Blog Content Management Systems

2009 Corporate Blogging Strategy

Posted Thursday, January 1, 2009 by Chris Baggott

In the early December SES meeting in Park City there was a lot of talk about 2009 being the year of getting back to "Blocking and Tackling" for online marketers. Dayna Moon, product

sales director at Platform A. "As search marketers, we will be asked to improve efficiencies and maximize ROI,"

Dayna hits it right on the head. Nothing new here....Vince Lombardi said this:

"Some people try to find things in this game that don't exist but football is only two things - blocking and tackling".

During this conference there was still some beating the drum for integrating video into display ads and mobile, but to the Vince-lovers this was more akin to a Terrell Owens strategy.

Blocking and tackling is just what Dayna said, efficiencies and ROI. In other words, how easy and how effective.

this is why there is so much momentum for investment in a Corporate Blogging Strategy. Both B2B as well as Retail Marketers are learning that it's content that drives search results and prospect engagement. Whoever has more content thats both recent and frequently updated wins.

Blocking and Tackling simply means empowering your employees to talk about what they are doing...the products, the customers, the service....as Cramer said: "You talk about your day".

Business blogging passes both of Dayna's blocking and tackling tests; It's highly efficient because the blog content is frequent and free. The ROI is easily measurable when compared to pay per click or any of your other traffic generating strategies.

Blogging is Recession Proof

Posted Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by Kristen Raves

It may surprise you that blogging is recession proof. It is the easiest, low cost form of marketing for your business. A blog can be just what your company needs during this slow economy. Writing content on your blog everyday is much more effective then putting thousands upon thousands of dollars into Pay Per Click campaigns, or print and radio advertisements for that matter.

Believe me blogging is the most cost effective online business if done with passion! All it takes is a little bit of time. In just 10 minutes a day, you and your employees can share what it is that you do on a daily basis, the products and services that you sell, and other areas of your business with millions of readers on the web.

Compendium Blogware has the best blog software for this day in age. We focus on leveraging the content you write with the keywords that your organization is trying to win in the search engines. A recent article by eTechBuzz further explains how to make money on your blog in times like these. Click here to view their article on "More Ways to Make Money During a Recession."

Blog Jokes

Posted Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by Kristen Raves

People often wonder why blogs are so easily searched. The answer is clear and simple, Google likes the frequency and relevancy of blog content. What most people get hung up on is the act of blogging itself.

Most days I use our easy to use blogging software to communicate what Compendium Blogware does to the world wide web. Most days the content I write is extremely relevant content that gives readers insight as to what blogging is all about. However, there are times where writing a blog that is lacking some perspective is necessary. To stay consistent with content will get your blog and keywords ranked higher in Google. Therefore, today I am going to add some fun blog jokes I found on the web. A big thanks goes out to CatchThePosts.com for entertaining us with these jokes.

Online Business Blog

Posted Tuesday, December 23, 2008 by Jason Gergely

When I hear the phrase "Online Business Blog" I think of a kind of journal that business professionals use to accomplish several different things. First, they do this to get the word out better about their company, what it has to offer, and how it can benefit you. Secondly, these business professionals are trying to express their feelings on your company. It can be a kind of like a journal but can be seen by anyone that wants to see. By allowing these employees to write posts, they can express themselves about the company and their job, and of course, since there is a content manager, the information put on your company website, will for sure be within your (or your administrator's) control.

Because an it is online, your blog MUST be attached to your company website. What good would a it do if it were not even attached to your website? It is completely ineffective if you don't. By attaching your blog to your website, you are helping with an easy transition from information search to sale of product or service. Basically what I am saying is LINK YOUR BLOG AND YOUR WEBSITE TOGETHER!

If you want to get more information on blogs for employees, look at Compendium's website. You can get information on the service as well as examples of how to set it up!

Subdomain vs Subdirectory: Which is better for SEO?

Posted Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by Douglas Karr

This is a follow-up to my first post on Why host on a subdomain versus a subdirectory.

Matt Cutts of Google has some interesting feedback on this, and promotes the use of a subdirectory due to the complexities involved in subdomain configuration. I believe that when you're blogging for business and tracking conversions, the advantages of a subdomain become a bit clearer.

