8.01.07
Up until now, people have been using blogs mostly so they can share their travel journals or so they can weigh in on political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere. It seems big business is now getting into the action. According to this post on WIRED’s Monkey Bites Microsoft has built up customer anticipation by letting their employees post about their product development process.
Well then, if it’s good for Microsoft and considering that the standup guys at WordPress have gone through the trouble of developing an enterprise version that can help Fortune 500 companies connect more with their customers, who’s to say that a small business can’t benefit from letting their current and potentials customers in on the inner workings of their company?
This is particularly true of businesses that have built their brand and reputation on the name of their founders. By providing an avenue through which customers can read real stories and opinions from – say, their friendly jeweller or mortgage broker – and be able to respond to these posts via comments and thus be able to interact with the company more directly, you can build trust and customer loyalty.
You also get to build a community among your customers so they start to associate your blog (and therefore your business) as a convivial gathering place among people with whom they have a connection – a common need for your services/products. I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that this is a great opportunity that is sadly ignored by traditional marketing.
On on our next installment, I’ll be talking about how to get started building a blog for your own business.
20.11.06
The New York Times has an article explaining what makes a website sing.
While there is no shortage of entries on this topic, it’s good to see the basic do’s and don’ts addressed in a straightforward fashion on a popular online newspaper. And judging from the surplus of bad websites out there, it’s a topic that’s well worth repeating.
For all you busy people out there, we’ve gone and turned the article into a handy bullet-pointed list:
15.11.06
Consider me a proud mama. One year ago today, I set out to start my own design company. As I’ve often quipped to friends and clients, if Argent of Change a baby, it would be walking and talking by now.
Like many of you out there, I had started out from fulltime employment and I had given up the security of having a monthly paycheck in order to strike out on my own. One year onwards and what do I have to show for it? Well I’m proud to say that I’m lucky enough to have made a turnaround of about 90% of my gross salary – which is pretty sweet if you consider that I’ve only been running the company fulltime since March 2006.
We’re not in debt (yahoo!), we haven’t disappointed any clients yet (to my knowledge) and we’ve managed to keep abreast about technology and we’re doing our own little bit in fighting against bad design and making the world a little more beautiful and usable each day.
But everyone knows that the first year is a very important milestone. That’s when the little rugrat’s personality begins to assert itself and we’ve thought long and hard about how we’re going to raise this kid. So we’ve decided to beef up on our offerings and that’s why we’re now calling it web development and not just web design anymore. We’re now going to ask our clients to let us integrate Textpattern CMS on their websites so they can manage their own content. We’re talking more openly about our graphic design service because we’d like to offer not just an online presence but print promotion as well – because hey, we can do that too.
So join me as I raise an imaginary toast to my pride and joy, and tell your friends about it too, because we’re a small design company that likes helping other small companies too.
Previously on the Orange Groove:
Next up: