Blogging for a Living?

The Wall Street Journal has found evidence of it: There's a livelihood in blogging. Stonyfield Farm hired a woman last year to post to four blogs which the dairy company maintains on its Web site, according to the WSJ story. The trick, according to a Stonyfield official in the article, is to be conversational. This encourages people to post comments. That's the goal of a good blog for a company: To invite a community to begin to build and connect.

Stonyfield's Web log sites — what it calls its "Cow"munities — maintained by chief blogger Christine Halvorson, are at www.stonyfield.com/weblog. The topics vary:

Strong Women Daily News: The latest news and insights from Strong Women partners

The Bovine Bugle: Daily moos from the Howmars Organic Dairy Farm

The Daily Scoop: Daily life at the yogurt works, and daily ways we try to nurture and sustain the environment.

There's also blogs for healthy kids and one for parents called Baby Babble.

It's all in a tasty cause. Stonyfield's yogurt products are tasty and as healthy as you'd want, from very low fat to luscious. Nearly all of its yogurt line is organic. While you might imagine it's a modest-szied company, Stonyfield is owned by Group Danone. Yes, the organic alternative is part of the world's largest dairy, water and biscuit company, $13.8 billion Dannon.

But that's a good thing. It makes buying organic easier, because Stonyfield yogurts are available in lots of stores. Blogging at its heart is just communication for a community , something I've been doing for a living since 1982, when I wrote my first articles as the Burnet County editor for my first community paper, The Highlander in Marble Falls, Texas. If you're looking for a job in the blogging field, there's a recruiter site to help: Bloggeropoly.

While that sounds pretty corporate, you can do the work to spread good. My friend Ellen located a great movie that promotes organic buying in the store. Called "Store Wars," it follows the quest of Cuke Skywalker and other vegetable friends. Natch, the Stonyfield blog includes a link to Store Wars, a fun 5-minute film. You need Flash to installed on your computer to watch it.

www.storewars.org/flash

Oh yeah, the living I mentioned. Stonyfield's CEO Gary Hirshberg says he wants to hire a couple more full-time bloggers within a couple of years, according to the WSJ. Blogger pay can be good, too. A listing on the job site Dice.com for a blogger post at Flycell, a game and ringtone provider, included a salary of $50,000 to $70,000 a year.

Consider the Light an audition, Gary.