Ok, so I try not to do double Seth Godin references but he seems to be so timely for what I'm doing. His most
recent blog post begins with this quote:
"The problem with "everyone" is that in order to reach everyone or teach everyone or sell to everyone, you need to so water down what you've got you end up with almost nothing."
This is what I find so hilarious about most of the corporate blogs I read. Often time these busy business men and women spend time manually tagging or categorizing their freeware blog for things like: social media, agency, advice, technology, etc. etc.
These are such general topics for organization. Most of these people tell me that they spend time blogging for SEO and do this organization so they will be found in the search engine by qualified prospects. If you are a branding agency, why would someone search just "branding" or "agency"?! They wouldn't. They would search something like "
branding agency in charlotte".
Seth's advice is great to heed when thinking about corporate blogging. If you try and make your blog about EVERYTHING or appealing to EVERYONE . . . . almost NO ONE will find you. Or you could look at it this way: A company that creates one blog and fills it with info ranging from industry news to product information simply waters down the blog, trying to make it about EVERYTHING. This means it will not be found by ANYONE or be a useful vehicle for getting found in search and driving traffic.
And this is why Compendium's structure is brilliant. Blog about EVERYTHING and let the software take care of the organization that actually makes it relevant to the searcher and the search engine.
(4th in a series of 5)Common Mistake #4:
The reason blogs are successful SEO tools is because they allow you to update them as frequently as you want. This is what the Search Engines love! They will send their web crawlers to your site looking for new content, and if they continue to find new content every time, they will come back more often and more frequently.
On the same hand, if the web crawler does not find new content, it will be trained to not come back as often or as frequently. Allowing your competition to surpass you.
Your business blog will not be very successful if the web crawlers aren't able to find new content. Make it discoverable and both the web crawlers and your readers/potential new customers will be able to find you.
Answer:There are a few ways to make a blog more easily discovered by web crawlers, but
the #1 way is to always be creating new content, and posting it frequently (on average a blog network should be generating at least 25 posts per month).Other ways include:
- Adding a link on your company home page to the blog.
- Publicize the blog in newsletters, email signatures, and marketing collateral.
- Integrate the blog with other social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.
- Optimize content for search engines by always using at least one exact keyword phrase in your blog post and post title. (do not keyword stuff though - its spam!)
Common Mistake #1Common Mistake #2Common Mistake #3
Corporate Blogging is all about credibility and search marketing. By organizing relevant content that is frequently updated you are essentially building targeted organic landing pages. Content drives this strategy, but don't forget ever that inbound links are really valuable too. Generally I fall into the camp that if your company bloggers create great content and that content targeting search, then you will dramatically increase the reach of your blogs and links will come naturally.
Sometimes however you might need to 'Prime the Pump' and engage in some strategies to legitimately go out and get some links.
This particular tactic is not my original idea but one I've been working on after a post by
Rand Fishkin. The idea is sort of back to the Zig Ziglar quote that has been around forever:
"You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want."
There is really nothing new conceptually with Social Media. The ideas are the same as they were before brand corruption, now we just have the tools to actually execute.
Rand's idea is to target people you know and write a testimonial about them. The key is not to put this testimonial on your blog, but offer it up for them to put on their own blog.
Another spin on this is the offer to be a guest blogger. I use Google alerts to keep track of who's blogging in my industry, that gives me a steady stream of fellow advocates to reach out to.
This morning, Compendium proudly released the ability to preview your blog post within your live blog template. Prior to today,when creating post as a user the options available were to save as a draft, submit my post to the administrator for moderation or preview the post in new window to ensure video worked properly.
Today, when a user selects preview post, they will now view their content as it would appear live on the web. A nice enhancement to our easy to use blogging software which allows users an extra reassurance that their content will represent the company well on the corporate blog.
As a member of the product support team, we are always working to request enhancements to the product that will enhance each users experience and provide the best blogging software to our clients.
If you have a suggestion, fill our the
web form and we will add it to our product log for enhancements. Yes, these enhancements are prioritized by customer request, so every vote matters.
