Buzz Marketing with Blogs: Blogs Are a Call-In Radio Show

Blogs Are a Call-In Radio Show

During a meeting yesterday I was explaining the different types of interaction possible on the Web: bulletin boards, blogs, email forms, guestbooks… During the meeting someone said how interesting it was that so many of these interactive technologies have a real-world analogy or equivalent. It got me thinking—if that’s true, what’s the real-world analogy for blogs? My first thought was that there might not be one, which would be sort of exciting, and also explain just why blogs are so hard to explain to people.

• Guestbooks are easy—think of any actual guestbook you’ve seen in a hotel lobby or at a scenic overlook. Online guestbooks work essentially the same way, where visitors leave a sort of “Hi, I was here” note and perhaps read a few that others have left.

• Email—well, those are letters, of course. Faster, shorter, and more informal than most written letters, but letters nonetheless. Email forms on Web sites also fall into this type of communication.

• Instant messenger and chat—Ever had a conversation with someone? There you go.

• Bulletin boards—Also called discussion boards and forums, bulletin boards are actually nothing like a real bulletin board. I think of them as being like meetings—people coming together in a group to talk about particular issues, topic, problem, etc. Bulletin boards server something of the same purpose as a book club group, a Scout troop meeting, even a meeting in the corporate world.

And then there are blogs. I left the meeting puzzling over whether there really was a good real-world analogy to use about blogs. Arriving home, I talked over the idea with Travis, who suggested that perhaps the best model to compare them to was a call-in talk radio show.

And they are, aren’t they? You have one person—the blogger/host—who spends a few minutes on something, and then people calling in to comment or question or criticize. And, like talk radio, some blogs are fascinating, some are written by cranks, some are dead boring! I’m liking this analogy more and more as I think about it.

What do you think? What real-world analogies have you used to describe blogs?

Posted by Susannah Gardner on 05/27 at 03:41 PM • Blogs

Comments

Yes, good call on the blog analogy. It is a conversation in a very public way, and the “host” throws open the lines.

Posted by Monique on 06/01 at 03:59 PM
I like to use the analogy of newspaper editorial pages when comparing blogs to a real-world experience. Just like the newspaper editorial section, reporters/writers write articles on current issues, trends or news, and people write back commenting positively or negatively to those articles in the form of letters or email. Their comments then get published (hopefully) in the next edition of the newspaper, as respondents.

Posted by Wendy Suto on 06/08 at 07:21 AM
I’ve heard it being compared to a personal diary but never a radio show. But it makes more sense..people act a certain way in public and differently in private.

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Posted by Los Angeles Acting School on 09/08 at 04:24 PM
Great analogy. Thats probably why they are so popular and have such a following.

Posted by LAAS on 09/08 at 08:43 PM