Managing Your Blogging Time
Posted Wednesday, December 31, 2008 by Jess Wehner
 Having trouble finding time to write you blog posts? 

If you're like most of my clients, I'm sure the biggest challenge for your corporate blogging strategy is finding time to blog!   Here are some tips that will help you and your company bloggers set aside time to blog and be more efficient with your blogging time.  Remember, a blog post only needs to be a couple paragraphs long and should only take 20-30 minutes of your time.

  • Set up an outlook calendar reminder to write a blog post (this also helps with consistency, and will remind you to get a post out every Monday/Wednesday, or whatever your schedule might be).
  • Set up a Google Alert to remind you to blog (they will give you news updates when your company or industry is mentioned in the news (read this post to find out how to do it)
  • Set up a blog lunch 1 time per month and make everyone write at least 2 posts by the end of the lunch (and provide them lunch!)
  • Use Dr. Wicked’s Writing Lab to make sure you are only spending 20-25 minutes on a blog post (read more about this tool here)
 
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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." 
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Blogging for SEO
Posted Tuesday, December 23, 2008 by Jason Gergely
Search Engine Optimization is a tough thing to control. I would compare it to a wild animal... one minute you think you understand it and have it under control... the next it throws you a loop and you are left on your butt, wondering what happened.

If you really want to harness the power of SEO, you have to look beyond just pay-per-click ads and hiding keywords behind photos on your web pages in hopes to rank higher in Google searches.

Blogging is probably the best way to harness Searches. By including a company blog on your website, you are increasing your likelyhood of ranking higher in Google searching. By blogging for rank, you are reaching more consumers who are looking for your product. What a blog does is constantly update the recent data, the frequency of data and the relevancy to the search on Google. And it isn't a coincidence that Google and other search engines are looking for exactly this. If you are interested now in blogging, check out Compendium's website!
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Making a great blog better
Posted Monday, December 22, 2008 by Brian Millis
So I just noticed on the Content Ideas feed in my Compendium Blogware platform a great article about a corporate blog;  http://blog.seniorcaremarketer.com/business_of_aging/

This is a great blog for many reasons.  It uses time relevant information and is kept up to date very frequently.  In fact, Wellsphere has named it one of the Top Health blogs online.  http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1782194.htmcompany blogger

It took me about 10 min. to figure out that this blog is one of the corporate blogs for a company called Fisher Vista LLC.  I couldn't help but think, Wow!, why is it so hard for me to figure out who is responsible for such an engaging blog.  I sure wish I could easily find a company that promotes this great blog, because I would be very likely to recommend them to some of the other health organizations that could benefit from their PR and marketing tactics that seem to work so well on this blog. 

One thing that would make this great blog better is if I could easily navigate my way to the company associated with it.  With Compendium, this same blog could come up in the search engines under phrases like, geriatric nursing, assisted living market research, etc.  It's great to find strong blogs online that give me the information I am searching for.  I wish the SeniorCareMarketer blog was done on Compendium so more searchers could find this fabulous page!
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Blog Research
Posted Monday, December 22, 2008 by Jason Gergely
Ok, so you are looking to start a business blog. You are searching through the internet, looking at different blogging websites. However, hardly any of it is making sense. How does it work? Will it work for my company? How do I get my employees to blog? How will I know if my efforts are working in search engines? These are all great questions when you are doing your research to start a good company blog.

Well it is good that you are doing your research, but I have a tip for you that could potentially end your tireless efforts in finding information on blogging. Compendium Blogware, is a company that can give you all the information and the down-low secrets to blogging. Check out the website and you can get all the information you need on how to start a business blog. This will do at least two things for you... 1.) end that searching for information on corporate blogging, and 2.) answer every question you might have about blogging for your company.
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Why are you participating in the recession?
Posted Monday, December 22, 2008 by Douglas Karr
Economy versus SearchCompendium Blogware is not participating in the recession. 

Why?

Because businesses and consumers' search volumes are increasing, not decreasing. 

