Blog for Organizations

Championship Blogging

Thursday, March 11, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

One of the greatest days of the college basketball season is Selection Sunday which is when the NCAA picks 65 teams to play in the big tournament. This tournament is what we all fondly call March Madness or the Road to the Final Four. However, this tournament also creates inspiration for your company's blog! You can create your own blogging tournament like we have done at Compendium Blogware.

Heather, our blogging coordinator, has made a tournament with every department competing against each other. Then at the end of each week, a department is eliminated for their lack of blogging. Luckily, the Marketing department is leading in the 2nd week of the tournament but we still have to survive the last two weeks of the tournament. We, as the marketing department, pride ourselves on our blogging frequency and expertise so all the rest of the departments are trying to beat us.

I do not have any worry though that we will be victorious of our little tournament. Either way, blogging tournaments and incentives can really help your company's blog and add some fun to your corporate blogging strategy.

Quickness at Compendium

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

I don't care what anybody normally says about interning but interning is awesome especially when you get to work for a company that is growing as fast as Compendium Blogware. I was just scanning through our own corporate business blog and it is so interesting seeing what everybody has to say that day about what is going on in their day. From Jim Hyslop talking about hanging out with SEO guru, Jay Baer, to Jason Harvoth talking about why Compendium's business blog software is the right thing to do for your business.

It is so exciting to work here that you just kind of want to run around and tell everybody. Compendium Blogware has such a great software that when I got Starbucks today, everybody was so intrigued on what exactly Compendium does that I had to give my own little mini sales pitch on what we do. I doubt that lead is converting anytime soon but its just fun. Check out our company blog soon to see why our software could be the right answer for your company's business strategy.

Release Wednesday

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Abby Warner

While today was a release day, we made only one client facing change in this weeks release. Now, as the Admin of your blog, when you view the Manage Keyword tab, a count for the total posts on your Uber or Main Company Blog. Remember that these blog counts are updated nightly, so the numbers will not change each time a blog post is approved. We do have something to look forward to next week when we will answer a client's request to have a CSV download of this table available.

It is so great to see each week we make progress on our product development and release new features.

Enterprise Social Media and SEO

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Frank Dale

At Compendium we have the opportunity to be at the forefront of enterprise adoption of social media tools. This is an email I sent to our sales team last night that shows why we are so excited.

Team,

This article shows that the Fortune 100 are beginning to adopt social media. A couple of key passages:

“A study by Burson-Marsteller finds that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using social media tools.”

“Fifty-percent of the Fortune 100 companies from the Asia Pacific have blogs. Burson-Marsteller says Asian companies prefer blogging due to the control they can have over the conversation. Only 11% of active U.S. company blogs had posts in the past three months as compared to 83% of European blogs and 77% of Asia-Pacific blogs. The U.S. blogs also had fewer blog posts."The results show the increasing popularity of the real-time web and its use across the enterprise. But is it smart not to update a blog? We wonder what company fares better. The one that is active on its Twitter account and its blogs or the one that has an active Twitter account but infrequently updates its blog?”

This is great news for Compendium, because we solve a major problem….we give the marketer control over the conversation in a secure, scalable environment. The administrative control we provide coupled with platform security make marketers feel comfortable sharing the content creation responsibility with more people than ever before. Companies with few blog posts all have one thing in common….only one or two bloggers. We solve this problem in a way that works for the marketer and the company. Final takeaway, this trend is not just happening in the US…it is a global movement.

Cheers,

Frank

In a global market, you can't afford to fall behind the competition. Check out our new whitepaper on Third Generation Corporate Blogging to learn more about the best customer acquisition strategy available.

I had to share, Gosh! this content thing is easy!

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Brian Millis

Check out the email below from our wise VP of Operations, Frank. He always passes around such great information for us to read in order to keep up on the most recent trends in the social and search marketing space. I think others would find his email valuable as well.

Email:

Team,

This article shows that the Fortune 100 are beginning to adopt social media. A couple of key passages:

“A study by Burson-Marsteller finds that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using social media tools.”

