With the world going broadband and wireless, and with the web becoming pervasive and social, with hyperlocal content and advertising and location-based services now being enabled through the geocoding of information, or through GPS, business improvement districts (BIDs) in towns and cities everywhere have in potential a rich new marketing and communications platform for local businesses.
What BIDs generally need to do though, to meet this opportunity, is to develop a set of best practices in web site design, digital marketing, telecom, and so forth. Today I will just discuss what could be done with BID web sites in this new environment.
The Local BID Portal
Typically, when you look at a BID web site, you will a membership directory, usually searchable by business type. You will often see a BID map as well. You will sometimes see a map with the BID members located on it. You rarely see the BID map with the members located on a map dynamically -- that is, as something you can click on to get a menu, hours, phone number, web site, etc.
This kind of functionality is of course available on Google, Yahoo, or Citysearch. Given the direction coding for the web is going, every BID could have such functionality on their sites.
Since most BID sites were built say more than a year ago, most don't have 'dynamic content' -- that is local news feeds, local event feeds, content aggregation tools. Instead, content must be 'posted' by their marketing person or webmaster or by the company that designed the site.
With the web now feed driven and modular, local BIDs can now have portals designed to capture all relevant information about the neighborhood and its local businesses. With the content auto-refreshing, the site becomes more 'visible' more interesting to visit and much easier to manage.
The next step after creating a feed driven local portal is to give locals the ability to post their own blogs, photos, videos about the neighborhood and its local businesses.
How valuable would it be to have locals aggregating local content for the BID portal? When people come to the BID's community web portal, they will read what the locals have to say before anyone else.
As we speak with our clients, we find more often than not, they would want the comments and user submitted content to be reviewed first. The good news is that this functionality is easy to implement.
Next: The Local BID Portal in a Wi-Fi Hot Zone
What BIDs generally need to do though, to meet this opportunity, is to develop a set of best practices in web site design, digital marketing, telecom, and so forth. Today I will just discuss what could be done with BID web sites in this new environment.
The Local BID Portal
Typically, when you look at a BID web site, you will a membership directory, usually searchable by business type. You will often see a BID map as well. You will sometimes see a map with the BID members located on it. You rarely see the BID map with the members located on a map dynamically -- that is, as something you can click on to get a menu, hours, phone number, web site, etc.
This kind of functionality is of course available on Google, Yahoo, or Citysearch. Given the direction coding for the web is going, every BID could have such functionality on their sites.
Since most BID sites were built say more than a year ago, most don't have 'dynamic content' -- that is local news feeds, local event feeds, content aggregation tools. Instead, content must be 'posted' by their marketing person or webmaster or by the company that designed the site.
With the web now feed driven and modular, local BIDs can now have portals designed to capture all relevant information about the neighborhood and its local businesses. With the content auto-refreshing, the site becomes more 'visible' more interesting to visit and much easier to manage.
The next step after creating a feed driven local portal is to give locals the ability to post their own blogs, photos, videos about the neighborhood and its local businesses.
How valuable would it be to have locals aggregating local content for the BID portal? When people come to the BID's community web portal, they will read what the locals have to say before anyone else.
As we speak with our clients, we find more often than not, they would want the comments and user submitted content to be reviewed first. The good news is that this functionality is easy to implement.
Next: The Local BID Portal in a Wi-Fi Hot Zone
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