Empathy doesn't come to natural to most of us. Potentially it is a lacking quality across my seemingly selfish generation, but I have to make a conscious effort towards empathy in any given situation.
Our friend, Seth Godin, recently wrote about
empathy in marketing noting that marketers and the fact that as marketers we can try as we might to be empathetic and we may think we understand the hopes and dreams along with the woes of any given demographic, but we really don't. And when we think we do, we are likely making broad, incorrect generalizations.
What can we do about this? And how does empathy really work? I consider empathy to be very close to the idea of a "similar situation" sales approach (i.e. - I'm just like you; let me solve your problem like I did for someone just like you, etc.). The truest form of empathy is truly being in the same situation...not faking it or making assumptions. How do you create this feeling of empathy through blogging? You enable multiple individuals throughout your organization to create content. It's amazing even within a small company the socioeconomic, life stage and other diversity that exists and opening this up can be a powerful marketing tool.
Another way in which empathy is natural from a search perspective is through known data. Although I can agree as Seth warns that mixing empathy in marketing is rather dangerous --- the fact that through search and tracking tools we are able to tie back the search terms that an eventual buyer or "conversion" came to our website or blog from, therefore, as we learn more about the individual we can begin to make these somewhat dangerous assumptions such as "Stay at home moms generally search with terms such as XYZ where as working mothers usually search on terms such as ABC" and using these data backed assumptions to create better custom landing pages, blog templates, calls to action within a blog and so forth.
It might be a stretch and empathy may never be a natural quality in many of our everyday lives, but I believe that some of the benefits of empathy in marketing can be found through blogging and search.
Recently I started writing about common mistakes we see when a company begins a blog marketing program. To continue with the series, I wanted to discuss the expectations regarding the amount and frequency of content generation.
(2nd in a series of 5)Common Mistake #2:
This is one of the most common misconceptions we see with new clients, is the understanding of how a search marketing effort becomes effective. When looking at our most successful clients, it is when they continue to fuel their content machine, and frequently put out new blog posts.
Think about blogs that you read on a regular basis - how often do they publish content? Typically it is multiple times per week, and is on a scheduled basis. So that you as the reader begin to count on when you'll see new information. Same story with the web crawlers - the frequency that your network creates content will train the crawlers to come back and crawl your site more frequently and see you as an authoritative answer.
Answer:Blogging on a regular basis is a hard habit to get into, but similar to going to the gym, once you get in the routine you'll find that it is an enjoyable experience, and the results will encourage you along the way. Get other individuals at your company to help write content, so that not one person is shouldering the load.
Also, with our easy to use blog software and post scheduling feature, you'll be able to schedule when a blog post shows live to the web, so that if you aren't able to put content out everyday, you'll at least look like you are! ;)
Remember that anything can be good blog fodder so talk about that great conversation you had with a client, or a new product that's coming out, or a recent article in your industry and how your company plays a role.
(
Common Mistake #1)
In the spirit of the Halloween here are five fabulous tricks to help you get the treat (business blogging leads).
1.
Use images of people. People respond to people and buy from people. Just make sure that the person in the image is looking at the action you want them to take not away from it.
2. Eye-catching colors are always good to use - in moderation of course. Get my attention but don't overpower me.
3. Say something that will really get them to think. Starting a CTA with a question is always a good start.
4. Make sure your offering a
variety of Calls To Action. Your corporate blog will have visitors that are ready to purchase right now as well as visitors that are only ready to commit to a newsletter. Don’t miss out – cater to all of the groups.
5. Never give it away for free. Make sure you capture your visitors data.
While creating quality CTAs can be tricky don't worry we are here to help. Just reach out to your client success manager for strategy and guidance around improving your CTAs.
Part of the fun of having a corporate blog is that it allows the personality of the employees to shine, and allow potential and existing customers to engage with your staff.
So along that note, I wanted to share a bit of Compendium's personality during this festive weekend! Ladies and Gentleman....feast your eyes on one of our Business Development Managers - Brian Graham:
(Kudos to Brian for creating and sewing this Two-Face outfit together on his own - I'm sorry I missed the leopard print boot though...) The best part about this picture is that Brian was on a demo with a client while allowing me to take advantage and publish his picture web-wide (Brian - any publicity deals you land from this, I get 15%).
