Remarkablogger

I’m doing a special series of guest posts this week on Remarkablogger. I’ve invited several up-and-coming bloggers to describe how they got started in blogging, how it helps their business, and how blogging helped them grow as a human being.

Meet Janet Fouts of Tatu Digital Media and JanetFouts.com. Janet was blogging and doing social media before the terms were invented (as you’ll see). She was one of my first blog consulting clients when I got into this business, and now we’re friends.

I’m happy to be asked to guest blog for Remarkablogger. I’ve worked closely with Michael on projects and he’s wonderful to work with and a fantastic coach! Even though I’ve been blogging for a while, I learned a lot from his insight and recommend him often.

When and why you started blogging

It’s hard to say when I first started blogging because it wasn’t blogging in the sense it is now. In 1996 I co-founded OntheRail.com with Gary Epting and we built an online community for the restaurant industry. We had lots of time in the restaurant biz, so stories flowed easily. For me the web has always been a medium for storytelling. The story of your project, your company, your product or your own story.

We had a couple of forums, and because nobody else had started in this particular space yet, we quickly had a booming community. But forums weren’t enough. You see, we had an incredibly talented design team, and forums didn’t give us enough latitude.

My first blog was a cobbled together guestbook script with evocative graphics and a story line sure to create conversation. Gary and I had been on opposite sides of the fence, he was a waiter and I was a chef, so we had some pretty spirited discussions with people on both sides of the line. Users flocked to the site and there was a never ending stream of new ideas.

We didn’t have lovely tools like Wordpress or Typepad, this was even before blogger, so every time we had a new topic we built a new page (in asp) and let people post pretty much whatever they wanted. I did moderate a little when there were out and out flame wars, but mostly I let it go unless it got really ugly, and put my energy into getting the discussions rolling.

As the site evolved we had more fun finding new ways to engage people, and of course to include more graphics, and we managed to automate the creation of the blog pages themselves and it got easier. We took the guestbook script and applied it as a back end for Flash and the Limbo Sessions were born. Gary created a group of chefs who were sitting around in group analysis talking and animated it in Flash. Users submitted their feedback for the wretched souls through that same old guestbook script, but now it was all compiled into a streaming animated story and it was really pretty darn cool if I do say so myself. There were a bunch more little innovations that came out of ONTHERAIL, but it’s all gone now and I won’t bore you with those details.

When the company dissolved in 2003 the stories we wrote remained, but the community went away, and I moved forward with my Web Development company, Tatu Digital Media, learned WordPress and blogged mostly about new projects and site launches for a while. I worked as the online community manager for the Exploratorium, moved on to e-learning apps and built my web design business.

Lately I’m finding myself deep in blogging and community again, and I’m thrilled to see that community has flourished while I was busy earning bread and butter. I can’t tell you how excited I am for the new opportunities that are cropping up everywhere.

How blogging helps your business

Blogging was the way we grew the community at ONTHERAIL. We’d start a topic and restaurant folk gathered in the wee hours to talk about work and unwind, lending their stories to the community and creating a user base for the site. Now, blogging and micro-blogging are one of the ways I reach out to current and future clients. I blog about web development and social media and find that new clients often have read one of my blogs before visiting the website to find out more about me. Whenever a new product launches or I will be at a public event, I try to get the word out on the micro-blogs and meet people in the area. It’s a great way to meet new people on short notice and micro-blogging events as they happen for people who can’t be there. It helps me keep clients up-to-date on tech and makes me their go-to girl with questions about social media and tech.

How blogging helped you discover yourself and grow as a human being

It’s energizing to to use my blog to talk to people about the amazing innovations taking place as you read this, and to guide people in how to use all of these goodies. Blogging has allowed me to meet people around the world, create friendships and working relationships in ways I never imagined. My relationships with my readers/clients/friends has made me more generous with my help and information. I understand now that the more you give the more you are enriched. I’ve learned that I actually like teaching and coaching people in how to make social media work for them, and I am continually thankful that I get to play in this arena once again, and come back to what seems like home to me.

Janet writes about social media in a very accessible manner at JanetFouts.com. You can also follow her on Twitter.