If your company was taking advantage of the growth of search usage, perhaps you would not have to participate in the recession. Start a business blog so that your company doesn't need to participate in the recession, either.
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Blogging for Coupons? The role of business blogging for coupon distribution
Posted Friday, December 19, 2008 by Chris Baggott
From a press release by ValPak:  

According to recent industry forecasts, 38 million consumers in the U.S. now access printable coupons online. Simmons Market Research Bureau estimates that nearly eight out of 10 printable coupon users said the Internet was one of the main places they went for coupons.


coupon, online coupons, business blog, Compendium Blogware

Valpak also announced that it's cutting something like 6% of their workforce.   Online couponing is real...but the problem is businesses still think they need some kind of middleman to host and deliver their coupons.   No no no!

Anyone can start a business blog, and any company blogger can host their own coupons.   If coupons are part of your marketing mix, your corporate blogging strategy should absolutly include those coupons.

Why?  The simple reason is traffic from search engines.   Look at this example of a tire company in Greenfield Indiana.   Now I don't know anything about their web presence by my guess is that If I search on Oil Change Greenfield IN  I don't get directly to them.   My guess.....well hang on, I'll go do the search right now...............................................................................................

.........ok, back.    As I suspected, just directories.   Here's the message to business, your customers are trying to find YOU when they search.  They don't want to find some version of the Yellow Pages or ValPak or any thousand of niche competitors to these two....  They want to find the best source for what they are looking for....business blogging gives that to them.   Your Corporate Blogging Strategy makes them happy because in your blogs, you are going to talk about how you help your customers, you will share your experiences and expertise.  You will blog about your love of the business, your commitment to the customer and your blog will put a human face on your business.

Doing some simple research I found about 150 different search terms that this Garage would want to win....representing about 20,000 monthly searches.   (as background, Greenfield Indiana has a population of about 11,000)

Only with Affordable blogging software can a business hope to get in front of so many viable opportunites. 



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You work in a Reputation Economy
Posted Tuesday, December 16, 2008 by Brian McKay
When you Blog to earn customers, it's important to understand that you become a voice for your company on the search engines.  When I work with clients, the question comes up, "Will anyone even read my Blog?"  The answer is a simple "yes."

The chart below is from Fast Company magazine and really tells the story about how Blogging for SEO can power any business to qualified leads online.  When implementing multi user Blog software you can add multiples to the amount of keyword rich content you can create.

Fast Company Graph
Note that TripAdvisor has 15 million reviews on it's site with 11 million or so visits, versus CitySearch that has only 600,000 reviews boasting over 30 milliion visits.  Blogging for SEO using a multi user blog software amplifies how much search you can win with your Blog posts.

Blogging to earn customers doesn't have to be intimidating.  It's a matter of doing what you do best working on a platform that organizes your content to win search.

Start a business Blog yesterday, and do it for the right reasons.  This is a reputation economy where everyone has an opinion about their experiences.  Shouldn't you have a voice in the conversation?
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Comparing Organic Search vs. PPC
Posted Tuesday, December 16, 2008 by Ali Sales
Last week I wrote about the comparison in effectiveness between organic search and PPC.

Compendium Blogware helps organizations win organic search by using business blogs. The funny thing about a corporate blogging strategy (with the intention of search engine optimization) is that is more easily compared to PPC than just about anything else.

Consider that the average marketer buys 1,000 keywords (at least) to win in the PPC area...and based on the effectiveness or winning those same terms organically (10 x more effective than PPC!), then of course any smart marketer wants to show up for those 1,000 keywords in the organic results.

There is a way to accomplish this (of course the answer is starting business blogs with Compendium). In fact, several of our customers have found that comparing the cost of their blogging program with Compendium against the cost of buying those same terms for PPC is the best way to prove the value of their company blogs.

I'll leave you with this graph from a customer that shows exactly what their blogging program costs per year (they are winning several thousand terms organically with it) vs. what those same terms would have cost to buy.

