Roto-Rooter Not Only Fixes Clogs: They Blog As Well

July 1, 2009 by: matt

I believe that conversation is commerce, and all commerce is powered by conversation.

I was totally convinced of this several years ago after finishing the The Clue Train Manifesto for the first time.

I am even more convinced today after reading this post by Chris Baggott highlighting how Roto-Rooter is successfully leveraging a corporate blogging strategy to attract more customers via natural search and connect more deeply with the ones they already have.

As far as plumbing news goes, it’s no where close to Joe, but it’s definitely an interesting story.

Most interesting to me is the level of effort Roto-Rooter is putting into blogging and how they’re beginning to see the return.  They target between 25 to 50 blogs per year, per  geography, and are achieving a ROI of about 135%.

blogging_plumbers

blogging connects plumbers with customers

Keep in mind Roto-Rooter is not a small business.  They have real resources and it’s quite easy for them to make this type of investment.

But what about ultra small businesses?   They have very limited resources.  What are they supposed to do?  Are they supposed to blog?  Should they be expected to seed the web with long-tail key words in the hopes of driving organic search?   Do we really think they’re prepared to participate in the conversational web?

I think the answer is absolutely yes.  Small business owners are extremely competent word-of-mouth marketers offline — and it’s only a matter of time before elegant tools emerge that will enable them to become competent word-of-mouth marketers online.

Keep an eye on www.cloudprofile.com — you’ll see what I mean for sure.

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Comments

One Response to “Roto-Rooter Not Only Fixes Clogs: They Blog As Well”
  1. Chris Baggott says:
    July 2, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    One of my favorite stories is a little liquor shop called Greenfield Liquors in Greenfield Indiana. The owner here sells plenty of bud light, but not much in high priced wines and fancy spirits. With her blogs she targets a wide range of keywords, all geotargeted based on where she is located.

    When the papers or TV stations review a wine, she blogs on that wine. People read the review and type in: Alamos Malbec, Greenfield she is the number one result. Her quote to the local paper about her blogging program: “i used to sell a few bottles, now I sell cases”.

    Business blogging is democratizing and an amazing tool for organizations of all sizes.

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