Advanced Business Blogging

And The Winner Is...

Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 by Kristen Hanschu

Week 2 of the Content for the Crown blogging tournament, and we have some winners. This past week brought on some friendly, yet firm competition. Every client gave it their all, and in the end we had 48 teams advance to the second round.

Round 2 started on Monday and already people are battling it out. What are they fighting for? Not only will these teams receive the coveted Compendium trophy, they will also have the pleasure of winning $50 gas cards for the administrator and all bloggers. Now, who would not want that when gas prices are $4.00 a gallon?

Thank you for all teams who participated and we look forward to seeing how this pans out. To view the brackets click here.

Congratulations to the following clients:

The Worst Thing I Heard At Blog Indiana

Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 by Chris Baggott

So I was privileged to teach a session on Advanced Business Blogging at the recent Blog Indiana event in Indianapolis. I learned a lot and there were some really smart people with some really good ideas and advice for Blogging in general and Corporate Blogging specifically.

But there was a LOT of Bull S--- too. I'm not normally one to go negative but some of this stuff makes me so mad that smoke comes out of my ears.

Blog Indiana Bad Business Blogging Advice, Comment Monitoring

The experience has given me an idea for a whitepaper: "Top Ten Lies about Business Blogging" (once I calm down, I'll probably change the word Lies to Myths)

This person (who's name escapes me) was doing a session on Business Blogging as well. A woman asked about comments and explained that her CEO wouldn't let them start a company blog unless he could review and reject comments he didn't like.

The advice?? Basically, it's better not to do a blog at all if you are going to actively manage comments!

I was incredulous.   Of course a corporation has to monitor not only comments, but blog posts as well. There is a lot of responsibility and liability for anything that appears on your site...including your blogs.

If Blog Benefits = 100%   Comments in general represent < 10% of that benefit.

The reality is that most business blogs never get that many comments anyway. Comments should never be used as a primary gage of success.   Think about Traffic, Search Engine Optimization and Conversions. Those are the real metrics of blogging best practices.

So my surprise was this idea that if you are not 100% you shouldn't do anything at all was just bad advice.

Stay tuned...I've got another 9 to go :-)

Official Blogging Tournament Rules

Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008 by Chantelle Flannery

The tournament began on August 11th and we are now moving into round two. Customers will compete to advance in a Compendium organized blogging tournament based on number of posts written by the client, week-by-week. The Blogging Tournament is designed to create some spirited competition amongst our customers in a battle of the ultimate team game—business blogging. You will be pitted randomly against another Compendium customer in the ultimate blogging championship.

Tournament Rules

You need do nothing to enter the tournament. To participate write blog posts as you normally would, or with a great deal more frequency to more effectively compete.
Winners in the tournament will advance from a field of over 100 on a weekly basis based on the amount of posts generated by each team.
If there is an equal number of posts between the two teams over the course of the week the previous week’s posts will be used to determine who will advance. We will review as many of the previous weeks as necessary in order to break the tie.
A week's worth of posts start on Monday and end on Sunday.
In order for a post to count it must be considered legitimate blog posts. This means that the post must be at least 5 sentences long and contain at least two keywords.
Remember that you’re writing on a corporate blog so talk about appropriate topics that relate to your industry and company.
Please note that sticky posts don’t count.

Tournament Prizes
The winner of the Championship earns a handsome trophy denoting blogging superiority and a bottle of Champaign. There will also be a $50 gas card for the account Administrator and a $50 gas card for the top blogger on the team. The other three final teams will receive a $50 gas card.

Tournament Contact Information
Please have fun with the tournament - use this as a tool internally to mobilize around content development. Keep an eye on Chantelle Flannery’s blog and the tournament bracket for updates.

Write content. Get found in search. Convert traffic. Demonstrate ROI. Crush the competition in business blogging, tournament style!

Blogging Indiana!

Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 by Sarah Sedberry

This weekend marks a great event in downtown Indianapolis, and no I'm not talking about Gen-Con. I'm referring to Blog Indiana 2008!

Blog Indiana is a 2-day blogging and social media conference, hosted at IUPUI, that aims to promote education, innovation and collaboration among Indiana’s fast-growing blogging community. There will be several keynote speakers at the conference, including our very own Chris Baggott.

