Blogging and Local Business

Citysquares’ Ben Saren pointed me to a John Battelle piece in which he discusses the hypothetical benefits of blogging by local businesses, specifically a hardware store in his neighborhood:

Corbet’s is a well-loved local institution, but if your first view of the place is through search, you have to work way too hard to find that out. Second, it’s clear that no one at Corbet’s has given the web a second thought, because Corbet’s doesn’t have a website, and clearly no one has joined the nascent conversation that has sprung up around the store (in the first seven links, there are four unsolicited and positive reviews. It’d be great if someone from Corbet’s joined the party and said “thanks for caring!”). And third, there’s a tremendous opportunity to be had by joining that conversation, in the process branding Corbet’s as quite possibly one of the most beloved local businesses in all of Marin.

He says that blogging would benefit the business by:

• Creating a self-controlled Internet presence
• Help with SEO 
• Help shape first impressions of the business 

In a recent Opus Research survey of more than 1,000 US small businesses blogging was mentioned by almost 20% of respondents as one of the marketing methods they’re currently using. This number strikes me as high and probably is “aspirational,” but it’s clearly a strategy — as Battelle recommends — that should be exploited by more SMBs.