Corporate Blogging

Ali Sales, Co-founder and President

Do you know what corporate blogging is all about?

Hint: It doesn't have a whole lot to do with being a world-class writer. It has everything to do with driving marketing ROI, sharing your organization's human side, and generating demand.

Blogs are one of the most powerful tools ever available to marketers -- read on to learn how to put them to work for your company.

Cheers to Local Search and Blogging

Posted Friday, June 27, 2008 by Ali Sales

This year, local advertisers are expected to shift over $13 billion of their budgeted funds to the Internet, according to Borrell Associates. That number is up by 50% over the last year.

Why is this relevant to you? Because we can't ignore the huge role that local search is going to play for nearly every kind of business, even national chains and enterprises who are stretching themselves for ways to get back to the basics of relationship building. And guess what?

Business blogging will most certainly play a role in the migration of dollars from off-line to online and in the local search arena.

There are a few key things driving this shift:

1) People want to buy from people (i.e. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, like in Cheers)

2) People want to buy from people who *are like them* -- of course regional/local means common ground

3) Search is the #1 online activity these days, right behind email marketing

If you attended our Humanize Your Marketing with Blogging webinar this past week, you know that company blogging leverages all of these factors. If you were unable to attend, here is a link to the instant replay.

The numbers and actions of advertisers and all kinds of companies will continue to prove that local/personal marketing is the way of the future. Starting a business blog is one of the best things you can do to get headed in the right direction and jump on a trend that's going to become the norm.

Write a blog post in 8 minutes...

Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 by Ali Sales

It's 1:52. I have a meeting in 8 minutes. That's not a long time to get much of anything done, but I'm going to write a blog post during it. Why? To prove that generate content for your business blogging program doesn't have to take a ton of time.

Here are a few quick tips for writing good, quick content:

1. Use your arsenal of existing content. We tend to forget how much content all of us accumulate over just a few weeks. There is nothing wrong with re-purposing content for your corporate blogs. Some places to look:

Newsletters
Whitepapers
Old articles
Your inbox
Industry News

Tip: Subscribe to Google Alerts for the terms you care most about. For Compendium, that means things like "blogging software" and "business blogs."

2. Just do it. You can't waste too much time thinking "what should I write about." Look at your arsenal and start typing.

If you're using Compendium Blogware, you'll see the things you should write about on the righthand side of your user account, so that should help you get focused. More doing, less thinking is good for all of us sometimes.

3. Don't be afraid to reiterate and repeat. Assuming that you're blogging for SEO, you can expect that it will mostly be new visitors returning to your blog. They haven't seen your best stuff yet, as content is continually getting pushed down to the bottom of your blogs.

It's 1:59 and my post is finished. I didn't have to spend hours coming up with content (I got the idea for this post based on the conversations taking place at Compendium headquarters around time commitment and content). I logged in. I started writing. I used my keyword suggestion tool, brain, and eye on the clock to keep my content on track.

Blog Potomac Questions: Answered

Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008 by Ali Sales

As a follow up to my last post, I'm going to put together a response for each of the questions I heard during the Blog Potomac conference last month.

I'll start with this question because it's the one I get most excited about:

How can I track the impact of corporate blogging?

Easy. Are you currently tracking the impact of your website? Are you tracking the impact of your Pay Per Click campaigns, email marketing, and any other online activities?

Good, I thought so. Then you can most definitely track the impact of blogging. There are a few key things:

1. You must have a goal when you start your blogging program. If you have no goal, then how will you measure against it?

2. You must have a call-to-action or conversion point accessible from your blogs. Take a look at the sidebar of my blog. Notice those conversion points? It's no secret that I want to build a relationship with you. So of course I need to provide ways for you to express more interest in my business.

