Updated
Stories about how business blogs help small businesses reach out to customers, get known, attract buyers and grow their small companies are common. Here is a story about how using a blog helped (saved) a small business owner when she was facing a financial crisis. Thanks to Todd Nelson, contributor to the Star Tribune newspaper for finding this gem of a small business blog success.
St. Paul-based Classic Cookie Company owner Katie Novotny felt she had to try everything when she realized her dire financial situation. Early in March she posted a blog article about how her small downtown bakery was in need of a rapid stream of customers and cash in order to stay in business. Her blog entry stated the facts and appealed to her loyal customers and blog readers to get the word out—she needed lots of customers. Quickly. She also emailed the entry…
to her friends and contacts. Todd Nelson’s Star Tribune article states in part:
“I’m like, OK, this is a last-ditch effort,” said Novotny… “I’m not going to go out and end up closing and not have tried everything. So I put it on my blog that we sort of had this emergency situation.”
She posted the blog item and e-mailed it to some friends.
From there, forwarded countless times, it took on a life of its own. By the next morning, in one instance, more than 3,400 subscribers to a weekly downtown electronic newsletter had the news of her plight in their in-boxes.”
The result was the power of Web 2.0 , the blog and the ‘people power’ of the community. Add to that, the power of networking.
Here are more articles on how business blogs help you find more customers:
Click this link for: Top 11 Ways Business Blogs Help You Find More Customers
Click here for: 5 Success Factors for Beginning Business Bloggers
The viral nature of the blog post resulted in other small business owners in Novotny’s community stepping up. An email reached a professional home organizer, Linda LaBarre of Linda LaBarre LLC, who knew Novotny from a networking group. LaBarre, on her own, created and distributed fliers urging people to pay a visit to the Classic Cookie Co. and buy some yummy treats.
“We wanted to buy cookies and do whatever we could,” LaBarre said. “I was really happy that she found a way to keep the business going. It’s tough times, you know?”
According to Novotny, “Enough people responded that we were able to pay our bills, meet our deadlines and stay open. And we were also able to talk to our customers so they understood why we raised our prices the next week.”
This story reveals how powerful the Internet is as a tool. A tool to help a community to stay connected and come together when it really counts. It also shows that transparency—being open, authentic and sharing facts about your company can be the difference between success and closing.
Do share your small business blog success stories with me. I believe sharing real stories like this one are so valuable to all of us small business owners. (Especially cases from a regional newspaper, that we might not all find.)
The complete article by Todd Nelson is here. The original Classic Cookie Company blog is here. Click here to read her current blog.
For more information on how business blogs can help your company, check out these articles.
Awesome success story! This is exactly how we all hope it will work. Stories like this are few and far between, but they’re immensely helpful to the rest of us. Congrats from a local Minneapolis blogger!
Thanks Eric for the comment. I hope more small businesses will find ways to connect online with their customer communities in order to grow their businesses.
Cynthia
Great idea. Small business owners must communicate with each often. They will get a lot of ideas from colleagues and they will not the ‘experts’.
Without question I can say that this is at the top of my favourite internet site list.
@Global Voices, Thanks for the vote!
Cynthia