This blog conference for both experienced and new bloggers alike. Sessions will include topics such as blogging for beginners, using blogs in your business, monetizing your blog, political blogging and more advanced topics. So if you are a blogger looking to get started, looking to add a corporate blog, or wanting to capitalize on the success you're already having with the blog for your business - this is a conference you should attend.

Compendium Blogware will also have a booth at the conference, so feel free to stop by and say hello to two of our Business Development Managers, Jenni Edwards and Eric Romer. They will be happy to help answer any questions you may have about blogging for your business.

Happy Blogging!

Blog Indiana 2008

Finding Time to Blog

Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008 by Jim Hyslop

So I know that I have already blogged about this issue but it seems to come up a lot. In fact I just read a post by Shel Holtz where he also addresses the issue that I hear all the time, "my staff is already maxed...we just don't have time to blog" and it got me thinking again.

The truth is by saying you don't have time to blog you are really saying I don't have time to communicate. I know I would never hear the same answer in regard to email or phone calls. The idea of not communicating by phone would be unheard of! We need to re-tune our minds to look at the blog in this exact way....as another form of corporate communication with our clients and business prospects on a human level. The beauty of the blog is now our method of communication is serving multiple purposes. Engaging our prospects, optimizing your company in the search rankings, and turning visitors into customers by your ability to do both of the first two things. But to do so you need the tools that allow you to do this.You need to incorporate methods of advanced business blogging.

The real time issue with managing a corporate blog does not come from communicating...it comes from managing the blog for ROI. There is a lot of lifting that happens to leverage that communication for your maximum benefit. At the end of the day if your company uses the right blogging tools to do this for you, you will inevitably secure the many benefits of blogging you deserve while at the same time never allowing your clients and potential customers to rank below the number one spot on your lists of priorities.

Driving business comes from the ability to acquire new customers by communicating to them you have exactly what they need. So by saying you don't have time to blog you are really saying I don't have time to obtain new forms of revenue. From a business perspective that just doesn't make sense. Blog for SEO. Blog for engagement. Blog for ROI!!!!

Business growth = Good Stuff..........Happy Blogging!

What's your blog bracketology?

Posted Friday, August 8, 2008 by Chantelle Flannery

Can you predict the bracket? In order to set up your picks go to the brackets main page and click on the ‘predict it’ link at the top of the bracket. Create a login for the bracket system and fill out your picks. The person who most accurately predicts the bracket will win a special prize. Note that the prize winner must be contributing content to their corporate blog during the entire tournament. You have until midnight on Monday August 11th to finalize your bracket.

One thing to note - although we are a competitive group here at Compendium we do not condone office gambling as it relates to this tournament and we will also not be held responsible for loss of productivity :-) Please make sure that your focusing on how you can help your team advance in the bracket create content.

Click here to add content to your blog now.

Content for the Crown Announcement

Posted Friday, August 8, 2008 by Chantelle Flannery

A field of over 100 companies will be participating in this falls Blogging Tournament – Content for the Crown. The companies will face off in a single elimination bracket over the course of the next 7 weeks. At the end of each week the total number of posts for each company will be compared and the team with the most posts will advance to the next round. Tie breaks will be broken by comparing the previous weeks post totals - going back as far a necessary in order to break the tie.

To find out whom you have to compete with check out the tournament bracket.

The first round of the tournament begins on Monday August 11th and lasts through the 17th of August.

Developing Blog Post Content

Posted Friday, August 1, 2008 by jeff lefevere

Have you ever wondered how others find time in their day to write consistent (and consistently good) blog posts?

You may think to yourself, “If only I had the time.”

It’s easy to de-prioritize blogging in order to stay caught up on email and the real core of your business -- growth.

De-prioritizing your blogging, however, is a mistake, especially in the face of your in-box and business growth.

Simply, you likely write close to two thousand words a day in email. One blog post is the equivalent of 250 – 300 words. So, in the course of business, on a daily basis, you likely write at least 8 blog posts, at a minimum. And, likely, at least half of those emails are internal and operationally oriented, not affecting the acquisition of a new customer.

Secondarily, as an adjunct to your daily email, your real daily focus is helping the business run smoothly and drive growth.

