Company Profile
From Nature With Love was founded in 1997 by a couple whose daughter developed a skin condition that was unresponsive to conventional treatment. Their subsequent investigation of natural ingredients not only helped their daughter, but also formed the foundation for a new business. Today, From Nature With Love is a leading wholesale supplier of natural ingredients to the skin care, aromatherapy, spa and massage industries, with over 1,750 natural products and a large catalog of packaging supplies and accessories.
A Company Uses the Adage "Know Thy Customer"
From Nature With Love began as a small company that built its customer base from scratch. "In the early days, people would call with questions and feedback, and our founder (Kibby) would answer the phone and talk to them," Online Media Director Emmy Gabriel reports. "She knew our customers by name. It was very personal."
As the company grew, Kibby had less time to devote to customer phone calls, but the company didn't want to lose those relationships. "As a business grows, it can often lose track of its customers," says Emmy. "We didn't want to become a distant entity that people couldn't relate to."
The company considered ways to stay connected to their customers, and decided to create a blog. Emmy was already familiar with the TypePad interface; she had already been blogging personally for about 4 years. "I tried out a number of different blog services, but I've always preferred TypePad," she reports. "I like the fact that TypePad gives you the control to make your blog look the way you want it to."
The company briefly considered hiring an outside source to create the blog, but decided that the best person for the job was Emmy herself. "The more we thought about it, the more obvious it was," she chuckles. "I've worked in every area of the company, I know what our customer is interested in, and I was already a blogger!"
Reaching the DIY Community
When the company launched the Natural Beauty Workshop blog, they were able to seed their audience with customers of From Nature With Love. "We already had a large newsletter subscriber base, so we started there."
One of the things Emmy appreciated most about TypePad was the way it improved the company's search engine rankings: "Without even trying, TypePad pushes your content to the search engines," she says. "People can find you when you're blogging on TypePad."
"Our customers are crafters, beauty experts, and entrepreneurs, and they have a lot of questions and feedback," Emmy says. "The blog helps us to stay in touch with what they want." A perfect example is a post on Candy Cane Sugar Scrub that was picked up by Craft Magazine's blog nearly a year after it was published on the blog. The post became so popular that the company created an entire line of Body Care Craft Kits, with the Candy Cane Sugar Scrub as the front-runner.
Emmy's primary objective is to create valuable content, from editorials on natural beauty and subjective senses to descriptive how-to's on How to Build An Aroma and How to Create Bath Salts.
To stay connected to FNWL's customers, Emmy spends time every week visiting blogs, leaving comments and engaging in conversations online through Twitter, Facebook and Crafter. "This is a thoughtful, engaged community," she says. "To be successful in the long term, FNWL has to be part of the community, not just a product source."
Emmy also created a photo pool on Flickr, where anyone can upload photos of items that they have made, and Emmy features some of the best photos on the blog. "It's part of giving back," she explains. "Helping spread the word about other people's work is one of the best things about blogging."
But business blogging is also about creating results, and so the team at FNWL created a system to track links on every sale, and found that the blog generates a significant amount of revenue for the company. "We can see real revenue linked to particular articles on the blog," Emmy reports. "We offer a discount code for our readers, and we've gotten an incredible number of new customers from our TypePad blog."
Advice for Other Business Bloggers
After more than two years of business blogging, Emmy believes that one of the most important things a new business can do is to create an editorial calendar for blog posts. "We sat down and made a list of things we wanted to post on a regular basis," she recalls. "Then we created categories, from ingredient profiles to recipes, and developed an editorial calendar around them."
She reports that creating a schedule is very useful: "The structure gives you momentum," she says. "It creates a rhythm that you can settle into, and provides consistency for your readers."
She cautions businesses against announcing their blog too soon: "Wait to tell the world about it until you've created about a months' worth of content," she says. "You want there to be a lot of value on your blog when people come to visit. Make every post count."
