Interview with Noah Acres from Bigha

Noah Acres is responsible for Sales and Marketing at Bigha, a small company based in Oregon which sells bikes and green lasers. Noah recently used the Bigha Blog to respond to negative publicity when someone was arrested by the FBI for misusing a laser bought from Bigha. This will probably become a case study in how to use a blog to manage a crisis. Noah kindly agreed to submit to my questions by e-mail. Here's what he had to say:

JH        Can you begin my telling me a bit about yourself. What's your background? How did you come to work for Bigha? What does your job consist of?

NA      I am of the Internet generation and originally came to Bigha to help develop their website. At the time, the only product was the bike and it hadn't even been released yet. I've gone from hyping the release of the bike, to doing normal marketing stuff, to now adding new products like the Jasper and other astronomy related stuff. I basically manage all the communications we have with the media, or with individual persons and customers.

JH        When did the Bigha blog begin?

NA      I think the blog began in the summer of 03. We were still hyping the release of the bike. Back then, we just used blogger, not the slicker looking Moveable Type that we have now.

JH        What is the purpose of the blog? What are you trying to achieve?

NA      The purpose of the blog is to give our company a human voice. When you write something on a website, it can sound pretty generic because it's non-personal. We try to make all of our messages extremely personal in order to develop relationships with customers and prospective customers. The blog makes that easy. Whenever you have something to say, you just say it. The audience knows who wrote it because it has the author's name at the top and it's written in 1st person.

JH        What do your colleagues at Bigha think of the blog?

NA      It's been around so long it's not even something we really discuss anymore. We did cancel the blog for a while because we didn't have much exciting content to post. Having a corporate blog is pretty tough. You don't want to post something unless it's somewhat newsworthy, and something newsworthy doesn't happen every day. We all have a ton of other things to do besides post to the blog, so sometimes it can get pretty stale - like a few weeks between posts. There was some controversy about the blog and whether or not to bring it back. In the end, we decided it would be useful at times and not useful in other times. But the positives outweigh the negatives.

JH        What are your feelings about the feedback you get via the Comments?

NA      Besides comment spam, I like the comments. Any time someone posts a comment you feel like your blog is validated. It gives the appearance of more people coming to the site. I haven't really had a problem with negative comments, other than the spam.

JH        How much time do you devote to your blogging activity?

NA      I'd say the typical post takes me 20 minutes. I try to post at least once a week. I don't use the blog to link to other people's sites and get them to link back to me and drive traffic. I try to keep everything pretty natural. If you bring irrelevant hits to your site, it won't do you any good. The blog is just for people who found their way to the site naturally.

JH        How would you describe your blogging voice?

NA      I'd say honest. I try to give an honest depiction of what's going on at Bigha.

JH        What are your feelings about your experience with blogging so far? 

NA      I'm glad I've done it. Besides the benefits it directly delivers to Bigha, I get more of a community feel for the Internet. This helps me in my day to day job, which is to make our site better.

JH        How important is the blog to the company and to you personally?

NA      This is a tough one to answer. Sometimes, it's very important. When we went through our laser controversy recently, it helped give us a voice. But at other times, when nothing's going on, it's just one more thing to take care of. As far as my personal feelings towards the blog, I try not to have any unreal expectations of what it can do. I don't think it makes or breaks the company. I don't think people will fall over whatever words I write on the site. I don't think I'd ever want to have a personal blog.

JH        What do you consider to be the benefits of the blog from a marketing perspective?

NA      I think it gives us the opportunity to express something in a 1st person voice. Just as importantly, we can do so in a short period of time. Any other page on the site requires hours of work, whereas I can just whip something up on the blog in a few minutes.

JH        How effective has the blog been in generating business for Bigha?

NA      On this one, I have no idea. I don't think you could measure it unless it was your only form of driving traffic. As I mentioned above, I don't use it for that purpose. I don't have any conclusive evidence to say whether or not the blog is worth the money we invested in it or the time I spend on it. But the investment is pretty minimal: a few hundred bucks in development and a few minutes of someone's time each week.

JH        What do you feel about the effectiveness of the blog as a PR tool?

NA      It definitely gives the media more quotes to pick up on. If you're like me, you believe any news is good news. If I can provide the media with more juice for their story, it means I'll get more publicity. Because it can be updated quickly, you can respond to whatever is going on in the world.

JH        What do you consider to be the limitations or risks of using a blog as a PR/marketing tool?

NA      I got misquoted or had quotes taken out of context a lot. It bothered me at first, but all reporters have an agenda, and pretty much any news is good news.

JH        What advice would you give to any small business thinking of starting a blog?

NA      Give your audience a sense of your personality, but don't make the blog just about you. You still want the relationship to be about business. People are there to read about your company's products/services, not you personally.