Here at Compendium in the product group we take the opportunity on a weekly basis to improve the base level of knowledge of our employees by getting together and discussing the world of computer software. We alternate weeks between code reviews of internally produced work and a reading group.
Last week we ran a reading group. This quarter our reading groups are structured such that we select a topic and everyone in the group presents some relevant information on a sub-topic. This give everyone the chance to delve a little deeper into something that are interested in while improving the knowledge for everyone.
Although the information we discuss doesn't always immediately apply to the task at hand with respect to blogging software, we do sometimes learn something that comes in handy later.
In a past reading group about algorithms, I found this post:
http://brainz.org/15-real-world-applications-genetic-algorithms; and although blogging software isn't on the list of applications for genetic algorithms, marketing techniques are. Marketing techniques are at the core of what business blogging is all about. This demonstrates effectively the breadth of reach a seemingly irrelevant topic might have and why it's important to continue to think about ideas that might not necessarily seem relevant at first glance.
As an employee for
Compendium Blogware, my job every day is to help our clients with our blog software. This often means that I find myself updating calls-to-action, explaining how clients can add users and answering other various questions that our users and admins might have.
But recently, the tables have turned. I have now become a blog admin myself! Now what do I do?!
Both Amber Mohling and I are fellows with the
Orr Fellowship program. The Orr Fellowship program provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate students searching for their first salaried, full-time position following graduation. It's been a great opportunity for both of us!
Well wouldn't you know it, we recently were able to set up an
Orr Fellowship blog. And I'm the new blog admin! Check it out --
http://blog.orrfellowship.org. I now find myself actually performing some of the duties that we discuss with clients each day. So as a new blog admin, what have I done? Followed Compendium's blogging best practice tips, of course!
- Updated our calls-to-action
- Added ShareThis to our blog (visit here and send the code to help@compendium.com)
- Encouraged my bloggers to blog frequently and consistently
- Made sure each blogger has a sticky post set up
- Monitored my Google Analytics statistics (admins should get them each Monday by e-mail)
It has definitely been an adventure, but I'm really enjoying being a blog admin. When I saw the number of click-throughs from our blog and our most recent search results, I was thrilled.
Compendium really does provide the best blogging software!
The power of the donut in the American office is amazing. We were given an opportunity to earn a free breakfast by each of us posting on our blog. The benefit for Compendium is we leverage our blogging for business to win organic search, if full participation is accomplished...everyone fills their tummy's Friday morning.
Personally, the donut is not a motivator for me personally but blogging for search with easy to use blog software is. Being the team player, I have been shamed in to blogging so that my comrades can stuff themselves in the morning.
You are welcome Clayton Blogware!
Posted earlier today was an interesting article by Kevin Moss entitled
Blogging Really Can Enhance Corporate Sustainability. In the article, he discusses the value of blogging to corporate responsibility.
This article got me thinking about the importance of companies not only using their blogs as a tool in stakeholder engagement but also using it as a tool in search marketing.... because you have to get people to find the blog before you can expect engagement to take place.
Compendium's blog software enables our clients to get found on a variety of keywords related to their business in organic search. Next, as discussed in Kevin Moss's article, the company can further use the blog as a tool in stakeholder engagement & communication.
To learn more, check out the
Compendium website.
Here at
Compendium we try to provide all the information possible for potential clients to grasp the ideas behind
blog software. We see search marketing as the strongest method to get your business found today.
On our web site, we ask readers three questions:
1. Do you want to drive demand for your organization's product or services?
2. Do you want to start personal relationships with prospective customers?
3. Do you want to acquire more customers?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, it is time to start looking at blogging as a new form of marketing for your business.
Download the Considering Blogging whitepaper for more information on how blogging fits in your business.
I saw this post on an ecommerce blog the other day and had to give pause. The powerful blogging software we offer has a complete API, so it's easy to integrate into other content sources, but I had not seen anyone use it to feed in relevant live chat transcripts.
At first I had to ask the question that I'm sure you are asking: is this legitimate content in a blog for business?
I really quickly came to the conclusion that yes, this is not only a really clever way to leverage existing content, it's actually quite valuable for the audience.
Here's the thing: Lot's of people have the same problem. As a result, lots of blog traffic comes from organic search. Those people ask questions...they want to find answers. These live chat transcripts are direct answers to direct questions. What's great is the simplicity.
You are already having these conversations. Doug Karr once suggested looking at all the emails you send out each day as a source for blog content. I thought that was brilliant and I think this is too.
Every day people in your company have interactions with customers and prospects. They help people, provide information and solve problems. This content is nothing more than a reflection of that value...you have already invested in it, so why not share it with others who can benefit?
