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Discover Mid-America — September 2007
 |
Coming soon —
a DMA blog
by Bruce Rodgers, Editor/Publisher
Blog, the term and its use as a running commentary by business people within the realm of antiques, isn’t exactly a common pairing. The word “blog” itself is less than ten years old, and as many of us know, the antique business adopts new approaches with much thought given beforehand.
According to the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, blog — used as both a noun and verb — sprang from an earlier Internet term “weblog,” which itself was only coined in 1997. Still, as of May 2007, according to Wikipedia, the blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 71 million blogs.
I’m sure some of those blogs belong to antiquers. But the only one I know of personally is www.31corp.blogspot.com by Daryle S. Lambert. He wrote the recently released book 31 Steps To Your Millions In Antiques & Collectibles. (In the future, Discover Mid-America will be talking with Lambert about his book.)
Lambert just recently started his blog. He called me the other day from his home near Chicago all excited about it. As expected, he’s talking — and having people talk back to him — about antiques and auctions
Even before Lambert called me, I had been mulling over the idea of a Discover Mid-America blog. Not that I, and the rest of DMA’s staff, have a lot of leisure time to write our thoughts, but there are things we can convene to our readers and advertisers.
To me that’s the point of a business-type blog — besides being a marketing tool. Get information out about your business — how things are done, how to make things easier for the people you do business with and to relay ideas, comments and complaints from others who are in the same business as yourself. In our case, publishing information about the antiques and collectibles trade, and highlighting historic attractions around the Midwest.
So, we’re going to make the plunge into the blog world next month. Contributors will be myself and — hopefully — all other DMA staff members. That includes Terri Baumgardner, who will be taking over as editor beginning with the upcoming October issue.
And the invitation will be out to you. Like all blogs, there will be a comment function for our readers and advertisers to respond to posted remarks from us. Within the right context, such responses could be a possible electronic billboard to help market your business or show.
I haven’t decided on a name for the blog, and considering there are at least 71 million of them, finding a name not taken could be a challenge. Here are a couple I’ve come up with: DMAgiveandtake.com, DMAantiquereflections.com, DMAloveoftheold.com and DMAsourceofhistory.com.
What do you think? If you come up with a better blog name, and we use it, I’ll give you a free ad if you’re an advertiser or a year’s free subscription if you’re a reader.
Anyway, the blog’s link will be on our web site soon and look for the print ads about it.
Bruce Rodgers can be contacted at publisher@discoverypub.com.
> Refurnished Thoughts Archive — past columns
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