3. From that conversion point, drive the visitor to a landing page that a) is specific to the blogging program or b) includes a tracking string so you can trace conversions back to that URL

4. Use your CRM system. To use Compendium as an example, we use a hidden field named "blogging program" as a source for prospects that come from our blogs. We also use Campaigns in salesforce.com so that we can track how a prospect from our blogging program progresses into a client opportunity for us. Campaigns in salesforce are great because they will automatically calculate your ROI!

I'll end my response with a pretty powerful snapshot of how blogs will change your business.

Compendium's blogging program generated $15K in new business over the last two months, is our second best online activity from an ROI standpoint (we assume that we would pay for our own software when we calculate ROI), and has a new client close rate of 35%.

The beauty of blogging is that it's online, trackable, and...it works.

Live (sort of) from BlogPotomac

Posted Sunday, June 15, 2008 by Ali Sales

This past Friday, I traveled to Washington D.C. to take part in BlogPotomac, a casual conference (it took place at the State Theater, host to mostly concerts).

I took a lot of notes and had every intention of posting while at the conference, but here I am a few days later after a very messy day of travel home.

Some of the key topics of discussion included:

1. How do I motivate people in my organization to not only dip their toe into corporate blogging, but consistently fuel the business blogging machine with updated content?

2. What are the right means of social networking for my business? i.e. There's so much buzz about Second Life, FaceBook, blogging, etc....how do I move forward without trying to do too much, and doing the right things?

3. How can I track the impact of organizational blogging?

4. Do I have to have a corporate blogging policy...how can I control content?

5. If we participate in the blogosphere, what kind of engagement should we expect to see (i.e. comments) based on what others have seen in the past?

Excellent fodder for several blog posts (perhaps you're wondering about some of the same things), and I have some good quotes from the variety of speakers who took the stage.

Because I'm excited about these questions, I'm hereby declaring my "How to Evaluate Online Traffic" series over (this is one of the best parts of business blogging -- you have flexibility in what you do or do not want to talk about) because I found out that MidMarketer has a great whitepaper on the topic. Why recreate the wheel?

A link to the MidMarketer Web Analytics: What to Look at whitepaper is here - they have several other great resources on their site.

I'll spend my next few blog posts addressing the topics above.

9 Ways to Evaluate Your Online Traffic (Part III)

Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008 by Ali Sales

Here we go again...5 points down, 4 to go. To view points 1-3 on evaluating your online traffic, go here. For points 4-5, go here.

9 Ways to Evaluate Your Online Traffic (cont)

6. Be aware of navigation paths
Nearly all of us have an ideal way that we'd like visitors to navigate through our business blogs or website. The question is: do your visitors follow that path, or do they create your own? Go ahead and take a hard look at "where" you're driving your traffic to -- where do you want them to go after they show up? Are you hoping that a click or two will lead them to take the next step? Will a download that you want to put them over the edge actually take them away from the path you've mapped out? Ideally you are getting your visitor to take the next step with as few of clicks as possible. That comes down to usability, which is an entire issue in itself!

7. Tie in conversion
This comes back to point 3, which encourages you to pay close attention to traffic quality versus traffic quantity. Tying in conversion numbers should not be an after-thought. Anytime you're evaluating your online traffic, you should be pulling conversion into the equation. Traffic numbers alone can be misleading...there's an end goal you're driving to, and traffic alone won't get you there.

When I first sat down to put these thoughts together, I didn't think that 9 key points would be a stretch. Here I am at point 7, wondering what I've left off the list so far. I could really use a little help.

Is everyone else applying these things to their evaluation of their blogging program or website? What else comes to mind? 2 points to go!

9 Ways to Evaluate Your Online / Blog Traffic (Part II)

Posted Friday, June 6, 2008 by Ali Sales

Welcome back to my top 9 list for ways to evaluate your online traffic. (Find the top 3 on my last blog post). I'll let this shake out into a few more posts, with points 4 and 5 included here.

