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.

What Compendium Is...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by Ali Sales Roach

Yesterday I had a great conversation here at Compendium HQ with Jay Baer, a social media strategist who runs the very popular blog, Convince and Convert.

Jay came all the way from AZ to hang out with us and not only brought some very cool (but heavy! They're made of metal) business cards with him but also a few hundred good ideas about blogging best practices, social media tools, SEO, and general messaging.

One of his best ideas around messaging was to think about your business in terms of what you are and what you aren't and to make this crystal clear to your prospects and customers .

There's nothing like a blank white sheet of paper to facilitate this exercise. Here's what I came up with in respect to Compendium.

What Compendium Is:

Very powerful blogging software that makes it easy for marketers to focus on producing content that leads to conversion and $'s. Instead of focusing on how to make the software work, our clients get to focus on results and even have a dedicated success manager helping them every step of the way!
A search marketing tool that "does the heavy lifting" when it comes to content categorization and distribution (i.e. there's no tagging or manual categorization that needs to happen to optimize content)
A perfect way for organizations to engage with their prospects on a personal level, while at the same time keeping control and compliance in check (hence our admin layer).

What Compendium Is NOT:

A software gadget that requires code tweaking, a computer science degree, or voodoo magic in order to get it up and running.
A total "Sink or Swim, Do It Yourself" approach to blogging and search optimization. Unlike other blogging platforms, our client support is not a black hole. We have real people (Amber, Allison, Abby, and Krystal to name a few!) helping real organizations every day.
A consumer tool for your personal diary, family photos, and gossip. We're focused on organizations...there are other tools for that stuff!

There are probably a bunch of other things I could add to these lists, but I'll leave it for now. Thanks to Jay for all his awesome tips and a great conversation. You can learn more about Compendium's easy to use blog software here.

Your employees have better things to do than blogging...right?

Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Ali Sales Roach

You don't want everyone in your organization blogging because they have better things to be doing. They have enough going on in their busy lives and the last thing you want them to do is to take blogging and move it to the top of their priority list --and besides, what's your company even going to gain by starting a business blogging program?

I hear these kinds of comments every day, and while I don't agree with them (of course I don't!) I can certainly understand them.

Your employees are very busy people and you have them working on a lot of important things. Your salespeople can't blog because they need to be selling! Your customer service people can't blog because they need to be serving! Your technology / development people can't blog because they need to be coding!

I get it, I get it.

But here are a couple things to consider:

1. Every day, many of your employees are already spending time out there on the web. They're checking their email, looking at Facebook, doing a quick Twitter update, doing a quick search for a pair of shoes they really want. Come on, I don't live under a rock. I believe there are studies that show the human brain can only function at the highest level of performance for about 20 minutes. That's exactly why most of us take a quick "web break" during the day.

So, if your employees are going to take this "web break," why not give them an outlet to share their thoughts in a way that benefits the company?

2. There are so many advantages to getting employees of all kinds involved in your blogging strategy. You hired smart, passionate people into your organization and the rest of the world (your customers and prospects) need to see them. There's no reason to hide, and even better yet, the more opinions, views, and info you provide from all types of people, the better your chances of someone on the other side identifying with you.

3. Money. I have to break this out as a separate point because blogging can make you money, in the same way that your salespeople or account managers can make you money. We have clients who are making more money from their blogging efforts than any other corporate effort! Seriously! We just had a customer who hasn't even been blogging with us for 2 months tell us yesterday that his blogging program is driving the most qualified demand he's ever seen into his organization. If you're unwilling to let at least some of your people blog, you could be missing out on a whole lot of money.

It's time to put the fears and excuses to bed and get comfortable with what's possible with a powerful blogging software tool like Compendium.

To learn more, check out our whitepaper: Considering Blogging?

Come Work at Compendium

Friday, December 18, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

During a time when a lot of companies are still scaling back, we feel really fortunate here at Compendium to continue growing. Part of this growth means finding new and talented individuals to help us develop, market, sell, and support our blogging solution.

Currently our two biggest needs are:

Senior Software Engineer

Business Development Manager (Inside Sales)

A full listing of positions can be found here.

A few key points about Compendium and our team (often referred to as the Compendians):

There are 30 of us and we work downtown right on Monument Circle in Indianapolis, IN
We're the only blogging software on the face of the planet with a proprietary "compending" algorithm
We have over 400 clients nationwide
We've won some awards and nominations like one of Business Week's Most Promising Start Ups
We work our buns off but have a lot of fun (i.e. there's a 4 foot gong in the sales office, light up reindeer in the client success office, we go to lovely Pennsylvania to all whitewater raft together during the summer, and just had our first Annual Compendium potluck)

To sum it up, if this sounds like the kind of company that you'd love to be part of then we can't wait to see your stuff. Go ahead and apply here.

