Web 2.0 Has Business Owners Blogging The Success Stories of Their Company

People is not just the name of a magazine, it is the subject of virtually every story published today. How people use a certain product. Why they behave the way they do. And what activity they're engaged in that is charming, disarming, or alarming. It's all about the people.

Most business publications tell us about people we can never identify with, even though we love to read about them. They have seemingly unlimited resources, celebrity contacts, and brilliant well-connected friends.

Fun to read but with very little direct relevance to us, except for the moral, legal, and ethical dilemmas and lessons each article contains.

Research demonstrated conclusively that online readers of web site content were looking for stories about regular people, putting Main Street faces online where their story could be told.

People want to read about successful business owners everyone can identify with, along side practical, insightful articles written by business professionals from a range of industries.

They were looking for evergreen content, because thought-provoking, idea-generating articles that were first published in 1999 are just as popular today as recent blog posts.

To date we have written and published almost 100 profiles of successful business owners. Each business owner who participated was nominated as a thought leader, someone whose story deserved telling, by his or her trade association.

Individuals were interviewed at length over the phone around a set of questions crafted to bring out how the company was formed, when and by whom and some of the challenges they overcame along the way.

And each success profile described their plans for them future - especially how they believed the Internet would help them grow their business in the future.

You see it occurred to us that there were lots of stories from Main Street that people would want to read about. So we made a few calls to our association executive contacts in a dozen industries and the rest was easy - time consuming, but easy.

As it turns out, our assumption was accurate.

The success stories along with a handful of how-to articles featuring the tactics of successful business owners account for a scant 1% of the content on our web sites and yet they receive over 32% of the web site's traffic. One profile, published in 2002, accounts for 10% of all web site impressions. People still access it several hundred times a week.

Experience dictates that no matter where someone is in the development of their business, there are people who are behind them on their own path toward success. People want to read about experiences they can leverage and tactics they can make their own.

Fortune 500 companies have in-house writers, contract authors, along with advertising and PR professional people who spend their days telling the world how great the company is.

Mainstream everyday companies do not have that luxury, until now.

Web 2.0 in the form of user created content from blog posts and comments provide business owners an opportunity to start a blog of their own that offers insights into their company.

Business owners with specific expertise can comment on other people's blogs, like those being set up by their industry's trade association or professional society, and adding to the discussion that's already taking place among like minded individuals.

And because blogs require virtually no resources and little if any money, every business owner can tell their story and follow the progress of other businesses they admire.

It is quite possible that a single posting on a relevant blog post will be the opening round in a never-ending dialogue between business owners. Business owners seeking advice can quickly and simply add a comment or a question to the original post and those with relevant advice to share can add their insights as well.

Instead of just being an historical account of the business like our original profiles are, blog posts and their follow up comments may take on a life of their own extending well into the future.

Let your light shine. Tell your story online. The people who'll find it will be those who are looking for the insights you have acquired the hard way.

Be somebody's new role model.

Seed Newsvine

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