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There's Still Time
Posted Tuesday, December 16, 2008 by meghan peters
There's still time to sign up for our upcoming Webinar: How to Utilize Blogging in your Inbound Marketing Strategy with Chris Baggott and Doug Karr.

Register Now! Only a few spots available!


During the Webinar, you’ll learn:

1. Why blogging is the most effective inbound strategy.
2. How blogging is an inexpensive way to generate leads.
3. How blogging gets your company found in search.

Learn how you can save money, generate qualified leads and get found in search through blogging.

We'll see you there at 11 am EST tomorrow!

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Why not throw a Blog Party?
Posted Friday, December 12, 2008 by meghan peters
I know I talk about great ideas for getting employees to blog so I thought I would share our recent plan.  Today the marketing team threw a blog party to help reach our December blogging goal.

Usually when we throw out challenges to the company they focus on finding your own time to blog, but who doesn't need a reminder every now and then??

To help remind everyone to take 30 minutes out of their day to blog, we decided to throw a blog party complete with snacks and some blog bonding.  

The plan - we picked a central location where everyone could relax, offered snacks and blocked some time off on the calendar.  We had a great turn out and it seems that when we all come together we get some positive results!

If you're thinking about finding a way to motivate your employees to blog, why not get together and have a party? It may just bring out the company blogger in you!
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White Water Rafting Client Success
Posted Friday, December 12, 2008 by Kaila Woodside
Today I started reminiscing on my previous job and experience as a white water rafting guide and how that has played a part in my current role as the Director of Client Success for Compendium Blogware. 

For three summers I worked for Wilderness Voyageurs in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania as a river guide. Every day was spent going down the same river - in the same raft - at the same time. What did change day-to-day was the type of people I was guiding. They ranged from families, scout groups, church and camp groups, 30th year HS reunions, college fraternities, etc. My job was not only to keep them safe – but to educate them on how to successfully maneuver the raft and make it through the obstacles (big waves/holes and rocks) without falling out or flipping over. I had to change the way I spoke, the words I used and how I explained it depending on who I was talking to.

Much like I did as a river guide, our client success team manages hundreds of clients on our multi-user blog software. Not only to they have to change their message from company to company, dependent on the company’s industry and goals – but they have to change their message depending on which user they are talking to. Our corporate blogging strategy is not to have a dedicated company blogger, but to allow each and every person in your company to blog. 

Our client’s dedicated client success managers help companies start a business blog – and guide them successfully through all of the challenges of keeping the blog up and running and filling it with content. Sometimes that means sending the users daily email – sometimes it is by creating an internal contest for motivation.
Regardless of the means, our team at Compendium is dedicated to making our clients extremely successful.
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Rand Fishkin shares data on search results pages
Posted Friday, December 12, 2008 by Chris Baggott
Business Blog, Rand FishkinAnother person who I'm a big fan of is Rand Fishkin.  I follow his blog daily and always appreciate his terrific insight.

Last week he posted on a conversation the had with a web analytics company called Enquisite. 

"Enquisite is a web analytics company that focuses on search. They track search traffic to more than 5,000 sites, including SEOmoz (the rest of their client database is private), and record millions of search engine click referrals every day. From this information, they can see some amazing statistics, including:

For every 1 click on a paid search result, the organic results generate 8.5 clicks (this is on a keyword parity basis, not counting those search results that have no paid ads)"

Clearly investing in Organic Search is a great investment.  As a company blogger, this should be huge for you.  A key Corporate Blogging Strategy is to measure your ROI around search engine optimization.  Why?  because that's where most of the action is on a search engine results page.   According to this data 85% of all clicks happen in the organic side.  

Targeted blogging can help you reach out across many of the keywords you also buy.  By leveraging a multi-user blog software platform you can follow the advice of Groundswell Co-author, Josh Bernoff and leverage your employees to tell those customer stories that are most trusted, and help drive relevant traffic.
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Utilize Blogging in your Inbound Marketing Strategy
Posted Thursday, December 11, 2008 by Kristen Raves
Doug Karr and Chris Baggott present this months webinar on how blogs will change your business.  Coporate blogging can be utilized in a number of ways to gain new clients.  Inbound marketing is one of the least expensive ways to get prospective leads to come to you.  In this webinar, you will learn:

1. Why blogging is the most effective inbound strategy.
2. How blogging is an inexpensive way to generate leads.
3. How blogging gets your company found in search.

