CT Biz Blogs

Well, two of my favorite blogs were mentioned in USA Today. They have a nice article called Blogs put businesses on Web search map, with many quotes from Small Business Blog of the Day’s Brian Brown, and one of the blogs they feature is J.D. Iles’s Signs Never Sleep, the blog for the Lincoln Sign Company, in New Hampshire.

Sign-maker Joseph Iles, 37, has been blogging for two years at his Lincoln Sign Co. in Lincoln, N.H. And he’s already seen a payoff. Iles attributes $33,000 in sales last year, or about 10% of total revenue, to customers he found through his Signs Never Sleep blog.

“If you can send an e-mail, you can do a blog,” he says. “It’s simple.”

Congratulations, guys!

In the article, Brian gives examples of 4 business blogs, and the reasons why they’re good blogs, and why blogs are good for business.

And when you read the article, don’t forget to follow the links to see the blog examples, and to read the other articles. There’s a great link to a brief how-to on blogging, and a link to USA Today’s Small business blog, Small Business Connection blog, written by Jim Hopkins. It’s full of good posts, including this one on what Suzanne Hetts, co-owner of Animal Behavior Associates in Littleton, Colo is saying about her planned move into blogging.

Ok, I lied.

Blogging IS new to a lot of people, but the thing it’s for — communication — that’s not new.

And if you’re hesitating trying out blogging because you’re nervous about this new thing, don’t be. Many of the same rules apply for blogging as do for any form of communication. They’re just ramped up a notch by the “enabling” blogging software.

Today I offer you two examples of communication, one bad and one good.

The bad example is actually a non-blogging one, but the mistakes here can also be made via blogging, so take heed.

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Blogs are great ways to let people get to know you a little bit. Usually it’s done indirectly, as your interests, skills, and knowledge are revealed in what you write about.

One way you can let people know about you is by interviewing yourself. By this I don’t mean the “I-have-12-children-and-live-in-Podunk” kind of stuff. Although that’s a good bit for the “about” page. (I’d certainly like to know, because anyone with 12 kids and still sane has miraculous management techniques!)

One approach to telling us about yourself is to try writing more stories, maybe about a time when you accomplished something or learned something. That isn’t really telling — it’s showing.

This is the basis of a technique that’s become popular in job interviews, called “Behavioral Interviewing.” In a job interview (which a blog is, in part) the interviewer might say something like “Tell me about a time when you had to tell someone bad news. What did you do and what happened?”

The stories are best if they stick to things that happened at a job, or something not too personal. And certainly not confessional — a small business blog shouldn’t be a tell-all diary. If other people in the story are recognizable by those who know you, it’s best to get their OK. You don’t want the kids at school teasing your son because of something his daddy said on a blog.

To get you started, here are a few sample behavioral interview questions from the Quintessential Careers website:

• Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills.

• Give me an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or achieve it.

• Tell me about a time you were able to successfully deal with another person even when that individual may not have personally liked you (or vice versa).

Katharine Hansen has some good interview answering tips on the Quintessential Careers site.

On your post, you don’t need to actually ask the question first, of course. You can start in with the answer. But you will need to have some introduction, some reason why you’re telling this story. It can be something as simple as a news item that reminds you of something that happened to you, or something that someone said, or even something as simple as, “You know, the life of a Waste Management Engineer isn’t all roses. Sometimes the compost heap can get piled pretty high. I remember a time when…” And you’re off.

See how easy it can be?

Technorati : blogging

This is a continuation of the thread I started with yesterday’s post: The risks of blogging.

One concern that people have about blogging is that, with your words out there on the internet, and forever enshrined in Google’s memory banks, what you say can come back to haunt you.

Here’s my take on that:

First, that works both ways. If you make a mistake, it may be a public one, especially if you don’t follow up wisely when it’s pointed out. Then people will come out of the woodwork to watch you self-destruct. But you also have a public record of all the smart things you said. You are building a portfolio, a relationship, a body of work, in a sense. In my opinion, the people who really have to worry about this problem are those who don’t have anything to say, have something to hide, or are just more of the “same old, same old.”