Some might think this is a crazy office, but that's whats fantastic about working here. We are all passionate about what we do, and we have fun with it! That personality allows our customers to have fun too. The other thing that happens now, is that you probably feel a little closer to Brian, right? Feel like you might know him, would enjoy talking with him, etc - you've engaged with him!!
Obviously, a blog for search engine optimization is key, but don't forget to allow your human side to show too!
Here's hoping everyone has a safe and spooky Halloween!
So you may be asking yourself, "What's the deal with all this talk about social media? It seems like people are talking about it everywhere, but I have no idea what they're talking about..."
That is a common question these days. Social networking has been growing for the past couple of years and recently has boomed into playing a huge role in business and marketing.
At Compendium,
we know the potential of social media and the seemingly endless ways it can be used in helping your business.
In a recent webinar, Compendium Co-Founder
Chris Baggott teamed up with
Kyle Lacy, the CEO of
Brandswag, to discuss why marketers and consumers are becoming obsessed with social media and how it can play a role in your company.
If you would like more information on this topic, as well as ways to combine business blogging software with social media to create ROI, I suggest
checking out the replay of the webinar.
If you still have questions after watching it,
contact a Compendium representative, and they can help you figure out where exactly blogging fits in your business.
Jay-Z called for the Death of Autotune, I'm calling for the death of Stock Imagery. Yeah right. Stock images are ok I guess because you can find a visual that represents what you're writing about in your blog kind of. Like if you're writing about "social media" you can find a stock image of some little icon people in a circle... you know, to really drive the idea home.
Stock images are easy. But
the most memorable blogs and websites in my mind are the ones that create everything from scratch. Obviously I don't practice what I preach... But I just want to give props to these very cool sites that really deliver one of a kind content, because content is really what separates a succesful business blog from an okay one.
IDEO and
alistapart.com are two examples that I know of who create custom graphics and illustrations to represent their content. Not an easy task! But it pays off brilliantly. The old design saying goes something like this: you're supposed to design around the content. Chances are a stock image can't express exactly what you wanted to say and also maintain the graphic standards of your brand. Granted not all of us have the budget for such customization, but maybe it's as easy as asking a local art student to pump out some drawings for you. Or asking your buddy the aspiring photographer to get some shots. Whatever it is, wouldn't it make for a much more beautiful internet if each site we visited had it's own unique look and feel, even in the content.
Here's what the heck i'm talking about in case I've lost you.
Exhibit A. Ideo.com's patterns... Awesome illustrations (please don't tell me these are stock or my whole theory is kabosh.)
Exhibit B. Also from Ideo. Notice they have their own style, yet they still speak to the content with the imagery. Even the layout is super unique.
Exhibit C. Alistapart has a darn good illustrator pumping out top notch watercolorings (?) makign each article that much more compelling and interesting.
Exhibit D. See what I'm saying?
It's definitely more time consuming, but again, this customization is another way to make for a more engaging, more memorable experience for visitors to your business blog, which is not an easy task online.
Gracias for the inspiration IDEO and Alistapart.
As part of my job here at
Compendium, I'm responsible for motivating our employees to blog on a regular basis. This responsibility can sometimes be challenging, but if you give your employees something to get excited about - it's easier than you think!
Here are some examples of incentives that I have done in the past that have proved very successful for us:
- Blog for Breakfast - bring in breakfast for the company if everyone submits a blog post the day before. Trust me, everyone will blog for some delicious donuts and coffee!
- Gift Cards - I give out a lot of gift cards for employees that blog. Try having a raffle and put in everyone's name who submitted a blog post then draw a few winners for $10 gift cards.
- Monthly Gifts - each month we give out a fun gift at our company meeting to the employee that submitted the most blog posts for that month. Everyone appreciates being recognized for something they have accomplished!
These are just a few ideas that have gone a long way for us - try coming up with your own creative way to reward your bloggers - they will thank you for it and you will be well on your way to creating more content before you know it.
Every time I meet with a client who is having a hard time keeping their bloggers motivated, I always ref
er to one of the best strategies I have heard thus far: Smiley Faces.
