Blog Editing Software

Uses of Genetic Algorithm

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by james litton

Here at Compendium in the product group we take the opportunity on a weekly basis to improve the base level of knowledge of our employees by getting together and discussing the world of computer software. We alternate weeks between code reviews of internally produced work and a reading group.

Last week we ran a reading group. This quarter our reading groups are structured such that we select a topic and everyone in the group presents some relevant information on a sub-topic. This give everyone the chance to delve a little deeper into something that are interested in while improving the knowledge for everyone.

Although the information we discuss doesn't always immediately apply to the task at hand with respect to blogging software, we do sometimes learn something that comes in handy later.

In a past reading group about algorithms, I found this post: http://brainz.org/15-real-world-applications-genetic-algorithms; and although blogging software isn't on the list of applications for genetic algorithms, marketing techniques are. Marketing techniques are at the core of what business blogging is all about. This demonstrates effectively the breadth of reach a seemingly irrelevant topic might have and why it's important to continue to think about ideas that might not necessarily seem relevant at first glance.

I'm a Blog Admin! Now What?!

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by Allison Bowen

As an employee for Compendium Blogware, my job every day is to help our clients with our blog software. This often means that I find myself updating calls-to-action, explaining how clients can add users and answering other various questions that our users and admins might have.

But recently, the tables have turned. I have now become a blog admin myself! Now what do I do?!

Both Amber Mohling and I are fellows with the Orr Fellowship program. The Orr Fellowship program provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate students searching for their first salaried, full-time position following graduation. It's been a great opportunity for both of us!

Well wouldn't you know it, we recently were able to set up an Orr Fellowship blog. And I'm the new blog admin! Check it out -- http://blog.orrfellowship.org. I now find myself actually performing some of the duties that we discuss with clients each day. So as a new blog admin, what have I done? Followed Compendium's blogging best practice tips, of course!

Updated our calls-to-action
Added ShareThis to our blog (visit here and send the code to help@compendium.com)
Encouraged my bloggers to blog frequently and consistently
Made sure each blogger has a sticky post set up
Monitored my Google Analytics statistics (admins should get them each Monday by e-mail)

It has definitely been an adventure, but I'm really enjoying being a blog admin. When I saw the number of click-throughs from our blog and our most recent search results, I was thrilled. Compendium really does provide the best blogging software!

The power of the post for a business

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by Julie Murphy

The power of the donut in the American office is amazing. We were given an opportunity to earn a free breakfast by each of us posting on our blog. The benefit for Compendium is we leverage our blogging for business to win organic search, if full participation is accomplished...everyone fills their tummy's Friday morning.

Personally, the donut is not a motivator for me personally but blogging for search with easy to use blog software is. Being the team player, I have been shamed in to blogging so that my comrades can stuff themselves in the morning.

You are welcome Clayton Blogware!

Closing the Gap Between Company and Stakeholders

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by Amber Mohling

Posted earlier today was an interesting article by Kevin Moss entitled Blogging Really Can Enhance Corporate Sustainability. In the article, he discusses the value of blogging to corporate responsibility.

This article got me thinking about the importance of companies not only using their blogs as a tool in stakeholder engagement but also using it as a tool in search marketing.... because you have to get people to find the blog before you can expect engagement to take place.

Compendium's blog software enables our clients to get found on a variety of keywords related to their business in organic search. Next, as discussed in Kevin Moss's article, the company can further use the blog as a tool in stakeholder engagement & communication.

To learn more, check out the Compendium website.

CNAME - What is it? How to set it up?

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by Krystal Featherston

Now that you're on board with Compendium and you've filled out your getting started form, the first thing you'll need to do is set-up your CNAME.

Now if your wondering what a CNAME is, well .... let me explain:
A CNAME record or Canonical Name record is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System (DNS) that specifies that the domain name is an alias of another, canonical domain name. This helps when running multiple services from a single IP address. Network administrators also use CNAMEs when running multiple HTTP servers on the same port, with different names, on the same physical host.

