Matt will be speaking about Small Business / Local Search at Searchfest 2009 which will be held March 10th in Portland, Oregon. Get your tickets now.
1) Please give me your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I keep myself pretty busy. I’m a freelance marketing/SEO consultant with a blog called Small Business Search Marketing. <https://www.smallbusinesssem.com/> I’m the Assignment Editor for Search Engine Land. <https://searchengineland.com/ > I write four local blogs with my wife, and share tips about local blogging on Hyperlocal Blogger. <https://www.hyperlocalblogger.com/> I also created, manage, and write for @U2 <https://www.atu2.com/>, the oldest independent site for U2 fans on the web. And my first book, U2 – A Diary, was just published in November. <https://www.u2diary.com/>
Before I got into SEO and online marketing, I spent 7 years a TV sports and news anchor, radio talk show host, and my first job out of college was working on the City Desk of the Los Angeles Daily News.
2) Your career started as a journalist and now, you are a journalist again (with Search Engine Land & as a Hyperlocal Blogger). What are some of the similarities between journalism then and now, and what are some of the differences?
The Internet wasn’t much of a concern when I was working in traditional journalism. AOL and CompuServe were still in their infancies, really, and I think a lot of people probably thought the Internet was a passing fad. Most traditional journalists certainly didn’t give it much attention in those days, nor did they see it as much of a threat to their business model.
Now, of course, TV stations and newspapers are shedding staff or shutting down altogether. Traditional journalism is fighting for survival, while online journalism is thriving. Newspaper print circulation is down, but visits to most major newspaper web sites are up. And citizen journalism is also on the rise. Some of the best news coverage of what’s happening in Seattle comes from a host of neighborhood blogs that are on the street writing and reporting about stuff that locals care about, but the big newspaper and TV stations ignore. In fact, right before Christmas when those awful snow and ice storms hit, the City of Seattle web site turned its home page into a list of links for residents to get more information about the storm. They didn’t bother linking to the TV or newspaper web sites, but they did link to the neighborhood blogs.
3) How has being a Hyperlocal Blogger influenced your (and your wife’s) standing and visibility in your community?
I don’t know. Probably not much. Our local blogs are less than a year old, and neither one of us has been able to focus as much time on them as we’d like. It’s still somewhat of an experiment for us, and we learn more about what works and what doesn’t every month. Plus, our local blogs exist in part to indirectly promote her real estate business – they’re not true news blogs. If we were running true local news blogs, we’d be out at all the school board, planning commission, city council meetings, and stuff like that. That would be the kind of blog that would enhance your visibility in the community, I think.
In my SearchFest presentation, I hope to share some of what we’ve learned so far, and make it applicable for people thinking about starting any kind of local blog — whether it be a local news blog, a local business blog, or any of the other types of local blogs. <https://www.hyperlocalblogger.com/5-types-of-hyperlocal-bloggers/ >
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.