ExactTarget, a long time user of Compendium, had a tough time motivating the 300+ plus employees to blog. They tried contests, games, prizes, etc - and it would produce a bit more content, but they needed more. A constant reminder for the bloggers. A few months back they came up with a brilliant idea that has worked really well for their company. Each week the marketing team counts up the posts written during the previous week and throughout the month for each of the bloggers. Then, leveraging their email marketing program they send a personalized email to each and every blogger letting them k
now where they stand. Included on this email is the Team goal, blogging best practices, tips and tricks as well as a few blog posts ideas for the coming week. However, the big motivation on this blog comes from a simple "smiley face" in the top right hand corner. If a blogger created enough content they receive a "smiley face". If they have a couple posts but didn't reach their goal - a "neutral/straight face". And if you didn't blog at all.... a "frowny face". This simply weekly reminder that you either helped the company drive results or that you let them down has kept the bloggers pumping out content each and every week.
Compendium's Client Success Team is here to help your company leverage powerful blogging software. We will work with your company to find out what motivates your bloggers, what drives results and how can your company win search through a blogging strategy.
Doug has a post on
adding your blog to facebook, but I realized it doesn't go in to detail on the step by step process, so I thought I'd create a post outlining the steps. Publishing your blog to your facebook page is an easy way to promote your business blog. While posting is important, it's also important to get inbound links to your blog and getting the word out about your new website is a great way to do this. By following the below steps, your facebook page will automatically be updated every time you write a new blog post.
Step 1: Login to Facebook and go to the networked blog page:
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/index.php
Step 2: Enter your blog's information
Step 3: Verify you are the author of the blog - you can do this by supplying us HTML code to put on your blog, or by getting 9 friends to approve that you are the author of the blog.
Step 4: If you choose to use the widget to verify ownership, send Compendium the below HTML code, and once we have placed the widget in your sidebar, you can hit the "verify widget" button. The widget can be removed once you have verified your blog.
"The promotion of weapons is restricted" according to Google Adwords. Want to advertise your inventory of firearms, ammunition and switchblades? Not in Google adwords you won't. So how can a sophisticated, forward thinking business that sells guns win search for hundreds or thousands of keywords? A blog for search engine optimization, t
hat's how. And that is just what Gilbert's Guns did.
Last month,
Gilbert's Guns signed on with Compendium to create a blog for search. They started off with a "test" and are targeting about 50 various keywords covering ammunition, firearms and binoculars. Understanding that corporate blog software is a strategy that takes a good amount of content to be successful, the plan is to contribute 6-8 posts a day on the various product lines. Also, because Compendium is a scalable, easy to use blog software, Gilberts Guns will continue to expand their targeted keyword list with success from the first round of targeted keywords.
Stay tuned for follow up on the success
Gilberts Guns will surely see in the coming months by leveraging corporate blogging software to targeted "prohibited" Google Adwords keywords.
In order for your company to have a successful search marketing campaign, blog content is key. Generating enough content for a successful blog can be tough, but it is essential. All employees of your company should be able to come to
gether to create content.
In other words, your
blogging strategy is dependent on generators.
I remember being younger and thinking that generators were such cool inventions. It’s like creating power out of nothing! With some fuel, some powerful gears and other little mechanisms, electricity is created anywhere you want! Besides adding a little fuel ever so often, it doesn’t constantly cost you, just provides you with the power you need.
It’s the same with blogging.
I know it sounds like a stretch, but hear me out … It takes all of your bloggers (the fuel and gears of your generator) working together to generate the most power for your company.
The more they produce (number of posts), the better the result. The more efficient they are (relevancy of the post), the more powerful the blog becomes. If you’re looking for maintenance on your content generation, contact a
Compendium representative today to see how to most
successfully blog for business.
