a brilliant addition that he could do interviews of local business people, and reciprocate links to their site in the interview. This would get a quality reciprocal link to a local resource website onto that page, as well as weight that page with area relevant text!
It would definately be a good approach to local businesses who might be hard to obtain reciprocal links from by just sending an email. (face to face interaction is always more personal than email)
What do you guys think… Good Idea?
Seriously???? Sounds like we are now entering the professional website promotion business.
When does this agent find the time to actually list and sell?
Any ideas that are less of a hassle?
Steve Samyn
May 16th, 2007
I know, doesn’t it seem crazy sometimes?
But just like any other industry, promotion is key. As an agent, you run your own business and have to sell your services. You have many venues in which to promote yourself and online is a big one!
I have heard from many agents over the years and the ones that really grown their business using their online tools seem to all agree that setting aside specific time each week or even a little time each day for internet marketing efforts is the ticket.
Just like all the other facets of your business, it comes down to managing your time effectively. Maybe adding something like this to your site once a month is a good pace for you. Just another thing you can do to get ahead.
Please feel free to share any ideas you have as well.
Anna
May 17th, 2007
You raise an excellent point Steve, it can be a “hassle” to do this.
However, if you have ever written content or tried getting local community reciprocal links, that also is a “hassle”. However, unique content and local reciprocal links seem to be the bread and butter of good placement and would be worth the effort. For people with writers block, it is much easier to transcribe an interview than to creatively describe your city.
You ask for “ideas that are less of a hassle?” and I have a couple of recommendations. One, go to the city hall and pick up a flyer about your community and re-write it into your website, using the original as a reference. Two, you could also borrow a book on your community from your Library and use that as a reference. Three, “interview” yourself and write down what you like about your community, why you moved here and what makes it fun/exciting/relaxing.
These are all approaches to the same idea of writing unique content that adds value to your clients and value for the search engines. The reason I thought the Interview approach was unique, is that it allows you to make business connections with these people. Add unique relevant content. Create community centered reciprocal links in a way that isn’t just a page full of outbound links.
Jeremy
May 18th, 2007