CT Biz Blogs

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…)

Steve Rubel wrote a few days ago in Micro Persuasion, about how he works — the applications he uses, how he organizes his work, and what he does throughout the day. He even created a Technorati tag for it, so that anyone interested can track the discussion as people chime in.

I already wrote a little about my day, but not much about what tools I use when I work at the computer. And I spend a lot of time at the computer — 10 - 12 hours a day!

I tend to keep it simple; I don’t like to have too many applications open at once. One reason is that I get too easily confused, but also, because some of the applications I use take a lot of computer resources, and opening too many other applications really slows things down. For example, Visio, a flowcharting tool by Microsoft, is a resource hog, at least on my system. Outlook, also. Combine the two and you can forget about anything else. Likewise with Dreamweaver, a web authoring tool.

When I have a jillion things to try and do in one day, I tend to keep open a Notepad file, where I put a to-do list. I do keep a good list in my Palm T3, but again, when I have some big apps open, even Palm Desktop slows things down. Notepad is better. If I have anything left over at the end of the day, then I open up the Palm Desktop, create the tasks, and sync to my T3.

In good “Getting Things Done” fashion, I not only write down what I’m doing or need to do, but I also put down what I’m waiting for. This helps me remember to nudge people if they haven’t gotten back to me.

Yesterday I felt very scattered and couldn’t settle down until I started working through that little notepad list. I find that just quickly jotting down the actions and outcomes helped keep me sane as I jump from one task to another, and through constant interruptions.

When I blog, I tend to just open the blog posting interface, and start typing — no off-line editor for me. That’s only because I haven’t found one that has all of the features I like. I sometimes use Zoundry, but it doesn’t have a spell-checker!

With all the time I spend at the computer, the real tool I need is a better chair and some device to help me keep my shoulders from hunching over. If I don’t get better about remembering to keep my shoulders back, I’m going to end up as a human comma!

Technorati : How I work

Integrated Health Management is another blog I’ve been working on with Valorie Luther, at Creative Concepts. It’s yet another WordPress.com blog. Anthony Gordon, the principal, is new to the blogging world, but he fearlessly leaped in with no coaching from me. Here’s what IHM is all about:

In a nutshell, Integrated Health Management prevention and disease management services align local physicians, health professionals and fitness leaders through a more precise collaborative care model. This supports the interests of employers, health plans, patients, and network providers to produce highly cost effective care for ambulatory outpatients who are chronically ill or at high risk!

Consulting services such as this need to be blogging. Expertise is a must in consulting, and what better way to demonstrate that than by writing posts about the issues in the field, the challenges potential clients face, and how he’s helped other clients provide better care.

Anthony is ahead of the curve, and I’m sure that as his blog grows, he’ll find that it helps him connect with clients, share his expertise, and build his business.

I love it when a plan comes together!

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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

(more…)

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…)

In a nutshell, you should link to other blogs (and websites) because:
• it offers your readers more information or examples.
• it adds your voice to the conversation.
• it extends your network, which helps readers and search engines find you.

I touched on the first in the previous post on reasons for linking to other blogs.

Adding your voice to the conversation is important. It helps establish your expertise. When you write about other resources, examples, or even just fun stuff, you’re demonstrating your knowledge, personality, or both. This helps your customers and clients know who you are.

For example, I was very pleased by the feedback I got from the posts I wrote on examples of small business blogs. (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…)

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…)

Here’s the second reason for having a weblog. (Read part one here)
Share your expertise

When you share your expertise and your ideas, you do three things:

1. Show your passion for your business and your chosen work
2. Build confidence in your readers that you know your subject and that you care about what you offer to customers or clients
3. Bring people to your business

(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…)