“Fifty-percent of the Fortune 100 companies from the Asia Pacific have blogs. Burson-Marsteller says Asian companies prefer blogging due to the control they can have over the conversation. Only 11% of active U.S. company blogs had posts in the past three months as compared to 83% of European blogs and 77% of Asia-Pacific blogs. The U.S. blogs also had fewer blog posts."The results show the increasing popularity of the real-time web and its use across the enterprise. But is it smart not to update a blog? We wonder what company fares better. The one that is active on its Twitter account and its blogs or the one that has an active Twitter account but infrequently updates its blog?”

This is great news for Compendium, because we solve a major problem….we give the marketer control over the conversation in a secure, scalable environment. The administrative control we provide coupled with platform security make marketers feel comfortable sharing the content creation responsibility with more people than ever before. Companies with few blog posts all have one thing in common….only one or two bloggers. We solve this problem in a way that works for the marketer and the company. Final takeaway, this trend is not just happening in the US…it is a global movement.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/02/no-surprise-really---fortune-1.php

Frank

Is Blogging in our DNA? Nope, We Still Need a Coach

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Brian Millis

Many times on the phone with prospect clients, I get the sense that they think that blogging is part of our DNA making it easy for us to say that writing a couple posts a week is simple. However, the folks here at Compendium are no differnt than our clients and other corporate blogging companies around. I don't wake up in the morning with THE great idea and motivation to blog. However, because my own livelihood is directly tied to our inbound lead generation strategy using the very platform that I sell, I find time to blog in order to avoid being a hypocrite.

Luckily, our platform makes it easy to understand and connect to a hard ROI. And we have wonderful people, like Heather in marketing who spur us along. In fact, I thought I would share a recent email from Heather to show you that even a blogging company needs fun and creative ways to continue the content charge. I hope this helps other companies learn how to effectively write helpful content while connecting that effort to an overall search marketing strategy.

Hi Team!

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to complete the Motivation to Blog Survey – We had 23 participants. The results are at the end of this email. With these results, I will tailor blogging contests to your preference in hopes to increase individual participation and to overachieve our company program goals of content creation and lead generation.

Just a few quick points I want to share about the future direction of our internal blogging program:

1. In an effort to increase awareness of our monthly company blogging goals as well as company efforts in meeting these goals, starting March 1st there will be a weekly content contribution report on your desk every Monday. This report will display:

a. Monthly goal for # of blog posts submitted

b. Month-to-date total # of blog posts submitted by company
c. Department breakdown of total blog posts submitted month-to-date

d. Individual breakdown of total blog posts submitted month-to-date

2. Additional Keyword research and testing in an effort to create not only high quantity of blog posts but high quality blog posts as well.

3. Monthly lunch and learn sessions to provide tips, ideas and open communication for content creation, motivation, blogging success and overall program suggestions.

4. WE ONLY HAVE 5 BUSINESS DAYS TO SUBMIT 18 POSTS AS A COMPANY TO MEET THIS MONTH’S GOAL. I know together we can reach this goal by the end of the week! Please refer to Sarah’s “Best Places to Work” email sent today or the resource library on our website for additional content ideas. Thanks in advance for working together as a team to reach the company’s goal. ~Heather

Why Blogging Works for SEO: Part 5 - Volume

Monday, February 22, 2010 by Heather Benfield

For those of you who may just be running across this blog, you must be thinking…”Part 5?! Where in the world are parts 1-4 and what’s this all about?”

To bring you up-to-speed, I’ve been writing a 6 part series blog post about why blogging works for SEO – something that sparked my interest after editing and reviewing one of our Compendium Whitepapers (look for it late February-early March).

You can check out parts 1-4 here: Titles, Keywords, Recency/Frequency, and Links.

So what does volume have to do with blogging for search?

Unlike past posts that may have taken a little longer to explain, volume is short, simple and to the point.

The number of blogs an organization manages, plus the number of posts generated, increases the amount of search traffic due to the increased amount of content.

At Compendium, we focus on effectively scaling content so it can be used in multiple, unique ways. (To see exactly how it works, sign up for a demo now).

