Business Owners' Stories

How a bud­ding blog blossomed

Our client Susan for whom we designed and host a blog, sur­prised us with her lat­est post at www​.socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com. The first sur­prise was the sub­ject mat­ter. She dis­cussed the evo­lu­tion of a web­site, where she devotes her posts to all things plants and nurseries.

The sec­ond sur­prise is one I feel the need to set straight, just for the record, and for the other new busi­ness own­ers who may be won­der­ing why Susan pos­sesses such great for­tune. Susan praises our efforts, and I do hope some of it is more than just flat­tery. After all, we did put a great deal of work into the design and main­te­nance of her site and into the ini­tial train­ing to help her get off on the right foot.

This com­prised only a small rea­son for her suc­cess; we did not cause her to suc­ceed. We do the same work for all our clients, yet some good ideas and good sites fail despite our efforts.

So why did Susan suc­ceed? Here are some of the things I’ve observed her doing.

1. She nar­rowly tar­geted a vis­i­tor audi­ence: gar­den­ers in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia who want to find a nurs­ery near them. She researched the infor­ma­tion these gar­den­ers seek and pro­vided it.
2. Susan is all about hands-​on action. She per­son­ally vis­ited dozens and dozens of inde­pen­dent nurs­eries, ver­i­fy­ing infor­ma­tion and meet­ing the own­ers, who at times were very cool to her, pos­si­bly fear­ing a sales pitch. She quickly won them over.
3. She printed fly­ers, posters, cards, even some very cute mini cards. Then trudged off to speak to gar­den clubs, let­ting them know about her site and what it offered them. It paid off in bumps to her vis­i­tors after each appearance. *
4. She didn’t hang around wait­ing for the Los Ange­les Times and Sun­set Mag­a­zine to hap­pen upon her use­ful site. She sent them press kits that she learned about via Wikipedia​.com. They responded with reviews, arti­cles and use­ful sug­ges­tions. What did that get her? In the first few months of oper­a­tion, she has close to 400 sub­scribers, a half mil­lion vis­i­tors, a few hun­dred peo­ple who con­sider her a friend, thou­sands of good con­tacts in her field and top Google rank­ings under her choice search terms. Try a search for south­ern cal­i­for­nia nurseries.

What is she going to do with the valu­able resources she has earned? She tells me all will be revealed when she reaches 500 sub­scribers. Know­ing Susan, she’ll turn that goal into a new begin­ning. There’s no stop­ping this lady’s trav­els through the blogosphere.

Visit her site at http://​www​.socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com, and you may find a nurs­ery you just have to visit in south­ern California.

Hints:

Look­ing for word of mouth adver­tis­ing? Do like Susan and start spread­ing the word your­self. Cre­ate a pre­sen­ta­tion to offer to all the orga­ni­za­tions you can find. They are all look­ing for speakers — all!

Your pre­sen­ta­tion doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily have to be about your busi­ness. Talk about your hobby, or give a quick les­son in jug­gling, and jug­gling doesn’t have to be about ten­nis balls. Just remem­ber to men­tion your name and your busi­ness a cou­ple of times.

Want to see your­self in print? Go to Wikipedia​.com and learn how to cre­ate your own press kit. Then write a short arti­cle about you, your busi­ness or your recent cat show win. Send it to the appro­pri­ate news edi­tor. They are all look­ing for arti­cles to print — all!

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