Best Practices in Blogging

Sarah Sedberry - Client Success Manager

Hi! My name is Sarah Sedberry, a Client Success Manager at Compendium Blogware. My responsibilities include keeping our clients motivated, posting current/frequent content, and getting the ROI results they want to see out of their blogging efforts.

This blog will primarily talk about tips and tricks for a great blog post and blogging best practices in order to inform readers about the importance of blogging.

Personally, I graduated from Rollins College (Winter Park, Florida) in 2004, where I played collegiate softball. I returned to my roots here in Indianapolis after graduation and enjoy sports, healthy competition, and of course the Colts!

Good Blogging Sports

Monday, January 25, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

Motivation is sometimes one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to a successful blogging program. Blog strategies require consistent and frequent content in order to see results and even us bloggers here at Compendium have our days where we struggle to come up with an idea.

Recently we had a blog off between two of our clients, both in the convention and visitors industry for their respective cities - Indianapolis and Tampa Bay. The blog was a simple competition where the blog network with the most post by the end of 30 days won. The loser of the competition had to wear shirts that said: "I'd rather be in (insert winning city here)"

The outcome - Tampa Bay put in a huge effort and took home the trophy. Indianapolis had to wear the shirts....(see picture)....brrrr - sorry Breena and Jeff.

As a Client Success Manager, it is part of my responsibility to partner with my clients admins in order to keep their bloggers motivated and continuing to post new content. Here are a few ideas for your team too:

Weekly Drawing (every blog post is an entry for the prize)
Food (everyone that submits a blog can attend a lunch or breakfast)
Gift Cards ( the blogger with the most posts in a given week wins)
Competitions (department vs department - most posts wins)

BizActions Needs Your Vote!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

This last week has made me a very happy camper as we have sooo many clients that are up for awards! The latest client making the spotlight is BizActions, a company that provides communications and email newsletters for CPA's and other professional services, such as Payroll and HR.

They are currently up for a Stevie Award in customer service. For those not familiar with them, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service honor and generate public recognition of the accomplishments of sales, customer service, and call/contact center professionals worldwide.

The winner will be announced next month, but in the meantime there is also a People's Choice Award, and they need everyones help in gathering votes to beat out the competition. We want to do everything we can to help them spread the word, so please help them out by voting for them - you can submit your vote here!

For more blogging customer success stories, check out our Client Marketing blog, or download a case study.

I need more blog content!

Monday, January 18, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

As we all know, blogging consistently and frequently drives a successful blog program. Although sometimes its hard to keep coming up with ideas, so here is a quick list for you to use to keep that brain moving, and keep that content generating!

Set up a Google Alert for your company or industry
Talk about products that are listed on your website and link to them
Use content from newsletters and marketing materials
Announce a new product or feature that's coming out
Have an email you feel you write over and over again - turn that into a post
Talk about upcoming webinars, conferences, or trade shows
Highlight the Calls To Action
Is your company up for an award or received recent PR?
Explain what your company does
Share a client success story
What are the trends in your industry
Post about company outings
Combat any negative press
Invite readers to sign up for newsletters or RSS feeds
What are others in your industry saying - do you agree?

Hopefully this quick list will get the gears moving to write your next blog post. Compendium's platform is built for search engine optimization, but needs content to fuel it. For more blogging best practices, contact your Client Success Manager - we're here to help!

Visit Tampa Bay Needs Your Vote!

Friday, January 15, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

It seems lately like all of our clients are up for awards (everything from Shorty Awards to landing Government partnerships)! We're happy to help out and spread the word because we're not only a blogging solution for our clients, but we truly believe that when our clients are successful, it makes us successful, no matter what!

Visit Tampa Bay has been a long time client of Compendium Blogware, and I have certainly enjoyed working with their blogging program admin, Jeremy Fairly. We both attended colleges in Florida, and were in the same conference, so we have a small rivalry between us, but I won't hold that against him!

