Rising Son: Getting Feet Wet in Competition

Getting Feet Wet in Competition

Of all the websites teaching me the old school principles of competition, it's Menifee 24/7.

It's a blog that I started a couple of years ago as an experiment in local blogging. I had been publishing blogs to a national and global audience, but never to a local audience. I had relationships with advertisers that wanted national exposure, but never advertisers that wanted local exposure.

Since then, Menifee 24/7 has grown some, and is enjoying some notariety among local business owners here in Menifee.

But what's teaching me the old school principles of competition is another website, MenifeeLive. The guy who runs it, Ben, is a nice guy. I met him and chatted with him for a bit. We still trade e-mails.

He wants to build the most popular web portal focusing on Menifee life. Basically, I want to do the same thing with Menifee 24/7. However, we're taking completely different approaches. He started by building a large portal with articles, photos, calendars, weather, links, you name it. He's also fielding advertisers. On the other hand, I'm starting by building community participation through blogging, and have put off advertisers for the time being.

My strategy is to create an online community by signing up bloggers and encouraging others to post comments. Ben's strategy seems to create a comprehensive resource of information with the expectation of attracting visitors. His strategy is actually the preeminent strategy used by many other successful portals.

But remember, I built Menifee 24/7 as an experiment by taking the concepts of blogging and community building, to a small local level.

So, which strategy is winning? Well, I don't know yet. Right now, Menifee 24/7 is attracting about 5,000 unique visitors per month. I don't know what MenifeeLive is attracting. I do know that Ben has since added blogs to his website, and is asking people to join.

The old school principles of competition I'm talking about involve getting myself into the field by visiting organizations and businesses and pitching my idea to everyone. I'm handing out business cards, visiting Chamber mixers, getting involved in community events, and getting to know the movers and shakers in this town. I've never done that with any of my other websites. I suppose I ought to, except that I don't know who meet with since those websites are published to global audiences.

But it's been pretty fun meeting new people and learning about their stories. It makes Menifee seem a lot more smaller.

Labels: Employment, Menifee, Self Employment