When I found out that my friend Rebecca Leaman was a paid blogger for the Wild Apricot Blog, I knew this would be a great way to bring to light how business blogging and paid blogging can be related and benefit each other. There are two reasons to know more about this: one, many bloggers wonder how to make money blogging in ethical ways that pay decently, and, two, many companies do not start blogs because they don’t have the staff or the time. Reading about what Rebecca’s doing with Wild Apricot offers an inside look into both company blogging and paid blogging.
Q: What is Wild Apricot?
A: Wild Apricot is a web-based system for running a club, association, community, charity and other nonprofits – website management, membership administration, event registration, online fundraising, all integrated into a single, affordable (from $25) system. It helps nonprofit boards, staff and volunteers to simplify and automate the mundane administration tasks, freeing up their time and energies to focus on their passion and cause. Wild Apricot is tailored to small and medium-sized nonprofits, who have the least money and resources. It is built for non-techies: People who can use Microsoft Word can now manage website, online member lists, and event registration on their own.
Q: How did the company approach creating a blog for their business?
A: As the saying goes, “People do not care what you know, until they know that you care.” We realized that if we write a blog about ourselves and our product, it would be pretty boring and not very useful to others. Instead, we set out to develop a knowledge center and community focused on how web technologies (in general) can help people who are organizing and administering associations, clubs, communities, charities – or any other group with a common interest. We figured that if we do a good job, people get to feel good about the Wild Apricot brand – and hopefully will eventually check out the Wild Apricot software, to see it can be of use to them or their network.
Apart from an occasional update on new features, or a brief (relevant) mention in some posts, we don’t actually write much about the product. And that’s key to the whole approach: This is not a blog about Wild Apricot, but a nonprofit technology blog that’s sponsored by Wild Apricot. It’s interesting that Google’s search engine has immediately recognized that our blog stands on its own – if you google Wild Apricot, you will see that it shows product site and blog separately, even though the blog lives within the same domain and site.
Q: What is your relation to Wild Apricot?
A: I’m a freelance writer; when Wild Apricot’s regular staff blogger went on maternity leave, I joined the team to help fill her shoes.
Q: Do you think that hiring non-employees to blog is a good idea for a business?
A: Good business blogging calls for quite a diverse set of skills, as well as a considerable investment in time and effort. If those resources are available in house, that’s great. If not, it seems only logical to hire a freelance professional. Naturally, any business person is going to be nervous about trusting their blog to someone who doesn’t have the same vested interest in the company as a fulltime employee. After all, your blog is often the most immediate public representation of your company. That’s why it’s vital to find the right person in terms of writing style, blogging and outreach skills, work ethic, and personality fit – and that is equally true whether you’re hiring a freelancer or assigning the blogging job to an employee.
Also, in this case it was good fit because of our goal to have a blog independent of the product and company – it was actually even better to have an independent blogger, removed from daily involvement with the Wild Apricot product itself.
Q: What’s been the impact of the blog on the company’s bottom line and reputation?
A: It’s difficult to precisely quantify the effect on the bottom line and business reputation – how do you put a price on goodwill, or track the customers you gain through casual referrals from blog readers? We’re happy with the steady increase in readership and subscribers to the blog, links to our blog (which gives a small benefit to our overall website), number of visitors. It’s especially rewarding to see a growing number of comments – people participating in the dialog is the best indication that we are not writing useless stuff in vacuum.
Thank you, Rebecca!
Takeaways from this interview
For companies or business owners who are thinking about starting a business blog, there are some important lessons here:
- A sponsored blog and a company blog aren’t the same. A sponsored blog is more likely to truly connect with people and help them, thus spreading goodwill about the brand. It’s not an either/or question: you can have both on different blogs!
- You don’t need to write the blog yourself, necessarily. Freelance writers and professional bloggers can, in fact, do a better job (they’re pros, after all!).
- Note that no overt selling takes place on the blog for the Wild Apricot product. And yet, the blog is a huge PR boon for the company, generating trust and goodwill among its readers. In other words, they’re not selling the Wild Apricot software so much as they’re “selling” the company.
11 Comments
This was a really well written interview. And the way Wild Apricot works looks really interesting.
I am looking forward to check out the rest of your blog.
Michael, thanks so much for this - it was great fun to do the interview with you. Especially, it’s so encouraging that you recognized Wild Apricot as an example of one of your main teaching-points about business blogs: that the blog is not an advertising channel, it’s a communication tool for establishing a relationship. I don’t know… could any business blog hope to be made sustainable, if it was all about selling instead of helping?
@ Rebecca - I don’t think a blog trying to sell is sustainable. Focusing on building the relationship is where it’s at. Thanks for agreeing to do the interview, it was my pleasure!
I’ve always taken this approach with my blogs as well as my posts on webmaster boards, including the couple I moderate. I very seldom talk about my services or websites directly but let my message board signature or links on my blogs do the work. As soon as you look like you’re only purpose for posting is for self promotion, your credibility comes into question.
The idea is similar to what was discussed in another of your posts recently about letting other people sell you rather than trying to sell yourself.
@ Hammer - Exactly! Providing value, contributing, and building relationships/trust IS the best way to “sell.”
Yes, Hammer has just totally nailed it: “As soon as you look like you’re only purpose for posting is for self promotion, your credibility comes into question.”
And that’s a real shame, because it’s not just schemers and sploggers - so many truly *worthwhile* bloggers fall into that trap, too. Shooting themselves in the foot, really… And who knows what useful content the postential readers might be missing out on, put off by over-agressive selling.
Great interview with a fabulous lesson to be learned (even for non-business blogs). An old saying comes to mind, “Moderation is key” and that applies to self-promotion as well.
I’ve thought that Wild Apricot has one of the absolute best models for a business blog since I discovered it, thanks to Rebecca. It’s all about generating trust, not sales, which will surely follow as the trust grows.
Now if I could only use the correct form or “your” my credibility as a blogger wouldn’t be in question.
Very good interview! I think that Rebecca has a lot of good insights about the benefits that a corporate blog can bring to a company. Thanks for alerting me to the Wild Apricot blog.
Great interview, Michael!
Like most things that are important for businesses to succeed, a business blog needs to be in the hands of caring professionals.
I agree with Rebecca’s comment about bloggers shooting themselves in the foot. But I suspect she is referring to your run-of-the-mill personal blog gussied up as a monetized click magnet.
A real business blog, such as Wild Apricot and Remarkablogger, will not suffer that fate if handled professionally.
Cheers,
Mitch
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[...] If you don’t have the time to blog or feel uncomfortable with the medium, don’t forget that many companies are now hiring professionals to write their blogs. To get an inside look at this approach read this post from Remarkablogger in which Michael Martine interviews Rebecca Leaman, paid blogger for Wild Apricot. [...]
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