Is the Stonyfield Bloghurt Experience Turning Sour?
Jeffrey Hill has interviewed Christine Halverson of Stonyfield Farms fame over at The Voice of the Blog, and it makes for quite an interesting read.
From the outset it appears as though Stonyfield are using their blogs to pull in traffic and it doesn’t seem to be working too well:
JH Has your traffic progressed since you were interviewed by Rick Bruner back in December?
CH The traffic is really variable. It’s sometimes up, sometimes down. We’ve decided internally that if the traffic doesn’t keep moving upwards, then we’ll pull the blog and try something else.
Now I’ve never understood why Stonyfield have five blogs - until now that is. It’s an obvious SEO strategy. But, from just quickly scouting round their blogs, it’s apparent that there’s very little linking going on. They don’t particularly link in their posts, nor do they have a blogroll to speak of. The Technorati profiles also speak volumes. You see, when linking to Stonyfield blogs you’re more inclined to link to the page which lists the five blogs as opposed to each individual one. I don’t know whether this is the exact reason, but there are very few sites linking to Stonyfield’s individual blogs for a company that’s been blogging for a long as it has.
Sally wrote an excellent post with some great comments about blogging and SEO below. To improve your search engine rankings is simple and can be done quite easily with the aid of a blog. It’s fairly easy to write the odd post with keyword filled content and also quite easy to use keyword filled hyperlinks to point at the rest of your site. BUT, it’s quite pointless if you haven’t got other blogs linking to you giving you some pagerank that you can filter through these links. Going to other blogs and commenting, or talking about other blogs is vital to your survival as a blog and a blogger. If your blog just sits there and is used as an easy web publishing tool for company news, then you’re wasting its potential. Just because it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck doesn’t mean it is a duck.
But what about the conversations, you thought blogging was all about companies having lovely little cosy chats with their customers, right? Well so do Stonyfield:
JH Has he laid down any blogging guidelines? Do you have a blogging code in your company?
CH You know, we don’t and it’s interesting that you say that. I’m part of the public relations department so obviously we are people who are sensitive to how the public is perceiving us, but Gary Hirshberg, the CEO, said he’s not concerned about that; he’s more concerned about building relationships with the people who are our loyal customers. His directive to me was to be real, to be authentic. And because of the nature of our product, organic yogurt, we do get people who are very loyal and committed to eating organic food and supporting organic agriculture. So because we know that about our customers, we assume that the risk of communicating with them directly and on a personal level is one worth taking.
JH What form does that conversation take, in fact, because I notice that on the blogs you get some comments but not an awful lot?
CH It’s not huge and every now and then we do intentionally try to put some controversial topics in there to get people revved up. We just assume that people are reading it but they’re just not taking the time to comment.
So Stonyfield, which is it to be? Do you want to drive more traffic to your site, or do you want to converse with your existing customer base? I presume it’s both, but it’s quite apparent to me that the comment about pulling the blogs and trying something else if the traffic doesn’t improve is the clincher on this one.
I’ve never understood the reasons behind commenting. I find it’s always existing bloggers who are more comfortable with the idea than your ordinary Joe stopping by. Maybe it’s an authenticity issue and talking to a specific audience - I don’t know. But, I wouldn’t sweat it. I suffer the same comments problem over at The Tinbasher from time to time as Christine does. I also fill a fairly similar role, but not identical. I also don’t get anywhere near their amount of traffic.
In essence, the Stonyfield blogs could quite easily be different categories under the umbrella of a single blog. They could also do a bit more embracing of the blogosphere and maybe the odd post from the CEO might not be a bad idea. That might be an excuse to start another blog, you never know.
When you pad Jeffrey’s interview out with Rick Bruner’s you can paint an excellent overall picture of the whole Stonyfield blogging strategy. You get stats and anecdotal evidence, but you’re also mindful that it’s an exercise in PR blogging. I also had no idea that Danone owned 85% of Stonyfield.
I’m just throwing this out there. It’s up to you lot to run with it. 
Filed under: Business Blogging, General, Paul
Hey Paul,
As far as the comments question, to me - comments ‘are’ the conversation of the blog. Not solely, but added to RSS, trackbacks, links and readers - the comments provide the ‘two-way’ open communication.
Certainly I do not get a lot of comments in my blog, and most of those are from my students I imagine. But, without the comments function, the students don’t feel empowered to question or agree with the content I publish - or me.
For a business, I think it may have a role in ’stickiness’ - not only for the blog, but the consumer to the brand/product. It is all about the people and anything that enhances the relationship with them.
The difficulty I’ve always wondered about for businesses is how they will determine what is a valuable level for their comments sections. Are they happy to get whatever they can? Do they de-value the blog solely because it does not generate comments and thereby abandom a great resource that is being read by many? Now we are back to your discussion of ROI.
I noted that Christine says they are looking at the traffic and might pull the blogs if they don’t increase. It would be interesting to know what the level is and what they believe an acceptable traffic levvel is, too. And, do they give RSS readers the same value as site visitors?
I know they are interested in traffic. Chris wrote to me about the link on my blog to make sure it was working. I hope their blogs do well. They are unique and interesting - to me.
Robert
I don’t know too many people with rampant comments boxes, but those who do all say the same thing - they’re a nightmare to moderate. But, they all tend to fall on the side of letting most of it go. You show me a nice tidy comments box with all its comments on message and you’ll find that it’s being heavily moderated.
