U. of British Columbia Botanical Garden: Small Business Blog of the Day
by Brian Brown (follow me on Twitter): April 6, 2006Can a University be considered a small business? I'm not sure, but I chanced upon this blog today and couldn't resist writing about it.
What it is
The Botany Photo of the Day, one of two blogs featured at the University of British Columbia's Botanical Garden website. The other blog, UBC Botanical Garden Weblog written by Eric La Fountaine, is also noteworthy.
Features
This is a great photo blog! Each day, Daniel Mosquin submits a photo of a plant and includes a lengthy description. And I mean lengthy. I can't even imagine the time he spends researching each post for this blog or perhaps he knows this stuff off the top of his head? In addition to describing the plant, each post also contains an "extra" where Daniel mentions an "art resource link" or something neat unrelated to the photo (note: these extras don't appear in the last couple of links because Daniel has been on vacation and his posts have been a little smaller than normal).
Favorite Post
I read several of the posts. This is rather amazing because I am not very interested in plants and the posts are quite technical. The one I latched onto was this one which is riddled with corrections which I found amusing. The post also contains this quote that is insightful in the fact that the audience for this blog is very specific:
As I've noted before, lichen identification is often aided by observing reactions to chemical reagents (if you ever see a person in a forest with a satchel of small bottles covered by eyedroppers, you will have encountered a bona fide lichenologist).
Further Comments
I included this blog on this website because I think it is a perfect example of what a business can do to massively expand their exposure. Who has ever heard of the UBC Botanical Garden...or UBC for that matter? Probably a lot of people in Canada, but I haven't heard of it. This blog places the brand of the University in front of hundreds or thousands of plant geeks a year. It's a great way to put your name in front of a very targeted audience and get their attention. It doesn't hurt that the blog is very well done.
Tags: University of British Columbia | UBC | British Columbia | botany | UBC botanical garden | UBC botanical gardens | botanical gardens | botanical garden | Daniel Mosquin | Eric La Fountaine
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