Attention Hurricane Country – A Big Wind is Coming! Be prepared for the threat from wind, rain, storm surge and…Man (Part 3 of 3)

Part 3 of 3

Today I’ll pick up the thread from Part 1 and Part 2 where I’ve outlined the first two parts of our mission at A Big Wind. If you’re skipping ahead, or reading this out of context, you can read the first two posts by clicking on the ‘Part 1 and Part 2′ two links above.

Our mission at A Big Wind is:

Hurricane protection through consumer protection, community involvement and commerce.

Commerce

What’s in it for me you ask?
If you’re a buyer or consumer we’ve already outlined how A Big Wind will help you protect yourself from both Hurricanes and Hurricane equipment providers. In just a minute we’ll give you even more good news on our future plans to help you and give back to the community at the same time.

If you’re a manufacturer, contractor or provider of some kind and you’re reputable then you’ve already begun to see how contributing to A Big Wind’s blog and forums will help give you free advertising and public relations and offer you a way to generate business for your company by simply doing good business. Nice!

We think we can build on this by also offering a set of tools to connect consumers and providers of Hurricane protection equipment. You could say that A Big Wind will make it a breeze (hee hee) to find the right product, at the right price from the right provider – all in one convenient place. While there are a small number of these directories available at the local level that partially address this need, no one is doing that all across Hurricane Country and no one is currently offering the range of tools that we plan to that leverage the latest technology. Ads in the newspaper or a two minute segment on your local News at 11 and advertisements in Hurricane guides are good but they just can’t compete with what you can do online today.

What will our tools do?
Our research and selection tools will include independent reviews, ratings and directories of providers from all across Hurricane country that feature background checks to make sure you’re dealing with a trusted, reliable source. As a buyer, most of the research will be done for you – at no cost to you. For the companies that will want to appear in A Big Wind’s marketplace your price of entry will be $0. Provided that you have the track record and honest business practices to get listed, you’ll be in front of our audience for free. How is that possible? Well, our tool will allow you to pay for only those consumers who contact you directly from our web site. You only pay when someone wants to do business with you. It’s a great advertising model known as ‘pay-for-performance’ that the Internet has made possible. Traditional media companies hate pay-for-performance advertising because they make their money off ads that YOU pay for whether they get you business or not. What can we say – times have changed.

How else will A Big Wind make money and why should I care?
Whether you are a consumer or advertiser you should care because it can dramatically influence the credibility of any source of information like A Big Wind. Like traditional media, A Big Wind plans to make money from advertisers wanting their messages to appear in front of you. You’ll see ads right on these pages. But unlike most media outlets we won’t take just anyone’s money and we have a plan to give back to our community. Our criteria for accepting advertising will be that the advertisers can demonstrate that they are legitimate, trustworthy businesses, with valuable services or products that you would likely be interested in. For you to find value in this community it’s critically important that we remain independent and able to voice our own opinions on A Big Wind. The last thing we want people to think is that we lack credibility because we take advertising money. That trust will only be built up over time and by acting in a manner consistent with our values. There are a couple of major ways we plan to show our commitment to our community while also maintaining our independence.

Let’s talk about commitment first. We won’t take a dime until we’re demonstrating that we support charitable organizations and relief efforts that directly help Hurricane victims or help promote Hurricane safety. That’s why the first ads that you see on these pages will promote charitable organizations – period. We will stand by this commitment for as long as we operate A Big Wind. In fact, we’ll make sure that our free ads for charities and other donations of time and service equal 10% of any profits we make. That’s our long-term commitment. The more money we make by building this community together, the more money A Big Wind will have to help our community. We’ll be on the lookout for consumers and business people who are like-minded. We’ll look for ways to partner with these people and organizations for the greater good.

Credibility in numbers

One of the most significant ways we’ll demonstrate our independence will be by having open access to our pages directly from YOU, our community. If you read Part 2 in this series you’ll know that we will feature comments and full reader stories from throughout our readership. You’ll also have access to our forum. We’re committed to publishing your stories, even if we don’t necessarily agree with all of them. As long as the stories follow rules of common decency, credibility and are aligned with our stated mission, you get published. We’re giving you this power because it will insure our independence. If we’re getting thousands of dollars a month from a window manufacturer you might question the credibility of a review we’ve written on their product (we would). But you won’t question it so much if you see that fellow consumers and contractors voice the same opinion. And the power of self-publishing doesn’t stop there. We know that by giving up control of our blog and forum content it will lead to a more vibrant and diverse conversation. This is what blogging and community is all about. Open access to what people really think. On the Internet, scammers and people who try to manipulate the truth via blogs are uncovered in a heartbeat. This has been proven time and again over the short time frame that blogs have been around. Our community will be our watchdog. If a contractor writes what appears to be a great story about how to select a good roof and their story is not factual people will find out and let everyone in the community know. Even so, we won’t take their story down. Instead we’ll use our own voice as a moderator to issue a correction or present the other side of the story. If an unbalanced consumer makes charges against a company that can’t be substantiated and are intended to defame a legitimate business person – we’ll find out. Again, even if we think you’re wrong we won’t delete your information. That’s the commitment it takes to have a real community. Because we’re a truly independent community there will be no EDITOR to bar a story from appearing, but we will act as moderators to enforce the conduct that we’ve clearly defined in our mission. The community will largely govern itself. People who are truthful, who have an intent to help other people, who demonstrate a commitment to this community will win out over those looking for a quick buck or to better only their personal aims.

I wish I was a good enough writer to have said all this in a couple of clear sentences – but I’m not. I hope you understand what we’re trying to do and I think it can be summed up like this. We’re business people and we’re people. We live and work in Hurricane country and we know what it’s like to deal with these issues first hand. We believe it’s good business to do something good with your knowledge and skills. That’s what we think we have the opportunity to do with A Big Wind and we hope you’ll come along and help us make it real.

Now, let’s start making it happen.