What does this mean for you ....
At Compendium, we require our client select a domain or sub-domain for their blog and create a CNAME Record for this domain. As a software as a service, Compendium hosts all of our clients blogs, including content and images. By using a CNAME Record, and directing to the Domain of www.compendiumblog.com, we have the ability to add to and modify our infrastructure when necessary without affecting service to our clients.

When a CNAME record is set for the URL of blog.EXAMPLE.com, and the CNAME record points to www.compendiumblog.com, the browser will resolve to the content at www.compendiumblog.com, but the browser would show http://bog.EXAMPLE.com in the address bar.

Now that you know what a CNAME is and why Compendium require our clients to create one, its time for you to get your set-up. Click here for some basic instructions. However, if you manage your DNS records through your registrar, here are links to some step-by-step instructions to some of the main registrars that will help you with this action.

After you get your CNAME set, your just a few days away from blogging for your business! So get your CNAME set and starting blogging today!

REMEMBER: if you have a question you can search Compendium's Knowledgebase RIGHT NOW - or fill out the online submission form.

Considering blogging?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 by Michael Burton

Here at Compendium we try to provide all the information possible for potential clients to grasp the ideas behind blog software. We see search marketing as the strongest method to get your business found today.

On our web site, we ask readers three questions:

1. Do you want to drive demand for your organization's product or services?
2. Do you want to start personal relationships with prospective customers?
3. Do you want to acquire more customers?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it is time to start looking at blogging as a new form of marketing for your business. Download the Considering Blogging whitepaper for more information on how blogging fits in your business.

Ready for what?

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 by Brian Millis

I sent an email to a prospect that showed a compendium client who increased online revenue by 40% in less than 6 months and has tracked over 100k in online sales back to blog traffic. This was the response that I got back(kept anonymous, of course):

. . . She was interested in the software and we would love to take on blogging in the future, but we are not quite ready at this time. Thank you for the information on Compendium- I will keep your emails and discuss again with my manager when our time comes to enter the blogosphere.

Ready for what? What business is not ready to increase revenue by better search marketing? I feel that it should be every businesses' time to enter the world of corporate blogging. Why? Because it is an easy and efficient way to communicate with target markets online and convert online traffic to paying customers.

Our platform takes most of the fear out of getting started with blogging for business. I think tha

t these responses come from companies that see this strategy as a HUGE time commitment. That really is not the case. You can log into Compendium, get prompted with your most valuable key phrases, have endless content ideas delivered right to you, and get real-time feedback on how you're doing as you write your post.

So what is keeping you from being ready?

You tell me: Is this good business blog content?

Monday, November 16, 2009 by Chris Baggott

You Tell Me...is this really a blog post?

I saw this post on an ecommerce blog the other day and had to give pause. The powerful blogging software we offer has a complete API, so it's easy to integrate into other content sources, but I had not seen anyone use it to feed in relevant live chat transcripts.

At first I had to ask the question that I'm sure you are asking: is this legitimate content in a blog for business?

I really quickly came to the conclusion that yes, this is not only a really clever way to leverage existing content, it's actually quite valuable for the audience.

Here's the thing: Lot's of people have the same problem.   As a result, lots of blog traffic comes from organic search.   Those people ask questions...they want to find answers.    These live chat transcripts are direct answers to direct questions.   What's great is the simplicity.

You are already having these conversations. Doug Karr once suggested looking at all the emails you send out each day as a source for blog content.   I thought that was brilliant and I think this is too.

Every day people in your company have interactions with customers and prospects.   They help people, provide information and solve problems. This content is nothing more than a reflection of that value...you have already invested in it, so why not share it with others who can benefit?

Will Speed Kill Your Website?

Saturday, November 14, 2009 by P.J. Hinton

Over at Marketing Technology Blog, Doug Karr has written a post about a proposed change in Google's ranking algorithm that would take into account page load times. Under the new system, sites whose pages load faster would get a boost.