Jeremy and his company Visit Tampa Bay are up for a Shorty Award on Twitter, and need your vote! The Shorty Awards recognize the best people and organizations on Twitter with 27 categories represented. VTB is up for the Travel category.

Help our our buddy Jeremy by tweeting: "I nominate @VisitTampaBay for a Shorty Award in #travel because..."

*Please note that you must have a Twitter account to be able to vote.

Ask an SEO Expert - Upcoming Webinar

Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

This month Compendium will be co-hosting a webinar with CEO, Chris Baggott, and SEO guru, Stephan Spencer, on January 21st at 2:00 pm (EST). Stephan is well known for his up to date knowledge on online marketing - including usability, ecommerce, email and especially SEO.

Chris and Stephan will be discussing the following topics during the webinar:

Basic SEO techniques to help you get found
Why business blogging is a great SEO strategy
A live Q & A session from the audience.

There are only a limited number of spots available for this webinar so make sure to register early. Also, if you already have your list of questions ready, feel free to submit them early to info@compendium.com.

Click here to register for this webinar

Blogging Equals Search Engine Results

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

I was reading an article on Social Media Examiner today where they are interviewing Steve Rubel, the VP of Edelman Digital. Rubel is an advisor of social media strategy for companies such as Pepsi, Dannon, HP and Microsoft.

In the interview, I was blown away at Rubel's response to blogging. He claims that blogging is dead and that the way to go is "streaming". By streaming he means - Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

*Ahem....pulling up soap box to stand on*

Now while I agree that every company should have a well-rounded social media strategy, that strategy also includes blogging - and not just cause I work for a blogging platform. Why you ask?

Because the one thing that blogging accomplishes is being found in search. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook included, allow a business to be in the community, allowing you to respond and have a quick easy way to update happenings while on the road perhaps. However the thing they do not do is allow your site to be found on multiple, hundreds, thousands of search phrases that people are searching on every single day.

Yes, your Twitter account may come up for your name, but that means the visitor was already looking for your company - they already knew you. What about all the consumers and potential customers out there that have no idea who you are and are looking for you?

They are turning to a search engine to find their answer - not Twitter, not YouTube, not Facebook. They are searching for terms like "low calorie yogurt" or "ideal pc for home office", not company names.

Blogging is DEFINITELY not dead - it is only just beginning. Bottom line? If you want to be found in the organic search results for multiple keyword phrases, you need to have a blog. Using a powerful blogging platform like Compendium and this whole blogging thing gets even easier because our platform does all the heavy lifting for you - allowing you to get back to to your job and making the company even more successful.

*stepping off soap box*

Compendium is Growing (again)!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

Compendium Blogware is in a very fortunate position where we are continuing to grow and expand. As our client base continues to build we are bringing on more individuals to help support our clients and their blogging programs.

As of today, the Client Success Department welcomes a new face, Kelly Simon, who will be joining us as a Client Success Manager, where she will be managing a portfolio of clients. She hails from Indiana University and has worked in a marketing position for the last 5 years for America's Beauty Show (the 2nd largest beauty trade show in America), and (coincidentally enough) at my sorority's headquarters! We are excited to have her on board with us!

Compendium is still hiring in all departments, so spread the word if there are others out there you know, that are looking to work in a fun, passionate, and fast paced environment. Here is a full listing of available positions.

Client up for Shorty Awards on Twitter

Monday, January 11, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

As a Client Success Manager, one of the things I dearly love about my role, is the relationships I get to form with my clients. Our philosophy is that we want to be a true partner with our clients, not just another vendor. We do everything we can to help ensure the success of our clients, not only with their online blogging strategy but in other areas as well.

For example, we currently have a client - The Taiga Company - that is up for 3 Shorty Awards on Twitter. Our contact there, Julie Urlaub, is the biggest sweetheart and we are doing what we can to help her out (hence this blog post)!