Organizing subdomains used to be difficult but is now pretty mainstream in hosting administration panels.
Utilizing subdomains opens you up to utilize third party Software as a Service applications that are best suited to do the job. Delegating your email subdomain to an email service provider, for example, is a great way to monitor and maintain your email reputation.
A subdomain can be pointed anywhere, internally or externally, providing you a lot more flexibility in moving your blog between providers or changing your website's content management system, etc. without impacting each.
Most importantly, utilization of a subdomain allows you to control, monitor and adjust your corporate blogging strategy seperate than your other marketing initiatives.

If you start a business blog, I still believe that hosting the blog on a subdomain is a best practice.

CMS Systems

Posted Thursday, December 11, 2008 by Jason Gergely

CMS stands for Content Management System. What a CMS system does it manages content by collaborating data. It eases the management of data. We can use them to create, manage, edit as well as publish content, such as blogs. A CMS can help organize your data, and keep track of your posts.

Some company websites use this type of system to help organize their website. For instance, a company has their main website, and then has subpages under this umbrella. What it does it gives the specific departments a free range of adding information, while maintaining a similar look across the entire website.

It makes it easier in the long run for designing websites. If the website has a small error or something that needs to be changed, you don't have to go back to the web designer because you can do it yourself

Content is the New Way to Market

Posted Thursday, December 11, 2008 by Kristen Raves

With so many advertisements being shoved down our throats every day, businesses are finding new and innovative ways to market their products and services. Pop up banners, newspaper ads, and Pay Per Click advertising just does not work the same way it used to. Marketing through blogging is a common way for the average customer to find you and purchase your products and/or services.

The common consumer just ignores those flashy ads. People are so bombarded with these tactics that it means nothing to them. By having a blog content management system such as Compendium Blogware, everyone in your organization can share their thoughts and opinions. From the CEO to a customer service representative, it is important that these individuals are writing about what it is that their organization has to offer.

By having a platform to share these ideas, it makes it easier for your company to be found in the search engines. Let's face it, not as many people actually click on those paid searches anymore. So why not market in the organic search results? Most companies are worried about how they are going to market in this tough economy. To that we say, blog. It is a cost efficient and easy way to promote your company in its best light. It gives you the ability to write content that focuses on what your company does and the solutions that you can provide to your potential customers.

Room for Personality in Business Blogging?

Posted Thursday, December 11, 2008 by Megan Glover

There should be. In fact, check out my colleague Doug Karr's post today: Don't be a Post Turtle.

Business blogging is a powerful search marketing tool that get's your organization found in search. But, it's also important to sustain placement in search. And, you do so by creating frequent, relevant, keyword rich content that speaks to your audience and humanizes your marketing.

So, how do you create content that speaks to the audience and provides humor, while still selling your good/service? Here are a few tips to keep your blog content relevant and human:

1. Pictures. Don't be afraid to use pictures to support and or frame your blog content.

2. Video. Create your own or search You Tube for videos to embed.

3. Link to Other Blogs - Just as I'm sure you'd find interest in the magazines I subscribe to each month, linking and recognizing the other blogs you read is a great way to showcase your persona.

At the end of the day - people like to communicate with people. Some blog authors are amazing at painting pictures through words; however, for those of us that aren't so talented, I hope I've provided a few alternatives.

Royal Order of the Water Buffalo

Posted Wednesday, December 10, 2008 by Brian McKay

The fictional fraternity Royal Order of the Water Buffalo from The Flintstones is where Fred Flintstone does his networking. He gets to wear an official hat, and feel a sense of belonging to a secret organization made up of men just like him.

The Blogging fraternity can sometimes be as fictional as the Royal Order of the Water Buffalo. In pop culture, it is trendy and hip to Blog about your experiences, your likes and dislikes, and in a corporate sense your company and your products. This activity may be trendy, and have some social or community building aspirations attached to it, but it is doomed to mediocrity.

