Mover Mike

I have been hired to post to a blog, The Landfair Retail Focus, on the Home Accents Today website. They have asked me to post to the blog at least three times a week. They rolled out a new website and my mug

appears on the front page along with my first post, Establishing My Credentials Ah, come on my wife and mother like my looks.

I invite you to surf by occasionally and grade my efforts.

Home Accents Today The Landfair Retail Focus Furniture Retailing Mover Mike

Over at Landfair Furniture (Blog) is an article by Bridget A. Otto entitled Furniture Folly Don't sit down on a costly mistake

Jennifer Litwin's frustration drove her to write a book, Best Furniture Buying Tips Ever!.

Even though Litwin is an antiques expert who trained at Sotheby's and reports on furniture for Consumers Digest, the Chicago-based author discovered the pitfalls of furniture shopping while trying to furnish her own home.

If she was frustrated, she thought, what must the average consumer experience?

One salesperson would say one thing about a sofa, and another would say something else. Litwin says she began to wonder who was being honest about the furniture.

The $75 billion-dollar-a-year industry is virtually unregulated, Litwin says. No one governs anything, leaving the consumer to be her own best advocate.

Jennifer Litwin furniture

Here's a hoot! Early, early this morning I posted on Mover Mike about the growth of blogs in 9,000,000 Blogs! In the post I paid homage to Hugh Hewitt and his book Blog and shared my discovery of an update to his book, an article titled Small Biz Blogging Joins The Marketing Mix. The article points out

...the majority of these (9,000,000 blogs) are personal, not business-related, but blogging is beginning to catch on in businesses large and small as well. A survey of small business owners by HP earlier this year found that 10 percent have included blogs as part of their marketing plans, with an additional 16 percent planning to invest in blogs over the next three years.

In addition, I said

This article covers a number of areas:

# Business Blogs: Getting More Visitor Traffic
# Small Business Blogging
# 5 Key Questions (You’ve Been Dying) To Ask About Business Blogs
# directory of small business blogs

The directory of small business blogs was so interesting that after I published the post, I clicked on the link for further research. I found that the mission of Blogs: Small Business was "This blog directory is dedicated to serving small business." I thought this would be perfect for our blog Landfair Furniture which serves the interior designer and the retail public, by promoting individual designers, help them keep current with trends, educate them about marketing, promote a web presence, and for the retail offers insight into the variety of interior designers, but also educates them on how furniture is made, how to save money, etc..

Our marketing plan was to offer value, that would translate into loyalty and foot or web traffic. Our unique proposition was not duplicated in our local area by anyone and we had garnered media attention with our plan. I applied for membership to Denise O'Berry Founder, Blogs: Small Business. It wasn't easy to find the right catagory from the ones O'berry listed:

Accounting & Cash Flow(12)
Advertising & Sales(15)
Affiliate Marketing(11)
Business Networking(8)
Email Marketing(6)
Entrepreneurship(22)
Hiring & Outsourcing(4)
Home-Based Biz Tips(17)
How To Blog(16)
Internet Marketing(36)
Legal Issues(6)
Local Marketing(10)
News & Notes(10)
Operations & Management(19)
Publicity & Media Relations(7)
Search Engine Optimization(6)
Security & Fraud(3)
Tools(5)

I chose News & Notes. It seemed the best fit for Landfair Furniture. I was told in the instructions that I would need to wait 36 48 hours for approval. They needed to make sure we were legitimate. Well, within an hour, I received an email from O'Berry, rejecting Landfair Furniture. No reason, just a note that our application had been rejected.

I wrote back asking for an explanation. She emailed me saying that talking about wightloss (sic) and promoting our furniture were not acceptable qualifications.

I have now emailed her a response:

Your mission says "This blog directory is dedicated to serving small business."

You don't even have a catagory for me.

We cater primarily to the interior designer. She or he knows about designing, but is not good at marketing. Few have a web site. We have urged them to get web sites, failing that, to start a blog about their business. We established a Top 20 Designers for 2004 and then we publish interviews of these designers on our blog to promote their business. In addition we are open to retail. Look at some of the subjects about which we have posted:

Can Your Accent Tables Do Tricks?
Rowe: Change Can Be Painful!
"More" from Decker Marketing
Christopher Bates of fauxcade
16 Master Bedroom Mistakes to Avoid!
What's "Room in a Bag"?
More About "Green Design"
The Phillips Collection at Highpoint
What are Performance Fabrics?
FURNITURE 101: A CONSUMER'S GUIDE TO SMART SHOPPING

THE INSIDE STORY: HOW UPHOLSTERED FURNITURE IS BUILT
A to Z Buyers Guide
Do you sell on eBay?
Who Be You?
MarketingSherpa's 10 Best Blogs for 2005
Designers Need A Web Presence!
Top Designers of 2004: Interview with Marcie Harris
Values of Designmaster
Get a Blog!

Top 10 Home Decor Trends for 2005
Gillian Drummond, Comfort and Convenience
10 steps to creating a successful business blog.
The Business Journal is Out and Talks with the Landfairs
Top Designers of 2004: Interview with Lisa Seung
Why Hire an Interior Designer?
Top Designers of 2004: Interview with Nancy Zieg
Interior Design Event with Darryl Ware

Top Designers of 2004: Interview with Carol Cornwell
Lip-Sticking and Smart Couple Online
10 Furniture Shopping Tips that Will Help You Save
Lip-Sticking and Diva Marketing
Woman's-Net
Good article in the Clarion-Ledger Take furniture on test drive before making final decision

(O'Berry)You say:

"What kind of blogs belong in this directory? Any blog that provides tips, tactics, strategies, or ideas to help small business owners and entrepreneurs, and solo professionals. Topics can be marketing ideas, customer service, operations and management, leadership -- any category that we have listed in the directory."

