Interview with Neil Payne of Kwintessential

My latest interview was with Neil Payne, director of Kwintessential, a language training and cross-cultural services company based in London. Neil spoke to me over the phone about the Kwintessential blog and blogging in general.

JH        How long has the company been going?

NP       Coming up to two years now.

JH        How did the blog come about?

NP       Well the blog was suggested to me by someone who dealt with our website and who's also an SEO expert and the intention behind the blog is threefold. One was we wanted a way of educating our people into how cross-cultural understanding and awareness has an impact on many different types of businesses, business sectors. The second intention was for me basically to have a way of recording articles of interest that I could use for clients in the future. The other was just in terms of adding fresh content to the site daily and getting Google in on a daily basis to index pages, add content. So those are the three main reasons why the blog was actually set up.

JH        Do you have any idea who reads the blog, the readership, the audience?

NP       To be honest I don't. It's now become the third most popular page on the site, though. So there is interest there but in terms of who's reading it, no. Ideally down the line we'd like to have a way of people posting comments to try and get a feel of who's actually reading it and what they think about the stuff there but it's still in its infancy. It's only been up, I think, just under two months so it's still something that's got to be developed for the future.

JH        I was wondering how effective the blog had been in generating business. It seems you don't really see it as a promotional tool.

NP       It's not really there to win business, like I said, it's there for those three other reasons, more of an educational tool plus SEO purposes. But again, it's still young. In terms of business it's brought at the moment it's zero but, you know, who can tell once we develop it a bit more, add a few more categories and then we'll see how it goes.

JH        Has the blog brought you any other benefits, professionally speaking?

NP       In terms of my personal development it's helped me in terms of understanding a bit more about our field and how it does relate to different business sectors and everything else out there.

JH        I was quite impressed by the number of posts.

NP       It's basically the first hour of the day I dedicate towards trawling through the news sites and a few other blogs that I keep an eye on and putting up whatever's relevant. And it's also a way of telling the people who do read it what's new on our site as well, rather than having to visit the site, look through the pages and see what's new.

JH       A lot of consultants are saying that every business should have a blog. Is it something that anybody can do?

NP       It depends on what benefits it's going to bring. For me the benefits are that it promotes our field, it promotes my company, it acts as a resource bank, but for others it could be just a complete waste of time. So it really depends on what's their objective in doing the blog. Does a lot of their business come through the Internet? If yes, then definitely use the blog and use if effectively, you know, keyword density etc. but if your website is more of a reference website and you're not going to be getting much business through it then why bother with a blog? You can use that time doing something much more useful.

JH        What advice would you give to any small business thinking of starting a blog based on your own experience?

NP       Just really define your objectives and stick to it really and just try and offer something a bit different. One of the reasons I think our blog has been quite successful is that it brings together quite a few different areas within quite a different paradigm and the way we're analysing all these different things through these glasses of cultural understanding. So whatever business sector you work in, try and tailor the blog to people who'll be interested in it, but in a way that's different. If you've got a floristry site, don't just put up a blog about flowers, try and be a bit more imaginative and creative about the posts you put up there and how you relate it to other business sectors. That would be my primary advice.

JH        Do you have any other issues or concerns concerning blogging?

NP       To be honest I'm a bit worried that the Internet is going to suffer from blog fatigue. It just seems to be everyone's doing it.