| By Jim Bruene on January 21, 2009 7:34 PM | Comments (2) |
When researching yesterday's post on BofA's iPhone app, I searched Google for "Bank of America mobile banking" and ended up at the bank's mobile banking news blog (see screenshot below).
This is the second blog the bank has launched in recent months. The first supports its MIT Center for Future Banking (post here).
While purists may claim this latest effort is not really a blog because there are no community features such as comments, it's updated infrequently (5 posts in 3 months, see note 1) and appears purely promotional in nature. The bank doesn't even refer to it as a blog. The official title is: Mobile Banking Media Center for Bank of America.
But it's laid out like a blog. The content is arranged in reverse chronological postings, with categories/tagging/permalinks. The variety of content includes YouTube videos, and you can subscribe via RSS feeds.
That's a blog to me, and a very good one at that. While the core audience consists of press and analysts, it's a great resource for anyone interested in the bank's mobile offerings. And as my search yesterday proved, Google has rewarded it with a high organic result, the first position on my search. That can potentially save the bank hundreds of thousands of dollars in search-engine advertising.
Bottom line: Call it what you will, but BofA demonstrates one of the most effective uses of the blog-like format: supporting PR and educational efforts for a new strategic effort (mobile banking) in an easy-to-follow and easy-to-administer format (see note 2).
Notes:
1. There are five posts on the homepage, but if you drill into the top categories, you'll find some older press releases.
2. For more ideas, see our Online Banking Report on Bank 2.0 Techniques.
3. BofA's new Blackberry app is shown at the top of this post.
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I’m so happy to see a true BlackBerry app for BofA. Plus this blog seems to be more about there products and services than the other one mentioned here. I still caution them about too much self-promotion. Remember: A blog is a two-way communication tool!
I just downloaded the new app on my BlackBerry Storm (pictured). It seemed to install fine, but on start I get an error: “Uncaught exception::Format: RE out of memory” . . . Not sure what’s going on, but I should have plenty of memory. I would tell BofA directly, but they don’t seem to have comments on their new blog. Just another example of a corporation missing vital consumer input!