Corporations and Blogging

The internet was created for people to share their ideas. In the beginning it was for the military and universities to communicate with themselves. Since then, the internet has come a long way to where, now, individual people can become internet authors and youtube stars. Corporations and business have jumped on the internet bandwagon with websites and online catalogs.

Recently with the burst in popularity with blogging and social network, business too have joined the craze. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and blogs have become standard, if not necessary for companies. Not only is this free marketing for companies but it allows them to build closer relationships with their customers. They can get the word out on new evets, product releases and get customer feed back in real time. It's as quick as seeing how many likes you get on a facebook status or tweet.

I work for Y's Road Shibuya, a bicycle company in Japan. It has become necessary for us to write blogs everyday. On our blog we write about anything and everything from new bikes that come to our store, custom builds we did, as well as how our weekend went. This blog is meant for customers to feel like they can get to know us (the employees). We already have a website that shows all our products and what not, so there is no real need to write too much about that stuff on our blog. I have written about my own bike, rides I've been on and where I want to go.

Customers come in to my store and talk to me about what I write. Sometimes they want to hear more about a blog post, recieve some more info about a ride I did or a bike I built. All in all it just helps build a relationship with our customers. A happy customer always comes back.

As a customer myself, when I go online to look for things, I like to read blogs of employees and see customers comments. See a person behind a company makes the company feel more down to earth and a friend. For example, my favorite bike company is Felt. I ride their bikes, and at more store I can sell them pretty easily. Felt has really jumped on the social media bandwagon. They have their own facebook, twitter and Youtube.

The more I get to know Felt the more loyal I become to their company. It makes me feel like they have nothing to hide and I like that transparency.