I’m glad you brought up the wider aspect to conversations regarding blogs. It’s imperative that you utilise all the tools at your disposal to make your blog function correctly. It really isn’t a case of just one way traffic.
I don’t begrudge businesses who don’t have comments, or don’t link freely to other blogs, or aren’t part of the blogosphere, but they have no right to complain about their blogs not working properly if that’s the way they want to do it.
I’d also love to know what they’d find acceptable with regards to traffic etc.
At the end of the day everybody can make their own business model up as they go along. And, we’ll just have to wait to find out what works and what doesn’t. These are interesting times.
I am a first time visitor here so thought I would drop some comments because I am into blogging much deeper than Stonyfield is. They have 5 blogs and I have more than 20 which I keep updated on a daily basis to the greatest extent possible. Then I submit them to 31 different blog search engines daily. I also use quite a few emails on each of Yahoo, MSN, and others that have their own newsreaders incorporated into their structure. I probably have at least 100 such “MY ACCOUNT” pages on Yahoo and MSN and all of them have subscriptions to all of my blogs.
This has the appearance of generating popularity for blogs that might otherwise not have so much exposure. I also have an enormous number of webpages out there since blogger generates a new webpage for each days postings plus I also use some pages as the basis for static webpages scattered all over the internet, mostly on hosted domains but also lots of them
are on freebie type websites. All of them are either directly linked to all of my blogs as well as some set up in triangulated linking. Do I get lots and lots of hits? You bet I do. And I think that submitting to the 31 blog search engines on a daily basis will help to beef that up a lot.
I don’t restrict my blogs to just items dealing with my creditwrench business either. An example of that is that I have one blog which provides articles about new Oklahoma legislative issues obtained from press releases coming out of the State Capitol press rooms daily. By having everything crosslinked and backlinked and linked every way imaginable between static pages and blogs and using a wide variety of subjects each germain to the theme of the blog plus submitting to the 31 search engines every day I’m getting a lot of attention from the big search engines I would not be getting otherwise.
Another way that I get a lot of business is that I have a large number of webpages that are actually directories of collection agencies on a city by city basis for just about every major city in the U.S. so I get tons of people wanting to find some collection agency who is hounding them to death. They mistakenly believe that by paying the debt collector they will improve their credit scores. Such is far from the truth and I am able to convince them of that fact and get them to send me emails asking for my help in resolving their problems.
Now I’m getting ready to get into podcasting too. But with my main business being what it is I have to reach an awfully large segment of the population.
All of that just goes to show that if you want traffic you can’t put all your eggs in one basket but you have to go after the traffic every way possible. And you have to watch your logs very carefully for new search patterns that people might be using to find your blogs or webpages. Sometimes the durndest things will pop up showing you the way to go.
I’m also thinking of doing submissions for other bloggers as well in order to help them get traffic. I’ll bet lots of bloggers don’t even know that there are so many blog specific search engines out there for them to submit to.
Where do I start with this one?
All you’ve done is create your own webring and bust your backside trying to get it to work.
Looking at your backlinks via the google toolbar I notice you only have 57 whereas I have 265. Your blog has been around for nearly two years, mine almost six months. Do I resort to your tactics?……no.
Have you ever heard of an RSS feed?
Although, to be fair, you’re only driving traffic to your blog as a means to get people to buy your credit guru thingy. Nobody in their right mind would link to you, therefore you resort to these desperate measures.
You Sir, are the very antithesis of what blogging is meant to be. You are what happens when a pepped-up SEO fiend gets his hands on a blog for nefarious means.
People……this is not what blogs are for.
Hello from Stonyfield Farm and Chief Blogger Chris–
If you want to continue the conversation about “what levels” will dictate our ending or not ending one or more of our blogs, I can only say, “Hey, it’s one big experiment.” When my gut tells me it’s time to move on, we’ll move on. I’m not saying that WILL happen, I’m saying IF it happens. Meanwhile, all five of our blogs continue with steady growth, so we’re happy. As to the linking–it’s true–I don’t do much of that–mainly because it’s a matter of my time. I don’t have time to READ other blogs! Our level of commenting has varied widely and continues to do so. The spam-control delay (highly necessary) I think puts some people off. My gut tells me people are also afraid to post. The regular people. Zealots–hey–we get plenty of those. I do value RSS feeds, but I don’t yet know how to measure them. (Would welcome advice and counsel in this area.) Anyway, thanks for encouragement, advice, and visiting.
Ah…so a gut reaction is what you refer to as an internal decision.
We must formulate precise theories and test them, conduct usability tests, focus groups, interviews, etc. about why blog visitors don’t post comments, or if they are “put off” by registration, comment moderation with delayed posting, etc.
I think only weeners are “put off” by comment moderation with delayed posting. I’m very much in favor of this, and in favor of captchas to prevent comment spam, abuse comments, and trolling.
Users refrain from posting comments due to several factors, which I discuss in my “Blog Building for Smarties” post.
1. stupid, nothing to say, no input possible
2. shy
3. fear of flaming
4. inept at using web forms
5. lazy
6. selfish
7. in a hurry, too busy
8. inarticulate, not good at expressing ideas or opinions
9. not inspired, your posts are good enough to generate reactions
10. not feeling invited to comment (which is why posts should pose questions to readers, I keep forgetting this guideline myself: ASK for interactions)