Clicksharp Marketing

According to a recent observation by Trend Central’s Intelligence Group, a new concept is beginning to emerge in the digital marketing space. You’ll start to see a lot of “blog bars” in 2008, defined in the article as “computer terminals which give the public the ability to post in real time and on location.”

Time and again, we’ve seen successful marketing campaigns revolve around consumer engagement (here’s an example involving Nike and social media). Marketers look long and hard at their product, extract the major points of differentiation, and use them to carve out a call to action.

Blog bars are just the latest vehicle for engagement. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is one example: they have set up eight computer terminals at a fashion exhibit. Imagine the array of benefits it can deliver:

• Readily available content for repackaging in the museum’s marketing communications, e.g. website content, promotional flyers, etc.
• Analytical insights, e.g. demography, seasonality (if they choose to survey visitors in such a way).
• Pushing large quantities of relevant keywords online, to rank this exhibit higher in general search engine queries related to fashion.
• And the biggest one of all — real-time feedback related to the exhibit: how to improve it, who to cater to, what works and what does not.

Is this really any different from signing a guest book at a bed & breakfast?

So are you, the small business owner, going to set up a blog bar? Well, you might–especially if you have old computers sitting around in your office that will just end up in the trash.

Ultimately however, you don’t need to. A typical blogging platform (Clicksharp recommends Wordpress) gives authors the option to open their blogs to reader comments. So whereas a blog bar allows people to give feedback in a physical location such as a museum, a blog of your own which represents your business and reaches out to readers will have the same effect.

But to do that, you gotta start writing a blog…because, as Trend Central correctly points out, “the ability to immediately link participation in a real world event to the online world only adds value to the experience.”

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 @ 7:14 am on the category Blogging, Marketing Theory, SEO, Small business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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