9 Ways to Evaluate Your Online Traffic (continued)

4. Pay attention to new vs. returning visitors
I've heard a lot of marketers rejoice when they see their "returning traffic" % go up. "Yes, they liked what they found before and they came back!" Well, not so fast. I encourage you to really think about your business blogging goals before you draw this conclusion. In my business (and maybe in yours) someone who comes back to my website over and over again is not necessarily a good thing. They're lingering. They're not moving onto the next step that will help us develop a relationship.

That why, to me, new visits are a more important metric to me. I don't plan on my website or my corporate blogs serving as a long-term nurturing site; I want it to engage people right off the bat so they can quickly move on. Obviously this may be different for membership-based businesses, etc.

5. Keep an eye on bounce rates and time on site
This is a basic one, but a lot of us ignore it. Would I rather have 50 people show up to my blogs and do nothing, or 10 show up, learn a bit more, and convert? Some of the classic issues that come back to high bounce rate are lack of relevancy, lack of fresh content, and bad design. If you have a professional blog or website with fresh, relevant content, you should see good results here.

To be continued again soon...what metrics are you using to evaluate your online traffic?

9 Ways to Evaluate Your Online / Blog Traffic

Posted Monday, June 2, 2008 by Ali Sales

I started thinking about this a few days ago after an in-depth analysis of our website traffic versus our blog traffic.

I have several thoughts on this subject, but I'm afraid it might turn into a meandering essay if I'm not careful.

For that reason, I'm going with the top 9 things to watch for when viewing your online traffic. I'll include 1-3 here and finish up the list over the next few days.

9 Ways to Evaluate Your Online Traffic

1. Benchmark your website against your corporate blogs.
This is pretty self-explanatory, but so many organizations do not do this. Typically this responsibility falls on the marketing team -- maybe they even provide weekly/monthly metrics reports. The blogs should be included in these reports, and you should constantly keep an eye on how these results compare. You might find that your website isn't needed if your business blogs are consistently outperforming it.

2. Get into the weeds.
What I mean by that is that it isn't enough to say, "The website gets more traffic than the blogs." Or, "The website gets a ton of traffic, so it's doing well."

Where is that traffic coming from? Hopefully one of your largest traffic sources is through the search engines, like Google, and you're able to determine exactly what those keywords are, how many times they referred traffic to you, and what they did once they arrived.

It's worth it to pay attention and get your hands dirty. You'll find some of your best keywords to target and keywords that aren't worth your time. This will also give you some insight into traffic quality, which brings me to my next point.

3. Focus on traffic quality -- it will lead you to quantity.
Here's an example situation:

Let's say your website gets a million visits from various traffic sources each month. Let's say your business blogs get only a fraction of that - around 100,000.

At first glance, you might think: my corporate blogging program is a deadbeat!

But then you find that visitors who arrive at the blog stay twice as long as those who arrive at the website and convert at 15% opposed to 2% on the website. That's high quality traffic, and instead of increasing your spend to get more people to your websites, it would make sense to drive more people to your business blogs.

Even if the conversion % for the blogs stays the same, by now increasing the quantity, you will be even better off. In other words - it will lead you to do more of what's really working and making more than a superficial impact on your business.

Stay tuned for 4-9 in my next two posts. Also, here is a shameless commercial plug for a new webinar you may be interested in:

Free Webinar: How to Humanize Your Marketing
Learn more here.

Who's Winning Your Most Basic Search?

Posted Thursday, May 29, 2008 by Ali Sales

A funny thing happened today when I Googled the company name of one of our clients. The results rendered, and nearly every single listing on the first page was a blog.

The problem?

None of these blogs belonged to the company. Yes, one of their business blogs appeared on the second page, and an obscure page of their website was a few results behind.

It made me think about the very most basic search that we all want to win -- our company name.

Have you Googled your organization lately? You might be surprised at what you find. My guess is that if you're like most companies, your corporate website is getting killed by blogs. They could be beating your website out all together, or they are close behind your website and may surpass it in the near future.