Many smaller organizations may not have the blogging resources available like larger organizations, but the beauty about Compendium’s platform is it leverages existing content in various ways, organizing content through multiple blogs which in turn dramatically increases search traffic.

Need to see it to believe it? Schedule a demo today!

Stay tuned for part 6 – Relevance

500% ROI for Professional Services Client with Enterprise Blogging Software

Friday, February 19, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Just completed a new success story from one of our professional services clients, Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP. Seriously, who wouldn't love sharing great search marketing success stories every day as their job?! I couldn't ask for a more positive, cheerful and rewarding experience.

Enjoy!

Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP., an Indianapolis based law firm, handles a wide array of business law matters from formation, employment, licensing and trademarks, to litigation, collections and commercial real estate. With such a diverse client base for a local company, the firm was searching for a way to earn new national and international clients through organic search as well as further its recognition among the leading Entrepreneurial Law Firms worldwide.

In May 2008, Alerding Castor Hewitt looked to Compendium Blogware for an enterprise blogging software solution that would increase their ROI from online initiatives and provide high level client conversion.

After a year of producing highly relevant content for 60 targeted keyword blogs, Alerding Castor Hewitt calculated a 500% ROI with just a 2 hour/week investment. For a further breakdown, the company produces on average 12 posts/month ranking 46% of targeted keyword blogs in the top 100 Google search results. This online exposure generates hundreds of unique blog visitors per month.

Alerding Castor includes a unique phone number as a Call-to-Action (CTA) in the sidebar of their blogs encouraging prospective partners to contact them for more information. Although the firm does not provide revenue numbers generated from this CTA, they do note they receive several calls per month from businesses stating they found their blogs in organic search results and have converted enough of these leads to achieve a 500% ROI within the first year of their corporate blogging program.

To find out how you can experience such great success, sign up for a demo today!

Is Your Company Blogging?

Thursday, February 18, 2010 by Kelly Simon

How can blogging for business support your company's marketing efforts? It's simple, increase the probability of prospects finding your product or service by implementing a blog for business.

The article, 'Blog Benefits: Traffic, Links and Indexed Pages,' neatly summarizes the power of blogging for search. Companies with a blog have:

55% more visitors
97% more inbound links
434% more indexed pages

True, a successful blogging program requires a commitment to generating interesting and relevant content, but consider the alternative...you could do nothing and let your competition win out time and again in search. See what blogging can do for your company with Compendium Blogware's powerful blogging software.

Why Blogging Works for SEO: Part 1 - Titles

Monday, February 15, 2010 by Heather Benfield

The #1 reason clients choose to start a blogging program with Compendium Blogware is to get found in organic search.

So how does blogging work for SEO, you might ask? Good question - Keep reading to find out.

I'm currently editing a Compendium Whitepaper-in-progress (look for it on our website towards the end of February) that does a great job of explaining the marriage between blogging and SEO. It elaborates on several factors that cause blogging to be successful for SEO.

So, instead of writing a ridiculously long blog post (even longer than this one already is) that you may only make ¼ of the way through before losing interest, I will highlight the 6 main factors in a series of 6 different posts.

The 6 main factors search engines look for on a webpage when determining the rank of organic search results include:

1. Titles

2.    Keywords
3.    Recency/Frequency
4.    Links
5.    Volume
6.    Relevance

So let’s get started with Titles!

SEO Expert, Steven Bradley states, “By far the most important piece of writing you’ll do on any given page is your page title. Search engines consider your page title to be very indicative of what can be found on the page.”

So, what does this mean for bloggers? By titling your blogs with keywords your prospects are searching for and effectively organizing content around those keywords, winning organic search results increases significantly. Contrary to popular belief, catchy, quirky titles do little to enhance the effectiveness of your corporate blogs. Instead, the focus should be on conveying the product or service you’re targeting in your blog(s).