Another happy Compendium client...

Friday, December 11, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

One thing that makes me really proud of Compendium is how willing our current clients are to mention their own success with our blogging solution and refer new clients to us.

For example, our client Fairytale Brownies was recently interviewed by Practical eCommerce.

In their interview, they mention:

"Right now our blog is the primary driver for search engine optimization. We've been using a company called Compendium Blogware for the past two years. We do a lot of keyword-rich blogging, and we've had very good success. Search terms like 'mail order brownies' and 'gourmet brownies' will point to our blog, and that's been very effective for us."

(By the way, their brownies are out of this world...so go ahead and Google "mail order brownies" and you'll have the perfect holiday gift for just about anyone).

Fairytale Brownies saw positive ROI from their blog program within only a few months, and nothing makes me happier than hearing straight from clients like them who are getting exactly the kind of search engine optimization benefits out of our blogging tools as they wanted when they originally signed up.

And there are lots of Compendium clients like Fairytale Brownies - a cool stat that's come from our routine client surveys is that the vast majority are willing to refer someone to Compendium within only a couple months of getting started!

To learn more about Compendium's simple blogging software, check out our ROI Toolkit.

Blogging, Search, and "All that Jazz"

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

Here at Compendium, we are huge advocates of blogging for search. Simply by having multiple blogs titled with the keyword phrases that your company wants to get found for (versus having a single corporate blog), you are dramatically increases your opportunity for sea ch engine optimization.

But the great thing is that this is not in place of all of the other reasons (all that jazz) why individuals and businesses typically start blogs - to identify with others on a human level, to share information and knowledge, to connect with others - those things stay intact, too.

Take our own blogs here at Compendium as a great example. We have tens of thousands of new people every month who are searching on phrases like "blogging best practices" and finding one of our blogs. When they arrive, they get to see real, happy people who are passionate about what they do sharing helpful information.

At the heart of blogging is still the idea of connecting with people on a personal level and giving them the information that they need and want. Compendium allows companies of all sizes and kinds (over 400 of them!) accomplish this while at the same making it easy for their prospects to find them online.

To see for yourself how Compendium makes this possible, just go here to schedule a quick online demo.

Why every employee needs a blog

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

I haven't blogged for 3 months. Go ahead and slap my wrist, I'm aware of the irony given the fact that Compendium is a blogging software company, but I have nothing to be ashamed about.

This is the power of widespread business blogging...every single day, at least one Compendium employee writes a blog post. Some employees write more than others - you know that 80/20 rule? It's true here, too - but because every employee gets a blog and can personally contribute to our marketing objective of inbound leads, this means that no single individual has to carry our corporate blogging program on his or her back.

I know what you're thinking: If i let all of my employees blog, what in the world will they say? It's a valid concern, but here are two things to make you feel better:

1. You hired your employees for a reason, probably because they're smart, hard working, and passionate. Your trust them every day to deliver the appropriate message in their emails, over the phone, and in person with your prospects and customers...so why not give them another medium to share their knowledge and passion while at the same time letting them contribute to your inbound marketing initiatives?

2. Ok, if you're still not quite comfortable, the Compendium blogging tool has a built in admin layer so that every piece of content can be approved or declined prior to publishing.

If you'd like to see how easy Compendium makes widespread employee blogging, then it's a great idea to sign up for a demo today.

Blog visitors: Do you really want them to do...nothing?

Thursday, August 27, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

It's amazing to me how many companies will put up a beautiful website without thinking about the very people who will be visiting it - the marketing team loves the design, the president thinks it's a huge improvement, but the visitors have NO IDEA what they're supposed to do after they find the website.

There's no big, round, inviting "Contact us now!" button or "Start your free demo" call-to-action, there's no phone number jumping off the page, and the visitors take the information they need and....leave. They don't start the relationship with the company because they have no idea how to do so.

Sigh. Talk about lost opportunity!

If you want someone to be able to start a relationship with you, you must make it obvious how they can do it. Even better, you have to give them several different ways that correspond to where they are in the buying cycle. This goes for both your website and corporate blogs.

For example, on our business blogs we're currently featuring:

1. A free whitepaper all about Blogging and SEO. This is perfect people who are early in the buying cyle and looking for general education - but notice that we require their information (so that we can start that relationship!) in order for them to get access to the document.

