Any local business owner knows how important building connections in their community with prospects, customers and other local businesses. And it’s just as important online as it is in person. In our 5 Easy Ways to Make Local Marketing Matter, we show you how to your in-person activities have digital parallels. In this post, we continue our focus on local marketing with 7 ways to start – and maintain – a blog that can go a long way towards building your positive, local reputation.

1. Start an Events Calendar feature

Create a bulleted list of monthly events in your community. Publish your post at the beginning of the month, and use the events as social media content throughout the month. Think street festivals, charity events, town-sponsored events, sports, even in-store sales and other activities.

2. Create a series of evergreen list posts about your community

• Local attractions or sights worth seeing
• Pet-friendly locations
• Best restaurants, ice cream shops, coffee shops…
• Things to do in the city

3. Write an event guide for a special event

For out-of-towners coming to the event, write a blog post about what else they might like to know (5 Things to Do After You Watch the Parade; 5 Places to Grab a Quick Bite after the Parade)

4. Spotlight other businesses in your community

• Write about a new business (or businesses) in town
• Interview a long-time business owner about what makes your community so great

5. Offer a monthly giveaway

Encourage anyone who comes to the store to put their name (and email address!) in a jar, select one winner each month and announce the winner in your blog and on social media. Keep it simple or get other local merchants involved. (This month, the prize is a gift certificate to…)

6. Write a series of historical posts

• How your store came about
• Interesting facts about the founding of your town
• Historical milestones of your town

7. Write about your business in the community

• Sponsor a local event – and write a press release about it, as well as a blog post
• Describe a local award you’ve received, making sure to thank the awarding organization
• Host a workshop or in-store event – prior to the event, announce it, and use a post to encourage registrations; after the event, write a summary, and include some testimonials from attendees
• Highlight your local connection – Are your products are locally sourced? Do you work in partnership with another local business?

Local Events Appeal to People and Search Engines

The rationale for this local approach is two-fold. First, if you are truly a local business, you care about your community, are knowledgeable about it, and want to help spread the word. Therefore, the information should be useful and of interest to your readers. This reinforces your value as a local online resource which, in turn, reinforces to the search engines that you are a true local business. To that end:

• always include local keywords (Concord, MA, West Concord, MA, West Concord Business Association);
• wherever possible, link to other organizations mentioned in the post;
• let the other organizations know you’ve mentioned them, asking them to cross-promote your post via their social networks (for more exposure to people) and on their website (for the always critical, good quality in-bound link for SEO).

How to localize your blog and never run out of things to write about.https://t.co/JvUaBIEG64

– Sales Renewal (@SalesRenewal) December 1, 2015