Fred Flintstone

During a recession, the Internet can provide an abundance of a scarce resource... Qualified leads. When you have any basic marketing or business development strategy, it is grounded in putting your company and your sales team in front of a qualified stream of opportunities to close business. The Royal Bloggers of the Water Buffalo are getting together every day and focusing on RSS, community building, and marketing to their Blog content as an extention of their web site presence.

Where does search fit in? Search shouldn't just fit, it should be the fundamental building block of a proactive and business development focused Blogging strategy. Blogging for SEO disqualifies you from Royal Order of the Water Buffalo.

If you are looking for a stream of qualified leads, and working to maximize the limited budget you've been given to work with, reach out to us at Compendium. We're eager to start a conversation, and shed light on a new fraternity that is open to all, the Blogging for SEO Society.

Time to Rethink Your Corporate Blogging Ideas

Posted Wednesday, December 10, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Josh Bernoff of Forrester, blog, Corporate blogging, trust

Hat's off to Josh Bernoff, Forrester Analyst and co-author of Groundswell for an insightful new report: "Time To Rethink Your Corporate Blogging Ideas"

Obviously Josh grabs your attention that "Corporate blogs rank at the bottom fo the trust scale...." Basically Josh points out that business blogs that act like commercials or PR vehicles are no more credible (actually less) than TV or PR...heck, more people said they trust the Yellow Pages which didn't make a lot of sense to me.

Josh is bravely telling business that blogging is a terrific media if used correctly. Most of his advice comes right out of the Compendium Playbook:

"Blog about the customer's problem. Don't blog about your products; blog about something your customers care about. Rubbermaid blogs about getting organized, for example. Emerson Process Experts blogs about factory automation. If you can bring value to your customers around their problems, they'll remain interested in you. Blogging about your customers' problems makes it far more likely that bloggers in your space will link to your blog, which increases both traffic and search relevance."

The greatest marketing tactic in the history of mankind is the similar situation. Nobody cares about you. They care about solutions to problems. Blogs give you the ability to tell stories (as Seth says) about customers who have had similar problems that have been solved by you. Talk about problems and solutions in the real world.

When you think about blogging and search...people search on problems not on brands.

Another terrific piece of advice from Josh:

"For B2B companies, get your employees in on the act. In companies that sell to other businesses, corporate communications typically sponsors the corporate blog.9 This is a mistake because product executives, product managers, and field marketing or sales support people better understand audience needs. When these staffers speak, B2B audiences recognize their expertise, trust their messages, and engage in the conversation. This is how dozens or hundreds of corporate-sanctioned bloggers at companies like HP, Microsoft, and Sun develop product connections with their particular customer groups."

Regular readers here know that this is the core of the Compendium value proposition. I'm a huge fan of the Richard Edelman study that found "Employee bloggers to be 5 times more credible than C-level Bloggers."

I have to respectfully disagree with Josh Beroff on limiting this to B2B companies only. We have lots of examples of retail and other B2C's. I had a call yesterday with LL Bean discussing this very issue. Why shouldn't buyers blog about how and why they pick certain products for the book. Every time I see the J. Peterman skits on Sienfield I think what great blog content this would be to know the stories behind the products.

Home Depot, Corporate Blogging, Blogs

Although not a client, I talk about Home Depot a lot. Who better to tell me stories about customer situations that might be similar to mine or educate me on the classes in my local store than the people who actually work in the store? Home Depot has 2400 stores and nearly 250,000 employees. There have to be at least several hundred that would be terrific (and trustworthy) bloggers. These are real peole, they live in my community. Their kids go to school with my kids, they support the same local causes I support...Let them Blog!

Anyway, Josh Bernoff? If you are out there listening. Thank you. Great wake up call for a lot of Corporate Blogging Programs.

Business Blogging Lies & Truths

Posted Monday, December 8, 2008 by Chris Baggott

"It's not enough to rage against the lie.. you've got to replace it with the truth."

Irish Rocker Bono

Ok, there are a lot of lies (call them perpetuated myths) about business blogging and social media.    Today I have heard 4 separate examples of respected companies who are trying to use blogging to engage existing happy clients.