2. A customized demo offer and $50 Starbucks card.

3. An ROI Toolkit that's ideal for marketers who have some blogging and search engine optimization education but want to hone in on return on investment.

And that's just for starters...we're giving each visitor the opportunity to read, learn a bit more, and then take action.

So take a look at your online marketing tools -- your website and your blogs -- and ask yourself if you're giving visitors a way to reach out to you or encouraging them to do nothing. The great thing about online marketing is that you can change this starting today.

Will Blogging Make You or Your Company Famous?

Thursday, August 6, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

Probably not, but don't get discouraged just yet...

I was just reading a story about Julie Powell, a writer who started a blog about her cooking experiences with Julia Child's recipes. This blog turned into a book, which just became a movie starring Meryl Streep, and the entire thing is one of those Cinderalla stories where a nobody becomes a big somebody overnight all because of her blog!

Out of 133 million blogs out there on the Internet, Julie Powell's became one of the magical ones, all because according to her she was "at the right place at the right time."

Bingo. Blogging to become famous,whether you're an individiual or someone responsible for overseeing a corporate blogging stragetgy, is not all that likely. Put the idea out of your mind. You're not going to become a star and Meryl Streep is not going to call you.

But blogging can absolutely help you be in the right place at the right time -- again, whether you're a consulting company of one or a billion dollar enterprise -- and it can help you intercept people who are online and already searching for the very things that you know something about. As we all know, being in the right place at the right time is critical. So while it won't make you or your company famous, it does come with all sorts of perks -- more interest, more leads, more customers, more money.

If you're unsure how blogging as a part of your online marketing strategy can help you be in the right place at the right time, then let us help you. Sign up here for a free consultation.

What Billy Mays can teach us about blogging

Monday, June 29, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

In very sad news, Billy Mays passed away over the weekend. I am not ashamed to admit that I have three bottles of OxyClean in my basement, and my ears couldn't help but perk up when hearing about most of the products linked to his name.

Even though Billy Mays didn't give me or anyone else personal advice about blogging best practices, his sales tactics can be applied to just about any sales and marketing activity, including your business blogging program.

There were three key components when it came to Billy Mays' pitches:

1. He made it obvious that he understood your problem
2. He made it clear that he had something that could help you
3. He made it clear that he was really excited about his product and how it could help you

I know, very deep stuff. It seems so obvious! As a marketer managing a corporate blogging strategy, why wouldn't you want to apply these tactics? After all, we know from the staggering sales of products like OxyClean that they work.

When it comes to blog marketing, you can make it easy on your visitors and make Mr. Mays proud at the same time - make it obvious that you understand your audience's problems, make it obvious that you have something that can help them, and deliver your message in the most human, optimistic way possible.

You don't have blog readers

Friday, June 19, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

Time to face the brutal facts: unless you're a publisher, you probably aren't going to have a high number of blog readers or RSS subscribers.

Let me share an interesting stat: Across our 400 customers, the average for new visitors to their blogs is over 90%.

What does this mean? It means that only 1 out of 10 people are coming back to read your content; everyone else is showing up for the first time.

What does this mean for marketers? And how does this impact blogging best practices? Well, a couple things:

1. You can repeat yourself.
And considering that one of the number one factors impacting whether your business blogging program will succeed or fail is content, and lots of it. The ability to repeat yourself is a beautiful thing -- you won't be "letting your readers down" by repeating yourself and making the same points over and over again, because this will be the first time they are digesting your blog content. Repetition is key.

2. You can take the pressure off.
Yes, the fuel of your corporate blogging program is content, but every piece of content that you write does not have to be perfect. You are not writing a whitepaper or a novel, you're simply writing something that will quickly capture the attention of someone showing up to your blog for the first time.

When you're considering how to start a business blog, I hope you keep in mind the stat of 90% new visitors. Realizing early on that your blogging program is about conversion and lead generation will free you from the fear of "What will my readers think?" You don't have readers, you have new visitors, and they are just waiting for you to provide them with some good, relevant info and then give them a chance to convert and learn more.

The Easiest way to Calculate / Estimate Blogging ROI

Thursday, May 14, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

I know that calculating ROI of any marketing initiative can seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be. If you know a few key pieces of data, it's easy to calculate or estimate the ROI of any marketing initiative, including your corporate blogging program.

