Another nice success story about a company “jumping in” to the peoplesphere, this time to sell ordinary non-magical beans.

Steve Sando is the founder of Rancho Gordo, a boutique farm and purveyor of “Glorious Old Fashion Vegetables and Authentic Instructions for Good Food.” His business began as a humble quest for a good tomato - a quest that I support and admire. American supermarkets sell nothing but horrible, flavorless, rock hard tomatoes ”vine ripened” indoors in European hot houses. They’re plainly labeled “vine ripened” in the same spirit as American companies always brag in their advertising about the one thing they’re worst at.

But I digress.

In the early days of Rancho Gordo, business was slow, and Steve’s friend Scott Kraft convinced him to give blogging a try. As CMO of six apart, Scott is a guy to listen to when it comes to blogging, and he gave Steve some very specific advice:

• Don’t write too much. A paragraph or two per post is sufficient
• Posts don’t need to be profound - just informative
• You must post at least 3x/week
• Always include at least one picture or video in a post
• Include at least 2 external links in any post and inform the people you’re linking to - don’t ask for anything from them, just let them know
• Turn on all of the publicity feeds in your account settings
• Use categories (eventually tags)
• Think about what you want to be known for and write about that often - in Sando’s case: cooking beans
• Turn comments on and answer all of them in the beginning
• Include a blogroll of all your favorites 
• Include a bookroll  of all your favorites
• If you have an existing site, e.g, an estore, link to it
• None of this should take more than a few hours a week

The result? A bountiful harvest. After just two months, Steve’s sales had surged, and the media was calling.

Posted by Shawn in Product Marketing