The reason as to why blogs are filtering to the top of the search results is pretty simple - Google is looking for fresh, relevant content to deliver to the searcher. The freshness of the content alone shoots many blogs to the top of the search engine results pages.

So what can you do? Good question. Of course it involves starting your own company blogs. And the benefit to business blogging that takes blogging best practices (such as recency of content) into consideration can help you win lots of searches outside of those that involve your company name, which is exactly what you want.

I've included a screen capture of what comes up when I search Compendium Blogware. I'm actually happy that our website wins this search because it wins on very few terms (while our blogs dominate on terms that do not include our company name). But our blogs are just a few results behind (if I were a Photoshop genius, I'd be able to include this).

Either way, we're the ones telling the story on the most basic searches related to Compendium. Who's telling yours?

Why Can't I Use a Free Blogging Solution (Part II)

Posted Tuesday, May 27, 2008 by Ali Sales

To set the stage...we have a lot of organizations ask us this question:

"Why shouldn't I just use the free blogging solutions out there to start my blog?"

They've heard of Wordpress or Blogger or TypePad, and the $0 price tag is enough to make them think twice.

The easiest way to answer this question is by asking you, the individual who is evaluating various blogging software, what you're trying to accomplish.

You probably fall into 1 of 2 buckets:

1. You want to use blogs for your personal benefit (or someone in your company's personal benefit - maybe the CEO). Your goal is thought leadership, expertise, and maybe even some ad revenue.

2. You want to use blogs to help your business generate leads, acquire customers, and get found in the search engine rankings.

The buckets are very different because the goals are very different. So it makes sense that the blogging platforms that fit each bucket are different, too.

Here at Compendium, we do not consider Blogger, TypePad, or any of the freebie blogging tools to be our competitors. Their audience is entirely different from ours.

We are focused solely on helping group 2 accomplish their goals, and we provide powerful blogging software, client support, and best practices to make it as easy as possible to start and maintain a business blogging program.

If you're currently evaluating different blogging solutions, the best place to start is by figuring out which bucket you belong to. That will save you a lot time, research, and get you started down the right path.

Why do I need Blogs if I have a Website?

Posted Friday, May 9, 2008 by Ali Sales

Are you wondering the same thing? We hear this question a lot at Compendium, which is why we're currently putting together a quick whitepaper on the subject.

Having a website isn't enough, and here's why:

Your website is probably boring, stale (staler than this stale bread)...

And it doesn't have the things that search engines (and people) want to find.

That makes it difficult for your site to act as a lead generation tool.

That's a bold statement - do I have your attention? Good, then time to explain....

Your website is where you control your corporate presence. Back in 1999, someone said, "Every company needs to have a website!" and so we marketers all built websites hoping that it would help us be found. A lot of us haven't updated them since. Ask any marketer why that's the reason, and we'll say that it's too hard.

For those of us who do update our websites, we do it in release cycles. We try not to put too much content on our sites (specifically the homepage) because it interferes with design and usability.

The problem? An abundance of content is what helps our website get found through the search engines!

Recency and frequency of content are huge factors in getting your website found when people come searching. It makes sense, right? People want to find fresh recent content online, and search engines want to deliver it. A stale website doesn't get you there.

Maybe you are thinking, "That's not a problem because I'm going to do a website redesign, and I will put more content on it!"

Well, it is still a problem. Because another thing that people and search engines want are credible information. When redesigning your site, you will probably tear down content and replace content. You completely miss out on the "age" factor that people and search engines want. Keeping old content around is a good thing, as long as it's supplemented by fresh content.

I mentioned that your website is probably generic. It's not your fault.

A lot of us don't have a good idea of what our website visitors want. We try to be all things to all people - need contact info? We've got it. Need to learn more about our products? Sure thing. We try to convey a lot, and in doing so, we make it hard on the visitor, who has to dig and dig and search through our site for what they want.