Can I buy stock in eMarketer? Every day they send me this great email with relevant content to my business....and yours.
Like this report for example. Clearly this blog is about education, and persuasion that we offer best blogging software for Business. Our firm belief is that that Social Media helps a company serve two masters. One is the search engine, and two is the need to humanize your business.
When you see a chart like this, it really helps make the case that if you just look at the responses related to search, online profile, and the two blog mentions (blog written by someone like me and professional or subject experts), you can clearly see that Corporate blogging is the critical hub of todays marketing strategy.
Blogs drive search traffic better than almost anything else...and it's a lot easier and legitmate to simply write often about how you help customers and solve problems than a lot of other SEO tools you might be tempted with.
I also love the phrase: "someone like me". Obviously, you have people in your organization who fit the professional/subject expert catagory. But think about it. Among your employees and your current customers you also have lots of people who can be classified as "someone like me".
Now either Gen X or Gen Y women represents an extremely large catagory. If you had to make a persona around everyone who could be slotted into these groups you would struggle. But tactics like triggered emails to existing customers are amazing ways to solicit relevant blog content and engage the long tail of this diverse yet consistant audience.
Many of our clients don't have tracking in place that will allow them to fully see exact dollars they can contribute back to their blog software. If this sounds like your company, there is some simple coding you can use to help your team track conversions deeper than just how many visitors came to the website from the business blog.
If your you use Google Analytics to track your website, you can set up a Goal to measure how well your site is fulfilling business objectives. A goal is achieved any time someone visits a page on your site that you wanted them to get to (i.e. a thank you page, a receipt, a confirmation, etc.). Once the goal is set up, you will be able to see the blog as a referring site listed in your analytics, and then be able to see how many of those referring visitors completed your goal. For example, the client I am helping set this up main business objective is to get people to view a demo. Our goal is set for the confirmation page once you have signed up to view a demo. Now, they will be able to tell how many people came from the blog and signed up for a demo - real ROI for their search marketing program.
If you take the tracking even further, you could even assign a value to that goal. For example if you know that 10% of people who view a demo will sign up for your services and your services on average go for $500, then the goal value would be $50. Then you could tangibly measure what the ROI is of the blog.
Here are step by step instructions for setting up a goal in Google Analytics (the simple way):
Step 1: Go to the goals page on Google Analytics, and click “set up goals and funnels”
Step 2: Click “Add goal”
Step 3: Fill in information for goal
- Active Goal = On
- Goal Position = Set 1, Goal 1
- Goal Type = URL Destination
- Match Type = Exact Match
- Goal URL = Thank you page or registration complete page
- Case Sensitive = check
- Goal Value = can put a dollar amount of what this person is worth to you
When it comes to stories of success,
Compendium wants to make sure you know how its corporate blog software will fit into your daily routine.
There are numerous case studies available from various companies' success stories. They are all
real stories from
real companies that have seen success from Compendium's corporate blogging software.
For more of these success stories and more information on them, sign up for Compendium's free
Webinar: Finding Business Blogging Success: Real-Life Stories. The Webinar will be hosted by marketer Chris Baggott, CEO and CoFounder of Compendium Blogware.
The Webinar will take place on November 18th, from 2-3pm EST and it will share the successes of several companies, including an eCommerce Gymnastics Apparel Company, SaaS Event Management and Web Survey Company, and Concrete and Services Company in Minneapolis.
In addition, the Webinar will cover:
- Best Practices for ROI driven business blogging.
- Real-life examples of successful blogging strategies.
- How to set up a blogging strategy built for success.
Don't hesitate,
sign up today!
Think about moving beyond the concept of
"A" blog. At it's most simplistic, a search engine is looking for a page that is focused on one thing....the one that relates most to the keyword or specific topic. I love this statement by Vanessa Fox:
"Relevance means keeping to a topic, helping the search engine understand what your site is about and, ideally, about one thing in particular."
Often, a blog can be confusing to search engines because they can cover so many different aspects of a topic.
For example, I had a blog in my email marketing days called
"Email Marketing Best Practices" and I think I still win that search most of the time today.
Now in that blog I talk about
"list building" almost 200 times. List building was an important keyword for our business...
along with about 5000 others.You will never find this blog on a search for "list building" or any of the other terms we were targeting. That's when it hit me.
My content wasn't organized properly. If I had a blog
titled List Building and put all my
List Building content on that blog, I would have a significantly better chance of ranking on that term. Because I talked about all aspects of email marketing, the search engine is naturally going to look for an easier page targeting the right keyword and offering more perceived relevance.