When you think about where you can save time, or shift time to focus on blogging, it would have to be getting out of the email in-box and into the blogging platform.

I say this not for the obvious reason that time spent emailing and blogging is a one-to-one trade-off, instead it’s because blogging for business allows you to create content that is optimized for search engines and that traffic subsequently leads to customer acquisition and a flow of potential new customers.

These two factors combined make daily blogging a no-brainer.

Am I positing that time spent blogging instead of emailing will lead to growth in your business? Yes I am.

So, say no to those four emails that don’t advance the situation forward, though they may advance your opinion forward, and drive that energy into growing the business, using blogging as a tool to do so.

A couple of tips to take your creative brainpower into overdrive:

1) Start to view your work life in terms of story vignettes

The customer situation yesterday that was resolved and made the company look good? It makes a perfect blog post!

2) Think about your business and blogging tangentially.

That Fortune, Men’s Health or Cooking Light magazine you read in your personal time is a treasure trove of cultural currency that can be cross-pollinated with your business for pop culture relevancy. That article about the healthiest cities in America? Well, if you’re a healthcare blog, there has to be some relevant tie-in to your business

3) Keep a notebook handy to scrawl down the genesis of an idea when it strikes

You won’t remember the idea later, but just the scribbled note will jog your memory.

I hope these tips help drive your blogging success forward.

What's a Business Blog Supposed To Accomplish?

Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 by Chris Baggott

There was some feedback from my interview on Blog Squad Radio last week about the Compendium Approach to Business Blogging was too Corporate.

I posted this reply:

I wanted to thank you both for a great session last week. Your questions were insightful and I really appreciate your open-mindedness for some of these new concepts.

A successful relationship requires direct communication. To get the right to build a relationship with a customer or prospect you have to first be found, second build credibility that a relationship with you will add value to the prospect or customer.

Blogging is spectacular for this stage of the relationship. From that point however 99% of the time that relationship is going to evolve to leverage some other medium...which might include face-to-face, email, telephone or even paper based things like catalogs.

You guys are a perfect case to show that a successful blogging program shouldn't be measured by the number of comments...but from the amount of traffic and conversions.Thanks again,

Chris Baggott, CEO
Compendium Blogware

Advanced Business Blogging Strategy, requires that your employee and constituent content should be mostly about your business. Blog about your solutions, your customers, your aspirations as it relates to your products & services. This is what people are searching for...great blog information that helps them and builds trust

Compendium Blogware: Blogging & Teambuilding

Posted Monday, July 28, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Compendium Blogware Company Trip to Ohiopyle...lots of business blogging fodder

I'm sure a lot of good stories will come out of this weekend's Compendium Blogware's First Annual White Water Rafting Trip to Ohiopyle PA. The Story is best told in pictures, so please feel free to browse Kaila Woodsides's Flickr Compendium of the trip.

If one of the goals of Corporate Blogging is to humanize your organization, sharing your events and activities probably go a long way. I'm guessing anyone who sees these blog photos and reads the posts from the Employees that post to their Compendium Blogs will get a pretty good idea of the personality of our organization.

At the end of the day, advanced business blogging is about showing that you have smart, fun, passionate people...who all share a common goal of doing everything they can to make you a successful business blogger.

Search Marketing, and the Catalog Industry

Posted Monday, July 21, 2008 by Chris Baggott

So let's talk Business Blogging for B2C organizations.   As many of you know I came originally from the Catalog business. Catalog frustration is what drove me to Email Marketing in the first place.   As far as Compendium Blogware goes, B2C is half our business.

I just spent $2500 with a company called Frongate for some stuff in a new garage I just built.   I didn't go to Frontgate as a destination or through direct navigation, but found them after a long painstaking series of searches looking for some specific floor mats my neighbor has.

It probably took me 15 minutes of searching to find the right product.   I was happy with the transaction (so far) and the good news for Frontgate is that I not only bought the mats, but wound up being upsold with some grade-A shelving as well. Frontgate's mats were by far the most expensive as well.

But I couldn't find them.   My search was painful. I went to a lot of sites that either didn't have the right product I was looking for or that the quality was suspect.    Remember...the searcher isn't going to call the thing the same thing you call it. Frontgate isn't found searching 'garage mats', 'garage floor mats', or even using one of the names that Frontgate calls, them 'industrial grade garage flooring'. If you seach 'PVC floor covering' Frontgate is found on the bottom of the first page.