For example, Compendium Client, Lydia’s Uniforms, includes the phrase “Stylish Medical Scrubs” in their blog title. So, when prospective customers type the phrase, “stylish medical scrubs” in the search box, they will find Lydia’s Uniforms blog at the top of their organic search results. When the prospect clicks on the blog, they will find relevant content that was written and focused on that specific keyword search phrase. The semantics are simple, straightforward, and descriptive of the products Lydia’s Uniforms offers. Basically, use the words you think people are using in search in your titles so once the prospect comes to your blog, they will immediately be interested in reading more.

If you found this blog in organic search results, I would hope you typed something in your search query like "blogging and SEO" or "how to title a blog" and found the title of my post and content relevant to the information you were looking for. If not, leave me a comment and I'd be more than happy to answer the questions you were really looking to get answered.

In the meantime, stay tuned for part 2 – Keywords.

To learn more about blogging for search, check out this great webinar: Why Blogs are your #1 Search Marketing Tool

How do you Measure Your Business Blogs' Success?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 by Heather Benfield

The beauty about working at Compendium is that not all of our clients have the same goals and objectives, but we are still able to provide a solution to whatever their business blogging need may be.

For example, I was writing a case study today about a successful client of ours, Indium Corporation, and while I was gathering information about what makes their corporate blogging program so great, I noticed there was no ROI information available.

Errrr...uh oh. What do I do now? WELL...after talking to the company's Client Succes Manager, Jess Wehner, she said that Indium measures their blogging success on organic search exposure and online lead generation. So I went back to gather more information and realized they are rocking it out!

755% increase in online presence and 83% increase in online lead generation!

Check out what else they're rocking out on by reading the success story below:

Indium Corporation develops and manufactures electronics assembly materials, but that’s not the only thing they developed before meeting Compendium Blogware. Indium had 9 blogs in operation with 12 contributing authors however; blog scalability, organic search exposure and lead generation were all missing from their blogging success equation.

Indium chose to integrate their old content into Compendium’s corporate blogging platform in order to manage and organize content in one area as well as increase their number of blogs from 9 to 68. This solution allowed the company to increase organic search exposure without increasing resources.

After transitioning to Compendium’s blogging software, in less than a week the company increased their online presence by 755%. Within the first four months, 30% of Indium’s keyword blogs were ranking in the top 10 Google search results and 65% ranking in the top 50. This boost in organic search exposure directly resulted in an 83% increase in online lead generation.

To learn more about Compendium Blogware's corporate blogging platform, sign up for a free, 20 minute online demo!

Multi-user blogging is a lot like group puzzle making.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by mikey mioduski

Every person who's ever started a blog has probably had a brief lapse where they neglected the crap out of their blog. If you make a living as a professional blogger of hot new gossip, being an unreliable provider of juice might dent your traffic. And in turn, your income. Your return visitor rates probably mean a lot to you.

But if you are a contributor to your company's blog, and your contributions have been hard to make due to external factors, or sheer laziness, you're in a much better position. You see, it's never too late to pick back up where you left off, because when you empower your entire company to pitch into your business blog, you aren't relying on one person or one voice. You are actually casting a wider net with your entire team, and as a result, your visitors tend to be new to your blog-- having found you through search. So the return traffic isn't as important.

And if you're using a smart and easy multi-user blogging platform, like ours, your other team members can keep on posting until you find your piece again.

It reminds me of this incredible graphic I found yesterday for Clayton Stobbs, a Business Development Manager here at Compendium. The stock image showcases four business people carefully assembling a multi colored foam puzzle. It might not be exactly like group blogging, but what I'm getting at here is this: I'm sorry I haven't blogged in a while. But thank you to the Compendiumites who've kept it up.

group blogging is very similar to group puzzle making

Nice work team.

Secrets to Business Blogging Success

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Everyone loves a great success story, right? When educating and inspiring others about blogging best practices, I feel there is no greater way than to provide real-life examples of companies who’ve experienced great success in what you’re looking to do.

With that being said, I’m excited to pass along this story about one of our clients who has hit their corporate blogging program out of the park!

Widen Enterprises, a leader in graphic communications, launched their corporate blogging program in December 2007 to target organic keywords in search and increase online lead generation.

