What is the name of your Blog?The Remarketer
What is your name?
Corey Donovan
Where are you from? (include country, state and/or city)
Minneapolis, MN - USA
What is your current age or age range?
31
Describe your blog?
An IT blog with emphasis on the used / refurbished industry. This is the corporate blog of Vibrant Technologies, which resells used servers.
Describe the main purpose of your blogging, what are you trying to accomplish?
The Remarketer allows us to show all of the positives of our company and industry while also having some fun. Our competitors are primarily manufacturers of new equipment and they would like to have their clients believe that used equipment will be faulty. The truth is that we have quality technical programs in place as well as standard warranties. We also get to write fun posts like the "7 Wonders of the Tech World". This creates a fun community in which our clients can interact with us on more of a personal level.
What blogging platform do you do and why?
Wordpress. It is very easy to modify via custom themes and plugins. I do need a better WYSIWYG, but other than that I'm pretty happy with it.
What do you blog the most about?
The Used IT industry and tech history stuff like the "10 Servers that Changed the World".
What kind of blogs make you angry?
Old-School business people who think they're blogging, but are really just putting out propaganda. With the open communications found in the blogosphere, these attempts at blogging in the form of posting plastic press releases comes across as so phony.
Give five of your best blogging tips.
1) When you're inspired, just start writing. Save your work and come back to it later to fact-check before you post. I have several posts in draft mode at any one time.
2) Link out to people in your industry in order to get their attention and create a conversation.
3) Follow the other blogs in your niche via Google Reader and Google updates to take part in conversations.
4) Don't just regurgitate the topic du jour, but contribute your own spin, too.
5) Speak in a human voice as if you were having a conversation with a client in a relaxed setting.
What are some things you would NEVER blog about?
If I can tie it into our industry or a tech topic, we'll blog about it.
Did you start blogging for the purpose of making money and if so, are you making enough money?
Our blog isn't directly tied to making money, but furthering relationships with our clients and our marketplace.
How long have you been blogging?
Almost one year.
About how many hours per day do you spend blogging?
Probably 10-15 minutes per day if you average it out (I don't blog every day).
Do you track RSS feeds and if so, how many do you usually track daily?
I do track RSS feeds and maybe read 100 per day. These include feeds in my industry and also feeds of general interest to me.
Do you use Digg, and why or why not?
I use it, but not as often as I used to. There are so many posts now that it is just overwhelming at times, but I do check it out for a laugh. Every once in a while a story there might inspire a post on our blog.
Do you use Stumbleupon, and why or why not?
I definitely use Stumbleupon. It helps broaden my horizon in terms of the sites I might discover. Our best posts get "Stumbled" and that can really drive a lot of traffic to us.
What promotional techniques work best for you and why?
Since we're very much in an insular industry, spreading our posts via WOM is the best way. We'll IM newest posts to a few key people in our industry and word just spreads.
If you could post a blog on any blog in the world, which one would it be and why?
Stand by Me was my favorite book / movie as a kid, so it would be pretty cool to post on Wil Wheaton's blog.
What mistakes have you made that you could warn others about?
My wife had our first baby this year and I assumed I would still have similar free time to blog as I'd had before. Hah! I should have divvied up blogging duties to others on my staff before the birth as things really slowed down on The Remarketer after Ellie was born.
What is the url of your blog?
The Remarketer
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