CT Biz Blogs

Valorie Luther, at Creative Concepts, LLC, has her new blog up and running. She’s got the blogging bug big-time, and has worked hard to understand and use blogs for herself and her clients.

She contacted me a few months ago (she found me because of this blog) and we’ve been working on offering blogging to clients who might benefit from having a business blog.

She’s had a blog for a while with her other company, White Linen Events . That blog is called Entertaining News, and it just got a beautiful make-over from The Geek Goddess (someone else Valorie found online).

Valorie started blogging the way a lot of people do — with a free blog from Blogger, for Entertaining News. She used it to learn the basics so that she could understand the issues involved in blogging.

Creative Concepts will be getting a make-over, as well, to move from the template look. Now that she understands blogging, she moved to the next level and got a Wordpress 2.0 blog on her own domain. Her web guys are working to get the main website up, but the blog is up now and she’s working on some great ideas, including offering a blogging workshop here in CT.

It’s about time things started happening here, instead of the west coast.

While I know a few things about blogging and the technology related to blogging, I’m not an expert in marketing and public relations. However, I do know someone who is: Valorie Luther, who owns Creative Concepts, a marketing and PR firm based in Fairfield, Connecticut.

She and I have been talking for some time about how CT Biz Blogs can help her clients get up to speed on blogging. On Friday it became official — here’s the press release announcing Creative Concepts’s blogging service. Valorie will supply the overall marketing strategy and public relations expertise and CT Biz Blogs will be supplying the blogging services for her clients.

I’m very excited about this — blogging is an excellent way for businesses to do marketing and PR. And I’m looking forward to working with Valorie; she’s a very smart lady!

She also does a lot of event planning work. Here’s a link to her event planning weblog, Entertaining News.

We’ve got some projects in the pipeline — I’ll be blogging about them when appropriate, within the bounds of client and professional confidentiality, of course.

If you’re interested, the contact info is on the announcement.

And, if you’re interested in getting technical help with blogging, CT Biz Blogs can help you there, too.

Liz Strauss, formerly of Successful Blog, has started a new blog called Biz.erati. She’s busy imparting her thoughts and writing about business issues. This is a good resource for anyone in the business world (which is really everyone, whether they know it or not), but especially good for folks who are starting a business.

Liz is a lively writer, full of stories and ideas. She’s well worth reading and I recommend you check out this blog.

I’ve subscribed.

The first open house women’s networking event at Jitters Coffeehouse will be happening tonight. The coffeehouse is at 1273 Queen Street in Southington (RT10). This is put on by the Central Ct Women’s Forum group.

The cost is $5 and includes coffee or tea, and desserts. No reservation is required. They will meet twice a month on Wednesday nights — the next meeting is December 7th.

I’d be there tonight if I didn’t already have other plans — I’ve got the Dec 7th event on my calendar, though.

Also, check out their press release for more information on the radio show they’re putting together.

I went to a CCWF meeting on Tuesday. This group meets the 3rd Tuesday of every month, at the Aqua Terra restaurant in Southington.

I’ve been to two meetings, as a visitor, and have had a great time on both occasions. This is an energetic group of women with diverse backgrounds and businesses, who all come together to network, and discuss various aspects of being in business.

The food is always excellent, and there’s a lot of energy and excitement in the room. That’s due in no small part to the hard work and efforts of the leadership team, headed by Shirley Bloethe, who owns several businesses, including Jitters Coffeehouse, and Pass it On Sports & Fitness.

At the last meeting we learned about the new focus of WXCT AM 990. They have decided to focus on Women’s issues for their new format, and the CCWF will be a part of that, hosting a weekly program, Tuesdays at 1 PM.

Also, because the group is large and they just don’t get enough opportunities to talk to each other, they are starting an open house women’s networking event at Jitter’s Coffeehouse 1273 Queen Street in Southington RT10. The first meeting is this coming Wednesday, Nov 23rd.

The cost is $5 and includes coffee or tea, and desserts. No reservation required.

You can find contact info at the website of the Central CT Women’s Forum.

Of course, you know they really need a blog!

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…)

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.