Blog best practices

Some really great support for the Compendium philosophy

Friday, March 19, 2010 by Brian Millis

Often times I think it is important to educate around the power of blogs in search engine ranking. It all comes back to 3 of the most important pillars of any search algorithm (google, bing, yahoo, etc.) which are:

1.    Relevancy (how well does the content address the search query)
2.    Frequency of content update (what is more frequently and easily updated than a blog)
3.    Recent update of new content (recency, again blogs dominate)

Blogs are THE BEST vehicle on the web to address these, which is why no search engine that wants to keep market share would stop valuing and ranking blogs. Google knows this more than anyone, which is why they own the majority of the search market because of their “Blended Search” algorithm. Here is collateral to support this Compendium philosophy:

Google’s Own Press Release from this week: 3/16/10:
“Google's vision for universal search is to ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time, and deliver a single, integrated set of search results that offers users precisely what they are looking for. Beginning today, the company will incorporate information from a variety of previously separate sources – including videos, images, news, maps, books, and websites – into a single set of results. At first, universal search results may be subtle. Over time users will recognize additional types of content integrated into their search results as the company advances toward delivering a truly comprehensive search experience.” Doesn’t sound like they are moving towards removing blogs, but rather increasing importance of other mediums (including blogs) http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/universalsearch_20070516.html

From PracticalEcommerce.com just this week:
Gone are the days when a search is performed and only a list of pertinent websites appears in the search engine results page. Instead, what can be found now is a blend of websites, videos, images, social media profiles, blogs, news stories, press releases, podcasts and maps. With blended search, all findings— official company websites and YouTube videos alike— are joined together on the search engine results page. By integrating this blend of media into your company’s site and marketing plan you can obtain search success and improve customer satisfaction, ultimately boosting your company’s overall sales. Below are four ways that your company can get started to ensure successful search marketing results.   SEE WAY #1 at this link: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1104-Blended-Search-Four-Ways-to-Optimize-Content-for-Better-Search-Rankings

From the most recent issue of Wired Magazine: Pages 97 – 116 (Cover Article): “Inside the Box: Inside Google Search”
See Key Advances, #6: Universal (or blended) Search: This is the way the algorithm is moving. To include more video, new mediums, pictures, etc. which is all much more prolific and easy to find and organize on blogs.

Fortune Magazine: March issue; page 64 about the changes in the entire publishing world:
Quote: “The only new media life form that has managed to live off those junk-ad rates (PPC) is the blog, a medium that tends to favor breadth over depth and cheap opinion over expensive original reporting.” Further proof that more satisfied searchers come from blog results, which is why search engines are only moving toward better blog ranking, not removing blog ranking.

Our CEO, Chris Baggott (Co-Founder of Exacttarget.com and 21st 2009 Most Influential Marketer) addressing this very question:
Google isn't ranking us because we are a blog.   It's ranking us because our pages are designed specifically for the algorithm.

Google likes specific titles, right? Google is moving towards more specific pages and content frequency and recency.

Google makes about 12 changes to it's algorithm every month.   Who better to stay on top of them than a large SaaS. We have a strategic sprint every week and a team dedicated to nothing but keeping our software up with the best practices as Google dictates. Recent changes include the canonical tag, the 301 redirect, (all changes we were able to respond to immediately) Google doesn't try to hide it's changes. it's pretty transparent about what it wants you to do. The biggest recent changes include real time search and personalization.   Both things that make us even more attractive right?    Google is responding to Twitter and Bing and realizing that fresh content is a very serious consideration in search.

Personalization is even more important.   Retailers are now REQUIRED to have a ton more content.   You have the challenge of building content that is relevant to everyone.   What used to be a mass marketing business. (homepage and massive linking) is now a highly fragmented targeted marketing game.

I hope this helps understand why companies are turning to services and platforms like Compendium to see more ROI on their search marketing strategies.

Blogging Best Practices - Call-to-Action Checklist

Monday, March 15, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

With all the hype around social media, twitter this, and Facebook that, the end goal sometimes gets lost. The motivation behind all of this social strategy for a business is to gain more leads, build a brand, generate more sales and revenue.