In the WebProNews interview cited by Doug, Google engineer Matt Cutts says that the change is backed by several Google engineers who believe speed should be a differentiating factor. Doug says that he is skeptical of Cutts' claims, arguing that it is spin, and the more likely reason is that Google is not wanting to make the investments in bandwidth and computational infrastructure to do more sophisticated forms of crawling.

I have to disagree respecfully with Doug's hypothesis because the assumptions don't match Google's operational profile. If you look back on the trajectory of Google's path to success in search, it is tied largely to their devotion to a couple of simple principles:

be better than anyone else at delivering timely and relevant search results
if state-of-the art tech isn't up to the task, build something new that does the job

This is why things like MapReduce and BigTable came into existence. No off-the-shelf software was good enough, so they built it themselves.

It's also the motivation behind the Caffeine indexer, which is being slowly rolled out to its data centers. By their own admission, rankings don't shuffle that much, but the algorthms behind the indexer get their results more quickly, which has real value both to Google and searchers.

Although Google is arguably the 800 lb gorilla of search, and it has been remarkably adept at leaving its competition in the dust over the past decade or so, it also has to compete in a volatile marketplace.

The cost of migrating to a different search engine is miniscule compared to similar migrations in automobile makes or operating systems. Change a bookmark or download a new browser toolbar, and you're done. Google won't have the luxury of marketplace inertia like the Big Three automakers or Microsoft.

To me, Doug's theory would make a lot more sense if Google was a company that was counting on market inertia for survival. A company that has a lot of cash and is hellbent on staying ahead of the competition isn't about to sit on its laurels and let it's crawling algorithms stagnate. Google has an engineer's mindset, not a the mindset of a miserly accountant.

I think the more appropriate interpretation is this. If your job is to develop a system of algorithms that determine how useful a page is for someone who is interested in a set of concepts, one has to take into account the question, "In what ways does a site suck?"

Google has attacked the content problem relentlessly, trying its best to weed out sites which attempt to weasel in higher rankings without providing real usefulness to the user. Now Google is turning its eye toward presentation. In other words, is the payload for the content being delivered to the user in a way that doesn't require relatively large amounts of time? This approach is innovative because it places value on the web searcher's time.

Another place where I disagree with Doug is the question of cost improving speed. Achieving faster page load times doesn't necessarily require that you invest in high end technologies that are used by the big sites. The tools for measurement and remediation are out there, and in many cases they are free (as in beer).

For the case of measurement, Yahoo provides YSlow, and Google offers PageSpeed. These tools give you quickly produced report cards that can help you decide where to channel your efforts.

Some low hanging fruit include turning on HTTP compression on your web server and slimming down the content of a page to what's really necessary. Minfying JavaScript with tools from Yahoo or Google is easy to do and helps with load times as well.

The next steps usually involve reducing the number of HTTP requests by doing things like asset rollups, where JavaScript and CSS files are bundled together, and using CSS sprites, which combine several frequently used graphics into a single image that are then displayed via CSS properties.

Moving your static assets to a content delivery network isn't all that astronomical anymore. You can use low cost CDNs like SimpleCDN or Amazon's CloudFront. If you have fine-grained control over your web server, take a look at how your server uses HTTP caching headers to ensure browsers are making the best use of their caches.

My advice to worried webmasters would be this:

Don't panic now! This is something that hasn't been made official yet. It's not going to kill your site right away, but it should give you pause as to whether your site is the best it could be.
Don't panic later! By its own admission, Google takes into account hundreds of factors. Your page's speed is just one of them. You don't have to be the fastest page out there. You just have to be faster than pages of similar content and quality.
Use the free profile tools to find out where your site's bandwidth usage is suboptimal.
Use common sense to make sure that the bad metrics truly are relevant to your site. For more information on this, take a look at Jeff Atwood's critique of YSlow from a couple years ago.
Spend some time looking over your page templates to identify what can be fixed.
Fix the things you can.