The story usually goes like this: "We want a system that will allow our Chief Blogging Expert to create a post and then our customers will come and comment.....alllll kinds of good things will happen then"

Hmmm...like what?

The vast majority of your blog traffic will come from search engines.   Companies have lot's of ways to engage in relationships with exisitng customers. Blogging is an acquisition strategy.

Here is the truth I would like to replace the lie with. Employees make the best bloggers. Employees have a vested interest in your success. No one knows your products or services better than your employees...and perhaps more importantly, no one understand how your prospects can benefit more than your employees.

Organize employee blog content around topics or keywords and you will win the search and win the engagement.

Hey if a few customers will donate content, great!   And there are several stratgies to help get that content out of them.   But customer generated content in enough volume to drive your progam in to any meaningful ROI? It's a lie.

Blog Tip: Be Genuine

Posted Monday, December 8, 2008 by Compendium Client Marketing

As a company blogger one of the best things about Compendium's multi user blog software platform is that you have the freedom and ability to talk in your own voice. Your blog and your content works towards the overall organizational goals but the content is from your perspective.

People are interested in other people. Especially people that they can relate or connect to.

Blog Tip:

Write in your own voice from your perspective. This will make your posts more genuine and increase your audience engagement.

Candy Canes bribed 8 blog posts in 8 minutes...

Posted Friday, December 5, 2008 by Megan Glover

I'm not afraid to admit we incent our employee bloggers. We don't give them cars, phones or any high ticket items but we do give periodic "happies" to encourage them to write content and keep up the good work.

For instance, in an effort to sustain blog content creation during the busy month of December we're hosting Pizza and a Movie afternoon on December 18th (if we reach our post goal).

To keep our marketing challenge in the forefront of our blogger's minds today we sent an email followed by a personal visit to everyone's desk with candy canes that say "Dont' forget to blog".

The result: from the time we started distrubuting the candy canes to the time we got back to our desks (probably 8-10 minutes) we had 8 new blog posts.

We couldn't ask for better results... and it only took a little big of leg work and holiday cheer. I'll keep you posted on our goal and if our team meets the challenge!

Wonder Mutt to the Rescue

Posted Friday, December 5, 2008 by Kaila Woodside

So because Willow is not allowed in the Compendium Offices any more (per Building Management) - I have decided to make her an honorary member of the Client Success Team! Furthermore, give her a title: Da Duh Duh DAAAAHH!!! Blogging Wonder Mutt.

And she is here to talk about one of our newest user interface tools: blogging content ideas. We know that it is sometimes difficult for the company blogger to come up with an idea for a blog post - but it doesn't have to be. Our easy blog software has become even easier to use -- by helping you with the actual content.

The content ideas panel, located directly in the user interface, pulls in news articles that are relevant to your business blog and the keywords you are targeting.This is a really great starting point. Simply read the article and then blog about it. Give your reactions to the article. Blog about whether you agree or disagree. Do you have a product/service that will help combat the issue in the article? Just write about it!

Let your corporate blogging strategy become relevant when people are searching for the services your provide and the news.

Signing off,
Wonder Mutt

It's about the blogging . . . . Baby!

Posted Thursday, December 4, 2008 by Brian Millis

I was demonstrating the power of the Compendium corporate blogging software today for a prospective client who wants to blog with a business purpose. The woman I spoke with knows how to blog, but can't seem to organize her content that will allow her to blog for SEO. As I we got into our discussion, I could hear her excitement build about our easy blog software that allows a company blogger to not worry about the marketing of each post. Let Compendium do that part for you! Just get on, and blog about what you know best . . . . your business.

Here is a comment I just read on one of our client's blogs:

"We have found that many parents-to-be visit our website as a direct result of Internet research of learning in the womb."
http://blog.babyplus.com/blog/infant-growth-assessment

In this post, BabyPlus asks their online customers to send them questions to be answered on the blog. What a great way to get your revenue stream engaged in your marketing effort! Nice work BabyPlus, nice work.

eMarketers and Retailers have Social Media...almost right

Posted Tuesday, December 2, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Blogging, Social Media, Business, Corporate, Retail

eMarketer reported another useful insight today in a report called: Learning to Work with Social Networks: A developing medium offers new targeting options.

