Guest Blog Column: Part 1- WHY I BLOG

I was recently asked by a good friend of mine, Paul Chaney at Radiant Marketing, to do a stint as a "guest blogger" and talk about my blogging experience from a small business perspective. Paul runs a company and blog that specializes in the needs of small businesses as it relates to blogging, and has also been instrumental in forming a "Professional Bloggers Association".

I was very flattered that he thought of me to contribute, and I am planning to blog for him every Wednesday for the next 4 weeks or so...

WHY I BLOG...

I am the new owner of a small sign company in the resort town of Lincoln, NH. We are a business that is well known for our carved and dimensional signs throughout the region, and my family and I very much enjoy living and working in the White Mountains.

I guess there are two things that drew me to start blogging. When I first started managing the company this past May, one of the first things I worked on was correcting some information on the companies current website (www.lincolnsign.com) and thinking about what I might want to do with that site in the future. I am very comfortable with computers and technology, but surprisingly ignorant when it comes to HTML and all the things that makes a website run. Another company did all the footwork for me in getting my site semi-updated, but I realized that the website was the exact opposite of what I wanted the internet to do for me.

#1: It took far too much time to make a change to a page and someone else had to do it for me.
#2: Once a change was made, it is unlikely the site would change again due to #1 above
#3: Customers would soon find my site static and dull because of #2 above

I wanted something that I could update whenever I wanted with little effort and present fresh information to my customers on a regular basis.

The second thing that drove me into bloggings arms is the unfortunate fact that the nature of my business sometimes makes it a difficult task to show a customer what we do on a daily basis. We make signs, lots of signs, and the nature of a sign is that it goes away fairly quickly once it is finished as it is either picked up by the customer or installed by us. So that means, when a potential customer stops by to visit, usually either all the nice signs we made recently are gone and there is nothing interesting to show them in the shop, or we have just spilled a gallon of paint all over the floor and our woodshop is a disaster area. It is rare that a customer visits us on a day we have a beautiful Gold-Leafed sign sitting in the shop in all its glory, and of course, that is what we want a customer to see.

It occurred to me, if I had a way to show a customer a daily progression of jobs and events through our shop, a customer could get a good, overall view of what we do on a daily basis. In effect, they could get a "shop tour" whenever and wherever they were, and see us at our best and brightest.

This is why our blog, www.signsneversleep.com, was born.

Now, how did I learn how to blog? The first thing you need to know about me, is that I am a workoholic and always up for a challenge, so learning how to do something new is right up my alley. Paul's was actually one of the first sites I found that talked about blogging for businesses, and was a great source of information when I started learning what I needed to know to get started.

I started blogging with Blogger and have been very happy with it. They make it very easy to set up a site and keep it going. I also use Hello to post pictures to my site, again, very easy to use. Also, both Blogger and Hello are free... That's right, I actually do not pay anyone, anything for my blog.

I have been blogging since August of 2004 and it usually takes me about 10 minutes per day. It has gotten me business, and more importantly, I enjoy doing it and it is a creative release for me. That is probably the biggest reason I blog on a daily basis. It is fun and, believe it or not, the primary reason I purchased my own business is to have fun.

If you want a place to go to start learning about business blogging, I suggest you start at Paul's site HERE