After developing a list of industry specific keywords their target audience was using in search, Widen used Compendium's blogging software to create different blogs containing content related to each keyword. In just three short months, 75% of their target keyword blogs were ranking on the first page of Google search results. This wide-spread exposure generated up to 50% conversion rates for Widen’s blogging program. Due to the great success, Widen increased their keyword blog amount (via Compendium) to cast an even larger net in organic search.

What is Widen’s secret to success? By implementing blogging best practices, they are able to track, measure and adjust their blogging strategy. This allows them to economically and efficiently utilize their resources in order to over-achieve goals and objectives.

Best practices include:

•    Implementation of necessary analytics to track blog traffic from visit to sales pipeline.
•    Consistent testing of Blog Call-To-Action’s (CTA’s).
•    Pulse on keywords driving organic traffic and additions when necessary
•    Consistent content creation among 8 employee contributors

Currently, Widen’s company blogs consistently perform as one of their top lead generation sources, accounting for over 60% of web referral leads by driving traffic to their website from blog CTA’s. By establishing goals, targeting keywords and following best practices, any company large or small is able to deliver the same results through corporate blogging.

Hats off to Widen Enterprises for implementing a successful corporate blogging strategy!

If you have a business blogging success story you’d like me to share, email me at hbenfield@compendium.com.

Three Unique Ways to Generate Leads through Corporate Blogging

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Just because it’s called a “Corporate Blog” doesn’t mean you have to be a big corporation with a large marketing budget to start a blogging program. Businesses of all shapes and sizes are launching company blogs and seeing great success!

Check out these three unique and creative ways Compendium Clients are utilizing blogs to increase online lead generation:

Travel/Tourism Industry

Virginia State Parks uses a “web to post” feature on their blogs that allows visitors to upload pictures and share stories about their state park visits. Visitors must provide contact information to use the web to-post feature allowing Virginia State Parks to collect information about their blog readers.

Blog URL: http://blog.virginiaparks.org

Restaurant Industy

Monon Coffee Company, a small coffee shop in Indianapolis, IN, embeds YouTube video clips into their blog to share customer testimonials. After prospects watch the video clips, they are instructed to “Submit Your Drink Suggestion” by way of a sidebar call-to-action (CTA). This CTA leads to a landing page with a web submission form where Monon Coffee is able to collect contact information in order to follow up with prospective leads.

Blog URL: http://mononcoffee.compendiumblog.com

Software/Technology Industry

Avectra, a leading provider of on demand association management software, seamlessly integrates their blogs into their website by linking all website landing pages, Call-To-Action’s (CTA’s) and social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. This allows users to easily navigate between Avectra’s blog and website to obtain all information they may be looking for - of course without providing their contact information first.

Blog URL: http://blog.avectra.com

If you’ve considered starting a blog for your company but aren’t sure how to integrate it into your marketing strategy, I recommend downloading the “Considering Blogging?” Whitepaper by Compendium Blogware.

This Whitepaper answers basic questions about business blogging - such as how to drive demand for your organization’s product or services and start personal relationships with prospective customers through blogs. Let me know what you think!

How Small Businesses are Ranking #1 in Google Search Results

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Check out some of Compendium’s successful clients! These small and local business blogs are ranking #1 in Google search results. Go ahead, try it out. Type any of the below keywords in Google search and see their company blogs show up in the #1 organic results spot.

BabyPlus Prenatal, LLC- A prenatal education curriculum.

Target Keywords: Benefits of Infant Stimulation, Critical Times in Child Development, Early Brain Development During Pregnancy, Having a smart baby, Infant Growth Assessment, Prenatal Care Curriculum
Blog URL: http://blog.babyplus.com

Cantaloupe – An Indianapolis, IN based media firm.

Target Keywords: Indiana Media Firms, Indianapolis Video Advertising, Indianapolis Video Management, Media firms in Indianapolis, Online Media Firms, Website Video Firms
Blog URL: http://blog.cantaloupe.tv

Fairytale Brownies – A direct-mail gourmet brownie business.

