AmericanTowns is another site you can use in order to direct more readers back to your blog.
AmericanTowns is your local link to the people, issues and activities that matter most in YOUR daily life.
The site is a virtual "town square," plugging you in to the information and resources related to your city, town and neighborhood. Whether it's town issues and community activism or school calendar events and sports schedules, AmericanTowns delivers the info faster and helps you use it better.
Each community/town can use the sites tools to post local events, news and announcements, press releases, take donations, create a web site and more.
Once you are in the site enter your zip code or click on your state to get started.
It has received a $3.3 million round of capital to realize the goal of delivering Hyper local content. The financing comes from Idearc Media, the publisher of the Verizon Yellow Pages and owner of the local search engine, Superpages.com.
So how does the site work and why would you want to use it? The answer is real easy ~ EXPOSURE!! AmericanTowns can help you get that local exposure we all desire. Want a fast, easy and FREE way to communicate with others in your community...and to be found in the search engines?
By adding your Blog posts and creating a business profile you have the opportunity to connect with more people in your market place.
Besides adding your blog, posting local events to an online calender for your town should work well as I have seen many creating these Localism type posts at Active Rain. Here is a screen shot of what the page looks like for my home town of Hopkinton Massachusetts.
When you put an event on your calendar or a news release on your web listing, you can simultaneously post it to the town-wide Calendar and Community Corner areas on the front page of AmericanTowns. All it takes is a few clicks to create your listing.
Americantowns makes it easy for you to let the entire community know about yourself and your company.
Here is a screen shot of what it looks like to have your blog posts included at AmericanTowns. Many of you that read my blog will notice the blog post about my new listing for the luxury home I am marketing at 70 West Elm Street Hopkinton, as well as the Re-blog of Brian Block's post about 5 things sure to turn off a buyer. Well you can see they are both here at Americantowns as well. Your welcome Brian:)
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You will also notice to the left here that Americantowns also has a feed connection with another favorite site of mine called Topix. Topix is one of my favorite sites on the net for bringing traffic to my blog.
In case you missed my post on this fantastic site and all its benefits here it is again:
If you use Topix you will also see your posts show up on American towns as well.
<<<------ Here is a screen shot of what the community calender looks like. It is very simple to add an event. You can also direct the event back to a website or a blog post if you like.
As I mentioned above I see quite a few Active Rain members who enjoy posting events in their respective communities. You can post them here and direct them back to the original source...... YOUR BLOG!
In addition to all of this you are also able to create a profile page about yourself and your company. Here is what Bill Gassett's Americantowns profile looks like. You will notice that you can add links to this page as well!
What else do I like about the site? How about the VIDEO section at the very top of the screen.
If you send your videos to Youtube via the Real Estate Shows and tag them they will show up here.
You will also notice that Fred Light a Member of AR also feeds his local videos here.
I have written many posts about how to get the exposure LOCALLY that you should be looking for. If you have not seen them some of my favorites include Topix, Outside.in Street Advisor and Yourstreet
These sites will not only bring readers to your blog but most of them should be in your area!
I often get asked which is the best? Personally I like Topix the best for a few reasons. The site is completely "do follow". All your links get followed back to the original source which is what you want. Not only does it help the performance of your blog with an inbound link but it will also deliver a stand alone search result in Google for the topic you post about. Lastly, I know I am getting a fair amount of traffic from it via the tracking service I use.
As a Hopkinton Realtor covering all the towns in Metrowest Massachusetts, I use all these tools in order to increase the exposure for my seller clients online. Now more than ever you need to have an online repetroire designed to maximize the chances of getting your clients a timely sale.
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Bill, a great post. I am bookmarking this to look into further.