With this advice, not only will you weather the change, if it does come along, your visitors will have a much better experience with your site.

Gen Y women. What influences their brand discovery?

Friday, November 13, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Can I buy stock in eMarketer?   Every day they send me this great email with relevant content to my business....and yours.

Like this report for example.   Clearly this blog is about education, and persuasion that we offer best blogging software for Business.   Our firm belief is that that Social Media helps a company serve two masters. One is the search engine, and two is the need to humanize your business.

When you see a chart like this, it really helps make the case that if you just look at the responses related to search, online profile, and the two blog mentions (blog written by someone like me and professional or subject experts), you can clearly see that Corporate blogging is the critical hub of todays marketing strategy.

Blogs drive search traffic better than almost anything else...and it's a lot easier and legitmate to simply write often about how you help customers and solve problems than a lot of other SEO tools you might be tempted with.

I also love the phrase: "someone like me".   Obviously, you have people in your organization who fit the professional/subject expert catagory.    But think about it.   Among your employees and your current customers you also have lots of people who can be classified as "someone like me".

Now either Gen X or Gen Y women represents an extremely large catagory.   If you had to make a persona around everyone who could be slotted into these groups you would struggle.   But tactics like triggered emails to existing customers are amazing ways to solicit relevant blog content and engage the long tail of this diverse yet consistant audience.

BizSurvey is sold on the value of Compendium's blog platform

Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Compendium Client Reviews

BizSurvey wasn't sure of the benefits of blogging. After further research, they were sold on the benefits of blogging with Compendium blogging platform. An employee at BizSurvey, Matt Braun, made the following statement about Compendium's software: "Had to convince my boss of the value of blogging, but once I got him to look at Compendium's solution, he saw the light - and within weeks we saw the results in our SEO improvement." The results don't lie - SEO improvement is just one of the many benefits of blogging with Compendium.

Name: Stephanie West
Company: Compendium Blogware
BlogURL:

How and Why To Set Up Google Analytics Goals

Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Jess Wehner

Many of our clients don't have tracking in place that will allow them to fully see exact dollars they can contribute back to their blog software. If this sounds like your company, there is some simple coding you can use to help your team track conversions deeper than just how many visitors came to the website from the business blog.

If your you use Google Analytics to track your website, you can set up a Goal to measure how well your site is fulfilling business objectives. A goal is achieved any time someone visits a page on your site that you wanted them to get to (i.e. a thank you page, a receipt, a confirmation, etc.). Once the goal is set up, you will be able to see the blog as a referring site listed in your analytics, and then be able to see how many of those referring visitors completed your goal. For example, the client I am helping set this up main business objective is to get people to view a demo. Our goal is set for the confirmation page once you have signed up to view a demo. Now, they will be able to tell how many people came from the blog and signed up for a demo - real ROI for their search marketing program.

If you take the tracking even further, you could even assign a value to that goal. For example if you know that 10% of people who view a demo will sign up for your services and your services on average go for $500, then the goal value would be $50. Then you could tangibly measure what the ROI is of the blog.

Here are step by step instructions for setting up a goal in Google Analytics (the simple way):

Step 1: Go to the goals page on Google Analytics, and click “set up goals and funnels”

Step 2: Click “Add goal”

Step 3: Fill in information for goal

Active Goal = On
Goal Position = Set 1, Goal 1
Goal Type = URL Destination
Match Type = Exact Match
Goal URL = Thank you page or registration complete page
Case Sensitive = check
Goal Value = can put a dollar amount of what this person is worth to you

Whose success are you measuring?

Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Stephanie West

When it comes to stories of success, Compendium wants to make sure you know how its corporate blog software will fit into your daily routine.

There are numerous case studies available from various companies' success stories. They are all real stories from real companies that have seen success from Compendium's corporate blogging software.