Maybe you see that something you wrote is being twisted and used against you, that’s when having a blog is a great strategy. If someone takes a quote out of context, or takes a cheap shot at you, you can write about it. You can point to the post and show how your opponent is giving out false information. One reason that Mark Cuban started his BlogMaverick personal weblog is because he was tired of having his words filtered through reporters or misquoted, or of having 2 hours of interview cut to 500 words. (Source: I Want Media: One Question, as quoted in Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright (great book!).

Blogging is a great way to give your side of any misunderstandings.

There’s no way you can control what negative things people may say about you, whether you’re blogging or not. As any professional writer can tell you, people will take your words and run them through their internal filters. Even in the best of circumstances, what comes out is different from what you wrote. The only way to avoid that is to not do anything, not strive for anything, not be anything.

What you can control is how you react to those issues. And blogging is one more tool to use to counter negatives, when done in the right way. (more…)

One of the banks in my area is merging with another bank (what a surprise!). As I was reading the local paper this morning I saw a big ad announcing the merger and asking people to “Tell us how we can make banking better.” It gave a web address (URL), where people could go to submit their comments about how TD Banknorth could build a better bank.

This is a great idea, except for one itty-bitty detail: it’s not a blog. Instead, people are given an smallish text box and a submit button.

Good idea: asking people for their suggestions and opinions.
Bad idea: sending that suggestion or opinion into a black hole, never to be seen again.

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Audible.com is a company that has online audio versions of books that can be downloaded to an MP3 player. I’ve been a subscriber to Audible.com since early 2001 (5 year anniversary in a week). At the time I joined, I was commuting an hour each way, and listening to books really made the time go by (and made me a little more knowledgeable, I hope).

Last December I got a letter and a free set of earbuds from Audible. The letter was from the president, Don Katz, telling me that, while they appreciated my business and my loyalty, the fact was that Audible was losing money on all its early-adopter listeners. I get two books a month for a very low price. He said that Audible would continue to honor the legacy account, but asked me to upgrade to a new account which would be only one book plus an audio magazine subscription.

My thought at the time was “Yeah, right. How can you lose money when there’s no inventory but some bits and bytes, and bandwidth for downloads?”

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Ok, I’ve been yammering here for 7 months now about blogging for small businesses. Today I want to direct your attention to another small business blogger out there — one who’s blogging as he builds his online business, months before he’s ready to open.

Mark Nash is building an online store, and blogging about it as he goes along. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the work he’s putting into his e-commerce site, and his latest post, Why Should a Small Business Blog, gives some of his reasons for why he’s blogging. Here’s a brief glimpse of a few of them

1. Creating pre-grand-opening awareness.

For a small online retail business with only a modest outlay for online advertising, then, the challenge is to create advance awareness without spending a ton of cash.

Marketing is certainly one big reason for blogging. I like this twist; I hadn’t thought of it.

4. Getting good advice.

As I continue describing my activities in the time leading up to the launch of the business, I am inviting criticism and discussion. Some of it will be good advice, some of it not so good, but all of it will be worth giving some consideration to.

People are curious, and they love a good story, especially one that’s unfolding before their eyes. This guy is a savvy blogger. (Although he’s using Google’s Blogger platform! He’s got a few reasons for doing so, but really, Mark, Blogger is so limited. If you want free and simple, Wordpress.com has better tools.) My bet is that people will come to his blog and won’t be able to resist participating, via the comments.

I know plenty of people will be coming via the link from Darren Rowse, of Problogger. That’s how I got there.

Check it out!

In scouring the internet in search of example blogs for small businesses, I found Hadley Spagna Photography (Actually, I just searched through CT Weblogs site.)

Hadley is a photographer, specializing in maternity and children photos. She’s got a regular website (just re-vamped) and a blog on Blogger.