Let's start with the key pieces of data that you will need:

1. Call-to-action (CTA) clicks - The number of people clicking on the conversion points that you are offering on your blogs. For example, on this blog, it would be anyone who is clicking on our "download" or "sign-up" buttons off to the right. You can find this in your analytics.

2. CTA click to lead rate - Of those who click, how many turn into leads? This is also known as click-to-form completion. You will need to use your CRM system for the lead piece. If it is difficult to figure this out for your business blogging program specifically, you can use other marketing activities as a benchmark - i.e. your PPC campaign or website are good places to start. This is simply CTA clicks / leads.

3. Lead to close rate - For leads that come into your CRM system, how many typically turn into won business. This could be customer count, order count, etc. This is simply won business / leads.

4. Avg. deal size - What does the average customer spend with you? Most marketers generally know what this amount is.

Okay, so Part 1 is to know what data you need to collect. Part 2 is to actually get it, and Part 3 is to apply it to come up with blogging ROI. It's your turn for Part 2, and my next post will include samples with ROI calculations.

Maybe the Most Important Blogging Question Yet...

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

I'm talking about the question of "who."

Who should own your business blogging program?

From where I sit, there's still a lot of uncertainty surrounding this very basic (yet critical) decision. Should it sit with a technology department? Should it sit with a sales department...or even account management? What about the corporate communications team?

Getting to the answer is really easy. Just ask yourself this question.

Who in my organization is primarily responsible for generating demand / leads?

For most companies, this is a marketing department.

It makes sense: marketing's job is to generate demand. The sales team's job is to close the demand that's generated. The customer support team's job is to support the customer after the close.

Given, a VP/CMO/ Director of Marketing role easily fits under the "owner" category, and these are typically the people who will evaluate the program's effectiveness.

In addition, Online Marketing Managers / Marketing Coordinators often manage the day-to-day aspects of a corporate blogging initiative. The great thing is that these tend to be the very people running the day-to-day aspects of email/website/other online tools, so all of these tools can work together to create the best conversion possible.

I will also mention that fr small businesses, oftentimes the President/Owner is carrying the demand generation torch, and perhaps even managing the day-to-day parts of the program.

If you're unsure how blogging software like Compendium can actually support lead generation / demand generation initiatives, here's a link to our most popular whitepaper, Blogging's Role in SEO and Social Networking.

Tired of the Social Media / Social Networking Buzz

Wednesday, April 8, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

I'm tired of the social media buzz, because that's all it is: Buzz.

The problem with buzz is that it doesn't produce anything. It's a lot of talk with little results. It's a great idea without any execution.

It seems like every business has a social media / networking strategy or is trying to figure one out. And the social media strategy goes something like this:

We should be on Twitter and Facebook and start blogging because we're going to get people to join our community and chat with us!

Agggggghhhhh! Along those lines, here I've compiled a few quick reasons why NOT to join the social media and social networking club:

1. Because everyone else is doing it
2. Because the word Twitter is fun to say
3. Because our customers want to hear all of our earth-shattering thoughts about <insert your industry here>

If you are going to put the time and effort into any new strategy (business blogging included):

1. Do it because you have a goal that you are working to fulfill.
2. Do it because you have a problem that you need to solve.

Pretty simple rules, right?

How to get 300% Blogging ROI

Thursday, March 26, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

There is nothing better than getting these kinds of notes from your customers:

I got a nice engagement from Fort Wayne today based on an SEO find from the blog. Probably $20k to $40k in fees over the next few months.

This customer has been running a corporate blogging program with Compendium for about a year. This one new client who found their business blogs through search will pay for their entire program and provide a great ROI between 300-400%. That's with just 1 client!

I think the results say enough here.

If you are focused on a customer acquisition strategy, then you should take 10 minutes to learn how this is possible with our simple blogging software.

Schedule a demo of our blogging tools here.

How Compendium Makes Blogging Fun for its Customers

Thursday, March 12, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

Are you sick and tired of boring marketing initiatives?

Does your customer acquisition strategy make you want to crawl under your desk with a pillow and sleep for awhile?

Here at Compendium, we're sick and tired of boring marketing programs.
Life and work are easier when you're having fun.

That's why we are really pushing the envelope when it comes to how we support and motivate our customers.

Sure, we provide ongoing blogging best practices, customized recommendations, tips, and online and offline support....

But they key for many of our customers comes down to fun!

Here is a note from customer who recently participated in one of our blogging programs.

Hi Sarah,

I wanted to thank you and Compendium for the gift cards and the cookies! It’s really fun participating in the contests and even more fun winning prizes! Please extend my thanks to the staff and to those at Compendium for creating the fun events and rewarding us with interesting goodies. It is much appreciated!