For more of these success stories and more information on them, sign up for Compendium's free Webinar: Finding Business Blogging Success: Real-Life Stories. The Webinar will be hosted by marketer Chris Baggott, CEO and CoFounder of Compendium Blogware.

The Webinar will take place on November 18th, from 2-3pm EST and it will share the successes of several companies, including an eCommerce Gymnastics Apparel Company, SaaS Event Management and Web Survey Company, and Concrete and Services Company in Minneapolis.

In addition, the Webinar will cover:

Best Practices for ROI driven business blogging.
Real-life examples of successful blogging strategies.
How to set up a blogging strategy built for success.

Don't hesitate, sign up today!

Beyond the "One Blog" Strategy

Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Think about moving beyond the concept of "A" blog. At it's most simplistic, a search engine is looking for a page that is focused on one thing....the one that relates most to the keyword or specific topic. I love this statement by Vanessa Fox:

"Relevance means keeping to a topic, helping the search engine understand what your site is about and, ideally, about one thing in particular."

Often, a blog can be confusing to search engines because they can cover so many different aspects of a topic.

For example, I had a blog in my email marketing days called "Email Marketing Best Practices" and I think I still win that search most of the time today.

Now in that blog I talk about "list building" almost 200 times.   List building was an important keyword for our business...along with about 5000 others.

You will never find this blog on a search for "list building" or any of the other terms we were targeting.   That's when it hit me.

My content wasn't organized properly.

If I had a blog titled List Building and put all my List Building content on that blog, I would have a significantly better chance of ranking on that term. Because I talked about all aspects of email marketing, the search engine is naturally going to look for an easier page targeting the right keyword and offering more perceived relevance.

Powerful blogging software can solve this problem for you. Think of blogging software that empowers lots of content creation, and organizes that content around the topics....Think of blogging as a target marketing strategy.

A business blogging lesson from my Dad

Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Brian Millis

One of my favorite words of wisdom from my Dad is: Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

He used to say that to me when I would complain about my job mowing lawns and interning in an extremely boring company. He would follow this up with a great lesson that has always proven itself true to me. If you always work hard, and put your full effort into something, the money will follow. This was my Dad's way of instilling a strong work ethic in me. However, I think that the same lesson can be applied to business blogging as well.

If a company feels that communicating on a human level with their target market is important, than isn't it worth doing well? I believe it is. And if you start a corporate blogging strategy in the right way and stick with the program, the money will indeed follow. Compendium's easy to use blog software just makes it easier to find success. With a small investment in this technology, businesses can focus on good, consitent content that adds value to a searcher. Here are 3 features that make this simple:

Provided with the important targeted keywords for your business
Endless stream of content ideas
Immediate feedback on how you're doing writing keyword rich content

Go ahead, request a demo and we'll show you how easy business blogging really can be. Remember, if you think that search marketing is worth doing, isn't it worth doing well?

What's your claim to fame?

Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Stephanie West

Companies have found their claim to fame in various ways. Some companies are fortunate enough to have found a big break, but most companies aren't that fortunate.

http://thecowhideglobe.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html

I'm not a company - I am just an intern, so I'm always looking for my big break. I think my big break came at the Indiana Pacers game tonight. For the first time ever, I was on the kiss cam. It was a scene straight out of the movie, "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days." It was classic. My claim to fame was in Conseco Fieldhouse on a jumbo screen in front of 10,000 people. I got lucky.

But not everyone gets a big break like I did.

Most companies need to work toward whatever their "claim to fame" may be. A company's "claim to fame" is generally its service or product.

So how do you get noticed?? One way is to BLOG!

Corporate blogging is a great way to share your success with internet searchers - or anyone that is looking for what you have to offer. By using Compendium's simple blogging software, you can have your fame just by blogging for your business.

I got lucky by getting on the kiss cam - it's not always that easy though! The best way to get found is sharing your service or product with others - so start by using Compendium's corporate blog software!