Her blog is very informal and while it does have some photography, it’s a combo of a lot of things:

• info about cameras
• example pictures of her children
• info on where you can see her photos (such as Border’s)
• writing about child-friendly local restaurants and getting a child’s hair cut

It may seem like the last item is off-target – a miscellany of writing about things that don’t have a lot to do with photography, but she’s not just showcasing her photographic skills. She’s also showing her relationship skills and the fact that she gets kids and knows what to do with them – she knows how to bring out the best.

She’s showing that she has both an artistic eye to capture the right moments well, and a parental eye to know what that moment would look like.

There’s nothing wrong with putting in as much personal commentary or detail as you feel comfortable sharing. It’s not unprofessional if done correctly.

Amy Gahran, a professional blogger and explorer of new media, has done a survey on the issue of bringing personal info into a business blog. Also check out the analysis of write-in responses to the survey.

In Hadley’s blog you get to see that she is a mom, that she understands kids, and that the experience of hiring her is going to be the complete opposite of the slap-the-kid-in-a-suit, prop-him-in-up-in-front-of-a-fake-background, and make funny “ooga-ooga, squidgy-squidgy-woo” noises until the kid stops screaming, and then snap the picture experience.

That’s a good thing!

That being said, there are a few things that bug me, or that I think could be done better. But I’ll have to postpone that analysis until Monday’s post – I’m out of time. See you then!

Your Voice is the blog of Kim Fawcett, who has declared her candidacy for state representative in Fairfield and Westport. She’s decided to use a blog as a way to help her reach out to people, and to hear what’s on their minds.

This Blog I hope will be about the issues. My plan is to run a grass roots campaign and talk to as many people as I can. I plan to use this Blog to share with you the issues that regular people in my community care about. If I am sucessful in reaching out to enough people my voice should over time truly become their voice in the process and that is my campaign slogan YOUR VOICE..FOR CHANGE!

Kim may be new to blogging, but she’s plunged right in. I think she’ll do well, because it fits right into her overall goal of meeting people and paying attention to what they have to say.

Photo by skarmj

In the daily rush of things to do, blogs to write, and marketing strategies to mastermind, it’s easy to forget that you’re allowed to have fun, too.

In that spirit, I’d like to ask you all to pop on over to Sealed Air’s site, for the festivities on Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, 2006.

These folks have found a fun way to promote their brand and their product. What a great idea! I especially like the simple, yet amusing, Bubble Wrap Personality Test.

Have some fun, and start thinking of ways you can incorporate fun and humor into your blog. Don’t forget that the idea is to make people want to come read what you have to say.

I’ll have a list of easy, quick ideas on Wednesday. Feel free to chime in here with yours!

Amazon.com has a new feature called “Amazon Connect.” Authors will be able to create a profile page in Amazon.com, and post messages directly to readers. These will be displayed on the detail page of an author’s book.

These aren’t quite blogs, but they’re close. They don’t have comments, for one thing. But they’re a good first step for authors who don’t have blogs.

Cory Doctorow science-fiction writer and blogger, wrote an excellent article in BoingBoing about why authors need blogs: Amazon’s author-blogs and the Age of the Conversational Artist.

You need conversation. In practically every field of artistic endeavor, we see success stories grounded in artists who engage in some form of conversation with their audience.

In the post he cites a New York Times Book Review article about the Amazon blogs.

The Amazon blogs are, at least for now, intended as a one-way communication, with writers talking to readers. But some authors have already found a way around that: Anita Diamant, the author of “The Last Days of Dogtown” and other novels, guides readers from her Amazon blog to her own Web site, where they can write to her directly. Other authors post their e-mail addresses on their profile pages.

I think the Amazon blogs work best as a secondary blog — “leveraging” (to use some business jargon) your already existing and better blog. Better because a) it has more features (such as comments and categories) and b) you control it. If Amazon changes its mind or its terms tomorrow, you’ll still own your blog.

