Small Business Blogging: American Legends

Lost in the blogarific narcissism of corporate branding is the recognition that the little guy has a lot to gain from blogging on their own.

Small businesses, especially product-driven businesses who employ college-age consumers, are some of the best places to watch the growth of business blogging. Lacking the millions of dollars in marketing budgets from big companies, and oftentimes forced to compete solely on quality and personal brand, small companies can have a big impact in the blogosphere.

American Legends, for example. American Legends is a sports memorabilia store in Scarsdale, NY. They sell baseball cards, hockey autographs, and basically anything any true sports fanatic would want for a gift.

So how do I know about them? They sent me an e-mail as part of a link exchange. I get a lot of requests from agencies that I ignore, but I always like to help out fellow bloggers, and boy did I make the right decision.

American Legends has a blog, hosted on blogspot (so it's free), and they have hundreds of links and stories around the internet. The blog writers are college students who work at the store, and they have taken the store and given it national exposure.

They have a PageRank4, lots of Technorati links, and great sports content. If I were buying sports memorabilia online, I bet I would consider them instead of a local store (because they are easy to find).

When you think about the power of business blogging - think about the small businesses who can compete using only their own resources - the internet and their employees. The person who contacted me was a 19 year old college student doing what he does naturally - connecting online.

That's impressive.