The only thing better than an engaged, happy customer who is having fun with us is an engaged, happy customer who is having fun and seeing great results.

Are you ready to have some fun with your blogging program and work with a partner who can help keep you motivated and seeing results?

Blogging ROI - Where to Start

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

If you're evaluating a blogging strategy, I hope the first thing you're thinking about is ROI.

Truth be told, most of us think about this only after the fact. It doesn't matter if we're purchasing blogging tools, ad placements, or conference space. Our thought process is like this:

"Oh yeah. I bought this really expensive, cool thing. It's going to be great! Now I just have to figure out how much I'm going to have to sell in order to cover the expense and then some."

Why not think about what it takes to get your ROI first?

How many bad marketing decisions would you be able to prevent if you first considered how much you need to sell of something and then acted once you felt good about the math?

As you think through your online marketing initiatives, including your corporate blogging plans, think about how much of your product/services need to be sold due to the program.

We've had prospects go down this path and realize that they only have to sell 1 or 2 pieces of inventory to cover their investment and then some, which then makes them realize they have more room than they'd thought to do a larger investment in their blogging program.

We have customers selling thousands of products/services through their business blogging programs, and others selling only a handful. Both are good as long as they make you money.

Step 1: Email needs Subscribers, Blogging needs Content

Friday, February 27, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

The other day a customer mentioned that they couldn't believe they hadn't seen any SEO benefit from their blogging strategy.

We knew that this customer had not been creating content (they had about 3 posts to-date, which isn't nearly enough to get the meter to move for any corporate blogging program.

It got me thinking about email...would we ever expect an email program to generate any results if we didn't have a subscriber list to go with it?

Of course not! In order to have an audience that will take action from an email campaign, we need to have a subscriber list.

Well, it's the same thing with a business blogging program. You can't put the cart before the horse.

In order to see measurable results from your blogging strategy, you have to produce the content.

The difference between email and blogging is that with blogging, your audience comes from content production rather than from a list. And I repeat: results come only after your audience has been built to a certain degree.

If you're an email marketing guru and want to find out other ways the two mediums compare (and how they can work together), Chris Baggott has written an entire whitepaper about blogging and email and how they work together.

You can get the blogging and email whitepaper here. Enjoy!

2 Simple, Straightforward Ways to Build Blogging Success

Thursday, February 26, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

In my mind, there are 2 primary ways to build the success of your blogging program.

1. Target more keywords that are relevant to your business.
2. Write more content.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with RSS feeds. I'm not trying to downplay the value that links from other credible sources might have.

It's just that by and large, these two factors are the driving forces behind most of Compendium Blogware's most successful customers. Those with the most content and the most keyword targeted blogs are the most successful.

Some customers might have 100 more links, some of them quite credible, but at the end of the day, the customers whose corporate blogging programs really succeed are not the ones with the most links. In fact, some of them may have as few as 15 inbound links but these customers still see thousands of qualified visits to their blogs and great conversion rates.

Traditional SEO techniques include keyword targeting and content, but such techniques also take a variety of other factors into consideration.

All I'm saying is let's keep it simple. Experience and data here at Compendium Blogware shows us that lots of content and lots of keywords are the two best ways to build your blogging reach. The other stuff is nice to have, but it's harder to control.

Every business, regardless of size, has the ability to write frequent, good content and the ability to determine keywords that are relevant to their business. This is a winning combo.

Your Prospects Don't Want Blogs

Thursday, February 19, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

The simple truth is that they don't care about blogs. They don't care whether or not you have a corporate blogging program or a Facebook strategy. By and large, they don't care what your CEO has to say.

Okay, so what do your prospects want?

1. They want any easy way to solve their problem.
2. They want information that is relevant to their problem.
2. They want a relationship with you when they are ready.

Your prospects don't care whether you accomplish this through your website, a landing page, or a blog.

Did it dawn on you that they don't know the difference between them?

Per eMarketer:

“-it is not always clear or relevant to the end user whether a particular destination is a blog….”

So again, they don't care about your business blogs.

But it just so happens that a corporate blogging strategy is one of the most effective ways to deliver on the 3 above needs of your prospects.

Maybe you've even reached this blog because you searched for something like "best blog software" to help solve your acquisition problems. Maybe you found a blog titled exactly this through the search engines, and have found some good, relevant info on it. If so, then I invite you to contact me.

I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't make starting a relationship as easy as possible on you...