The rise of "retail blogs"

We've been through lots of experiments in giving companies a human voice, few of them successful. Paid pitchmen and celebrity endorsements. Awkward commercials featuring the aw-shucks CEO. Quirky corporate styles and creation myths. In the end they all feel as manufactured as they are.

But now I'm seeing a new approach that works far better. Some of the smaller companies that I follow are redesigning their websites to put their blog front and center. Not a link to the blog at the bottom of the page, but a front page that is almost all blog, with the products relegated to a sidebar. For lack of a better term, I call them "retail blogs".

One of the best examples of this is Sparkfun. This is a company that caters to electronics hobbyists and DIY hardware hackers, of which I am one thanks to my UAV/autopilot side project. Speaking of which, this is what Sparkfun's site looks like today:

See? It's all voice and community. This is a corporate home page that you'll want to subscribe to in your RSS reader--the mix of insidery chat about new products with fanboy admiration of customer projects is infectious.

Other examples include Woot's hilarious blog-like new product listings each day:

Others are just the blog side of a physical store, and so they're not as well integrated with online sales, such as the trendy Reed Space store in NYC:

 

Then there are blogs that are pared with a retail side, like the fantastic Make blog + Maker Shed store and Slashdot + ThinkGeek.

As DIY Drones starts releasing products, this is the direction we'll go. Blog and community first, selling things second. Voice builds trust and trust sells stuff.

Comments

[Raul T]

Yep Chris .... its a good name: Ratial Blogs.

Since small companies does not have to much money to publish a big website, a blog format site will be more effective.

But the vision of to talk directly with the customers and let them to talk about your company is very courageous in my point of view.

And could be very gratifying also.

We need to wait and see where it will go.

Raul T.
---------------------
http://tialuso.blogspot.com
http://www.soluttia.com.br

[Rodolpho Arruda]

Two - maybe three - years ago I came up with the idea of transforming my aikido club's website into a blog. Some of the other black belts involved into the conversation saw little or no value in adopting the format. I've got comments like: "blogs are for people, not companies or groups" or even "blogs aren't efficient at showing the information we need to show to our public". The website kept unchanged since then.

I'm happy to read your text, Chris, and needless to say I totally support the idea. Everybody loves browsing/searching through postings, clicking tags to filter content, subscribing to it and so on. The most basic blog setup has a lot more to offer to visitors than a rigid traditional corp website.

I'm going to send this to my club folks and try to leverage the discussion on blogs.

thanks!

[Andrea Merida]

Yesss! I've been preaching this approach to anyone in the fashion industry that will listen, and since fashion is such an emotional and subjective choice, it will work. We have such a wonderful opportunity to resonate with current and potential customers via a blog, and it's a great opportunity to make brand ambassadors featured writers on the blog as well. Thanks for such a great article!

[mathew johnson]

one of the pioneers for this style of corporate communications platform is the new york venture capital firm, union square ventures. their website (unionsquareventures.com) has been a blog from day 1. without any other homepage sitting on top.

-mathew johnson

[Chris Anderson]

@matthew: yes, that's a good example of a company with a blog-first public face. But I was focusing more on retail sites. Do you have any other good examples of that?

[twojarandka]

good post :)

[Ariel Wada]

Great topic. Thanks, Chris.

On the retail blog side, we've been collecting social implementations by brands and businesses for awhile. The link below points to a file that lists over 300 business/brand social media implementations (maintained by another source, which I believe is cited inside the doc). A good number of retail blog sites should be listed. Snap-On (tools for the consumer) is another retailer/brand to add - they are also attempting to align social media with product sales. The site is located here: http://education.snapon.com

Brand/business social media implementations:
www.pureverticals.com/corpmedia/corp-socmed.doc

Love the thread and look forward to more dialogue.

Ariel
ariel.wada@pureverticals.com

[Carlos Garcia-Hoz]

Chris,

We did just that with our company blog. Being a small interactive agency, instead of building a huge and impressive website for our visitors, we created a wordpress theme with some tweaking extras, so our reel and portfolio appear on top and can be updated by anyone in the agency (no expensive production team time required). And the blog lives right beneath, giving the occassional visitor a good view of our vision, ideas and likes. And the chance to start a conversation with us. In http://101.es you can see what I'm talking about.

Carlos

[thé]

Nice sharing here.Great sharing of retail blogs.the links which are provided by Raul T is very interesting.Thanks for such a great post here...