CT Biz Blogs

For a while now, I’ve wanted to find out more about the Lincoln Sign Co blog, Signs Never Sleep, so I chose J.D. Iles for my interview post of the 20 blog types. I’ve never met the man, but I sent him an email, asking if he would mind answering a few questions about his blog.

He replied that he gets requests like that all the time, and doesn’t have time to do a full interview (between the signs and the blogging he’s a busy guy) but he pointed me to a series of posts he did in January and February of this year, on blogging and the SNS blog, and said he could answer a question or two in addition to that.

That’s fair enough, I think. So I decided to do a slightly different kind of “interview” and use the power of the blogosphere to pull from those posts. I don’t think I pulled anything out of context, but I recommend that you go read the entire posts for the full story.

One of the things I wondered about was, why SNS? What prompted JD to start blogging to begin with? Here’s one of the things he had to say about why he started the Signs Never Sleep blog.

When I first started managing the company this past May, one of the first things I worked on was correcting some information on the companies current website….

I realized that the website was the exact opposite of what I wanted the internet to do for me.

#1: It took far too much time to make a change to a page and someone else had to do it for me.
#2: Once a change was made, it is unlikely the site would change again due to #1 above
#3: Customers would soon find my site static and dull because of #2 above

I wanted something that I could update whenever I wanted with little effort and present fresh information to my customers on a regular basis.

It occurred to me, if I had a way to show a customer a daily progression of jobs and events through our shop, a customer could get a good, overall view of what we do on a daily basis. In effect, they could get a “shop tour” whenever and wherever they were, and see us at our best and brightest.

This is why our blog, Signs Never Sleep, was born.

There are many benefits to having a blog; I’ve certainly harped on many of them here. JD talks in this post about some of the benefits he gets from the blog– comparing the blog to a tool, like a hammer or chisel.

When a customer first calls me to talk about a sign project, I have about 3 minutes to convince them I can do a better job than any signmaker out of the Yellow Pages. That’s a lot of pressure on those 3 minutes…

What I tend to do now is at the end of the phonecall, I ask them for their e-mail address. I e-mail them a thank you note for taking time to talk to me on the phone, and send a link to my Blog and encourage them to take a look. Now, my Blog can be the “automatic salesman” and sell to them for the next 10 minutes or 6 months (depending if they take a peek every now and then). Using the Blog this way had gotten me jobs, period! and I have not had to do the “sales work”!

Now that’s a good tool…

One of the things I believe that blogging is good for is to show the people behind the company. This helps customers understand your business and think of you as more than a “black box.” I’m not the only one who sees this advantage to blogs, as JD writes, in another post, entitled Why blogging proves I am a very small business and why this is a good thing

Rather than existing on the web as Signs Never Sleep LLC (where all the signs are made by robots, lasers, and artificially intelligent computers) we are Lincoln Sign Company (where all the signs are made by 3 people). I am married, I have kids, I have a dog, and the wife and kids are talking about getting a rabbit this spring which means it will ultimately fall to me to clean the cage more than I want to… (Oh sorry, drifted off there)

The weblog shows my customers what we are, a small business that is approachable, fun, and hopefully they like the work we do. Websites and weblogs are great tools, but you can use a tool well, or badly. A “web-presence” should show off your company as it is, and highlight the strengths you have because of “how your business is”.

However, there are downsides to blogging, too. It needn’t be as time-consuming as you might fear, but there is work and time involved. Is it worth it? Here’s what JD says about being a trailblazer in blogging his business:

99% of my customer base (that’s 99 percent!) have never heard the term “blog” or “weblog” when I first tell them about mine. It can be depressing at times, as I am sure all small business bloggers will agree.

However, small business bloggers take heart! It will not always be this way!…

Remember when the internet first dawned, and you went from saying “what’s this WWW thing next to your address?” to “oh, you have a website?” to “do you have a website?” to “you don’t even have a website. Should I do business with you?”

In five years, people will ask you if you have a blog. Will you be ready?

Sign Never Sleep is a blog about a small business up in Lincoln, New Hampshire, but it is also an example of what small businesses could be and should be doing to connect with customers, share expertise, and build the business.

Thanks, JD, for blazing a trail and for an enjoyable read every day.