The Shorty Awards honor the best people and organizations on Twitter. These unique awards are for the Twitter community, by the Twitter community. Online voting is public and democratic, culminating in an awards ceremony that recognizes the winners in 27 official categories.

Taiga Company is up for the following 3 categories:

Green (currently in the lead)
CSR
Commuter Benefits

Let's help Julie out by casting your vote here!

*Please note that voting is Twitter based so you will need to have a Twitter account in order to be able to vote.

Search Trending and Why It's Important to Listen to an 8th Grader.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

In a recent New York Times article they discuss a trend that all marketers should be paying attention to. Specifically what the next generation of consumers is learning and being trained to do, as their actions are going to determine how marketing trends continue in the future.

The article describes a recent study between Google and the University of Maryland, where the research was to find the difference between how children and adults search and to identify where there might be barriers. There were 83 children that participated in the study, all between the ages of 7-11.

The interesting results were that when a child was given a question, they took the question and typed it into their desired search engine (overwhelming majority tried Google first), when that yielded no results, they then tried all subsequent search engines. When they couldn't find the answer they gave up, not realizing that a question might be a multi-step question such as: "Which day would the vice president's birthday fall on the next year?"

The rationale being that it wasn't important enough to be on Google, so they gave up.

Now the article goes on to discuss more about what changes Google and Bing are making to make searching easier for children as well as adults, but this first part of the article was what stuck out to me. The fact that they gave up because the exact answer wasn't yielded to them on their first try. Now certainly we can talk about how they might not be well-versed in how to utilize search engines to find the answer, but that's not the point. The point is that to be the answer your searcher is looking for needs to be easy to find.

If we think to our own experiences when using a search engine, we type our questions in a way that we'll get a result that is as close as possible to what I'm looking for. Make your company easy to find, and easy to show up in search results, and that's where you'll find your potential customers.

Blogs are a great search tool in order to achieve this, and using a simple blogging software like Compendium, where our platform does all the heavy lifting for you, makes this easy. Our platform targets 50, 100, or 1,00's of keyword phrases that will allow your company to target a variety of search phrases that potential customers are typing in when looking for your product or service. That way, the next time an adult, or a child, types in their search query, you'll come up as the answer.

Blog Resources Over the Holidays

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

Happy Holidays from Compendium Blogware!

With the holidays fast approaching, we recognize that many individuals will be out of the office, and several offices closed. We wanted to inform everyone that our offices will be closed the following days:

December 24
December 25
December 31
January 1

Should you need assistance during one of these days, please visit our Online Knowledge Base which houses our FAQ page, best blogging practices, and previously recorded client webinars. If you need assistance before then, please contact your Client Success Manager directly.

Also of note, our development team will not have their normally scheduled weekly releases until after the holidays. We have several exciting plans for development of our blogging solution for the coming year

We look forward to what 2010 holds and wish everyone a splendid holiday season!

Happy Blogging Holidays!

Monday, December 21, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

Some of our core competencies here at Compendium Blogware are to be prideful and passionate about our work, to be smart and articulate about our knowledge, and most of all to have fun! So while we are focused on search marketing and blogging best practices 365 days of the year, we also want to take the time to spread a little cheer!

In honor of the holidays, we've put together a nice little video from us here in the Client Success department. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) the program only allowed 5 photos, but it is truly from all of us!

Happy Holidays and best wishes for the coming New Year!

Business Blog Visitor Trending Survey

Monday, December 21, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

Compendium Blogware has put together a survey with the intent to gain more insight into corporate blogging strategies. The survey focuses on how visitors get to corporate blogs and what happens once there.

The survey has been complied by a list of industry experts including:

Debbie Weil: Author of the original book that defined corporate blogging, The Corporate Blogging Book.

Chris Baggott - Co-Founder/CEO of Compendium, also named in the Top 100 Marketers of 2008. Chris also has authored the book Email Marketing by the Numbers.

Jay Baer - Author of the Convince & Convert blog, one of the world's best marketing resources.