Click here to register.
To view details click here:
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Create Company Blog
Posted Thursday, December 11, 2008 by Jason Gergely
Creating a company blog very easy and painless. However, company blogs need several things. One main thing that it needs is bloggers. Bloggers are people that provide content for the individual blog posts. All being added to the whole blog that is attached to your website. By being attached to your website, when consumers do a Google search and click on your blog page, they are directly linked to your website. Thus being more exposed to your product, your service, and your company.

Goals are also a great thing for your bloggers. By providing these goals, your efforts are more successful and will in turn increase your search ranking. For instance, asking your bloggers to post two or three times a week is a good starting goal. This will provide adequate frequency and recent data so when Google goes and find those keywords that are related to your product or service.... you rank higher in the search. And this is exactly what your company wants.
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Big Bad Blog Clock?
Posted Thursday, December 11, 2008 by Ellie Cummins
Blog Tactics By Marketing Profs

In hopes of sharing successful business blogging tips in my blog, and not being an expert by any means on business blogging... I find it particularly helpful to reference various resources I come across. 

My Marketing Profs email today titled "The Big Bad Blog Clock" touted the importance of having a strategy for blogging, developing a dedicated team of bloggers, and having a system so that your posts to hit your blog at the most effective time.  Compendium's philosophy and mine do mimic these overall strategies, and I would encourage you to be even a bit more "loose" with your company blogging efforts by freeing more than just a few people within the company to blog.  Yes you will probably have a core team that enjoys it and is good at it but why not open it up and encourage all of your employees from the top on down to share information?  This strategy, in my opinion, will ensure you have a variety of information and stories around all the reasons your company is great, not just the opinion of a few and that you will have multiple posts per week.  With an admin layer in place, such as the tool on our easy blog software, you can ensure all info, no matter who is writing, is solid and correct for your business before it is live on the web.  This tool along with bringing in multiple bloggers will help your business blog acheive the overall goal of engaging searchers and customers on a person to person level. 
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Spend Less. Generate More.
Posted Wednesday, December 10, 2008 by meghan peters
The definition of Inbound Marketing: the act of prospects calling and emailing you for your goods and services opposed to you seeking them.

So how do companies focus more on their Inbound Marketing while saving money, generating qualified leads and getting found in search?

Find out the answers to these compelling questions in our upcoming Webinar: Utilize Blogs for your Inbound Marketing Strategy on December 16th from 11-12 pm EST.

What will be covered:
1. Why blogging is the most effective inbound strategy.
2. How blogging is an inexpensive way to generate leads.
3. How blogging gets your company found in search.

Register Now! Only 100 spots available!


Compendium Webinar
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I Am Not a Used Car Salesman!
Posted Wednesday, December 10, 2008 by PJ Hinton
Joe Wilcox at Ziff Davis' Microsoft Watch blog has written a scathing post about Microsoft's corporate blogging program, using a blog post by Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff as the basis for his argument.  Bernoff was making the case that the level of public trust in company blogs is low because people view them largely as self-promotional vehicles.

I won't spend any space critiquing Bernoff because fellow Compendium team member Doug Karr has already done an excellent job of that in another post. 

It's also worth noting that Robert Scoble, whom Wicox praises in his post, has been largely unsuccessful as a market influencer since leaving Microsoft.  People may be interested in what Scoble has to say, but they aren't buying from his sponsors.

