Local Business Uses Blogging Effectively
There seems to be no shortage of stories about big business and blogging and for anyone interested in what, say, the Fortune 500 companies are doing there is the excellent Fortune 500 Blog Project wiki.
But while I am keenly interested in hearing about the biggies and their blogging, I like also to collect examples of smaller businesses blogging, especially where they have a niche or local market.
Brendon Connelly of Slacker Manager fame (another of our trusty band from the Business channel at b5media) posts about a local ski resort, whose GM’s blog has become a valued resource for patrons wanting to know current conditions.
The resort GM, Dave Riley, has been a blog hero. He’s been keeping regular updates, with pictures, about the road rebuilding progress. Hearing about progress directly from the General Manager, rather than a PR flack, is so refreshing.
By the way, I share Brendon’s dislike for using the word “blog” for what the rest of us call a post, or an entry, or an article. I get emails sometimes from people alerting me to a new “blog” they’ve written - I know now that if I check it out I can expect to find it’s just another post to their existing blog, not a new blog.
Tags: Blogging, business, Fortune+500, ski+resort, small+businessRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Corporate, General, Small Business
4 opinions for Local Business Uses Blogging Effectively
Vincent Blog-potato
Nov 23, 2006 at 3:23 am
I think my favourite small business blog would be over at http://www.malleenativeplants.com.au/ the website for the Mallee Native Plants Nursery. I first found them through a Problogger writing project. Corinne blogs frequently about drought resistant native plants, drought proofing gardens and identifying grasses. All great stuff for a country experiencing longer and harder droughts. She has built up a catalog of posts that is as good as any coffee table book or gardening book.
By following a topic like this through an RSS feed you can end up retaining more information then if you sat down and tried to plough through a thick book.
regards
Vincent
Des Walsh
Dec 2, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Vincent
Yes, it is a fascinating blog and the style is much as I recommend to people - informative, content-rich, personal, even chatty without being prolix. I have a bit of a problem seeing it as a business blog as I can’t actually find where it says the blog publisher actually sells anything or offers services, or even a way to contact her other than by leaving a comment. Maybe I’m missing something, but as business bloggers we need to be making it easier for people to see what we have to sell and how they can access that if they so wish.
Des
Vincent Blog-potato
Dec 4, 2006 at 4:54 pm
You are right! Now that I look at the site closer it has a lot about native plants, an about me page on the author, the name of the business but nothing about how to visit or contact the business! I did dive into the archive and found the reason for this:
“My nursery, Mallee Native Plants Nursery, is where I work. The website for it is being worked on now. I hope soon to have a catalogue available on line, when son Simon (IT Whiz) gets it ready for me to operate.”
Cmon Simon, get busy.
Business and Blogging - Fortune 500 Blog Project Call for Volunteers
Dec 20, 2006 at 10:02 pm
[…] In a previous post I made a passing reference to the Fortune 500 Blog Project, described on the wiki as follows: The Fortune 500 Blog Project is an independent, volunteer-driven project to identify and evaluate public-facing corporate blogs owned and/or operated by Fortune 500 companies. Secondary purposes of this project include finding out to what degree Fortune 500 companies are using internal corporate blogs, and highlighting blogs that discuss Fortune 500 companies. […]
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