Critique of Save our Bars.com

Save our Bars.com needs a pull to bring pub goers to the website. This pull could happen by means of blogging on Technorati or advertising on a website capable of promoting a similar interest. Perhaps a link could come from a website that marketed beer or made recommendations of cool places to go watch the game. One underutilized tool would be to post a memo about save our bars.com on yelp.

             Yelp is where local bloggers go to discuss their experiences about just about anywhere in their joint zip code.  Writing about bars on yelp would succeed due to its community feel and the fact that such posts could link different local bars together. If the reader were impressed by one person’s recommendation, they would be likely to follow that up by reading the next.

            Bar goers also need an incentive to go blog about their experience after leaving the bar. Independent bars could offer a free beer to those that promise to go home and blog about it. Those pubs that offer free beer would be giving consuming bloggers an extra incentive to go home and give them a nice rating.  Bars could also have laptops set up at the bar to give immediate rewards, like bloggers free before 11:00.

            It would help to use facebook to promote the bars, however this should be done by region.  Local bars should align themselves with the local universities in their surrounding area to maintain that tight nit community feeling.  When the facebook users download the save our bars widget, instead of merely describing the nightlife landscape they should include a picture of it. People can also post pictures on their friend’s page of their group experience at that bar.

            The Google campaign is not very feasible because it would be very expensive to gain ownership to such a popular search word. However if done, one of the Google ad words to draw pub goers to the site could simply be ‘beer.’

            While well intended, links to alcohol support groups would only weaken the strength of the movement to revive bars. Most importantly, the website needs to inform patrons as to what the independent pubs offer that corporate bars do not.  All in all though, if I were someone that went to local bars, I would take part in save our bars.com with the hope that my participation would preserve the remaining independent bars from less digitalized corporate giants.