This case study considers different ways of developing and maintaining audience and customer interest. David Farrer runs Curia, a business that undertakes polling using a range of casual staff. To build up and maintain a customer base, which in this case consists of an interested audience, David uses online newsletters and blogs.
The case study explores these media14 and their effectiveness as business tools.
The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away 
While many people talk about the potential importance of blogs and blogging in business today, very few people in New Zealand have actually made it an integral part of their business or brand. While David Farrar is best known for writing Kiwiblog, the most-read political blog in the country, blogging and technology also plays a critical role in his polling company Curia.
He was keen to establish Curia and Curiablog as a separate brand from Kiwiblog. He explains that “Kiwiblog is noisy, loud and political. I wanted Curia to be associated with expertise on polling. The aim is for Curiablog to become the long-term repository archives of all New Zealand polling since 1974, the best record of polls in the country. It is definitely not a ‘nah-nah, you are behind’ kind of conversation. I wanted to build up the brand and the brand credibility by looking at the big issues like why polls on the same issue can vary so much. I also felt New Zealand could learn a lot from the information on some of the US polling blogs.”
One of the key strategies to establish this brand is the free polling newsletter. The decision about whether to charge for newsletters and subscriptions is always difficult for a new business. David admits it was an interesting challenge.
“I think you have to start free. Production might take a few hours a month but it is part of building credibility and ensuring I keep my finger of the pulse of all the results. Above all, it lets me talk about polling. I actually can’t talk about a lot of the polls I do because very few of my clients release the information. That’s very normal in this business,” he says.
With over 500 subscribers to the newsletter, the obvious question is whether he will look to shift to charging for a premium edition. He confesses he is not sure. “Most of the newsletter data comes from Curiablog anyway so it is not a huge investment of time. For me, one new client is probably more valuable than the subscriptions, particularly seeing I’d have to set up the whole credit card process,” David says.
Business blogging can work though David says he would struggle to name many local businesses that are making the best use of the new medium. In his case, blogging has meant a steady stream of work without advertising.
He has some advice for businesses planning to use blogs: “Always have a blog appear under a name of a real person. People want to know who they are talking to. Generally, people don’t interact with a business – they interact with the people in that business. That applies to blogs too.”
“Don’t turn your blog into a sales brochure. It puts people off. Talk about your business, of course, but also wider business issues, economic policy and events. This attracts readers. It can also put a human face on the company,” David says.
The best advice is to post often and allow two-way dialogue. “You need to be posting something new at least a couple of times a week. It is also important to allow comments and dialogue. One of the strengths of blogging is that it allows interaction,” he says.
At technical level, David believes blog software these days is so good that people can basically run their business website through it. He recommends using tags and categories to group related stories together for the public. Tags also help Google find a site.
“Forget all the other search engines,” David says, “Google is the only one to worry about. Tags will help. The subject lines of your posts are also more important than you think. Make them relevant rather than quirky. Google will also look for the links you have to other sites and the links other sites have to you, particularly links from very popular sites.”
He shares some tricks of the trade – and a warning. “Comment on other blogs and include your blog address. That will attract some traffic. Be careful to stay on topic and don’t make too many comments though. Above all, never spam anyone. Unsolicited email is illegal, people hate it and it never gets any sales. To stop spam on your website set up a ‘captcha graphic’. This requires people to enter the letters and numbers on screen. It’s pretty easy to run and very effective,” he says.
Behind the technology, Curia is a polling company which relies heavily on casual employees to make the polling calls. The workload is hard to predict which makes developing the roster difficult. “I can’t roster staff on if there is no work but I also have to make it a win-win situation for them. It has to be worthwhile for them to work. Getting the exact number is tricky,” David says.
Most of his staff are students. Ideally, the aim is for the students to work three-hour shifts three times a week so they keep their student allowance. “You have to factor things like that in. I also deliberately pay above market rates because I want to get bright, intelligent students who understand the questions they are asking. Once and only once did I advertise for staff through Student Job Search. There were so many issues I won’t be doing that again. My strategy is to recruit the friends of current staff – they don’t want to let their friends down by doing something slack at work,” he says.
Curia offers a recruitment bonus to staff. If their friend is employed and works 50 hours, the staff member who brought them in gets a bonus equivalent to a week’s pay.
“Incentives have an immense impact. We introduced a bonus for the person who got the most call responses and saw an immediate 20-25% lift in productivity. People are competitive. There are also three monthly prizes for best attendance and response rates. People who are more reliable and effective also get preference when we are doing the roster. Be careful you don’t encourage people to falsify returns though. Companies should have systems set up to catch any false reporting,” David says.
However, incentives don’t have to be money. David believes a great experience can have more impact than just money. “Do people remember $100 or a mystery weekend? Curia has a monthly random draw for something like two tickets to the Gold Lounge so students can see a movie in style. For our employee of the year, we give them a significant prize like an iPod nano or a trip to Sydney. It works,” he says.
Blogging has sometimes been derided as something teenagers did from their parent’s basements. That’s simply not the case. Curia shows blogging increasingly belongs in business.