By trying to "do it all" on our website, it's hard to be relevant to each specific searcher. That's a major hindrance when it comes to lead generation and conversion.

It's also hard for a corporate website to convey more than a single personality -- typically that of the marketing department.

We all know that people buy from people that they like and identify with, yet the only personality we serve up to them is an impersonal, canned one.

OK, so I've made my points and my hope is that you are now nodding in agreement, saying, "There has to be a better way. My website isn't the end all be all to my online presence. The nature of my website is going to make it very difficult for me to accomplish my lead and demand generation goals."

What will? Business blogging. Corporate blogging. Blogging for search. No matter what you call, it's going to help. Stay tuned for my next post to find out how...

Is Blogging Worth Your Employees' Time?)

Posted Wednesday, April 30, 2008 by Ali Sales

Compendium Team

This question just came up during a webinar that Chris Baggott hosted today (5 Compelling Reasons SMB's Should Blog. Slides coming soon), and I couldn't resist responding to it myself.

So here is the question: Is allowing your employees to blog at work a bad use of their time?

Well, yes and no. (You thought I was going to give a firm no, but hear me out). Let me give you two scenarios to demonstrate the different ways this can play out.

Scenario A: Your employees are using the blogging platform of their choice (one geared toward citizen journalism like Wordpress or TypePad or whatever their heart desires). There is no consistency. The employees write about whatever they want. There is no administrator to review content before it is published.

Do I think this is a good use of time? No way. And you shouldn't either. Now how about this example...

Scenario B: Your employees are all using the same blogging tool (like Compendium). They understand that their content is the driving force behind the company's ability to acquire leads and customers through the search engines. The employees are encouraged to write about topics that are relevant to their position within the company, but can still add their personal touches and keep a genuine voice. An administrator can review the content before it's published

So do I think this kind of business blogging is worth the time? You bet.
With the right blogging software, end goals, and focus that you provide to those who will be writing the content, Scenario A can easily turn into Scenario B, which is hugely beneficial to every kind of organization.

And yes, the picture above are some of Compendium's favorite bloggers.

Japan, Your Goal, and a Bit of Pre-Vacation Insight

Posted Friday, April 18, 2008 by Ali Sales

Tomorrow I'm leaving for a little vacation to Japan with my family.

Now I'll admit that I'm about the world's worst traveler. No sense of direction (literally, 0. Just ask me which way I think North is, and I will send you toward Florida), hungry all the time, old lady feet, etc, etc. You can hear me whining already, right?

And I generally hate doing research before I go somewhere. I like to take in the culture and relax and have someone tell me what to do, which is precisely why I've done nothing to prepare for this trip. I haven't even packed yet. (Did I mention I leave tomorrow)?

We're going on a fully guided trip, which will be fantastic for a traveler like me, and the slightest bit of research that I have done has been on a blog. Okay, not even a business blog or corporate blog. And I wasn't the one who found this blog. My dad found it, and it has some pictures of where we'll be staying (a traditional Japanese ryokan) and type of cuisine served.

The reason why this blog makes me so happy is because of this: my dad wasn't looking for a blog when he found it. He was looking for information on the ryokan, and when he went to Google, Google decided that a blog was one of the best results to present him with.

And guess what? This is completely relevant to organizational blogging (you knew I would come get to this topic again).

>As Chris Baggott has simply said, "Millions of people every day are simply typing their wants and needs into that little box and waiting for the good marketers to deliver their solutions. The goal of marketers is to be the one presented on that page saying: “yeah, I do that."

You can't assume that the person looking for your organization has prior knowledge of your company or your website or blog. Case in point, my dad just wanted information; not a destination.

Blogging provides the perfect opportunity to be present when someone comes searching for what they want or need.

And yes, of course I'll have a few pictures to post when I return from the trip.