Uhhhh.....I didn't know I was looking for PVC....thought that was for plumbing....

So how could advanced business blogging help in this environment?

Compendium Blogware post about Frontgate catalog marketing and my garage

Suppose they send me an email asking me why I need this product? ...ask me to tell them about my new garage and mention you are looking for stories for their blog.   I'm so excited about this stupid garage I would probably send pictures and tell them all about why I built it, what I put in it, how I'm outfitting it and how I'll use this Frontgate stuff.

That's all there is to it.

And it's totally a blogging best practice. Frontgate gets a great post and the searcher now gets terrific relevant content to more easily help the next searcher more easily find all the stuff I struggled to find.   The searcher is thrilled, Frontgate is thrilled and as far as I'm concerned I'll never visit a Frontgate blog again...until I have another search that they can serve...

I promise I'm not likely to subscribe to a garage blog or make any comments...I've got a life....and I did subscribe to their email & I'm sure I'll be getting a catalog every month :-)

A blog strategy like this could generate literally hundreds of relevant blogging posts a week.   Combined this with widespread employee blogging on the products and you have not only a winning search engine marketing strategy...but a lot more happy prospects clicking through to buy.

Should You Allow Comments on Blogs

Posted Friday, July 18, 2008 by Kristen Hanschu

Individuals and organizations who are using some of our competitors (and for sake of being respectful, I will not name names) are running into problems with people commenting on their blogs. A reader will leave a negative remark and the accused has no way of monitoring or deleting the comment. In fact, there have been some lawsuits over unlawful statements and comments that are made on blogs and websites.

In a recent article by Wendy Davis, Roommates.com was sued for civil rights violations. With this said, our prospective clients are usually nervous when it comes to the commenting portion of our business blogging software.

Our blogging platform allows the individual or company to view all comments before they go live. Compendium's advanced system give them the power to approve and decline all comments that people leave. Therefore, nothing will be shown on your blog site that you did not approve. To view what our comment section looks like, you can view my blog. Additionally, our comment section requires that the reader fill out a captcha which does not allow for people to spam your site.

Staying on top of the topics that matter most to you

Posted Friday, June 27, 2008 by Chantelle Flannery

The internet has an unlimited amount of content and is growing daily. It is impossible to read every existing - let alone new article that pertains to your organization and industry. A great tool that will allow you to stay on top of the latest news as it relates to your industry is Google Alerts.

Google Alerts sends automatic emails when there are new search results for topics that you determine in advance. Google alerts comes in 6 different variations - 'News', 'Web', 'Blogs', 'Comprehensive', 'Video' and 'Groups'. I would recommend at the very least subscribing to the Blog Google Alert with your company as a topic.

Not only do you benefit from staying up to date on the newest information it also provides new topics for you to discuss on your blog. Possible posts include:

Article Reviews
News on the latest developments in the industry
Rebuttals to negative attention your company/industry is receiving
Allows you to discover / work with other industry bloggers

For more information check out Google Alerts Help Page.

Welcome to Indianapolis Tennis Championships

Posted Monday, June 23, 2008 by Kristen Hanschu

One of our newest clients, Indianapolis Tennis Championships, is now blogging! They came on board with Compendium just a few weeks ago and are using our blog software to advance their opportunities in Google and other search engines.

The Tennis Championships will be held in Indianapolis on July 12-20. If you are attending this event for the first time, then you are in for a treat. It takes place downtown in the heart of Indiana. The Circle City provides you with endless entertainment in addition to tennis. Indianapolis has some of the best museums and restaurants in the Midwest.

They are on the verge of seeing how blogs will change their business. To get more information please visit their website or their blog. Here you can purchase tickets for this event, find a hotel, and discover what to do while you are in town.

Successful Website Requires Close Relationship Between Design and Development

Posted Sunday, June 22, 2008 by PJ Hinton

Trade publication eWeek ran a story on Friday about Google promoting it's App Engine as a workflow tool to bring web designers and developers together. The most interesting part of the story was a collection of remarks by Lindsey Simon, a UX software engineer, and John Skidgel, a web designer, both who work at Google.