Disclaimer: I really was on the kiss cam last night but it's not my claim to fame. It was used as an example for this blog post...

Take a lesson from the NFL: Momentum Matters

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 by Michael Burton

After watching football all day Sunday, specifically the Colts game, I realized how much momentum plays into a game of football. It can either hurt you or help you, but the important thing to realize is that it just takes a small jolt of success to get the ball rolling and everything else just starts to fall into place.

Take the Colts game for example; in the first half, Texans quarterback Matt Schaub had about 60 yards, completed very few passes and was sacked multiple times. By the end of the game, he had completed 75% of his passes for over 300 yards and came up 5 feet wide left of winning the game.

This just goes to show that it only takes a small push and some precise adjustments to turn things around and find success. It wasn't until I really started thinking about the ideas of momentum that I realized how much that relates to the world of business blogging software.

No matter what your former marketing strategies looked like, taking the step to starting a blog for you business will be the perfect jump start to getting your new marketing campaign underway. Once you get into a "blogging groove" and find your niche, creating powerful, effective posts comes naturally and helps to further the success of your blog.

Peyton Manning leads all current NFL quarterbacks in most 4th quarter comebacks, meaning that he is the expert in changing his team's momentum when it really counts. He does this with a great coaching staff leading him along the way... Take a page from his book and contact Compendium today for some great coaching on how to utilize blogging in your business!

TCLogic happy with blogging results with Compendium

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 by Compendium Client Reviews

TCLogic is seeing results with Compendium's blogging software. The company is happy with its blogging results and it is particularly happy with its ranking on important keywords - which has been its main goal all along. Rich Murphy, from TCLogic, said that its "blog is outperforming its website with 327 visits in the last 30 days (48% from search). The blog also serves as a #2 referrer to the website (behind email campaign)."

Name: Stephanie West
Company: Compendium Blogware
BlogURL:

The path of successful business blogging

Monday, November 9, 2009 by Michael Burton

The purpose and success within Compendium's powerful blogging software breaks down into three simple steps...

Blogging --> SEO Opportunities --> Customer Conversion Opportunities

Obviously, the goal for anyone reaching out to customers online is customer conversion. It is not enough for visitors to spend time looking at your blogs; you want them to find your website, find your products/services and make the purchase! All of this comes most easily through strong SEO Tools.

SEO Opportunities are the best way for a searcher to find your blog. Nearly every searcher ends up clicking on the top few listings in a Google or Bing search and having your blog listed at the top will lead to visitors finding your page. And this all comes from consistent, relevant blog postings.

Blogging is the obvious starting point. Without a strong base to begin your online marketing campaign, you'll have no potential to see changes. Blogging gets those key phrases you care about listed high on Google and other search engines so searchers can find you. Compendium's affordable blogging software will help get this system underway!

Finding New Ways to Market Your Business

Friday, October 16, 2009 by Chandra Chaves

Each week I am overwhelmed by the amount of mail that I continue to receive from various company who want my business. Coupons, sales ads, etc. I am always throwing them away and thinking how much money do these companies spend on these thick paper advertisements and coupons? Then I think, if they are spending the money to send these advertisements and coupons to consumers, then they are spending way to much money on marketing their business.

In today's world most of us use the computer to find what we need. Why should companies spend money on such marketing ads, when we can find that information ourselves with a few clicks?

Companies should invest their money into new strategies for the ever changing market. Compendium has that solution. Compendium sells affordable blogging software that will save consumers money as well as put money into their pockets. The easy to use blog software enables the client to put the power into their hands by blogging about the company and its experiences and customer experiences. It adds that human element to marketing that gets lost in the shuffle. Why not blog for business? Blogging about your business allows consumers to find your business just by providing certain keywords that pertain to your business. So when searchers are looking for a certain brand or a specific type of product, you want to be blogging! Save consumers time and money by getting rid of the needless paper advertisements and go green. Let people search for you on the net, but of course, you need to always blog about your business!!!