Blogging and lookin' good

Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008 by Ali Sales

You have probably heard this before: one of the biggest keys to success is working with people who know more than you.

I couldn't agree more. I'm lucky to be surrounded by sales, accounting, support, and everything else in-between experts who make my life easier...and make me look good. Of course you have your own set of folks who do this for you.

It dawned on me today that the same thing should be true of the partner and platform you select for your business blogging program. The majority of prospects who come to us don't know a lot about blogging...and that's how we prefer it!

We really feel that as an organization, it's our responsibility to bring the corporate blogging expertise to the table. Selecting the right anything -- including blogging software -- comes down to how much easier it is going to make your life. Can it compensate for your weaknesses and help your strengths shine through?

The point I'm trying to make is this: You don't have to have all the answers or much knowledge at all about blogging to be able to get started on the right foot.

You just need to have a glimmer of interest and openness to someone leading the way for you (for most of us, that's a big relief!). If there is one thing I personally hate doing, it's recreating the wheel. Time is just too slim to waste.

We have answers, expertise, and knowledge when it comes to general blogging best practices as well as "how" to actually run a business blogging strategy. Why go too far down the path alone in trying to figure this all out? We're ready to make you look good.

Website vs. Blogs

Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2008 by Ali Sales

So someone asked me the other day, "Why don't you ever update your website?"

Good question. As someone with a marketing background, yes, I understand the importance of testing, tracking, and adjusting.

At the same time, I know that our company should do more of what's working the best. From a few very important perspectives, our corporate blogging program outperforms the website.

The most significant of those ways starts with the interception point. How do people find the website and the blogs?

For the corporate website, most of our visitors come directly. For those who search in Google or other search engines and find us, they typically have previous knowledge of Compendium. i.e. "Compendium Blogware" is their search query.

At that, only 12 keyword phrases over the past 45 days have referred traffic to our website.

On the other hand, over 300 keywords phrases--more broad terms like "blogging solution"--have referred traffic to our blogs.

With a limited number of resources, that's why we at Compendium have spent most our efforts using the blogs as an online acquisition tool.

In the near future, you'll see us doing some new things to the website, but our blogs are our one of our biggest online priorities here. My guess is that if you are already running a business blogging program, your results are along the same lines.

Blogging and SEO in Simple Terms

Posted Thursday, April 3, 2008 by Ali Sales

More and more, I'm finding that a lot of marketers consider blogging and SEO to be completely separate activities. That's because the benefits of blogging haven't been clearly spelled out to organizations...until now.

To take it a step further, blogging isn't only an SEO tool, it's also an acquisition tool (as long as you give people a place where they can take action. Take our blogs, for example. See those call-to-actions over in the right side? That's no coincidence).

How is this all possible? To put it in the simplest terms, search engines (like Google) and people (blog visitors) essentially want the same things. People and search engines want fresh, relevant, reliable, engaging content.

People want to find that kind of content, and search engines want to serve that kind of content. Business blogs work from an acquisition and conversion standpoint because they deliver those things to both parties.

You may be unsure exactly what that means, so I encourage you to sign up for a free blogging consultation that Compendium is running right now. These are general consultations focused on blogging in general, not so much on Compendium. Any company that is interested in SEO and blogging will definitely find it worth their while.

What do you mean you can't track blogging?

Posted Friday, March 21, 2008 by Ali Sales

I'm a little bit fired up over this. I am tired of seeing articles such as this one (in the Financial Express) that essentially say, "Blogging could be a good activity for organizations. The problem is: the ROI can't be tracked."

That is just not the case. First of all, anything that happens online can be tracked. That is the beauty of the online world, as compared with the print world. Online, I can track clicks, navigation, time...you name it, I can track it. And guess what? Tracking doesn't have a high price tag. There are free, robust tools like Google Analytics available to anyone.

Tracking online is not something new to us when it comes to our website, our even email program. But for some reason, organizational blogging seems to present challenges that just shouldn't exist.