So how is the best way to accomplish that on your company's business blog? When individuals are searching the web they know exactly what they want and what they are looking for. It is no accident when a visitor arrives at your site, as something they were searching for brought them there. Utilizing the right words will drive those visitors to take action.

With Compendium, you can direct that traffic to take the next step via Calls to Action (CTA's for short). Here is a quick check list to make sure your CTA is following best practices:

Does your CTA have a purpose?
Does your CTA have a benefit for the visitor?
Are you directing your traffic via a command?
Is there an obvious place for a reader to click?
Do you have a unique landing page available for this CTA?
Have you put the proper tracking measurements in place?

For prime examples, look to the right of this post to see Compendium's sidebar and our calls to action. We try to use images that draw your attention, and make it obvious that its a button. You'll also see that our landing pages are specific to our CTA's and are very simple. That's because we don't want to distract a visitor to do anything else than focus on that landing page (fill out a form, download a whitepaper, view a demo, etc).

Think about the end goal for your blogging program and set up your CTA's accordingly. Remember to capture the visitors that come to your site, and direct them to the next appropriate step.

Outgoing Email on Overdrive

Monday, March 15, 2010 by Tyler Bender

After taking a quick look at my "sent" folder last week, I could swear that my out-of-office reply was turned on. Every outgoing email looked like a carbon copy of the one sent before it. It seemed like I found about 100 different ways to say "that's an approvable post" to both writers and customers.

As a writer, I can understand aiming for perfection. I can also understand taking feedback too personally. So when a writer submits a post to one of our clients that gets declined with feedback attached and they feel like the world is caving in on them, it's sometimes interesting to me how we're determining the middle ground between "this is a blogging masterpiece" and "this is a blogging trainwreck."

We're not launching rockets here, we're blogging for search.

If you're an admin in a Compendium account, consider these things when you're reviewing your submitted posts.

does the post hit your keywords? - obviously the easiest way to determine this is whether or not your keyword strength bar is green. But analyze how the keywords are used. Are they injected seamlessly into the writer's content? Or are they just kind of tossed into some sentences that may or may not make sense?
does the post have a point? - we often preach here that blog posts can be about anything. If a writer can talk about what they did today, they can write a post. As long as the post addresses something that can be tied back into your business, it's approvable. If the post tries to solve the problems of the world, you might want to consider breaking that up and spreading the love in multiple posts.
does the post mis-represent your brand? - obviously if your writers are talking about things that contradict your best practices or business identity in their post, then it should be declined. But if the post mixes with your brand and can connect with your audience, then it's approvable.

This is a good place to start. There are plenty more items to check off when you're going through your blog posts to decline or approve them (spelling, photos, links, etc), but even if a post doesn't have some/all of those things, it's still probably approvable.

Save yourself some time and save your writers some anxiety. Approving posts that, at the bare minimum, follow these three guidelines will still positively impact your blogging strategy.

Study Shows 80% of Blog Traffic Comes from First-Time Visitors

Friday, March 12, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Since working at Compendium (a total of 2 months now), I'm beginning to see several common themes, questions, debates, misconceptions and conversations between the social media world and the seo world. One of the most common discussions I've heard between the two sides is the notion of "the repeat visitor".

What I mean by this is social media lovers often believe that the majority of business blog readers are loyal fans who keep coming back for more - a repeat visitor. However, here at Compendium Blogware we track metrics for over 400 client blogs and notice that the majority of traffic to a blog is from new, unique visitors.

In order to clear up the myth, Compendium partnered with a few social media and SEO gurus, Jason Falls, Debbie Weil and Jay Baer and conducted a survey with 266 companies addressing various questions about their social media usage and visitors.

The results?

Two-thirds of respondents reported over 80% of blog traffic comes from first-time visitors.

So what does this mean? Well, from a writer's perspective it definitely means that you can't assume your readers know who you are, what your business provides, or will understand any references you make from earlier posts or previous topics you've written about. You need to make sure you are writing your content in a way that would answer the questions a searcher was looking for when running across your blog in the search engine results. This also means you can re-use content! If you had a great post last year about the benefits of your product that you were able to see great traffic from, don't be afraid to re-use it since most of your readers will be seeing it for the first time.