Powerful blogging software can solve this problem for you. Think of blogging software that empowers lots of content creation, and organizes that content around the topics....Think of blogging as a target marketing strategy.
One of my favorite words of wisdom from my Dad is:
Anything worth doing is worth doing well. He used to say that to me when I would complain about my job mowing lawns and interning in an extremely boring company. He would follow this up with a great lesson that has always proven itself true to me. If you always work hard, and put your full effort into something, the money will follow. This was my Dad's way of instilling a strong work ethic in me. However, I think that the same lesson can be applied to business blogging as well.
If a company feels that communicating on a human level with their target market is important, than isn't it worth doing well? I believe it is. And if you start a corporate blogging strategy in the right way and stick with the program, the money will indeed follow. Compendium's easy to use blog software just makes it easier to find success. With a small investment in this technology, businesses can focus on good, consitent content that adds value to a searcher. Here are 3 features that make this simple:
- Provided with the important targeted keywords for your business
- Endless stream of content ideas
- Immediate feedback on how you're doing writing keyword rich content
Go ahead,
request a demo and we'll show you how easy business blogging really can be. Remember, if you think that search marketing is worth doing, isn't it worth doing well?
Companies have found their claim to fame in various ways. Some companies are fortunate enough to have found a big break, but
most companies aren't that fortunate.
I'm not a company - I am just an intern, so I'm always looking for my big break. I think my big break came at the Indiana Pacers game tonight. For the first time ever, I was on the kiss cam. It was a scene straight out of the movie, "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days." It was classic. My claim to fame was in Conseco Fieldhouse on a jumbo screen in front of 10,000 people. I got lucky.
But not everyone gets a big break like I did.
Most companies need to work toward whatever their "claim to fame" may be. A company's "claim to fame" is generally its service or product.
So how do you get noticed?? One way is to
BLOG!
Corporate blogging is a great way to share your success with internet searchers - or anyone that is looking for what you have to offer. By using
Compendium's simple blogging software, you can have your fame just by blogging for your business.
I got lucky by getting on the kiss cam - it's not always that easy though! The best way to get found is sharing your service or product with others - so
start by using Compendium's corporate blog software!
Disclaimer: I really was on the kiss cam last night but it's not my claim to fame. It was used as an example for this blog post...
After watching football all day Sunday, specifically the Colts game, I realized how much momentum plays into a game of football. It can either hurt you or help you, but the important thing to realize is that it
just takes a small jolt of success to get the ball rolling and everything else just starts to fall into place.
Take the Colts game for example; in the first half, Texans quarterback Matt Schaub had about 60 yards, completed very few passes and was sacked multiple times. By the end of the game, he had completed 75% of his passes for over 300 yards and came up 5 feet wide left of winning the game.
This just goes to show that it only takes a small push and some precise adjustments to turn things around and find success. It wasn't until I really started thinking about the ideas of momentum that I realized how much that relates to the world of business blogging software.
No matter what your former marketing strategies looked like,
taking the step to starting a blog for you business will be the perfect jump start to getting your new marketing campaign underway. Once you get into a "blogging groove" and find your niche, creating powerful, effective posts comes naturally and helps to further the success of your blog.
Peyton Manning leads all current NFL quarterbacks in most 4th quarter comebacks, meaning that he is the expert in changing his team's momentum when it really counts. He does this with a great coaching staff leading him along the way... Take a page from his book and
contact Compendium today for some great coaching on how to utilize blogging in your business!
TCLogic is seeing results with Compendium's blogging software. The company is happy with its blogging results and it is particularly happy with its ranking on important keywords - which has been its main goal all along.
Rich Murphy, from TCLogic, said that its "blog is outperforming its website with 327 visits in the last 30 days (48% from search). The blog also serves as a #2 referrer to the website (behind email campaign)."
Name: Stephanie West
Company: Compendium Blogware
BlogURL:
Struggling with content creation? We hear that all the time. I know, I know - you have a million other things to do and don't have time to blog, right? Well, here are a couple of time saver ideas to help your company come up with content for your blog program:
- Outside content creation - we are offering content creation at really low prices, if you just don't have the resources within your organization, this may be the best option for you.
- Employee contest - if it's difficult to get your employee's to blog, try asking them to submit stories to you (the administrator). One idea - send an email out asking for the top questions your sales team and customer service reps get from their customers and what answer they give. You can turn each of those Q&A's into a post. And you could reward the person who submits the most Q&A's.
- Customer contest - have a contest for your customers - send out an email to customers and ask them to share their story of how they use your product. Then the best story could receive a prize and you could submit all of those stories as blog posts.