But if you don’t have a blog, get in on this.

I went to the sign up page to check it out. Basically, the process seems to be: submit your email address, bibliography, and the name of a third party contact (such as a publisher, editor, or agent) who can verify your claim. Here’s a link to the beginning signup page for Amazon Connect (you’ll have to log in).

And here’s what it would look like: the blog page for Meg Wolitzer, author mentioned in the NY Times article.

So what are you waiting for?

If you’ve never had a blog, it might be hard to imagine what it would be like if you did. So here are a few hypothetical situations you might find yourself in, if you were blogging about your business.

• You would get an email from someone saying, “I just read your article about incorporating a business. You’ve raised some issues I hadn’t even considered. I’d like to come in and talk to you about it.”

• You would get a phone call from someone who found you on the web, saying “I dropped my watch into the ocean. What can I do?” But you wouldn’t just tell him over the phone, you’d use the question as the basis for a post. You’d include that post in your FAQs. And you might even offer that person a small discount on a new watch, as a thank you for inspiring the post.

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Scenario #1: Imagine that you are a PR and Marketing guy, and you’re really into blogging. You and your co-writer (who writes a popular blog for a large software company) have decided to write a book about why companies should embrace blogging.

You want to build some buzz for this proposed book, you want to share your ideas, and you hope you’ll get some feedback, info, and advice as you write the book. So you decide to blog the book. On the blog, you write about the initial premise and finding a publisher. As time goes on, you ask your readers for suggestions for the book’s title for names of people to interview. You post your complete notes from interviews, and full drafts of your chapters, asking for help with corrections. As the chapters approach final form, you post them as well. Finally, you ask for people who might be interested in reviewing the bound galleys of the book, for final proofing and error-checking.

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For my case study post (for the 20 blog types marathon) I want to take a look at Andrew Ewalt’s Law Blog. One reason is that he’s a CT lawyer from near my old stomping grounds (he’s in Manchester and Storrs; I lived in that area for many years). For another, he’s a good subject for my experiment — he’s headed in the right direction with his blog, but it could use a few tweaks. For a third, I’m in the process of redesigning this blog, and thinking objectively about someone else’s blog is easier than thinking objectively about my own. This will get my brain going in the right direction. So, I have a few thoughts on Andrew’s blog that I’d like to share. Do with them what you will, Andrew.

I’ll be writing about three parts of Andrew’s blog:

1. The URL
2. The Header
3. The Posts

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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. (more…)

There are many different types of businesses that could use a blog to help connect with customers or vendors, share their expertise, and build their businesses. These could be used in place of a website, or as an addition to the website.

As a challenge to myself (as if I’m not already challenged with this 20 types marathon), I brainstormed some ways four different types of businesses could use a blog. I’m sure there are many more that I haven’t thought of. The potential uses of a blog are only limited to the imagination of the business owner. I mean, who knew that a blog about a sign business could be so much fun to read.

How 4 types of small businesses could use a blog: (more…)

Even though The Soap Blog isn’t a Connecticut blog, it’s an excellent example of what Connecticut business bloggers could be doing, too! This series of posts is also a fascinating look into the creative spirit that anyone with an ounce of creativity can relate to.

Right now, Heather is writing a series of stories about four scents she created to pay tribute to four women who influenced her.

In a previous post, she mentioned that she was working on a scent called “Nora,” and gave some history of how she’s been struggling to come up with just the right “notes” for it. In today’s post, Alma, Elinor, Elsie and Nora, she has some thumbnail photos of the women, and introduces them briefly to us. Heather says:

I used these women who I knew were very different as a platform to shape the fragrance - so as to embody something for everyone - once I had done that, the actual perfume so strongly associated with that woman - I couldn’t concieve of any other name for them - any other image.

She plans to tell us more about them, as perfumes, over the next few posts. I’m intrigued, because I want to see how she works with her materials so that “…their perfumes to reflect the richness and the colour they displayed during their lifetimes - and to be a signature to their personality that any woman, every woman could share.”