I beg you to please remove the idea of Social Networks from your vocabulary and focus on the key phrase.....New Targeting Options.

There is, as of today, no successful and scalable retail marketing strategy that leverages social networks in the manner that most people think.

Social Tools?   Yeah...that's what we are talking about.   How can a Retail Marketer leverage Social Tools to drive their business objectives?

The number one most effective Social Tool is a Blogging Platform for Search Engine Optimization.   Substitute the term "Social" for "Human".   This entire phenomenon is telling marketers one thing:   Stop with the Branding and focus on human to human interaction. What we are suggesting is that you have a two phase blogging program.   Step one is to engage as wide a net of employees as possible to create content (blog) and phase two it to organize that great content around topics and keywords instead of individual "thought leadership".

If you have many blogs that are targeted to specific keywords, and you are feeding those blogs with relevant, human generated content frequently...well that turns a Social Tool like blogging into a New Targeting Option that is the holy grail for retail marketers.

And it's easy!

Protecting the Data is a Priority

Posted Sunday, November 30, 2008 by PJ Hinton

Erich Schonfeld has a post at Tech Crunch about how Facebook recently experienced a data loss that resulted in evaporation of its user's e-mail notification preferences. He takes comfort in the fact that it was a loss that should provide only a minor, and short-lived, annoyance to users, but he also notes that had the preference been something that regarded privacy settings, the results could have been much worse.

As a developer, I have an idea of what might have happened in the data loss. I wouldn't want to be the person who was responsible for the data loss. It's good that we see these stories because it's a sobering reminder of the dangers of working with live data.

Almost every web-based application has to persist data. Facebook stores profile information in addition to preferences. E-mail services store messages and the preferences that govern the behavior of the application's user interface. Content management applications (blogs included) store posts, comments, and page layout information.

Usually this data goes into a relational database management system (RDBMS) like MySQL, MS SQL Server, or Oracle. But performance issues have led some to question the database design best practices that have been in use over the past two or three decades. Others have one so far as to speculate that RDBMSes may be so ill suited to some data persistence uses that one should consider using something else.

Regardless, the data you submit to a web application gets poked into some means of persistence, and then later on it is read by the application for generating pages (like this blog post) or making a decision (like whether to notify an administrator immediately when a blog post has been submitted for approval).

The world is neither perfect nor static. Sometimes a bug in an application can result in the creation of bogus database entries. It's not enough to stop the application from doing that again, it's also important to determine if the damaged data can be repaired. If the damage is on the order of hundreds or thousands of items, a script may need to be created to repair the damage.

Here is where things can get dangerous. Repair scripts sometimes need to make destructive changes (i.e. SQL DELETE statements) to a table. It is very important for the script's author to have an understanding not only of the table being modified but also any quirks in the semantics of column entries.

For example, rows created early in the application's history may not have stored ID values for certain types of entries. When these things are not taken into account, a repair script may inadvertently delete rows that may not be valid in current application usage but are still essential pieces of data.

When things like this happen it's not always obvious that something has gone wrong in the application. For the most part things may work fine, but then all of the sudden people notice that information on certain pages is missing.

Times like this, it's nice to have a backup of the database from which to restore the lost data. My guess is that the Facebook development team decided that the loss was not severe enough to perform the recovery. On the other hand, if the decision was based on the lack of a recent backup to restore from, then shame on them.

Here at Compendium, we devoted a code review a couple months back to developing some standards and best practices for writing database repair and maintenance scripts. This helped us to move from an ad hoc patchwork of scripting styles to a more consistent, reliable, and reusable body of code. Some of the guidelines that emerged from those discussions:

Proposed database schema changes should be vetted by all members of the engineering team. Once agreed upon, the system engineering team needs to be notified of these changes so that backup scripts can be adjusted.
Environment settings (e.g. production or development) should be specifiable from the script's command line arguments and then determined programmatically by the framework if not specified there. There should be no hard coding of these values.
If there are model classes or data access objects that can be used to manipulate the data, the script should use these rather than using hand crafted SQL strings.
One-time use scripts should be named after the work item number that they were created for. Multiple use scripts should be flexible to handle a wide number of use situations, named for the tasks they perform.
All repair and maintenance scripts should be placed under revision control.

