With the Olympics going on right now there seems to be a lot of Olympicthemed blogging going on. This is probably great for being current, but maybe there’s ways to think more long-term on this. After all, the Olympics happen on a regular basis (every two years: Summer then Winter etc) so there could be a fireworks-like advantage to blogging about the games.

Let’s combine two ideas: Current Events and Local

Blogging about current events is always a good idea. It lets people know you’re listening and can add some context or value to the conversations that are occurring every day. When those events repeat on a regular basis this gives us some added incentive to write about them because there’s a predictable pattern to the number of people giving attention to the topic. Today I’m going to use the Olympics as an example. Being “local” could mean the obvious: write about your nearby geographic zone. But it could mean your special niche or directly relevant topic. Today I’m writing mostly for my real estate readers so I’m going to be using the geographic kind of local.

And let’s also make it relevant

There are lots of ways we could try to stuff the word “Olympics” into an article. Then we’d get a lot of traffic looking for generic Olympics information and those visitors wouldn’t be happy and then they’d go away. Not much point in that. Let’s make articles that are Olympic-themed but also provide value for the people you most want to serve. In today’s example I’m using real estate buyers/sellers/watchers. But I bet you can synthesize this into your own industry. Olympic-themed blog post ideas for Real Estate “Local”

  • Any Olympic athletes grow up, live or train in your neighborhood?
  • Any Olympic training facilities in or near your neighborhood?
  • If someone wanted to train for the Olympics in your neighborhood, how would they get started?
  • Any team leaders, coaches or trainers for the Olympics active in your neighborhood?
  • How about Olympic gear and equipment manufacture or purchasing options? I can tell you from experience that getting a properly set-up biathlon rifle is not something you can do anywhere.

Notice how all of these ideas involve connecting a current event back to your area and gives some insight, context and value to someone who is truly interested in the Olympics. Also notice how it will help you position your neighborhood in relation to the Olympics and athletic competition. You might get a long tail conversion, but at the very least you will be adding good content about your neighborhood to the web. Search engines like this very much. The strategy here, as you might guess, is to get the attention of readers both now (current event) and in the future (people who will make decisions based on how your neighborhood relates to the current event). This is an example of a content-planning strategy that makes use of the long tail marketing concept.

Examples of good Olympic blog posts:

Zillow, making use of it’s position as an aggregator of information, tells us about the state with the most Olympians in the 2008 Olympics. Talking about the state and cities brings us some local aspects, talking about the Olympians inserts their brand into the current events conversation. They even provide some additional value by linking out to the source that identifies the home of all the Olympians. Feeding a small tidbit of news/gossip, The Real Estate Bloggers, lets us know about Olympic hero Michael Phelps’ recent condo purchase. Olympic content? Check. Local information? Check. Perhaps taking a tip from Zillow, Lynne Pope further segments that California list down to the athletes that are in her market area. Might be time to get ready for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. This blog post is dedicated to my colleague Scott Nellé who wanted to skip work today so he could watch the basketball game.