Of course at Compendium, we are able to use our own blogging software, and run a corporate blogging strategy ourselves. Not only can I tell you the average time on our blogs, the bounce rate, the most popular content, and the number of visits, I can tell you how many visitors take the next step. That's right, we offer a call-to-action on our blogs just like we do on our website.

From there, anyone who "converts" via the call-to-actions we provide is logged in our CRM system and is tracked through the prospect lifecyle until it results in a closed opportunity. And thus, we are able to track dollars and ROI.

Tracking isn't difficult to do, but the first step is acknowledging that it can and should be a part of every online activity, blogging included.

Using a Pay Per Click Mindset for Blogs

Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2008 by Ali Sales

Pay per click is an incredibly popular online marketing tool for a lot of companies. Did you know that of those organization who purchase keywords, the average purchase is over 1,000 of them? At the risk of sounding like Donald Trump on the Apprentice..."That's huge."

Seriously, 1,000 keywords is a really big number. And that's for both BtoB and BtoC folks. What that tells us is that regardless of type of organization, these companies understand the importance of casting a wide net (i.e. buying a ton of keywords) to increase the likelihood that when someone comes searching, they find that company.

So what does this have to do with blogging, you ask. Well, a whole, whole lot. You see, the traditional mentality of corporate blogging is all about thought leadership. But the new way to think about organizational blogging is much more about broad exposure and conversion -- things that we marketers have done a great job at applying to our website and PPC campaigns, but have had a hard time grasping when it comes to blogging.

That's all changing as companies of all sizes and kinds (many of them Compendium clients!) realize the value of a blogging strategy that is in-tune with many aspects of PPC. If you are already doing PPC, now is the perfect time to consider how you can supplement that with a blogging strategy that helps you win organic search. And if you are already considering blogging, make sure you are thinking about purchasing the kind of blog software that will help take the best aspects of a keyword strategy and blog strategy and put the two together.

Is Your Blog Content Spammy?

Posted Wednesday, March 5, 2008 by Ali Sales

Most of us are familiar with what makes an email look like “spam.”

Typically, there are a lot of CAPITILIZED LETTERS and several exclamation points!!!!! Not to mention the over-the-top formatting, such as underlining, highlighting, excessive bolding, and font colors. Of course, the intention of the sender is to grab your attention with ALL THAT FANCY STUFF!!! But the truth is, if a company has to work that hard to make its content look enticing, then the content is probably not all that valuable to begin with.

You should consider these email spam triggers when thinking about the content of your blogging program. Search engines dislike spam just as much as the ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) do, and if they sniff out something that feels “spammy,” they will be less inclined to serve it as result.

Our advice at Compendium is to keep your blog content formatting clean, simple, and consistent. Of course images, hyperlinks, and some bolding here and there to call out some key points are all just fine. But if you spend more time formatting your content than you spend writing your content, it may be a red flag.

Compendium in the Wall Street Journal Today

Posted Tuesday, March 4, 2008 by Ali Sales

There is a great interview with Chris Baggott in today's Wall Street Journal. Of course it's exciting news for Compendium Blogware....

But why should you care?

Because there is a true revolution taking place when it comes to corporate blogging. Now is the time to throw out any preconceived notions you might have as to what the purpose of business blogging is, and how you should go about it.

The simple truths, which are pertinent to organizations of every kind, are this:

1. People want to buy from people. As Chris mentions, there's a real backlash against "corporate" going on right now.

2. Your employees are smart, passionate people and generally want to help the company.

3. People are going online more than ever to find products and services of interest to them.

Now given all of these trends and facts (dare I call them that? I can't cite any sources for 2., but let's say I'm going on a lot of faith here) -- what is your organization going to do about it?

Your company is going to blog. Blogging is simply the vehicle that leverages these points above in a way that is measurable and adjustable.

You can view Chris's responses in the Wall Street Journal article here.

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