Buildings, Like Blogs, Can Be Interactive

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A month ago, a building began to sing.  “Playing the Building” is a project that, this summer, is turning a New York City landmark building into an interactive keyboard.  Rock singer and artist David Byrne wired an antique organ to a few dozen spots throughout the building, so that visitors can stop in (free of charge) and touch keys that trigger hammers which clang against pipes and columns, activate motors that make ceiling beams vibrate, and shoot blasts of air through pipes at different pitches.
While this building is not the first to be “played”, this latest Byrne exhibit is quite different from former offerings by him and by other artists.  “People going into an art institution are treated as passive consumers, as vessels to be filled with …music emanating from the stage”, Byrne explained in a Newsweek interview.

The artist goes on to explain the one aspect of his project that’s so very important for today’s business owners to comprehend.  “‘Playing the Building’ only exists and comes to life when the public participates in it,” Byrne said.

In today’s world of marketing, it’s not enough to “hand out” material about a business.  Yes, brochures, postcards, advertising, billboards – all of those things can still be valid business marketing tools.  But, as with David Byrne’s building, the best blogs don’t “sing to people”, but instead invite them in to make music together with the business behind the blog.  Blogs, by their very nature of being on the Worldwide Web, are available not only for reading, but for acting and interacting.  A good blog invites readers to post comments, and makes it easy for them to subscribe to the blog (through an RSS feed or an email service).  Individual readers whould be able to get back to earlier posts to read more in depth on a topic that particularly interests them.

In short, it should be all about “Playing the Blog”!

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The Don’t-Do-It-Yourself Trend Hits Clothing And Blogging

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As a professional ghost blogger, I’ve come to realize, I’m actually part of a big trend.  It could almost be considered a movement, the Movement Towards Delegating and Relegating. In the case of blogs, a ghost blogger develops materials for businesses.  The owners of those businesses need to use their time making and selling products or consulting, with no time left to write about what they’re doing and why.

There’s certainly no lack of variety in task doers in the personal arena.  In an earlier piece, Blogging Is A Concierge Service, I wrote about all the many chores concierges perform, from airport pickup to pet-sitting.  Now businesses are joining the Delegators and Relegators, outsourcing tasks ranging from computer maintenance to hiring employees.

On the surface, it would appear there are certain tasks better not delegated to others, because in some areas things need to be done in a very individualized way.  You’d think, for example, a businessperson who does a lot of traveling would want to select her own wardrobe for the trip and pack the clothes in exactly the style she prefers.  Turns out, packing and lugging suitcases is a chore many business owners would just as soon relegate to others.  A clothing butler from Flylite, a Massachusetts company, will be happy to take over the all the packing and lugging.

New Flylite customers pack their own bags – once.  The “clothing “butlers” take it from there, picking up the bags, cleaning and pressing the clothes, even polishing the shoes.  All the clothes are scanned into an online virtual closet.  Each time a trip is coming up, the traveler drags and drops the icons into the “bag” (all done with clicks of the computer mouse).  Flylite delivers the actual packed bag to any U.S. destination.  When the stay is over, the butler picks up the bags, takes care of the clothes and stores everything for the next trip.  Even golf clubs can be carted to the destination by a Flylite butler!

Interestingly, ghost-writing blogs for a business follow a similar model.  The style of the business and the target market dictate the tone for the blog posts.  The “wardrobe” (the business mission, the demographics of the target customers, the type of products or services the business offers) comes from the business and is very individualized.  The blogger then becomes a “butler”, maintaining the discipline of “frequency and recency” that is so crucial to winning online rankings.

Your “blog butler” picks up the information about your business, “cleans, presses, and polishes” the material into finished articles, then conveniently “delivers” those directly to the Worldwide Web in the form of blog posts.  And that’s how I, your friendly and oh-so-handy blog-butler “Say It For You”!

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Blogs And Billboards Strike Only When The Iron Is Hot

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Some years ago, I read about an experiment having to do with people’s attention and the way in which that attention is engaged. The subjects of the study were people (several hundred of them) who drove the same route every day to work and back, passing a giant billboard advertising new cars.  When questioned, almost none of these people could remember even seeing a billboard, much less that it was about cars.  On the other hand, the moment any individual was in the market for a car, he’d notice the billboard immediately. In other words, if what the billboard was advertising was not relevant to a person’s life right then, his brain “brushed off” the information as not useful, never making room in his memory for the image of the billboard.