I trust that these stories are authentic, because Heather is the voice of Eie Flud, and she’s authentic. She’s become so, to me, because of her blogging. As I’ve been reading her posts, I feel I know her a bit. This is what I call authentic marketing — telling a real story, not only of the women, but of how Heather works, and how passionate and knowledgeable she is about what she does.

As she tells us about the perfumes, I hope she tells us a bit more about the women’s lives, also. Or maybe she’ll blend the two strands into one story, the way she blends her ingredients.

In an earlier article I wrote about blogs with multiple authors. There’s one type of multiple-author blog I missed – the customer evangelist blogs at Vespa. This project is headed by Steve Rubel, a VP at CooperKatz & Company, who writes Micro Persuasion, an influential blog about public relations and new media.

Vespa has four people blogging on two officially sanctioned blogs, which are linked to right from the corporate website. These people were approved by Vespa, and given guidelines to follow, but their posts are not screened in any way. (Visit Micro Persuasion link above for the PDF of the blogging guidelines). They are also not getting paid, according to the Vespa blogging FAQ page.

These writers already have their own blogs, and they are already Vespa owners. They are “Customer Evangelists,” (more…)

When you first begin blogging, you’re pretty much talking to yourself. It takes time and effort for readers to appear. When you talk to yourself, it’s easy to forget that the people you want to talk to have a different context; you tend to make assumptions about what people already know, and what they might want to know.

For example, I started this blog for small businesses getting into blogging — to help newcomers understand why and how a blog could help them, and to serve as a resource. I’m focusing on my home state of Connecticut because I think there’s a great need for blogs in this state. CTBizBlogs can help in many ways, including networking with other blogging businesses.

I began by writing a couple of weeks’ worth of posts and going to some business networking meetings, giving out cards with the blog’s web address (URL).

At one of those meetings someone told me, “I looked at your site…but I still don’t understand. What is a blog?”

Wake-up call! That was exactly what I needed to hear. There was a “hole” in my blog, to use a phrase from this useful article, Blog Review Checklist, from what is fast becoming one of my “must read” blogs, Successful Blog. (Plus, they also use WordPress as their blogging platform, which I use and love.)

You get a hole in your blog when you don’t write for your audience. And this checklist is a great way to review your blog, see if you have any holes, and get ideas on how to fix them.

I’ve started taking steps to better help folks who are completely new to the blogging phenomenon, such as creating a page called “Blogging Basics.”

But I know there’s more I can do, and I’ll start with this checklist and see what happens. Let me know what you think!

While I did write briefly about how to subscribe to a blog, I didn’t really touch on why you should be reading blogs.

You should be reading blogs for several business reasons: to see what others in your field are saying; to see how other businesses are using blogs; and to keep tabs on what is being said about you, your company, and your products.

In the Cluetrain Manifesto, the authors state that “markets are conversations.” And blogging is one way to start a conversation with your clients and customers, present and prospective. But if you’re new to blogs, you may not realize that there’s a conversation going on already. (more…)

Some businesses, such as Eie Flud, (first mentioned in this post) have a website as well as a blog. But for some, such as CT BizBlogs, the blog is their website.

Here’s a very nice example of that. The Aldo Coffee Company has been blogging for almost a year now, and their site is very well-designed. (more…)

From my dining room window I can see grazing, the very cows that within minutes provide the milk for these soaps - still warm and frothy and completely natural. We toddle over with our basin, and toddle back to make the soap. Our thanks to the Farmers Meakin (Freeby) for providing the milk and Carl the herdsman for not even so much as blinking at our reasons for wanting it.