This is a great best practice to use when writing a post. After a post is complete, ask yourself the following four questions:

1. Did I use relevant keywords or phrases that my target audience would type in a search querry if they had a question about my product or service
2. Did I establish who I am, what company I worked for or the product or solution I provide?
3. Based on the keywords I chose to focus on in my post, did I provide answers to the questions my reader was searching for?
4. Did I provide next steps for the reader to take action in order to learn more or even purchase the product or service I provide that solves their problems?

By asking these questions, you'll be able to cover your bases when making sure you are not assuming that the people reading your blog are long-time followers. You will in fact, be providing the needed information a new visitor would need in order to make a decision as to weather or not they would like to become a loyal customer.

Read the full Compendium Survey Results.

May the Force Be With Your Organization

Thursday, March 4, 2010 by Brittan Bright

I committed one of the deadliest sins of discount-retail shopping this weekend: I threw away a receipt after trying to purchase my 7-year old stepson a Star Wars poster that turned out to be poster of the Beatles. I also accidentally mistook the Rebel Trooper Army Pack for the Assassin Droid something or other which is apparently vastly different. The look on his little face trumped the dreaded task of making a trip to the customer service department sans-receipt.

As a sales professional, I'm always looking for new customer acquisition strategies and competing for business. It struck me that, despite it's proximity to my home, this particular discount retailer was one I had not frequented often due to many bad customer experiences. This store in particular had destroyed my trust in the entire chain's ability to use common-sense over policy and act like human beings. However this was prior to the advent of Social Media. The article I had just read on Mashables about consumer trust in the age of Social Media came to mind. I decided that this was their chance to win me back! After all, those bad experiences happened before access to so many competitors at the click of a mouse was widely practiced. This chain has had a complete image overhaul, including a social media strategy. According to their marketing efforts, this shifted focus is geared toward customer satisfaction.

Still I prepared myself for battle, determined to use the Force to get the simple and equitable exchange I felt I deserved. As I suspected, I was stopped, bag in hand, by the greeter at the door and asked for my receipt. As I explained the facts of the situation, he just shook his head and told me it wasn't going to happen.

I was not swayed, surely I could find some sensible individual with a gaggle of Facebook friends who would recognize my power and the potential disaster of disappointing a socially and digitally connected consumer. I clutched my Blackberry, prepared to document my experience in real-time if necessary as I charged on toward the Customer Service counter.

When it was my turn, I positioned my smart-phone suggestively on the counter and plead my case. She asked "all you want is an exchange?" I nodded. She told me to just go and get what I needed, and said would work it out.

The moral of this story is (other than my flair for drama) that if you do not create and embrace an open exchange of information like blogging as the center of your social media platform than you not only risk the destruction of an enraged client with no where to go but Twitter or Facebook, you also lose the momentum of an engaged client and an opportunity to redeem yourself. That redemption may just lead to new clients and have the very viral effect that most companies with a Social Media strategy are struggling blindly for.

May the Force of the people be with you and your organization.

To Blog or not to blog, that is the question......

Thursday, March 4, 2010 by Scott Bleczinski

As an old-school salesperson in the software as a service & search marketing world, I am always on the hunt for enterprise clients and prospects. The enduring challenge, as a salesperson, is what tactic can I use to drive more interested parties to me and my company? How can I drive leads??

Traditional means have been direct mail, email, referrals and networking. The frustration with these mediums has been the time investment and the lack of being able to measure 'my impact' or 'my results'. If there was a way that I could create and track the results of my efforts - now that would be lead generation heaven!

With my new role at Compendium, I've realized that by blogging - I actually DO have the power to create new leads & prospects, while tracking the results of my efforts. By using our corporate blogging software and our web analytics integrations, and by following blogging best practices - one can definitely drive enterprise leads and prospects.....so the answer is - yes, blog!

Blogging for Customer Acquisition Part 2

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Frank Dale

I talked to our CEO, Chris Baggott, a few weeks ago about some of his experiences building ExactTarget. Chris was a co-founder and CMO at ExactTarget, which provides a wealth of relevant experience for us to draw on at Compendium. Specifically, we discussed a few of the epiphanies that came out of his eponymous email marketing blog. His email marketing blog has great content and still wins search for the term email marketing best practices to this day.