Both Simon and Skidgel articulated the need for a close working relationship between engineer and designers. So close, in fact, that Simon said it should be almost spousal. Both roles needed to have a respect for each other's strengths and enough knowledge about the other's job to communicate effectively.

Taking the spousal analogy a step further, Skidgel and Simon described what hypothetical personal ads might say. Simon's designer ad read:

"Seeking an unpretentious, scrappy, well-rounded interaction and visual designer." The qualities listed as being sought after were, "Takes criticism without a hissy fit, willing to entertain rants about back-end/front-end code, knows Photoshop kung fu and not afraid of code."

Skidgel's ad for a UX engineer read:

"Takes suggestions without going ballistic, appreciates aesthetics, deep and broad understanding of front-end and back-end technology, and not afraid to express himself visually—he can draw [or] chicken-scratch flows."

At the heart of this humorous exercise was a serious message. Quoting Simon's words:

"You can't really have a meaningful design for these kinds of applications anymore if you really want to separate strict visual design and interaction design from the act of engineering it. That's not really a productive workflow." As a developer, "you want to work with your designer, and from the beginning."

Developing highly advanced blogging software has put this issue front and center with the engineering team at Compendium. Although the overall appearance of our application is drawn up by a professional design team, many of us have to don the designer hat every once in a while as we develop rich user interfaces for things like blog web page customization and content authoring. Soon our team will be growing to include a developer who will be focused on developing more powerful blogging features, the kinds of things that our current and future customers say they want from an Enterprise 2.0 blog.

On a related note, If you know of someone who might be thinking about starting a business blog, you might be interested in taking advantage of Compendium's friend referral promotion, which offers a $50 Starbucks card for each valid referral, up to 10 referrals. Details and disclaimers can be found at Compendium's website.

The issue of TIME

Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008 by Eric Romer

There's a great song by an artist named Cody Chesnutt called "When I Find Time", and I often find it popping up in my head throughout the week. The chorus goes like this:

"It's so sad, and it's too bad
I only have time, to think about the time I don't have
What a day it's gonna be,... when I find time"

When approaching a blogging solution for your business, a big concern is TIME.

I get it, and I am a perfect case study. Day in and day out, I am on the phones with prospective clients, sending follow-up emails & press about Compendium, and analyzing client keywords and organic rankings. My days are usually packed with Demo's of our business blogging software, and managing my list of clients. My boss wants me driving new business, plain and simple.

But writing on a business blog is easy, helps drives leads for my business, and allows me to create a conversation with prospective customers. In the time that I've started this post, 7 minutes has passed. It took longer for me to walk down to Starbuck's for an afternoon coffee on the first floor of our building. Advanced business blogging is an oxymoron, because it is simple to do, yet drives advanced results for your business.

If you don't believe me, read Chris Baggott's recent post titled "You Think You Don't Have Time To Blog?". He's way smarter than me anyhow.... (and yes, that was me sucking up to the head honcho, another benefit of allowing employees to blog)

Misconceptions about Blog Content

Posted Monday, June 2, 2008 by Chris Baggott

I'm totally lifting this paragraph from a comment I saw posted by Scott Henderson of Mediasauce about Corporate Blog Content and who should write....I promise I will send him a link:

"..Another big challenge is the misperception of how to blog. It’s not lengthy white papers, stilted memorandums, and corporate speak, but needs to be more akin to engaging coffee house/cocktail party conversation The savvy corporations tap people who are great minglers and conversationalists, who can host a great conversation as well as partake in the other conversations out there (i.e. visiting and posting on other blogs)."

Right on! Advanced Business Blogging whether it's Enterprise or Small Business Blogging depends on frequent content creation and very narrow focus. Find the people in your company who are the most passionate, and have access to the most stories about your company and most importantly, your products or services.

I'll give you a hint...they probably are not C-level.

George knows what makes Corporate Blogging Work

Posted Friday, May 30, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Advanced Business Blogging is easy. Usually where it slows down is in the process of content creation. Too many people worry about content for business blogs instead of focusing on the real human stories that happen every day. Business bloggers often have a tendency to overthink every word to a point of infrequency.

Frequency is the most important component in Corporate Blogging. Blogs aren't the place for articles or whitepapers.

