How Home Depot uses newscraft to engage the do-it-yourself customer

When I first heard about The Home Depot in the 1990s, folks didn’t describe it as “a big box store where you can get home-improvement supplies at a decent price.”

There was a lot more passion about Home Depot back then. It was the home-improvement place where you go to learn how to do just about anything yourself.

There were workshops almost every day. The stores even posted a schedule out front.

You could learn how to lay flooring, or tile a shower, or paint a kitchen, or hang a ceiling fan. The employees were DYI experts. Ask, they could tell you.

That seems pretty much gone, the inevitable result of a company that grew real big real fast – and lost its bond with its customers.

You can still register online for weekend workshops. But the employees don’t seem as enthusiastic or as knowledgeable or as passionate as they did a few years ago.

And the company’s web site puts the emphasis on selling you something rather than making you a part of a DYI community. That’s a damn shame.

To its credit, Home Depot continues to post a lot of newscraft on its blog: The Apron.

For example, here’s a recent post, “How to build an outdoor serving cart.” And here’s a Ways-To story on outdoor lighting ideas. (What’s the news peg? It’s summer. Folks are moving outdoors. )

The site also offers a library of well-made How-To videos as well as a customer project forum.

It’s hard to knock Home Depot's effort. Any brand journalist can learn a lot just by studying the blog.

What’s disappointing is that the company's  newscraft takes a back seat to run-of-the-mill crap like holiday sales and special financing.

Home Depot could easily spark a powerful How-To movement among its customers; instead, it is settling to be the Sears Roebuck of the 21^st century. Zzzzzz.