Kevin Talbot, author of No Sleep NYC, came by the outside.in HQ yesterday to pow-wow about local blogging. No Sleep is an Astoria-based blog that recommends bars, coffee shops, restaurants, and events that have a local flair. It helps tourists find those places off the beaten path where they will no longer feel like tourists. Kevin is fairly new to the blogosphere, but he went home yesterday totally motivated, and we’re really excited to see what he writes in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on his site.
We talked about techniques to find material for good local posts and increase his audience. I encouraged him to write daily and to not underestimate what qualifies as news. If he limits his geographic scope and writes about every restaurant opening, for instance, he’ll become a neighborhood authority in short order. To increase his audience, I suggested he Twitter with lots of @replies and links to his posts, link to other area bloggers in his own blog posts, and, of course, I helped him put up a sweet StoryMap. Now his readers have an easy way to navigate his posts. Also, his stories are being promoted on outside.in across outside.in/new_york_ny.
We also got all nerdy and dug into his GeoToolkit Stats. They gave us a great idea of the places on which Kevin is the authority because no one else has written about them. Now, he plans on staying on top of the news about those places so that readers come to his blog for updates.
Are you a local blogger that wants to pick up some tips? Leave a comment to set up a visit to outside.in or to start an email thread.