Content creation is key to the success of your business blog program. It's not enough just to buy our corporate blogging software, you must also write consistent, relevant content. For more information on how using compendium as your blogging solution,
view a demo (and get some free Starbucks too!)
I recently received a great note from a client who just joined Compendium a month or so ago. Hendler Law is a law firm that focuses on
mesothelioma lawsuits and other toxic exposure cases. They recently finished setting up their blog networks and attended our new live training with
Allison Bowen. Here's what our contact had to say about the services so far:
"I did the training on Friday....thanks so much. Allison did a great job! Compendium's customer service is the BEST!"
I'm proud to say that not only does Compendium offer the best business blogging software on the market, we also have the best customer service reps (product support and client success alike) out there. Ok, maybe I'm biased - but if you don't believe me, just have our sales team set you up with a demo and you can hear even more success stories from satisfied Compendium clients.
Football tailgaters are interesting. They bring entertainment to fans, by-passers, alumni, students, parents, spectators, etc.
Tailgaters are like bloggers. They lighten the atmosphere. They bring the fun. They humanize the game.
Football is the main attraction. It's like your company's website. The goal of your company website is to drive traffic and provide a source of information to perspective customers. Football games also try to drive traffic. But the tailgaters and the energy behind the game.
So the tailgaters are like the bloggers. They set up the blog - which is the humanized aspect of football games. Tailgaters get pumped for the game, then they all trail into the stadium for the actual football game.
Bloggers do the same thing. They write about the main attraction (the website).
Blogging is a source of information and entertainment for perspective customers. And most importantly, it drives those perspective customers (or we could call them internet searchers) to
your company website.
The blog software that
Compendium offers is a great tool for your company to use. It will humanize your marketing efforts and drive perspective customers to the main attraction - your website.
The purpose and success within
Compendium's powerful blogging software breaks down into three simple steps...
Blogging --> SEO Opportunities --> Customer Conversion OpportunitiesObviously, the goal for anyone reaching out to customers online is customer conversion. It is not enough for visitors to spend time looking at your blogs; you want them to
find your website, find your products/services and make the purchase! All of this comes most easily through strong SEO Tools.
SEO Opportunities are the best way for a searcher to find your blog. Nearly every searcher ends up clicking on the top few listings in a Google or Bing search and having your blog listed at the top will lead to visitors finding your page. And this all comes from consistent, relevant blog postings.
Blogging is the obvious starting point. Without a strong base to begin your online marketing campaign, you'll have no potential to see changes. Blogging gets those key phrases you care about listed high on Google and other search engines so searchers can find you. Compendium's affordable blogging software will help get this system underway!
A recent article by
Advertising Age titled,
Digital Marketing: The State of Search Marketing: 2009, has reported that search marketing is continuing to grow. In addition, about 9 out of 10 marketers are practicing organic search optimization. That's a large percentage of marketers that are going organic to get found in search!
The benefits of leveraging your online marketing strategy by organic search are limitless. Since many people are clicking on organic search results, they are attracting viewers to their blog, which can, in turn, draw potential customers into their website.
If you want to acquire new customers and then convert those customers -
corporate blogging might be your answer because blogging humanizes your marketing strategy.
Compendium's corporate blogging software is designed to help leverage your blog in organic search - with a humanized approach. Nine out of 10 marketers are trying to position themselves in organic search - which mean
YOU (as the customer) are likely to come into contact with one of these marketer's organic search strategies.
For more information on blogging for organic search and how it pertains to you -
click here to speak with a blogging expert. They will explain the benefits of using Compendium's blog software to you!
Each week I am overwhelmed by the amount of mail that I continue to receive from various company who want my business. Coupons, sales ads, etc. I am always throwing them away and thinking how much money do these companies spend on these thick paper advertisements and coupons? Then I think, if they are spending the money to send these advertisements and coupons to consumers, then they are spending way to much money on marketing their business.
In today's world most of us use the computer to find what we need. Why should companies spend money on such marketing ads, when we can find that information ourselves with a few clicks?
Companies should invest their money into new strategies for the ever changing market. Compendium has that solution. Compendium sells affordable blogging software that will save consumers money as well as put money into their pockets. The easy to use blog software enables the client to put the power into their hands by blogging about the company and its experiences and customer experiences. It adds that human element to marketing that gets lost in the shuffle. Why not blog for business? Blogging about your business allows consumers to find your business just by providing certain keywords that pertain to your business. So when searchers are looking for a certain brand or a specific type of product, you want to be blogging! Save consumers time and money by getting rid of the needless paper advertisements and go green. Let people search for you on the net, but of course, you need to always blog about your business!!!