What I found particularly interesting was the way Chris and ET’s marketing department leveraged the content from his blog. Chris is a smart guy and he puts a lot of thought into what he writes. But Chris will be the first person to tell you that some posts are better than others. Why does this matter? It matters because people come to you to help them solve a problem. If you are not answering the questions that matter to the prospective customer, you lose the right to continue the conversation.

Chris and the marketing team at ET understood the fundamental principle of business.

Provide value to the customer to receive value from the customer.

They also knew that new visitors to ET’s website at that time tended to be interested in fundamental best practices for email marketing. Chris collaborated with his marketing team to take his best posts and turn them into a series of emails for new subscribers to the ET list. The series of messages they created is often called a lifecycle marketing campaign. The campaign provided readers with many of the best practices they would need to launch a successful email marketing initiative. New readers got to see his best stuff on getting started at the time it mattered most…when they were just getting started. This win for the prospective customer led to wins for ET. Great idea, but how does this relate to search marketing? I am glad you asked.

Search Engine Marketing and Segmentation

One of the tougher parts of any lifecycle marketing campaign is deciding where to start. Marketers solve this to a certain degree by placing the individuals into groups also known as segments. A segment is simply a rough grouping of individuals with similar characteristics, preferences, or behaviors. Segmentation makes a lot of sense because it helps us speak appropriately to people with similar interests instead of providing one message for everyone. But with search marketing, we can go one step further. We can speak to individuals or at least much smaller segments than we can traditionally.

Search lets us “target” individuals because we don’t have to artificially place them in groups. The searcher self-identifies their respective interest by choosing keywords that describe the problem they want to solve. This makes it much easier to provide content that is relevant to the prospective customer. But what I find particularly interesting is the way search helps us identify segments. Typical segmentation efforts depend on a mix of qualitative and quantitative data, which you use to predict future behavior. Traditional segmentation efforts are great, but they can also be very expensive. What if we could run hundreds of low cost, potentially high return experiments at once?

When you combine an enterprise blogging solution like Compendium with the benefits of search marketing we can “test” a much larger array of messages than we can in other mediums. A Compendium customer can target hundreds of combinations of search terms, while also testing the content associated with the search terms. A review of your analytics data should provide insight into viable segments for additional marketing efforts. The data analysis can be fairly simple. Look at the top ten or twenty blogs based on the number of visitors delivered to your website. Then analyze the behavior of the cohort from each of the twenty blogs. Look for patterns on your site. Which pages did they visit and in what order? How many converted from each cohort? The data will help you start to identify the problem each group wants to solve. You will most likely find that several groups have the same behavior once they get on your site. You simply acquired them based on subtle variations in the way they think about the problem you solve.

The key is that with a solution like Compendium you can acquire lots of customers based on the way they think about the problem you solve. Once they are acquired, you can place them in a segment based on similar interests. This can be done by either using predefined landing pages that guide the segment members through your site in the order that is most likely to please them or you can give them an opportunity to sign-up for a lifecycle messaging campaign that addresses the problem that is relevant to them. Either way we can do many of the same things that a more expensive segmentation effort will accomplish, but at a much lower cost…and potentially a lot faster. Just one of the many benefits of our search marketing software. If you would like to learn more about our enterprise blogging platform for search engine optimization, check out this whitepaper or sign-up for a free demonstration.

ROI: Really Obvious Information

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Brittan Bright

I don't follow many blogs, but I do follow Seth Godin's. His marketing tips and philosophies are more than just interesting and pertinent to what I do for a living, they also tend to be short, inspirational and, frankly, obvious. As a salesperson I can appreciate his ability to re-frame typically neglected and forgotten life "best-practices" through a business lens.

His post this morning was titled "Try Different". It was simple and obvious yet, those of us who have worked in Corporate America know that this is not always how businesses operate. I have seen so many talented individuals be labeled failures when the same methods that made them wildly successful in the past, fail to produce the same results in a vastly different economy. Instead of adapting and trying something different, often times organizations continue to push harder costing themselves great employees, morale and unmeasurable amounts of $.

While demonstrating Compendium's business blogging software and overall philosophy with a potential clien

t yesterday, I was struck by their response. They gave me the "aha" moment that makes my job FUN. They confessed that they had been pressing on with the marketing methods that had worked for them for the last 5 years, despite the fact that their returns had diminished dramatically. Regardless of their hard-work, dedication and commitment and positive customer feedback, their profits have sunk and they've come to a crossroad. The "aha" in their voice was directly tied the relief of realizing that trying harder could simply mean trying something different.