Target Keywords: Brownie Test, Kitchen, Customer Brownie Stories, Delivery Brownies, Food Start Ups Advice, Order Brownies
Blog URL: http://blog.brownies.com

So how are these small businesses winning the coveted #1 organic spot on Google?

By using Compendium’s corporate blogging platform, they’re able to target hundreds or thousands of long tail (a term coined by Chris Anderson) keywords in their blogs rather than only the top 10 or 20 short tail keywords their target audience uses.

In a blog post by Compendium’s CEO, Chris Baggott, he says that “56% of all keyword queries are now three word phrases or more.” Chris also believes that blogs targeting long tail keywords are getting found in search results by people who are specifically looking for the information provided in the posts. This generates highly qualified leads and larger conversion rates.

But how do BabyPlus, Cantaloupe and Fairytale Brownies have the time and money to target hundreds or even thousands of keywords, you might ask? They use Compendium’s business blogging software that automatically multiplies and organizes their blog content the ideal way search engines read and rank results. This allows even the smallest blogging programs to be successful without big company resources.

To learn more about long tail vs. short tail keywords, check out this helpful article by MarketingHub.info.

To schedule a demo of Compendium's business blog software, click here.

Blog Marketing Content (Part 3): The Buyer’s Journey or How to Know Where Blogging Fits into Your Marketing Program

Friday, January 22, 2010 by Frank Dale

Buying is a process or in Hugh Macfarlane’s words a “journey”. If you understand that simple concept, you have an opportunity to benefit by being part of that process. Customers go through stages from being unaware they have a problem, to acknowledging the problem, to searching for a solution, and finally purchasing a solution. As a marketer your job at the highest level is to accomplish these three things:

•Understand the need your customer is trying to meet (What job are you being hired to do?)
•Understand the buying process your customer employs to meet that need
•Design a marketing and sales process that aligns with your customer’s buying process

If you understand your customer’s buying process, you can begin to see where blogging fits into that process. For many companies blogging provides the most value after a potential customer already knows they have a problem. This is because the majority of potential customers find corporate blogs via search. At the point the potential customer gets to your blog, they are already aware that they have a problem. We know this because they entered a specific set of search terms in an attempt to find a solution to that problem.

If you understand the potential customer’s buying process, you can write content that answers the questions that are relevant to the buyer at that point in the process. The best source of content will be conversations with your customers. Ask customers what they thought about when they evaluated your product. For example, what information did they look for to decide whether or not your product was credible? Was it a customer testimonial or analyst recommendation? When you understand the process your customer uses, you can then tell your story from the perspective of the customer. You can answer the potential customer's questions by telling them what a current customer wanted to achieve and describe how you provided that outcome.

Your goal is to provide enough value from the customer’s perspective that the customer is willing to take the next step in the their buying process. If you provide value and understand the buying process, the customer will click on your blog’s call-to-action and proceed to the next step. It really is that simple. If you would like to learn more about how corporate blogging can help you acquire customers, check out our free whitepaper on blogging's role in SEO and social media.

Blogging for Business

Thursday, January 21, 2010 by Kelly Simon

A successful blog means different things to different

marketers. Maybe your ultimate goal is to increase traffic to your site through your blog or give a voice to the people in your company. Maybe you measure success on ROI and the number of clients who download your webinars or whitepapers.

Whatever your metrics of success, make sure your calls to action help your search marketing efforts and generate business (or awareness).

Here are some things to consider when blogging for your business:

1. Establish Goals: It's simple, the goals you establish will set the tone for the life of your blog. Meet with your marketing team to determine your most important business drivers. Once your goals have been established, create a home for them on your blog in the form of calls to action. (Make sure you're tracking your goals so you know where you're seeing success...see below.)

2. Track Your Goals: Once you've pinpointed your blog's goals make sure you track them. Tracking goals will allow you to see what people are interested in and where you can convert interest to sales.

3. Blog!: An often overlooked blogging best practice...blog! No matter how you swing it, content creating is key. Set team expectations up front so your blog sees immediate success AND your team understands their commitment. Inspire your team to blog by providing incentives and/or creating contests centered around your company's blog program. Like putting on pants in the morning, blogging should become a part of your marketers' daily routine.

