The big players in mobile gaming and geo-location based services like Foursquare and SCVNGR have been gaining some real traction lately when it comes to creating promotions and partnerships with major brands across the country. With companies like H&M, Toys R Us, Dunkin’ Donuts and even The Black Eyed Peas jumping on the bandwagon it is safe to say that this type of marketing has hit the mainstream in marketing.
Yesterday however, Lauren Indvik published an article on Mashable about a particular set of challenges on the SCVNGR platform for Neiman Marcus. Indvik brought up a really good point when she states:
Although we find the challenge cleverly designed and applaud Neiman Marcus’s willingness, as a long-established luxury retailer, to embrace new mobile marketing techniques, we were concerned that the typical Neiman Marcus shopper might not be the most likely candidate for a SCVNGR campaign.
Further more, Neiman Marcus plans to supplement their mobile campaign with in store signage and other online outreach to ensure at least the tech savvy will participate.
Some of the most compelling arguments for running promotions on these platforms are the ability to target very specific demographics and the ability to obtain highly relevant analytics on their success in real time. The question arises however when you ask how accurate these numbers may actually be if those using these services are still are still a very specific demographic in itself. In Indvik’s example, the early adopters currently using SCVNGR which is just three years old, are not likely to fit the profile of Neiman Marcus shoppers.
Will potentially lackluster results from these campaigns begin to scare away other major brands from adopting these new marketing techniques or will the enticing offers lure in the general public, taking the product life cycle beyond the early adopter stage? With impressive growth for companies like Foursquare, I tend to believe the latter will prevail. Share your thoughts below!
The Value Of Blog Comments
A debate has been brewing for some time about comments on blogs. Should they be moderated or removed altogether? What value do they bring to your blog? Prominent tech evangelist and blogger Robert Scoble declared that blog comments are dead, and in many cases I tend to agree with him. However, as the cartoon above suggests, there are compelling arguments for both sides of the debate.
As Scoble suggests, third party applications like FriendFeed, Twitter and now even Facebook Comments allow most bloggers to get a lot more exposure and feedback than traditional commenting systems without the massive amounts of spam.
Still, others say that these applications will ultimately draw people back tot he blog source and generate more comments. There is even some pretty convincing data to back that up.
The decision to allow comments or not really comes down to the type of community you have built around your blog and the type of content you produce. While the arguments above address the issue of community, neither really get into the meat of the issue: content. The rapid growth of the blogging platform, Tumblr, is a perfect example of the content debate. Its sleek and simple design doesn’t foster to content rich comments. While you can get hundreds of ‘notes’ on a post, most are simple “likes’ or ‘reblogs’ without any added content. Its rapid growth and success has even caused some to ask if Tumblr is the new Wordpress.
I find it pretty comical that every time a new service comes around people will predict that it will destroy the old system because there is only room for one platform in any category. In Tumblr’s case, I think it has simply fulfilled the need for bloggers who are looking for a simple way to post rich content without necessarily looking for ‘added value’ through comments.
If you tend to keep things simple then Tumblr might be the platform for you. However, if your posts tend to be more comprehensive and thought provoking then you will likely find more value in Wordpress. So, in conclusion, blog comments are not dead, but if you aren’t creating the right content you either won’t get any or they won’t bring added value to your blog. Because there is no ultimate right answer, the comment debate will likely rage on forever. Rather than get caught up trying to predict which side will win, take a look at your blogs content and position it in a place where it will be successful, comments or not.