Here's to hoping they heed Seth Godin's advice and choose "different". Here's also to encouraging you to do the same.

Blogging to Drive Competition & Sales

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Jason Harvoth

Compendium is hosting a team blogging contest during the first week of March. This contest will increase team morale, promote product usage, and generate a search engine buzz around some of our targeted key phrases. This contest has the fan-fair of racing at Ron Richardson's house party in the movie, "Mr. Mom."

As a corporate blogging software company, we are truly practicing what we preach. Take the human capital that knows the product, and let them talk about it. If you were allowed to blog on the products or services that you sell, and reap the benefits of the leads that followed, would you? Of course you would.

Take a look at this SHORT VIDEO, and learn how Compendium is changing the way you can attract new clients, show off your human capital intellect, and be found.

More and more companies are trusting Compendium's powerful blogging software, and their results are staggering. Contact us today to learn more and you could be beating the competition sooner than you think.

How Search is Changing

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

In a recent whiteboard Friday, the (in my humble opinion) god of SEO, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, recapped how the search engines have moved and evolved over the years, and where he believe search is heading. I won't bore you with all the details but here are the things that are important to review.

In the last several years we've seen the following time-line when it comes to search engines and how they determined what was a relevant result to show:

1995: Results were determined by keywords, editorial analysis, almost a manual process
1997: Search engines start to pay attention to links - who is linking to you, who are you linking to?
1999: The Page Rank makes its scene, and we begin to see more accuracy in search
2002: The rise of Anchor Text. Prior to now web crawlers updated on a scheduled basis, about once/month.
2005: Around this time we begin to see web crawlers updating based on how frequently a page is updated - could be as often as multiple times a day. Also comes the birth of sitemaps, no follows, and webmaster tools.

Up until this point, SEO best practices didn't change much. Certainly you had to evolve with the search engines but things stayed pretty consistent. Until.....

2006 and on - The rise of social media!
- Google works with Twitter to make a deal (talks with Facebook to reach a deal as well) in order to provide more real time results
- Search Wiki is created in order to jump on the social bookmarking efforts
- Google Wave created to serve more information about what's happening in real time
- Gmail -- and now its evolution to Goolge Buzz

The recent changes we've seen even in just the last 12 months is suggesting a movement towards social importance that could become more important than the SEO practices of not even 5 years ago. This type of trending will have a big impact on how users look for and share content.

All businesses should have a strategy to leverage social media, the virality of it, and to utilize the "word of mouth" marketing that the popular platforms are harnessing. It is critical to a business to know how these trends are influencing search results, and what it means for your business. Having a blogging solution, like Compendium, to be the hub of your content and pushing it out to your social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, allows you the ease and simplicity of staying on top of this new trending.

Social media and search are coming together in a big way - how is your company positioned for it?

Compending Blogs - What a Concept!

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Here at Compendium, we like to practice what we preach. What better way to show a prospect how our software works than by using it ourself and sharing our fantastic results!

Here is some inspiring information about our internal blogging program:

Since the start of our internal blogging efforts (November 2007) to today, Compendium employees have created 3,226 blog posts.

With the compending process, those 3,226 posts were multiplied a little over 117 times generating 377,683 total posts in our keyword blogs.

So, the 2 years and 3 months time to generate 377,683 combined keyword blog posts would have taken 263 years to create without the compending process!!

Think about that...even the smallest business can generate a ton of content with compendium's enterprise blogging platform. Check out a demo today to see how the compending process works.

Blogging Gets a 10 from GK Elite Sportswear

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

One of the best marketing practices for niche businesses is to start blogging. One of Compendium Blogware's clients is a prime example of a niche company who wanted to create a new online strategy revolving around blogging and search engine optimization. Although the company, GK Elite, is the leader of gymnastic apparel and sponsors many National and Olympic teams, they are still looking to continuously expand their online presence.

Many niche companies need to find ways to reach out to new customers in an ultra competitve and fast business environment. Compendium Blogware has affordable blogging software that can help your company, big or small, like the software helped GK Elite. You can check out their gymnastic apparel on their blog or you can read Compendium's case study here to see how your niche business could benefit from business blogging.