This study about car billboards sums up the reasons blogging  has become such an important part of any business’ marketing plan. Blogging for business is about promoting yourself, your products, and your ideas.  Your blog posts are out there on the Internet “super-highway”, available for anyone to see.  But the only people who are going to notice your blog are those who are searching for the kinds of information, products, or services that relate to what you do! That’s because your blog will come up on their screen based on their search of the Internet. Millions of other people are “driving” on the Internet highway every hour of every day.  The important thing, though, is that you’ll engage the attention of the ones who might be in the market for what you sell or who need your particular type of expert advice or service.

(By the way, “strike while the iron is hot” is a blacksmith’s phrase.  An iron horseshoe needed to be shaped at exactly the time the metal was hot enough to be flexible.)  As the study with the car billboard demonstrated, the folks most likely to become your customers have an immediate need or interest in your type of product or services.  And, exactly at that time while the “iron is hot” for them, your blog is catching their attention and introducing them – to YOU!.

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Blogging Ala Concierge

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High-end residential complexes offer their services, as do all the best hotels.  Concierges help with everything from setting salon appointments, arranging luggage pickup from hotel rooms, booking tours, and offering sightseeing tips.

Personal concierges are the fastest-growing subset of the breed, running errands for people with little spare time (or for those who prefer to spend their time in pursuits more engaging than picking up groceries or dry cleaning).  My friend Judi Stephenson of Another You Concierge tells me her company performs thousands of different services ranging from party planning to dog-sitting.  In “Helping Hands”, Indianpolis Woman magazine described concierge services as freeing “those with hectic lives from mundane tasks”.

Businesses, particularly small businesses, need concierges, too.  Blogging, an essential customer acquisition tool in our increasingly web-based world, is no mundane task.  Still, few business owners, even with the help of talented employees, can spare the time to post relevant, new material with enough consistency and frequency to improve search engine rankings.
Concierges pick up stuff for clients: luggage, packages, children, arriving guests; a ghost blogger must “pick up” the business owner’s individual style and vision.  Concierges deliver stuff: mailings, groceries, gifts, messages, flowers, reservations, meals; ghost bloggers “deliver” content to the Web.  This, in turn, helps “deliver” traffic to the business’ website.

As Indianapolis Woman puts it, “You might find yourself wishing you had a clone, just to accomplish everything on your to-do list.”  Well, when it comes to blogging for business, your blog “concierge” can be your clone!

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If The Parents Hate It, The Kids Will Love It

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One good rule of thumb about business blogging is to narrow down the target audience.  To be an effective marketing tool for your business, your blog must to be the result of a well-planned strategy aimed at a specific segment of the market.  I advise picking one area of focus, rather than trying to tell your blog readers about everything you have to offer and about all the things you do.

Just the other day, in Speaker (the magazine I receive as a member of the National Speakers Association) there was an article by Terri Langham about the Alice Cooper rock music group.  By way of reminder for those blog readers not “into” the rocker scene, the Alice Cooper 1972 hit “School’s Out” topped the charts worldwide.  The groups’s tour the following year broke box office records formerly set by The Rolling Stones.  The Alice Cooper stage show was “way over the top” by anybody’s standards, complete with guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, live chickens, and a real boa constrictor.

The point Terri Langham was making about this band was that it had a signature way of doing things, a “brand”, and she advises aspiring professional speakers to develop their own unique brands.  But the point I want to bring out here relates to the thought process the band members used in creating their Alice Cooper brand.  Realizing that having a male (Vince Furnier as Alice Cooper) playing the role of a witch in tattered women’s clothing and makeup and holding a snake would cause social controversy, the band made a brilliant career decision.  They focused on one target audience – kids.  “If the parents hate it, the kids will love it.” became the motto.

I’m no rock groupie, to be sure, but as a professional ghost blogger, I find the Alice Cooper marketing strategy “right on”. Narrow down your target market.  Figure out what those people need and want that you have or that you do.  Then do everything you can to “speak” to those people through your blog. You don’t care if other segments of the market hate your blog – you want your target customers to love it… all the way to your website!
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