Content Marketing for Local Businesses

[RickyShockley]

Hey guys!

As someone who works with a number of local businesses (with localized target markets) I find that developing ideas for content marketing can be VERY difficult. I like the idea of creating local guides, local event info etc, but what other ways can we create content for a localized target market? For example: I have an OBGYN client that we'd love to create content for that is related to their niche (women's health), but don't want to promote or create content for national audience. That would seem incredibly wasteful.

Would love to hear ideas on how to create targeted content for a local audience!

Thanks

[EGOL]

Women's health issues can vary geographically.  Those of concern in your area can be different from those in other areas.

In most communities there are a few physicians, professors, social service workers, who are experts on this type of topic.  They might be found at universities, hospitals, physicians offices, home health providers, county/city government.

You could develop a content plan that includes interviews with several of these types of professionals, each sharing his/her expertise on one or more issues in your area.  The physicians or administrators at your client's office might be able to help select these people for a number of topics.  Perhaps they would want to do the interview instead of you because they are conversant on these topics and familiar with these people.

The professional being interviewed can be a source of the questions because they know the issues and know what message they want to get out. This might  even be done by questionnaire, asking them to identify a few important issues and elaborate.  IMPORTANT:  Each interview should conclude with "where to get help / more information" on the issues covered.

Their website could become a rich source of information.  It could have charts/maps/time lines showing issues compared among age groups and other demographic variables.  It might be referenced by government agencies, schools, health care organizations.  If done superbely it would be a real white hat for the client to wear.

[WhoWuddaThunk]

The intent for content marketing is to educate your audience, as well as demonstrate yourself as an expert in the field.  Writing about the local dog park won't exactly do either for you.

I'd suggest writing about what people are actually interested in in relation to whatever your client does.  You can get ideas for content by going through different Women's Health Forums, and Yahoo Answers.

Just doing some quick research I see that there are tons of searches for long tail variations of "How often should I go to the gynecologist."  When you boil that down to just your city there is far less, but it is still something women have shown interest in.  Just off the top of my head I would suggest writing content for things like "What age should girls start going to the Gynecologist," "What to expect at your Gyno examination" and "When should you go to the Gynecologist."

One of the Chiropractors I work with posted a few videos on a specific treatment he does that not everyone can do a while back.  He has had people travel great distances to get that treatment from him, and it even helped him get a foot in the door to be a Chiropractor for some of the Winter Olympic athletes.  All from creating content he knew his readers would like to see.

[RickyShockley]

Hi Cody,

I agree that local guides etc. won't do much in the way of building your reputation as an expert, but they are often great ways to attract relevant traffic from your target market while exposing them to your brand and brand value proposition. I know that the competition for local terms is less, but how do you put a local angle on a post relating to "What Age Should Girls Should Start Going to the Gynecologist"? If we create content like that, we'd be competing nationally. I know Google biases search to local business, but not for informational type content, right? That would leave us competing nationally vs top health sites that had content related to the topic. With Google Hummingbird I see less and less impact moving forward on creating content specifically for exact match long tail phrases.

I guess creating informational type content and publicizing the content locally could work, but I don't think we'd have a chance to attract much traffic from search doing that. It would have to be mainly a case of content publicity locally...

[WhoWuddaThunk]

I was looking at it from more of a social media / inbound perspective.  So, you might show up in the 7th-9th spot from Venice, but you wouldn't get much traffic organically - as you suggested.

One thing that have been successful for me locally is doing interviews with the event organizers.  I ask them to post the interview on their social media, and link to it from their website.  Most non-profits are more than happy to do that in turn for increased exposure. Running event organizers, especially for new events, are usually open to doing the same.  I do this with car dealerships quite often, and pretty much everyone hates car dealerships.

You could do a mixture of local and informational content to get the best of both worlds.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ricky,

Egol's suggestion regarding interviews is really a good one and, if done with care, would produce some very high quality content.

Another suggestion: if the medical practice has a blog, how about a weekly or monthly roundup-type post of local women's health/fitness events? Things like marathons, free yoga classes, healthy cooking classes, free lectures on relevant topics, volunteer opportunities, breast cancer fundraisers, etc. If the blogger can set up alerts on things like this, he/she can aggregate the data and then go a step beyond this by adding something fresh to each roundup - a personal perspective on the week's/month's opportunities for better living for local women.

Just one idea, but something that could be added into the mix to improve the usefulness of the website to local women.