Although things have been quiet on the blog for a while it doesn’t mean things are quiet behind the scenes. Widgets are coming very soon so you can take your events with you on your own site. Stay tuned…
Although things have been quiet on the blog for a while it doesn’t mean things are quiet behind the scenes. Widgets are coming very soon so you can take your events with you on your own site. Stay tuned…
SXSW is a huge three-part festival that happens every March in Austin, TX. To say there are a ton of things going on during this festival is an understatement. There are official events, unofficial events and random events that seem to just happen on the fly. It is tough to keep track of everything, but the SXSW site and Sched do a good job of helping people out. However, what happens when you and five people decide you want to host a party at a bar tonight and want all the SXSW people to know about it? Kind of hard to get it up on these sites and that is where BB! comes in.
Simply pick your Austin venue (or enter a new one if it’s not there), enter the event facts and tag the event ‘sxsw‘ and now you are part of the SXSW crowd and everyone attending SXSW can know about it. So if you are going to the festival or looking to throw a party make sure to have fun and let people know about it.
When creating a site that covers the whole country and almost any venue and event it is going to take some time to build up, but I am proud to say that BullieBoard! now has over 300 venues in its database. The areacodes that are taking up space are:
Not bad for the first week and still more venues and cities being added daily. Remember, anyone can post a venue and event so don’t wait on me to get to your area. Also be sure to let your favorite places know about BullieBoard! so they can start posting their events and you can find out what’s happening tonight.
If you have some venues that you would like to put up, but aren’t sure if you have the time then feel free to contact me with the venue names and the city and I’ll add them for you.
I have added the ability to tag venues the same way you can tag events now. This will help all us party people to narrow down the type of places we wish to go to. If you only want to hit up an Irish Pub tonight then do a search for irishpub to see what is available in your area.
Over time if we all take the time to properly tag events and venues we will have a system that helps out everyone find exactly what they are looking for.
To put it simply I got tired of trying to figure out what I wanted to do tonight without knowing what is actually going on tonight. I got tired of looking for events in Tampa and finding that the local Yarn club is hosting a brunch at 11am that I had no interest in attending. I wanted to know what clubs and bars were offering 2-4-1 drinks. What clubs had the music I wanted. I wanted to to be able to go to a site and just find it right away.
I couldn’t find a place like that so I created my own.
BullieBoard! is everything I ever wanted in a site that simply gets down to it. I figured there were others who shared my frustrations and so I am opening it you. Feel free to add your favorite clubs/bars/venues to hang out at and the events they hold daily. Maybe you can help me find new places to go tonight.
Forget about registrations. Forget about logins. Forget about clutter. Just get down to finding what’s happening tonight.
Let me know what you think.
One of the ways you can describe events on BullieBoard! is through the use of tags. Tags are any words that you can think of to help give a better description of an event. They also help to provide you with a better way of grouping events together for future reference.
For example, if I am a DJ that wishes to have all my events found easily, I might tag all of my events “djscrivs” and then go to the DJScrivs tag page. Unfortunately I am not a DJ so there are no events posted with that tag…yet.
Or maybe you are a party person who wants to track the events that you are potentially going to attend. Simply come up with a unique tag and tag events with it. You can have your own personal event page without having to worry about logins.
Club owner? Want to keep an eye on the competition? Maybe tag the competition’s events with “wearegreattheyarebad” so you know what to plan for on that day.
Personally I like to tag events that offer cheap drink specials with “cheapbeer and “cheapliquor. With tags the possibilities are endless, but use them responsibly. They allow the site to remain flexible so you can enjoy BullieBoard anyway you want. So go tag!
UPDATE: Now you can tag venues.
With how long the web has been around and how many people make it their default place to find information I am always suprised by how many clubs don’t utilize the web to the best of their abilities. Most club websites I have come across are your standard 1998 brochure site. Clearly the objective of running a club is to bring people in, but if you aren’t helping to engage your audience through the web, you are simply handicapping your chances of keeping them.
Now I don’t believe you need to build a full-scale social network for your club’s website (you do have a website right?), but I also don’t think that having a MySpace page and friending people is the way to go either. Luckily for you I have some tips on how you can better promote your venue online.
Clubs love to offer different drink specials on different nights, but as a party person, it can be hard to keep track of what day applies to what special. Also if I haven’t been to your venue in a while then I probably don’t remember that you have any specials at all. Of all the clubs and bars I go to, only one has a happy hour that I can remember the exact day and times. This is a problem.
Now maybe you don’t want to start a blog because it becomes time-consuming and honestly if you don’t have the time to update it don’t waste your time. However, having a static website that forces me to go find what is happening is a complete turn off. When I go to your site why not tell me right away what is going on tonight? No reason to hide that information.
This is what makes BullieBoard! so useful is that you can update what is happening at your club in a matter of minutes. If you are constantly pushing your club offline, why aren’t you pushing it online as well?
Flash has its purpose on the web, but when your whole site is created in Flash you make it harder for search engines to pick up your content. Why would you risk your competition getting a leg up in search results simply because you wanted a site that was cool to you? Your audience will enjoy the site the first time, but after that they just want to know what is happening tonight.
If you truly believe your club is the place people will want to be at then prove it. Show them pictures of the club while people are in it. It’s okay to have some posed pictures, but pictures showing people in their natural element help give me a better feel of what your club is about.