Murky I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down
My beloved Murky Coffee is still closed. I'm following the Murky blog but that's not cutting it; the last update was from Feb. 29th.
What makes Murky special is the character and community of going to the place and now that community here on Capital Hill is displaced (Port City Java is a poor substitute, and doesn't have even 1/3 of the Murky charm or even very good coffee. We care about Murky so there's two things that people want to know :
- what's going on with the DC government and your paperwork?
- when do you anticipate/guess that you will be re-opening?
And even if you don't have any news for us, Murky, we want to hear from you because we care about you. When you have crises and I'd call this one (they've lost two weekends of business now) you over communicate with the public. I'm not suggesting that Nick, who has written the two blog posts about the closing, is clamming up on purpose (I'm sure he's busy as hell trying to get this issue resolved) but this is when we want to hear from you.
When people ask me why their business should have a blog, I say it's because it allows you to communicate directly with your customers, gain valuable, critical insight, and to develop a community around your business. Does the community aspect apply to every business? No, probably not, but at the end of the day customers want to be heard and listened to and a blog is the easiest platform for that two-way communication.
You don't even want to blog specifically about your products, you want to blog about the industry that you're in: what's going in your world, what are the new trends, where do you see the business going. Don't use your blog to directly market your products or services because people can smell that a mile away. Build your credibility by blogging often and passionately, respond to all of your comments and engage your readers, and good things will follow. You'll do more to market your business this indirect way than by trying to market your products directly on your blog.
Which brings me back to Murky: I don't know what's going on and I'd like to know something even if it's that you don't have any updates. It's just like being at the airport and the airline doesn't give you any updates on the status of your delayed flight. I don't care if you don't even know how long the delay is or what caused the delay (although secretly I think the airlines often do but it doesn't make them look good to be that transparent), just give me an update and acknowledge me.
Right now, I can't help but think of LCD Soundsystem's song "New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down". Murky, I love you but you're bringing me down.
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