Daniel Mosquin: Small Business Blog Interview

Daniel Mosquin recently returned from vacation to find my email in his inbox for the Small Business Blog of the Day. Daniel works at the University of British Columbia and writes a blog for their botanical gardens called the Botany Photo of the Day. We featured them back on April 6.

Pajama Market: How has the blog impacted your company?

Daniel Mosquin: It's raised our profile quite a bit. BPotD, combined with the discussion forums on the site, give us roughly the same amount of web traffic as the largest botanical gardens (using Alexa). Our institutional budget compared to theirs is in the 2-3% range. Excellent return on the dollar.

PM: What has the response been from your customers/clients?

DM: It's been well-received. A plant picture every day to greet you in the morning - what's not to like? The majority of the feedback has been positive.

PM: What types of things about your work day inspire you to write a post on your blog?

DM: I'm in a bit of an odd situation - I write an entry every day, whether I'm inspired or not. Things that help keep me going are user comments and recognition. On a different level, of course, being surrounded by the beauty of our garden helps more than a little bit. Wanting to share that beauty while at the same time pointing out "There is a story here" is a powerful incentive.

PM: What have been the biggest surprises with your blog so far?

DM: The power of small and how quickly the weblog was "noticed". The power of small helps us be experimental with weblogging and the web site without having to go through a lot of bureaucracy. As for being "noticed", the site garnered significant attention within 2.5 months (made a Yahoo! Pick of the Day). What was surprising is we'd been doing something similar for over a year (posting weekly pics to our discussion forums) with relatively little response. For some reason, the format helped make it front and centre.

PM: What blogging program do you use for the blog? Did you create this blog yourself? How do you like the program?

DM: Movable Type 3.2, with a number of small plugins. The idea for the weblog came out of a conversation with Tim Bray, but the mechanics of it were done by myself. I'm fairly happy with Movable Type; I've found the support staff great the few occasions I've needed them. However, I've had some unresolved issues with the plugins (from the independent developer network) - I really wish that Movable Type would incorporate more of them into the software and fully support them. If I started weblogging today, I'd have a hard time choosing between Movable Type and WordPress.

Tags: University of British Columbia | UBC | British Columbia | botany | UBC botanical garden | UBC botanical gardens | botanical gardens | botanical garden | Daniel Mosquin | Eric La Fountaine

Comments

[panasianbiz]

I just wanted to say thanks for the post. I like reading success stories such as Daniel's. It gives me motivation to keep working on my own blog. It also shows that blogs are indeed powerful tools for small businesses, and can even the playing field so to speak. It's fantastic that Daniel's site gets as much traffic as the largest botanical gardens even though he spends only about 2-3% as much on advertising. Very cool!

[Daniel Mosquin]

panasianbiz, a small correction - we spend nothing on advertising. My estimates (and I think my numbers are pretty good) are based on annual operating budgets for the entire institution.

[Emily]

Great Interview! Thanks!! I like reading success stories such as Daniel's. It also shows that blogs are indeed powerful tools for small businesses.