I feel like I post about this a lot, but the truth is, content creation is probably the top thing I spend time coaching customers on through out my day. I recently sent an email to a customer who is struggling to get content up on their blog - they don't have the resources to currently to create enough content themselves, nor do they have the budget to pay for a ghost writer to contribute content to their blog. Here are my suggestions for them (note - they are a b to c company):
- Can you (or someone on your team) put every piece of marketing material that has already been created up on the blog? i.e. email marketing newsletters, mailers that are sent out, flyers, etc. As long as it is not on the web anywhere else, it can be put on the blog
- Could we solicit stories from customers/potential customers (about their experience with your company) in exchange for a gift card of some sort (i.e. submit your story and be entered to win a $50 giftcard) – these stories could be turned directly into blog posts
- Can we get sales reps or customer services reps to submit customer stories and provide a gift card to the person that submits the most stories?
Content creation is the most important thing for your business blog program, so if your team is not naturally producing enough content, make sure you think outside of the box for easy ways to find content. Most of the above ideas take little extra work and put the burden of content creation on the customer!
Although the Compendium blog software is very easy to use, many of our clients appreciate some sort of training just to learn all the in's and out's of the system. This is where I come in! I have been working to develop a training webinar for both users and administrators. So far I've compiled a PowerPoint, developed wording and even presented the webinar to our Client Success team and my parents. Everyone gave me a thumbs up!
However, the trust test came today. Early this afternoon I presented both the user and admin training webinars to a few clients who have just begun using our power blogging software.
I began with the user training session. I kicked off the webinar with an introduction and showed users how to complete the four-step set-up process. I then demonstrated how to create a sticky post and how to add pictures, hyperlinks and video. I also pointed out a few other little-known features of the Compendium software.
During the administrator session, I demonstrated how to add users and select target keywords. I then took the clients through the process of reviewing and approving/declining posts from their users as well as comments from readers. At the end of the webinar, I went over a few blogging best practices that admins should ensure their users follow.
Overall the trainings received awesome reviews! I am now working to develop a way to share these trainings with all of our clients. Watch for a link soon!
You can go ahead and mark your calendars now. The user trainings will take place Tuesdays at 2:00pm and Thursdays at 10:00am. Admin trainings will take place at 2:30pm on Tuesdays and at 10:30am on Thursdays. More details to come!
As I continue in my efforts to develop the perfect training webinar for
Compendium clients, I've enlisted the help of a few friendly folks that agreed to be my guinea pigs. The amazing Client Success team here at
Compendium agreed to be my first subjects. Every person on the team is an expert when it comes to our powerful blogging software and knows all the blogging best pratices out there. Needless to say, I had a feeling they were going to be my toughest critics.
After a few technical difficulties I was finally able to deliver my first webinar to our team. They loved it! I received some very helpful comments back and a few suggestions, but overall my first attempt at the future webinar went very well.
Since I needed some more practice rehersing the wording, I presented my webinar a few more times this past weekend to some less harsh critics - my parents. Despite the fact that they aren't always the most computer savvy people, they seemed to understand our software entirely. Great!
What's the next step in my quest to create the perfect
Compendium Client Training webinars? Real clients! Today I'm enlisting the help of a few clients that are willing to listen to my webinar and will provide some feedback and suggestions on what else they are looking for. Watch for another post soon regarding how it went... I'm so close! Training webinars should be out early next week!!
A long standing client of Compendium, Roto-Rooter is always looking for new ways to leverage content from their employee base. The latest software as a service tool they are benefiting from is Compendium's Web-to-Post functionality. Using Web-to-Post, their employee network simply navigates to a simple web-page where they are able to create a post without logging into the Compendium interface. They can title their post, tell a great story about a customer and even upload a picture. Once they are finished they simply submit their post up to the Administrator of Roto-Rooter's blog program. With the administrative layer in place, each post must still be approved before it will go live to blog.
By creating this web page, the Roto-Rooter corporate blogging team utilizes the white space on the page to help the bloggers with best practices, tips, and advice. They even use the space to talk about incentive programs and prizes associated with the blog to help motivate the bloggers.
After implementing Web-to-Post last month the blogging team has seen more than 80% of their content come from the web-submission page. The content is relevant, keyword
rich blog content that tells stories from Roto-Rooter branches all over the country!
Want to find out how you can leverage Web-to-Post for your business and win a Nano? Check out our giveaway a day promotion and learn more.