Jason Falls - Social media guru and author of Social Media Explorer, a top 20 fixture in the Advertising Age Power 150 blogs.

This survey is for any company that has a blog, not just those with Compendium. We are excited to dig through the data in order to better enhance our product and better provide strategic coaching to our clientele. We will also be sharing the results of the data publicly.

We thank you in advance for helping out!

TAKE THE SURVEY

Speaking Language of the Customer

Thursday, December 17, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

Frequently when I meet new people, the inevitable question usually always arises, and follows a similar pattern:

"So where do you work?"

"Compendium Blogware"

"(blank stare)....what's that?"

This is where I usually go into my spiel about how we are a powerful, yet simple, blogging software that allows businesses to capture inbound leads from search queries on the web. My tech speak usually goes over their heads, and therefore I typically scale it back to, "we are an inbound marketing tool"....(light switch turns on) "OHHHHHH".

I sometimes get to caught up in the exciting things we are doing for our clients that I forget that not everyone speaks "my language". I need to keep in mind the mindset of my audience and make my explanation relevant to them.

The same thing is important when it comes to marketing, or using keywords in your blogging program. You need to target the way that your audience/potential customers are thinking, not necessarily the way you talk about it. The search engine wants to deliver an exact match to the searcher's query so it is absolutely key that you use those same search phrases as them in order to come up as a result.

Remember - talk in the language of your buyer, as they are the one that needs to understand what you're saying!

A new face in Client Success!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

In light of all the success that Compendium has had this year, our Client Success and Product Support departments have had to grow in order to handle our growing client base. One of our pride points here at Compendium is to be able to serve our customers and provide outstanding support in every facet possible.

In order to keep up with our growing demand we are now bringing on additional Client Success Managers, as well as, additional Client Support Specialists. I am excited to announce that one of our "new" faces, really isn't "new" as he has transferred out of our Business Development side. Lee Jorgenson, previously a BDM, now has the title of Client Success Manager, and starting this week will be taking on his own portfolio of clients.

We are excited to have Lee on the CS team as his knowledge from the sales side, experience to date with Compendium, and dedication to the success of our clients are only a few of the reasons he'll make a great addition to our team.

To learn more about how our team can help your company utilize a blog for search engine optimization, contact us today to schedule a demo, or learn more by downloading one of our case studies or white papers.

What a year! Highlights of 2009

Tuesday, December 15, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

It is amazing how quickly time is flying by! I can not believe that next week is Christmas, and the week after - a whole new year!!

There have been some pretty amazing things that have happened this year at Compendium, it is hard to fathom where we started this year and where we ended up. That is one of the things I love about working at a software as a service start up, especially one with this much energy. So much can be accomplished by driven individuals.

Here's a short recap on some of the excitement we've seen in 2009 (in no particular order):

Platform Enhancements:

Introduction of our API
Introduction of Web to Post feature
Introduction of Publisher/Subscriber networks
Availability for Admins to create/modify users on their network
Availability for Admins to manage keywords on their network
New Admin Interface
New User Manage Post interface
New Keyword Listing for users
Availability for Admins to edit posts - coming soon!!

Employee News: - we are still hiring - if interested please apply!

Introduction of VP of Client Success
Introduction of VP of Operations
Introduction of Content Writing Team
Expansion of Client Success Team
Expansion of Product Support Team

Misc:

Several Weddings - congrats to Ali, Brian, Meghan, and Abby! (and significant others)
1st Compendium Baby - congrats to Jess!
There were also several puppies that were added to families here, way too many to list, but if anyone knows of a good doggie daycare - I'm pretty sure Compendium Employees alone would fill up an entire class.

We are excited about what we've been able to accomplish this year with our blogging solution and all of the clients we've been able to help in their organic marketing strategies. Here's looking forward to another year of great successes!

