I have been a writer my whole life, but don’t do as much of it as I would like. I’m computer savvy, too. Blogging is simply a marriage of the two interests.
Long a computer whiz, the thought occurred to me recently that I had somewhat ignored a few of the popular internet twists over the past few years… MySpace/Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs. And as I thought about them, I came to realize that they offered both a chance to relax, break away, and regroup during times of stress, and perhaps also augment what I need to do for my business to become more successful.
I’ve left entries on other people’s blogs before. After 911, I was a very regular poster on a local news channel blog, on a wide variety of topics for well over a month. And I have blogged about our business, sports, politics, crimes committed by children, selling on Ebay, and technology when different things have caught by my attention. But that’s mostly been random….once every six months or so in different places. I’ve been an intermittent voice in different crowds.
Anyway, a few days ago, I began reading a book I downloaded to my new Sony 505-PRS Ereader: “The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging“. I bought the Ereader because I got an email coupon from Borders to buy it for $100 off the regular price. I downloaded the blog book because I was looking for an inexpensive item to buy to try out the new device, and the Huffington folks have a pretty good reputation so I figured they would probably know what they were talking about. And so the next logical step was to start a blog. Ok, so sometimes I act on impulses. But I think that fits well into the spontaneous world of blogs anyway.
After downloading the software from WordPress and uploading and installing it and then configuring my website for a blog, I had to write something. So I spent 20 minutes or so and posted my first entry (about the swine flu & bird flu) yesterday. The first posting was somewhat related to our business, as many of our blog posts will be. We know stuff in the safety industry. We’re experts. We’re opinionated. And I am hoping that eventually people will come here to find what we have to say about such things, and perhaps discover what we have to sell as well. If the blog helps our business, that’ll be great. If not, if I find myself proverbially speaking to myself in an empty forest, that’s ok, too. Like I said, it’s a relaxing release for me.
Curiously, less than 5 minutes after I published my first blog yesterday, a customer and friend stopped by our office to get some 3M 8210 masks and safety glasses for his musical instrument manufacturing shop down the street from us. He talked about how things have changed for his business over the years, how a former employee was trying to steal his customers and hurt his business, and the different things he was doing to keep with the pace. He mentioned he had a blog, but he rarely posted to it anymore because he did not have the time. Over the past year, he has spent too much of his time training new employees and fighting former employees and trying to let his customers know he was still around. I told him that his blog was possibly a good venue to release some of his frustration and combat the situation.
Since our business is a family business, I don’t suspect I will have any entries here about fights with former employees, but we will probably talk about family things from time to time, or give our own perspective on things in the news.
Anyway, so this afternoon, while my wife is sleeping off a tummy full of cherries that she ate rather than put in the basket when we went cherry picking today, I write my second entry. It shares a bit of who I am, where I am coming from, and why I have started the blog. And as the blog develops over time, my “voice” will probably become clearer, more refined. Heck, I am just getting the hang of it, and I still have to finish that Huffington book on blogging. I think I will go back to that right now. Cheers.
Mike Lee www.BeedoSafety.com