During my blog surfing, I found a relatively new small business blog from the UK, all about a company that makes soap. Heather Platts, of the company Eie Flud, has been blogging about their experiences setting up a shop, packaging their products, and creating soaps and perfumes. She’s also been blogging about her blog and her experiences in the blogosphere. (more…)

You may be wondering why you should bother with a weblog, especially if you’re coming to this blog for the first time. You’ve never heard of blogs before, or you’ve only just heard of them, but never had the time to see what the fuss was all about. Who reads these things, anyway? (more…)

There’s some controversy swirling around the blog world the last few days. Apparently, a blogger is being sued over comments someone left on one of his blogs. Amy Gahran’s post on this subject is one of the most comprehensive I’ve found. This issue is understandably making a lot of bloggers nervous and concerned, and has sparked a lot of conversations about liability, libel, and free speech. Some bloggers are seriously considering turning off the comment function in their blogs. (more…)

Connecticut Windows on the Natural World is a beautiful weblog. In the header, it’s described like this:

There may be no place better than Connecticut to discover nature. This blog tells of local discoveries about geology, paleontology, ecology and fisheries over the past two centuries and connects them with events in the world today.

This site looks to be Brendan Hanrahan’s companion site to www.cttrips.com. Searching Google for “connecticut” and “geology” brings links to www.cttrips.com on the first page. While he doesn’t seem to need the blog to drive business to his main site, it does nicely augment it. (more…)

Andrew Ewalt is a solo attorney in the Greater Hartford area. His blog serves as a good example of sharing expertise.

He has articles on taxes, identity theft, and life insurance. He also has a list of links, to mostly legal blogs.

But those links make it less clear for whom these articles are intended. Reading the articles, I get the impression that they’re for clients and the general public. But if that’s the case, he might do better by having a list of links to sites that his intended audience would find more helpful, such as financial information, tax sites, or consumer information. I doubt that most clients are really interested in the site for the American Constitution Society.

However, he might also want to be a part of the growing network of legal bloggers, a perfectly valid goal, and one that adds to the fun of being in the blogging world. In that case, dividing the links into two segments could help: legal sites, and consumer information sites.

There are many decisions to make when shaping a blog. The good news is that you don’t have to make all of them at once. A weblog is something that grows over time, just like a business.

The main three reasons for blogging are listed at the top of this site:

• Connect with your customers
• Share your expertise and thoughts
• Build your business

What does that mean? I’ll tackle these one at a time in a series of posts. (more…)

Yet another great example, not from Connecticut, but it shows you what you could do with a weblog, if you have a restaurant.

This restaurant weblog from North Conway, New Hampshire, is very professional looking. It’s created using Typepad, a hosted blogging service.

They post about upcoming events at the restaurant and area, food, recipies, and even a video on how to eat spaghetti!

Their site is full of sidebar links and photos, including photos sent in by customers.

When you see this site, you feel as if you were there in North Conway.

Signs Never Sleep is the weblog of the Lincoln Sign Company, in New Hampshire.

They feature great photos of work they’ve done, and use an informal style which makes you feel right at home.

Here is a weblog from South Windsor, CT. Folks from Gerber Scientific Products created a blog using Blogger, the fastest, cheapest, and simplest way to start blogging.

They use it to showcase what their customers have done with their products, give tips, and explain features.

This is a great way to personalize a company, and connect with customers.

I passed by their building, going to and from work, for many years — never knew what they did. Now I do!

Here’s a good introductory article about the growing trend of corporate blogging.

Blogging — once the electronic soapbox of the teenage diarist — has exploded in popularity over the last year. Businesses are now weighing how blogs can fit into their marketing and strategy. Their first concern: Is the blog, or “Web log,” destined to become the next “killer application,” like the Web or e-mail? Or will it enjoy short-lived fanfare, only to fade into oblivion in the years ahead?

This is my first post in this blog, which I’ve created with WordPress. I intend this blog to be an example of what I want to help other small businesses do — connect, share, and build.

I’ve blogged for about a year now using Blogger, Google’s free, hosted blogging software. It has many fine features and is a great way for someone to start with blogging.

But to really understand blogging, I have to get into the guts of the process, so I’m taking this next step.

Here’s to a great adventure!