The Bid Blog

Sunday, January 1, 2012

We’re in a committed relationship…

Happy New Year! 2012 brings a whole new look for Paint BidTracker, reconstructed with the intent of delivering more customized information to our corner of the contracting world. We spent the past year looking for ways to make BidTracker an even better resource for your business, and we’re confident that we’ve succeeded. We’ve amped up our hardware with faster servers, upgraded the architecture of the website, added export and sharing tools to help you organize and expedite your bid research, and created a new tag system to sort and deliver precise results.

Of course, this isn’t just a late Christmas gift. Despite all the clichés about it being better to give then receive, I’d like something from you in return (beyond your paid subscriptions to our reports). It’s one of those buzzwords in the web world – engagement. We’re offering some new features, like the Project Showcase and this blog, to engage you on a daily basis. Spend some time on the site, surf around, comment on a news item or a colleague’s photo, and recognize that you’re not wasting time on the internet, you’re staying connected to the industry that pays your bills. And on that note, please don’t hesitate to click on our advertisers’ links.
 
It’s all part of being engaged. I’m not trying to scare you away, but we’re kind of in a committed relationship (logging in = pre-nup).  I could probably ramble on with this metaphor for a while (side note – have you ever noticed how wordy the BidTracker editor’s notes are…), but my point is that we’re in a relationship that requires a two-way exchange of information.
 
You tell us what you want by paying for our service, by which reports you view, by feedback to our customer service and sales reps, and by everything else you do on our website. In exchange, we devote our research efforts to your interests. The more feedback you give us, the more customized the information that we deliver to you.
 
Sounds like a pretty good relationship. The more you share, the more we both grow. You can start by letting me know what you think of the redesigned BidTracker.  Just because we spent the past year on improvements doesn’t mean we’re done with the upgrades.
 
And as far as this blog goes, I’m hoping you might offer some inspiration. Let me know what you want to read here, leave comments, email me, etc. and I’ll do my best to keep up with regularly posting blog entries. For now, I’m planning on pointing out some unique or interesting bids as they come up, but I’m open to suggestions on using this as a platform for other discussions.