Compendium's Holiday Party

Monday, December 14, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

Tis the season for holiday parties, and Compendium Blogware was no different! We celebrated as a company this past Friday at a wonderful downtown Indianapolis restaurant , Mo's Steakhouse, located off of Pennsylvania Street. Our entire staff was able to revel in holiday cheer and laughter, as we were treated to wonderful food and courteous service by their staff.

Mo's is also a client of Compendium, and uses our powerful blogging software, as one of their SEO tools to win search organically. They have just recently started their corporate blogging strategy, and we are excited to help them along the way.

Working with Tina and Molly has been a blast, and if their dedication to the program is anything like the time and effort their staff put in for our holiday party, I have no doubts that they will see great success!

For more information on how your company can start spreading some organic holiday cheer - schedule a demo today to learn more about our blog software.

Compendium Success Story - Winning Workplaces

Friday, December 11, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

A major difference between Compendium's blogging platform and the free platforms out there that make it so great for a business blogging program is that we have a Client Success Team dedicated to all of our clients to lean on through the process, and help show a return on investment.

Take for example my client Mark Harbeke at Winning Workplaces. Mark is in charge of the blogging program for his company, a non-profit that works on employee engagement and team building in the work place. They have a tight budget as most non-profits do, but he has effectively used his blogging program to drive traffic as well as to help feed both his social media and newsletters.

In 2009 so far, Mark has seen over 36,000 visitors from search engines alone, and 70% of his blog visitors have converted into a lead or closed deal for the company. In a recent blog post by Mark he states:

YTD visitor growth of 169%, greater than the YTD growth of all of the above Winning Workplaces social media outposts.

When we account for the increase in subscribers to our newsletter and those who support our mission by purchasing our workplace improvement products or making a donation, vs. what we pay our blogging provider, Compendium, for use of their software, we see an ROI of 147%.

If we were to get the same traffic from search engines through PPC (pay per click) advertising that we get organically (which is more desirable), we would have to spend 186% more!

We are so excited to be working with Mark and even happier for all of his success. He is one of many success stories we hear from our clients, and hearing it from our clients is more validating than anything I could ever write.

I think the comment to his above mentioned blog post sums up our thoughts:

"Couldn't agree with you more! Thanks for your thoughts. All other social media tools should be bringing people back to your blog, and your blog should be your main hub."

Click Through Rates by Organic Rankings

Friday, December 4, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

Using a powerful blogging software like Compendium Blogware's platform, allows a company to enhance their online marketing to achieve higher organic rankings. Our platform is optimized for search engines, and makes it easy for users to enter content.

Take a look at the graph below - it highlights the trending of visitors and where they click in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) over the last several years. As you can see being a higher ranking result on a search page (especially the #1 spot) yields more clicks.

Now the question becomes - "how do I get my site to be in the top organic results?"

With our blogging platform, we do all the heavy lifting. Due to our unique "compending" algorithm, content that is entered into the blog is grouped around specific keywords.

What happens is that a blog network will end up with these "keyword pages" that are full of relevant content, that's been updated frequently, that is all targeting a specific phrase. This is exactly what search engines are looking for when providing a result to a search query.

When this happens, the blog network is served up as a top organic result, and your company then has around an 86% chance of being the result clicked on - resulting in thousands of visitors being directed to your blog site.

For more information on how Compendium's blogging platform can work for your business, schedule a demo today. Plus we are giving a $50 Starbucks gift card to those that view a demo - perfect for a holiday Peppermint Mocha!

Webinar Today - 12/3 at 1:00 pm (EST)

Thursday, December 3, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

Compendium's CEO, Chris Baggott, and Right On Interactive's VP of Marketing, Richard Cunningham, will be co-hosting the webinar - Using Blogs to Generate and Nurture Demand into Closed Business - today at 1:00 pm (eastern time).

These two marketing leaders will be discussing best practices on:

Generating leads through blogging
Nurturing leads to take an action
How to integrate blogging into a customer life cycle messaging

This webinar will be highly informative and transparent to give you the honest truth about how a blogging solution can be the #1 SEO tool for your company.

Click here to register for today's webinar