If you follow this blog with any regularity, you know that one of my passions is music...clearly evidenced by the reality that we close each week with our Music Friday feature. Thus, I'll cop to what I'm about to say has a certain bias. Only people who love live music would generally agree.
It should come as no surprise that my frustration level is sensationally high when I blow into a town and can't locate the live music I know is there. Sure, I could pick up the alternative weekly and find club dates...but it usually comes out on Thursday and tonight is Wednesday. Plus, I have no idea where I could pick up a copy, even if a few still remained.
This really should be the role of the Destination Marketing Organization...and I've been harping on this for some time now. DMOs do a fairly sensational idea of content curation up to about 7pm. Our collective score after 7pm is a D- (and I'm grading on a gracious curve).
So, to say I'm simply enthralled with what Denny Edwards and his team have done at the Greater Raleigh CVB is a massive understatement. Talk about embracing music. They've determined that there is more live music in Raleigh than anywhere in North Carolina...so they've camped out on TheMostNC.com and claim to offer the definitive guide to every live music event in the region, from Kenny Chesney at PNC next month to bands nobody has every heard of playing dive honkytonks.
They've smartly designed the new micro-site to refer back to the mothership website...but only serving up music related content. For instance, the link to the Bureau blog from TheMostNC.com only returns music oriented posts. But, once on the main site, visitors can branch out to other areas such as dining and lodging if they choose. Very smart.
Hey, Raleigh? You just nailed it. Sensationally well played.
There are a few venues offering Blues and Rock during the week in Kankakee...The Journal covers them fairly well and the locals all know about them....Friends of the Blues and Sammy's Pizza advertise when they have bands....what is a good way to get the word out to visitors to Greater Kankakee, on both weekends and during the week...."wednesday"
Posted by: Mark Wegner | April 22, 2015 at 22:02
Roughly a third of all visitors access the local CVB website for information on things to do...increasingly on mobile platforms. So, making sure that the CVB website or mobile app is updated with club dates would go a long way to connecting visitors that don't even think to pick up the Journal (hell, they don't even know what the Journal is). And, once that copy is online, it is more easily accessed by those doing a Google search. Like I said...it really should be the CVB that curates all this content.
Larry's team at the Kankakee County CVB has assembled a great calendar of events...but it could use some more club dates. It's a two way street, tho...their website has a link for bars to upload their bands. If you know the owners, you should suggest this as a way to score new patrons.
Posted by: Bill Geist | April 22, 2015 at 22:17