Short, sweet authentic anecdotes about things that are happening in your business, with your customers, success, missteps...all this is what makes great corporate blog content.

Thanks to Scott for the clips!

WordPress is easy???

Posted Thursday, May 29, 2008 by Chris Baggott

There are a lot of parallels to compare Corporate Blogging today to where Email Marketing was 5 or 6 years ago.   Back then, Email Marketing was free. All you had to do was download a ListServ application, configure a server or two, find and manipulate some plug-in applications for registration or bounces or unsubscribes or de-duplication or throttling or opens & clickthrough tracking or analytics.....and the list goes on.

In the end, some geeks might have loved all this tinkering, but from a business or marketing standpoint it was a nightmare.   The solution was all encompassing SaaS tools from companies like ExactTarget, Constant Contact or Responsys...

Superior tools designed for marketers, not IT folks.   In the end, both parties were happier.

The same discussion happens in Corporate Blogging Software.   "WordPress is free...why pay you?"    For the most part we hear this when IT folks are involved.   Natuarally as they understand the Compendium Blogware offering they start to see the feature differences, but the don't really understand that Free isn't Free.

That is why I was so happy to see this post today from a big Technology focused Blog talking about how overly hard WordPress is:

"Recently I have started chatting to an engineer at Automattic, the mob which employs most of the lead programmers on Wordpress. They also run the Wordpress.com service, which is a big job — millions of blogs, tens of millions of monthly visits."

"I complained to him that one of my annoyances in life is how complex Wordpress actually is. Why? Because you don’t just have to configure Wordpress to get anywhere. To get it to perform acceptably you can either throw powerful hardware at the problem (which is how Club Troppo has done it since our donation drive last year) or you can implement a whole rogue’s gallery of tweaks and adaptations."

When you think about what your goals are with advanced business blogging the focus should be on engagement and traffic through SEO....not constantly tweaking software, messing with plug-ins or installing more powerful servers. Let the Vendor manage that stuff....

The Eloquence of Passing Time

Posted Friday, May 9, 2008 by jeff lefevere

There’s an obscure Chicago-based band called Poi Dog Pondering and a lyric to one of their songs, Collarbone, says the following:

“ … The only thing that speaks the truth is the eloquence of passing time”

This speaks volumes to me, particularly when you consider blogging as a marketing paradigm.

Our Co-Founder and CEO, Chris Baggott did a webinar this week with a partner company and we were made privy to some advance questions from the audience. One of the questions was:

“Is blogging a fad or a trend? Should I just sit on the sideline and catch the next ‘big thing’ earlier on in the process?”

Good question.

The difference between a fad and trend, as we all know, is a fad is sizzling hot and then fades away. Croc shoes come to mind, though I am so far abstaining from wearing molded plastic as footwear. If I had to make a prediction I would say Crocs will fall somewhere into a 2020 fad retrospective of the last 30 + years—probably somewhere between big hair from the 80’s and grunge music in the 90’s.

However, a trend is something that is enduring; something changes the landscape of how we function. Think Starbucks coffee. A scant 10 or 12 years ago nobody would have imagined paying $3 for a cup of coffee as a part of our daily routine. Now, you can’t imagine not having a Starbucks nearby.

Given that blogging started in earnest at around the same as Starbucks ascension (blogging history here), I think it’s pretty safe to say that this little thing called blogging is a trend.

Heck, there’s probably a Master’s Thesis project in drawing correlations between the notion of the Starbucks “third-place” and blogging as an engagement mechanism, but we’ll save that for another day.

I guess my overall point is that blogging is here to stay, and while blogging itself has been around for a decade, we’re just now heading into an era where there is widespread adoption for business. And, this adoption is all a part of a larger quilt of trends that suggests, no, demands that business optimize themselves on the web for search while cultivating their customer and prospect base using an “authentic” voice.

So, to our friend that was optimistically skeptical, my response to his benign question would be, “The only thing that speaks the truth is the eloquence of passing time.” The next big thing has yet to emerge, but if it’s a trend instead of a fad, you’ll want to engage in that AFTER blogging for business because our lives don’t get simpler, they get more complex and what comes next is likely to be iteration on top of our existing prevailing wisdom.

I hope you are or are planning on heeding the truth, as well.

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