Summary

According to Technorati there are more than 110 million blogs. In addition, it is believed that the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 115 days with about 100,000 new weblogs being created each day. The Addison Food Pantry (AFP) wanted to create a blog and realized that in order to be heard, they needed to produce an interesting blog that was different from all the other blogs out there.

The Background

AFP is located in Chicago, IL and has seen major growth over the last 5 years. Its mission is to provide groceries to homeless families. The majority of the items distributed by AFP come through donations from the general public, local grocery stores, as well as corporate sponsorships. The members of AFP had done a great job of building a presence in their community through their efforts. In 2011, AFP began blogging to help drive traffic to their website and help others learn more about what they do.

The Solution

AFP decided to come up with compelling blog postings that were of interest to readers. So instead of creating an organizational blog, they formed a city-wide blog for issues relating to homelessness and invited the other homeless support organizations to contribute to it. AFP posted a weekly feature story on their organizations`s blog using voices and stories of homeless people to drive home their challenges. AFP interviewed legislators and policy makers on issues relating to homelessness and posted these interviews on their blog with a request that their supporters comment on the interviews. Volunteers were invited to blog about their experiences working with AFP, allowing people to see the organization from an insider`s point of view.

Lessons Learned

The Addison Food Pantry realized that in the "blogosphere" almost all blogs are linked to one another. The blogosphere is constantly changing and those blogs that receive the highest rankings provide more interaction, more functionality, and more reasons to participate than their competitors. AFP also learned that a blog helps with search engine optimization. Search engines give preference to websites that have fresh, relevant content, and Hubspot research shows that sites with blos get 55% more traffic that sites without blogs. AFP`s investment in a consistent stream of quality content was leveraged in many ways to support a content marketing strategy. They used links from blog posts to answer questions, as the basis for speeches, newsletter content, and as links on their facebook page. The result was that AFP built up new levels of trust and loyalty within their community and the public.