Blog Ideas and Motivation

Saturday, February 20, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

It is important that when using blogging for search results that content is recent, frequent and consistant. A conversation that I have frequently with clients is how to keep their blog teams motivated to continue generating content in order to achieve the best results. I wanted to highlight that this is a common obstacle and one that we even experince here at Compendium.

Our marketing department is charged with making sure our staff generates enough content to meet our monthly goals (150 posts per month as a network). Here are some ideas we've used in the past and hope that you can find one that works for your company:

Remember these can be individual vs team, individual vs company, dept vs dept, or even company vs company.....

Most posts in a month
Most posts in a week
Most posts by 5 pm on a certain day
Minimum # of posts by timeline
Minimum # of posts that include specific keywords

Options for prizes:

Giftcards
Prize Packages
Event Tickets
Food
Luncheons
Extra day to wear jeans
1/2 PTO day

When using a simple blogging software like Compendium, following best practices of continually creating content you'll be able to see your results grow month over month. For more tips and motivational strategies, consult with your accounts Client Success Manager on what works bes for your blogging program.

Blogging Best Practices - Content, Content, Content

Friday, February 19, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

One of the most critical things a blogging program can do to get off the ground is to generate content on a frequent and consistent basis. Without content a blog program will not see results. Here are some ideas to help make sure your team is creating content as they should be:

Set up a routine posting schedule
- Rotate the responsibility of content generation
Assign specific topics to certain writers
- Help fill all blog pages at the same time
- Don't let pages sit blank
Provide motivation for your bloggers
- Prizes
- Celebrations
- Recognition
Ensure your team is filing all of your keyword blogs
- Utilize all keywords on your network

Remember that content is king and to have fun with it. A blog post should NOT be laborious or time consuming. A post can be about anything, as long as you can relate it back to the keywords that your particular program is targeting.

For example take this post that you're reading - it include blogging best practices, but also allows me the chance to show this wonderful video that an employee here at Compendium stars in.......(yes, he'll be murdering me as soon as this goes live....). I was able to create a post that is relevant to our business, our blog keywords, and our end marketing goals, but still able to have fun.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Why Blogging Works for SEO: Part 4 - Links

Friday, February 19, 2010 by Heather Benfield

In case you’re just joining in (which is highly likely since 80% of blog readers are first-time visitors)…I’m on the home stretch of a 6 series blog post (inspired by a Compendium Blogware Whitepaper I’m currently editing) about why blogging works as a great SEO tool.

Read Parts 1-3 to learn about titles, keywords and recency/frequency.

So, what’s so important about links when increasing page rankings in search engine results?

Well, a traditional SEO strategy is very dependent upon links. Google explains it this way:

"The best way to ensure Google finds your site, is for your pages to be linked from lots of pages on other sites. Google's robots jump from page to page on the Web via hyperlinks, so the more sites that link to you, the more likely it is that we'll find you quickly."

Here at Compendium, we believe that highly targeted keyword content is one of the most important tactics in driving good, credible links. In other words, the more relevant content you create for the searcher, the more people searching for the same information are going to run across it and the more opportunity you have for others to share and link your content on their websites, blogs or social media pages to share with even more people with similar interests. This builds credibility and authority letting Google know you're legit and know your stuff.

So by posting content everyday in my blog with similar topics regarding blogging solutions and blogging best practices, I’m hoping to not only provide answers to your questions, but to also create useful content that readers share with others by posting my link on their blogs or other sites to cast an even wider net in search.

I think that by keeping this in mind, it also helps bloggers to really think about and focus on the purpose of their blog posts. It’s not just to build community or communicate with those you’ve already met or formed a relationship with, you can do that on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Blogging is about getting found in search by NEW prospects and forming NEW relationships and providing useful content that a NEW visitor will forward on to even more first-time readers.

Read this great post by Compendium CEO, Chris Baggott for more information about links.
(Notice how his helpful content just earned him a new link?)

Stay tuned for Parts 5 and 6: Volume and Relevance.

Should Blogging be the Hub of your Social Media Strategy?

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Amber Mohling

Have you asked yourself this question lately but can't quite figure out the answer? Join Compedium on March 4th at 2pm EST for a free webinar with Jay Baer.