On that basis we qualify, but I need to make it (our blog) interesting. I want people to come back every day. I can't keep hammering on an issue, like get a web presence. I can do research for them, expose them to the latest trends in color and furniture.

I put that weight loss article in because I thought our audience would find it interesting, and you know what, our traffic to our business blog jumped 10 fold! So I followed it up with a couple more testing the appeal. I am always testing to see what our audience is interested in.

We are also giving local artists, designers, and related businesses free exposure by listing them in our blogroll. Nobody in our market is doing what we are doing and bottom line, you could learn from us, by adding another catagory for businesses that are using the web, technology and blogs.

Ok, Denise O'Berry, I have made my case why Landfair Furniture (the blog) should be included in Blogs: SmallBusiness. I added Blogs: Small Business to my blogroll. Now I would like to hear from you why I should want to be included in Blogs: Small Business. How will our customers and designers working with Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery be better off if we are included in Blogs: Small Business?

Bev at Landfair Furniture has posted the fourth in her series of interviews with Top Designers of 2004, Marcie Harris. Harris has some very interesting things to say about incorporating "Universal Design" and "Green Design" into the home environment. If you are an aging "Boomer" and who isn't, you might want to take a look. If you are into organic, believe in being socially responsible, and work to be environment friendly, and that fits with most Oregonians, then you might want to take a look. And if you don't fall into those catagories and think she is talking about Designing "Green" colored cars and "Universal" joints, then you, like me, really need to take a look!

The Business Journal in Portland, Oregon dated April 29, 2005, has a special section called The Marketing Industry. Today there were two articles about using blogs in marketing. The first, Portlanders turn to blogs as cheap marketing tools by Jodi Helmer, focuses on the Bev and Mike Landfair. In order to boost Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery, the "bricks and mortar" business, the Landfairs started an online store Landfair Furniture Annex and are using a new marketing tool, a blog, Landfair Furniture, to drive traffic to the online store and boost awareness of the Landfair Furniture Gallery.

The Landfairs are among a handful of locals pioneering the use of blogs as business marketing tools. Those pioneers are finding that blogs - online journals that are updated regularly - are easy to establish and inexpensive to maintain, and they have the potential to reach a large customer base.

Besides the Landfairs, Charles and Jennifer Turner, brokers with Prudential NW Properties, added a blog as an extension of their web marketing. "We saw a blog as another avenue of marketing ourselves," says Charles Turner. Portland lawyer Charles R Schrader uses a blog to reinforce his reputation as an expert in construction labor law.

The blog averages 356 hits per day and also appears as the No. 1 ranked werb site on Yahoo...for the search term "construction labor law".

The second article, Blogs restore personal element to marketing by Toby Bloomberg, President of Diva Marketing.

In a world that spins too fast to even know your next-door neighbor, blogs help re-create the "corner grocery store relationship" that even small businesses lost with the onset of mass marketing strategies.

Bloomberg avers that:

Blogs build brands through ongoing natural conversations.

Blogs increase credibility.

Blogs provide content for traditional Web sites by linking to the blog. (She uses the Landfairs to support this point.)

Two excellent articles and we are proud to be used as examples. Get your copy at the newstand or look online, some time next week at The Business Journal.

This week Landfair Furniture is interviewing Lisa Seung, a member of our Top Designers for 2004. You will be surprised at her background!

Landfair Furniture has an interview with Nancy Zieg, in one of a series of interviews with Top Designers of 2004.

On Monday, the blog Landfair Furniture told you about Lip-Sticking. If you aren't reading it, you are missing some great marketing tips oriented to women on-line. Yvonne DiVita of Lip-Sticking surprised us by asking for an interview in Smart Couple Online You can see the result of that interview here.

Check out Yvonne's recent book to make your website female-friendly: “Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online”.

In the book, Yvonne urges businesses to break out of the old Dick and Jane mindset of the 20th century and enter the new millennium where Jane is the gender with the power, the money, and the inclination to shop online.

Visit SmartMarketingtowomenonline.com to learn how to get this huge group of shoppers to your Web site to buy your products and services.

Hat tip to Kirby's Reports. Mother Jones has a good recap of the arguments before the Supreme Court re Kelo v New London in Why eminent domain is nothing to fear — so long as its abuses can be curbed.

and Redevelopment has some people on uneasy street in San Diego.

They fear the city might resort to eminent domain if they refuse to sell their properties to make way for what some officials describe as the most significant redevelopment project proposed for Midway.

The proposal includes 124 condominiums in an area where civic leaders have lamented a lack of residences.

Mover Mike

This week's Carnival of the Capitalists is up!

Mover Mike

I have started a new blog, Landfair Furniture which will be devoted only to items of interest to entrepreneurs, interior designers, people interested in home improvements and home decor, marketing, retail, and interviews with top Portland, Oregon interior designers.

Mover Mike

Yesterday, I posted about Muslim parents agitating for Islam to be taught in the public schools. Today, Milt's File has found an excellent article in the Middle East Quarterly titled The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe

First Germany, Then Europe

While the Muslim Brotherhood and their Saudi financiers have worked to cement Islamist influence over Germany's Muslim community, they have not limited their infiltration to Germany. Thanks to generous foreign funding, meticulous organization, and the naïveté of European elites, Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations have gained prominent positions throughout Europe. In France, the extremist Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) has become the predominant organization in the government's Islamic Council.[69] In Italy, the extremist Unione delle Comunita' ed Organizzazioni Islamiche in Italia (Union of the Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy) is the government's prime partner in dialogue regarding Italian Islamic issues.

Mover Mike