These guidelines help us to ensure that when things need to be fixed or reconfigured, they are done with minimal risk to the data.

When to Fire Your Blogging Expert

Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2008 by Douglas Karr

I was speaking with Mobile Marketing expert, Adam Small, last night and he vented to me about a recent meeting. A "business consultant" came in and told him how he was going to transform his business... without even asking Adam what his business model, pricing model, competition, challenges, etc. were. Adam quickly ended the meeting.

There are two huge mistakes that I see most businesses make when it comes to blogging:

Lack of strategy
Lack of measurement

Most of the problem is the disinformation that is spread on the Internet. Blogging seems to have this magical and overstated impact on businesses today so every marketer is turning to blogging to help drive their bottom line. But business blogging strategies are failing... miserably. Some sources estimate that up to 75% of business blogs fail. Not our clients.

Additionally, there's an explosion of social media experts and blogging experts out there that started a blog a few years ago and now they're going to tell you all about how it's going to help your business. When it doesn't, they leave you in the dust to clean up.

If your "expert" hasn't defined strategies and goals, and instead, threw a free blogging platform up and sent you a login...

Fire them.

You can't hide from these folks - just do a few searches for corporate blogging and strategies out on the web. Participate in a regional blogging conference. Count how many talk about your business and how you drive customers. Count how many talk about measuring results. Most don't. They talk in terms of vague and unmeasurable strategies like engagement and transparency.

Fire them now.

Authority, engagement and transparency are all valid tactics when writing blogs for business, but the ultimate goal is to grow qualified leads through search acquisition for new prospects and upsell opportunities by building relationships with current clients.

The reason I'm telling you to fire them is because the work they need to do is very basic. Researching your company to get a solidified keyword strategy and finding you a platform to execute on it is a first step. Next is measuring the results! It takes 10 minutes to build a custom report in Google Analytics that will provide you with:

Popular content on your blog and the conversions it lead to.
Keywords your blog is being found for and the conversions it leads to.

Keyword and Conversion tracking in Google Analytics

By measuring our traffic and conversions, we know exactly how conversions are developing by our web visitors. We have goals set on each of our calls to action, See the spike in goals on November 17th? That was our recent webinar! More webinars will be coming!

Our staff knows what to blog about, when to blog about it, and how to integrate other marketing strategies to fully leverage blogging. Does your blogging "expert" do that for you?

If not, fire them.

Blogging and Email

Posted Monday, November 24, 2008 by mikey mioduski

We just wrapped up a marketing meeting to recap what happened last week and throughout November with some of the campaigns we're running. I love being able to see what our blog and website visitors are really looking for- because it so often goes against what we expect.

While our Blogging's Role in SEO and Social Media whitepaper is our most popular piece, we were shocked at how many people have been reading our Blogging and Email whitepaper.

blogging and email whitepaper

You never know how one week will change from the last, but I really think that as more businesses incorporate a blogging platform into their marketing plan, they want to integrate the blog content wherever they can. Doug Karr , VP of Blogging Evangelism, is always working on clever new tricks to take our blog content further. One of his latest creations was a tricked-out new way to display our last posts in the signature of our emails. This shows everyone you contact day-in and day-out what you've been writing in your blogs... And all you have to do is press send.

Now that's integration, baby!

Blog Tip: Repurpose Emails as Blog Posts

Posted Monday, November 24, 2008 by Compendium Client Marketing

If you think about it everyone is consistently creating new content in the form of emails. Email is a great way to get your message out to a specific person that you have contact info for.

How can you reach a much larger audience and people you don't have contact info for?

Write a blog of course.

An easy way to build up content on your blogs is to repurpose content that you have already written in your emails to clients and prospects.

Blog Tip:
Do you email? If so, take your last email to prospects or customers and repurpose it in a blog post.

View an example of this tip.

Login and use this tip to create your next blog post.

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