This webinar will help your business:

Learn where to best spend social media time & resources
Determine what social media is best for your specific business
Leverage social media to drive tangible demand for your business
Learn the social media myths and busts

Simply sign up for the upcoming webinar to learn about the above components and other blogging best practices.

Be - Consistent! B - E - Consistent!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Lee Jorgenson

Is your blog program consistent? Does every ounce of effort you put towards your blogging solution nudge it towards measureable success?

If your answer to the above questions is "yes", then congratulations! If not (and I find that most cannot), then it's time to re-focus your efforts. There are a couple important steps to ensuring that your program is consistent. They are as follows:

- Draw traffic from quality, relevant keywords. Being found for "fly fishing accessories" does not help if your business is selling lumber.
- Write content that meets the needs of those searching your keywords. Don't write about the history of dance if people are finding you via the keyword "dance shoes". Be salesy. Talk about how quickly you can deliver shoes to those who order and what kind of discount I am going to receive by mentioning an exclusive code listed on your blog. That's tracking and relevant content!
- Know your desirable outcomes and have a clear path for your qualified traffic to take. If your end goal is getting your qualified visitors to sign up for a webinar, make sure that your calls-to-action incentivize them to sign up based on what they deem valuable or appealing. Don't have a giant "learn more" button that takes your visitors to another informative page that requires two more clicks to sign up for the ultimate goal - the webinar.

Being consistent is a core blogging best practice. What common areas have you seen inconsistencies that need to be addressed in your program?

Increase Lead Generation On Your Business Blog

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Jess Wehner

I am currently working with a client that has seen great traffic from the blog, but is struggling to get those visitors to take a next step. After a bit of digging I discovered that they are actually experiencing the same trouble on their website, which made me realize we are going to be starting from scratch to start showing leads/sales from the blog. Fortunately, we are here to help! And the client has a willingness to try our recommendations, so I look forward to seeing the results we can bring in and help conversions not only on his blog, but also his website. My recommendations to him:

Add a banner CTA to the top of the blog content (some clients who are currently doing this: Dyknow, Cvent, Fuseworks)
Continue testing - since your website doesn’t have a clear “winning” CTA/landing page, it is important that we keep trying different tactics to see what works with the online audience

I also recommended he work on his content creation and go back to the basics with blog best practices. Keep in mind that getting people to take the next step on your business blog starts with engaging them from their first place.

Content should be short and to the point - it’s ok to have lengthy posts every once in awhile, but for the most part keeping it short and simple is the way to go. Think of your post as baiting the client and then you will reel them in with the whitepaper/case study/demo/etc. You can check out our blog as an example, you will see most posts are pretty short. Keep in mind, when people are online they are scanning content to find something that stands out to them.

I'll update my blog once we've been able to turn things around for this program! Hopefully we'll have some good findings to share.

Universal Forest Products new Blog Designs!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Kaila Woodside

I wanted to take a minute to talk about Universal Forest

Products (UFPI). UFPI has been a client of ours for a little less than a year. Within the first 6 months and following our blog best practices they were seeing phenomenal results!

Because UFPI is using their blog as a customer acquisition strategy AND has a rather diverse group of product offerings and target markets – they wanted (and needed) to give the searcher a unique experience based on their search criteria.

Via Java Script, they have created a few different templates to render various headers, Call To Action images and color combinations for the searcher. Take a look:

Composite Decking Area

Eco-Friendly Products

For construction workers

Blog Best Practices - Making Adjustments

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Lee Jorgenson

I have a tendency to crawl into the weeds of analytics and frustrating details, so I often have to take a step back and look at the big picture. This is one of those moments.

Would you like to have a successful blog program for your business? Here's a tip: always measure and adjust. Don't assume that a simple blog software is going to manage itself. Blogging solutions are tools in your belt, tool that need a good mind to run them.

Starting off with a solid foundation is essential, but every good strategy requires adjustment. What if you aren't trending towards success after being a couple months into your program? Are you going to throw away your time and money and move on to something else? That's an expensive strategy and one that will keep you bouncing from initiative to initiative for the rest of your life.

Measure your blog success like you do your other marketing programs and be ready to make adjustments for maximum success. Sound like effort? I assure you, it is.