Blogs: Corner Grocery Store Relationships
01/12/2005
There are many reasons why blogs are the new darlings of interactive marketing: to support branding and customer communications, to create awareness and customer loyalty. PR is a big deal too. While to others if sales is not part of the game why play? Well...divas blogs are being used for commerce in the same way as websites.
Smart guys like Robert Scoble and Shel Israel and are writing books about blogs and how to use them. C-levels are jumping on the blog band wagon to show the world that they're just one of the guys/or gals.
All those reasons and more are valid; but for this diva there is one more that underscores all. In a world that spins too fast, to even know your next door neighbor, blogs help recreate the corner grocery store relationship.
Paul Chaney, Radiant Marketing, tells me that he likes to read blogs written by women because they frequently put strategies in the context of "stories" that are easy to understand and easy to remember. So for Paul - here's my corner grocery store story.
When I was a little girl growing up in Boston, I use to love going grocery shopping with my grandma. We would visit the green-grocer, the butcher, the fishmonger and my favorite, the baker. 
They knew my grandma well. And why wouldn't they? She shopping with them for many years. They knew she had five children and grandchildren she adored. They knew family dinners at Ida Marder's home meant lots of food and that meant lots of purchases.
Grandma wanted only the best and sometimes "special" which was better than best! So the green-grocer would often put aside produce or the butcher would save a cut of beef or a chicken for her. If Grandma didn't think the chicken was up to her standard...she was not shy about letting the butcher know it was not acceptable. And then advising him what to do about it. "Next time don't get one so old."
When we went to the bakery the lady behind the high counter would reach over and give me a cookie. Always. My did I feel special! And I was special in her eyes. I was the granddaughter of one of her customers. She knew that if I was happy then Grandma was happy. Even if Grandma's favorites weren't readily available she wasn't going to the baker down the street. She was "brand loyal."
And Grandma knew them too. She knew their simches (joys) and their tsoris (sorrows). If I were to say to Grandma, "You must have a pretty good relationship with the butcher to know about his daughter's operation." She would have said to me, "What relationship? They talk and I listen."
So it was. Customers and grocers both talked and listened. Customers and grocers both learned from each other what was important. Customers and grocers both cared.
Blogging helps recreate some of that corner grocery store relationship. How? By letting your customers and prospects in on the humanism of the people who are your company. By allowing customers and prospects to participate in the process of doing business. By encouraging conversations.
However, blogging is not always safe or easy. When you open comments you allow people the ability to tell you that your chicken may be too old. Unlike a letter or email or a phone call the next customer in line hears. You have to be on your toes to listen and to respond. That takes time and resources.
Even if you don't open comments on your blog, with the faster than a speeding bullet aspect of communication on the internet, it doesn't really matter. If your chicken is old your customer and prospects will get word. It only takes a click to send an email to your 527 favorite friends and relatives.
A group of smart guys who wrote the cluetrain manifesto say the markets are conversations. I like to remember markets are people. With blogs we can begin to do that again.
