Local blogging for perks

Today I was at the Broadway foodcourt in the Brisbane city mall eating lunch with a couple of friends, Ed and Chris who both work for Marketing-Results. Ed made a comment about when he was younger he wanted to be a food critic. I’ve also contemplated this but not seriously – more in a “I wonder what it would be like” kind of way.

Back in oldschool days, a time before the Internet and web, you had to be a journalist before you could ever consider becoming a food critic. You probably had to study a degree and fight to land a job at a newspaper or magazine.

Nowadays it’s all changed. With the invention of the weblog or blog, any dedicated writer can establish themself as a critic for almost any field. If you want to become a food critic all you have to do is set up a blog, give it a name like “Yaro’s Brisbane Restaurant Guide” and get eating and reviewing. If you can write reasonably well, keep content coming and get indexed in search engines with a few good link exchanges you can establish a readership. With that readership you have power.

Consider you write a glaringly positive review of your local spanish restaurant. The power of the blog is that you are giving out personal recommendations with every comment you make. If your blog has a large following one positive review can send a stream of new customers to that restaurant. That’s a power you can leverage.

The logical benefit of being a food critic would be free food. Contact any restaurant, tell them you are an online restaurant reviewer and what a positive review might do for them, and bam – instant free meal! Send them your URL if they don’t believe you and tell them stories about the impact your commentary has had on other restaurants.

The trick with this is to remain locally focussed. Stick to your geographic area or field of interest and keep the focus sharp, niched and clear. Make sure the title of your blog says what it is you do -”Brisbane Restaurant Reviews”. This will help you place better in search engines too.

The beauty of blogging is you can take this principle to almost any industry. Provided there is not significant competition you can establish yourself in whatever area you are interested in. Like reading sci-fi books? Do reviews on your blog and then contact sci-fi authors or bookshops for free books. Enjoy yoga – review the local yoga studios and then score free classes.

Of course these are just some local “perks”. If you were serious and developed a large audience you can start to reap some financial returns too. This may include advertising (e.g. local restaurants pay to be listed on your blog), newsletters, subscriptions, premium based content (for example archive your reviews in a database and charge a fee for access), etc etc. You are limited only by how many ways you can think of to provide value to your audience.

Yaro Starak
Blogpreneur