Why “Naked Conversations” Has Me Jazzed

I’m part owner of a flower shop in Butler, PA (The Bloomery, thanks for asking).  Butler is a rusted out steel town about 35 miles north of Pittsburgh, and about 15 miles north of the suburban sprawl.  We’re having a holiday open house on November 6, and to promote the event, we’re doing a postcard mailing.  We had 700 sheets of cardstock printed with postcards 4/page.  We then spent several hours cutting the cards apart.  We pared our mailing list down to about 2600 people based on proximity and purchases.  Mailing labels and return address labels had to be printed and applied, and stamps purchased and applied.  We’re in for close to $1000 just in copies, stamps and labels, plus the hours and hours of our time.


By contrast, it would take me about 10 minutes to put the same information on our blog (at www.floristblogs.com), or about half an hour to get really artistic in the blog post.  Now, we’re a long way away from 2600 people in this town reading blogs on a regular basis, let alone our shop’s blog, but the time will come when we can really scale back the expense and effort it takes us to reach our customer base.  Cindy Closkey, one of the founders of Pittsburgh Bloggers, lives here in Butler and is doing her darndest to spread the word.


I hope the time is soon.  I want this week’s evenings and 1 grand back.