Your New Neighborhood Newspaper? Soon, a Real Estate Site.

One of these days smart real estate folks are going to start turning their websites into local news sites.

It will help them with their SEO.

And it will help create the kind of community people want to live in.

Paul Roetzer, founder and president of PR 20/20, is headed in this direction with a project he's working on in Cleveland.

It's a downtown development called The Avenue District. Its website has a blog, videos and lots of updates on the neighborhood and construction.

It's a great start. I hope they do keep going.

They could talk more about what's happening in the neighborhood outside the development. They could talk about local politics, community development, education, small businesses and on and on.

It could become a veritable hyperlocal blog.

If they create a useful, vital neighborhood site -- something that people rely on like the Davis Square Live Journal or Baristanet -- the site will get inbound links, and it will rise in the search results. The development and the community will thrive.

Real Estate folks will doubt such a site is worth the investment; newspaper folks will doubt its quality.

But it makes sense.  Sooner or later, it will happen. And it will be a good thing.

Comments

[Paul Roetzer]

You're right, Rick. There is incredible opportunity for real estate developers, and organizations in every industry for that matter, to become content publishers and connect directly with their audiences online. Excellent thoughts on how to extend the reach and influence of The Avenue District blog. Definitely stuff we'll be looking at in 2009.

Thanks.

Paul

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