Instant Local Site Traffic

Many small business web site owners miss a great opportunity to promote their site to their local audience.

They tend to focus on different online ways to market their site but completely miss an offline opportunity. This opportunity could bring some substantial, targeted traffic.

I'm talking about getting published in your area newspapers.

Getting an article about your business in the local paper certainly would give you a nice boost. But why not take this one step further and get published regularly in that paper?

Read All About It

You can do this by offering up a weekly (biweekly, monthly...) article of interest for the newspaper to publish. Of course the topic would somehow tie into your online business.

Don't think this is feasible?

Just take a look through your paper and notice some of the "tip of the week" type columns in there. Notice that they include contact information about the author.

These are people who are making it happen for themselves right now.

By appearing regularly in the paper, it:

• builds name recognition (branding)
• creates instant credibility (after all, you are published in the paper!)
• focuses specifically at your local market
• is likely to generate many local leads for your business

But why on earth would they publish an article for you?

Because you are willing to come up with short articles which would be of interest to some of their readers.

Not only can you provide them useful content, you can offer to do it for free in exchange for the exposure from it.

Here's some little secret about local newspapers:

• they are often looking for useful content for their readership
• the word "free" is attractive to them
• articles with a local connection tend to be more attractive to them

While this may not apply as easily to very large newspapers, smaller regional ones are approachable for this.

In exchange for your free content, you simply request that a very brief "bio" box is included at the end of the article. This can be as simple as your name and web site address.

What To Write About?

You already likely have a lot of content that you can use for a regular article. Your web site or products you are selling are likely to contain many, many short topics of interest.

Someone would be hard pressed to not be able to discuss some topic idea that is somehow associated with their web site.

It doesn't have to be SPECIFICALLY about your site's topic but it definitely should touch on related areas.

Browse through a weeks worth of the paper and look at the sections which are relevant to your business. You'll get the idea.

Let's look at some example sites and topics they could write about:

• Painting contractor - painting and indoor projects for the Home/Garden section of the paper
• Copywriter - advertising and copywriting tips for businesses in the Business section
• Architect - home building, land development considerations for the real estate section

Don't discount this. It can be a great way to get offline recognition to your online business.

In the next article, I'll show you how to maximize your chances of landing a guest column spot. You'll also see how to ensure that you get the maximum impact for your online business with it.