I took umbrage with the latter part of Wilcox's post where he starts to smear corporate blogging with a broad brush (emphasis mine):
I predict that with the economy going to hell, people will find more reasons to distrust company blogs. A car salesman by any other name is a corporate blogger. He's trying to sell something. She has an agenda.
While there are a good number of posts on my blog that talk about the benefits of corporate blogging, not everything I write about in this space is targeted toward selling our hosted blog software.  If you go back through the archives you'll find content on things like:
  • technologies that pertain to blogging, like RSS feeds and search
  • technologies that interest me, such as prediction markets and social graph applications
  • issues in software development, like programming practices, bugs, and security problems
  • what life is like here at the office
As a company that prides itself on eating its own dog food, Compendium leads by example in letting blogging staff drive the content of their posts.  Even though every post I write goes through an approval process, I get a lot of latitude in choosing what I want to write about and how I choose to express myself.  This blog is anything but a continuous hard sell.
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The Monetary Value of Organic Search
Posted Tuesday, December 9, 2008 by Megan Glover
I ran across a good article from SEOmoz today: PPC Agencies Make 45x's what SEO's do for the Same Value

The post is based on analysis comparing the volume and value of clicks in the organic vs. paid section of a SERP. Here's a really compelling stat from the article:

For every 1 click on a paid search result, the organic results generate 8.5 clicks (this is on a keyword parity basis, not counting those search results that have no paid ads)

I'm glad to see a value being placed on organic search. It's something that we've started doing with our company bloggers. Each month we tally organic search terms (driven by their blog strategy) and  bump that up to what that would have cost to by all of those keywords via paid search.

The results are astounding. We have one client who's into six figure savings.Putting a dollar value on organic search is a really powerful metric to compile when building the case for blogging.
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Where Forrester Misses HUGE on Corporate Blogging
Posted Tuesday, December 9, 2008 by Douglas Karr
The big hubbub on the web today on the web is Josh Bernoff's research paper from Forrester, People Don't Trust Corporate Blogs!  That title is what we in the Internet business call 'link bait', a captivating title that really doesn't mean what it says.

The big audacious bullet point of Josh's research is that only 16% of people trust corporate blogs, less than other mediums.  Josh leaves the meat of the analysis out of his blog post and in the download - a real disappointment.  To give him credit, Josh does tell people that they really need to download the full analysis and give it thought.

The walk away from the analysis is this:
  • People don't trust companies.
  • Since they do not trust companies, they're definitely not going to trust some new technology that a company adopts that might be used to try to manipulate them.
  • The majority of corporate blogs suck.
Compendium Blogware agrees with most of Forrester's research, although we don't appreciate the disinformation that might be spread by the link bait.  Josh knows that most readers remember snippets - like titles - and don't take the time to read the full analysis.
  • Compendium believes that the majority of corporate blogs are not necessarily untrustworthy, but most do suck.
  • We're tired of all the experts providing terrible corporate blogging advice that is prevalent on the web right now.  These voices have clogged the Internet and left unrealistic expectations of companies on how blogging will help them and how they should leverage blogging to drive sales and build relationships with their customers.
  • Corporate blogging should be leveraged to build online search authority, ranking, and acquisition - not simply a tool for building trust.
  • Corporate blogs should provide relevant content that answers the questions that the reader is looking for.  That means speaking to the customer, about the customer, and how you can help that reader.
If you really want to get to the good stuff, download Josh's full analysis, which provides some good advice on When and How to Blog for Business.  His key point is something that Chris Baggott tells people in every presentation:
Like any other marketing channel, blogging can work. But it’s not about you; it’s about your customer. Our rule of thumb is that if the person reading the blog says, “Sure I don’t trust corporate blogs, but I don’t think of your blog that way,” then you’re on the right track.
Where Forrester totally missed the mark:

Josh provides some feedback on when and how a business should blog but he totally left out Search Engine Marketing, an absolute disappointment.  In other words, Forrester has perpetuated the myth of corporate blogging as only a tool to build relationships and fuzzy little Web 2.0 terms like engagement.

Corporate blogging is becoming a key strategy in conversions and acquisition in a search engine strategy.  I can't believe that Forrester left out the search component associated with the benefits of corporate blogging! 

Most consumers start their activity on the web from a web search... that means that your company's placement in those results should be key to your online marketing strategy.
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