Blogging is one of the best ways to be found through search. Keep your content fresh, establish your expectations and make sure you track your goals! Until next time...

Conversion rates matter

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Brian Millis

I read this interesting post from Rand Fishkin , which got me thinking about conversion rates. Rand makes this comment:

It's technically worse to rank 1st and convert visits at 0.1% than to rank 10th and get a conversion rate of 2%. By segmenting on intent, you can make sure to uniquely target searchers seeking a specific goal without cannibalizing or misdirecting traffic to the detriment of your site's usability/conversion rate.

This is a really great point that I talk about quite a bit with prospective clients. It is true that holding that number one spot will bring you over 3.5X the number of searchers, but if only a tiny percentage of those clicks convert, than how valuable is that traffic to your business? With Compendium, we often look at how much overall traffic our clients' blogs are driving. For example, if a client has 500 blogs with us and 475 of them are driving traffic with an overall conversion rate of 8%, that is a lot of qualified search traffic! They might only have a few that hold the number one spot, but that doesn't mean the others are not valuable to the overall program. I think that Rand's comment (directed at page rank and traditional SEO) touches on the same truth.

Our overall goal is to provide a business blogging solution that acts as a content management system for blogs by organizing blog content around revenue driving search terms. With this approach, businesses are able to cast out a wide net of blogs and improve the overall search marketing effort. Conversion rates are often higher on blogs than PPC adds because of the humanized nature of the content. I'd be happy to discuss some relevant examples to your business when you request a demo of Compendium's simple blogging software.

Will You Be Our 1st Featured Client?

Friday, January 15, 2010 by Compendium Client Marketing

Now that the new year has arrived, we want to be sure that our clients are staying up to date on all the happenings here at Compendium. To help make that happen, we'll be launching a new and improved monthly client newsletter.

You'll be receiving this newsletter at the end of each month and it will be jampacked with information and fun blogging tips and tricks to help you stay on track with your blogging goals.

We believe it's very important to give credit to our clients who are seeing amazing results or running exciting blogging programs. We want to showcase these clients in our new client newsletter. We will have a section dedicated to a different client each month. It will contain information on your outstanding blogging program and a link to your company blog.

If you like what you hear and would like to nominate your company for the January 2010 Client Newsletter, click here to fill out the short submission form. You will have until Friday, January 22, 2010 to fill out the form. The winning company will be featured in our 1st newsletter that will be sent next week. So keep an eye on your inbox for our newsletter to see who is featured!

*If you have any questions about the submissions, please email us at clientmarketing@compendium.com or contact your client success manager.

Your employees have better things to do than blogging...right?

Thursday, January 14, 2010 by Ali Sales Roach

You don't want everyone in your organization blogging because they have better things to be doing. They have enough going on in their busy lives and the last thing you want them to do is to take blogging and move it to the top of their priority list --and besides, what's your company even going to gain by starting a business blogging program?

I hear these kinds of comments every day, and while I don't agree with them (of course I don't!) I can certainly understand them.

Your employees are very busy people and you have them working on a lot of important things. Your salespeople can't blog because they need to be selling! Your customer service people can't blog because they need to be serving! Your technology / development people can't blog because they need to be coding!

I get it, I get it.

But here are a couple things to consider:

1. Every day, many of your employees are already spending time out there on the web. They're checking their email, looking at Facebook, doing a quick Twitter update, doing a quick search for a pair of shoes they really want. Come on, I don't live under a rock. I believe there are studies that show the human brain can only function at the highest level of performance for about 20 minutes. That's exactly why most of us take a quick "web break" during the day.

So, if your employees are going to take this "web break," why not give them an outlet to share their thoughts in a way that benefits the company?

2. There are so many advantages to getting employees of all kinds involved in your blogging strategy. You hired smart, passionate people into your organization and the rest of the world (your customers and prospects) need to see them. There's no reason to hide, and even better yet, the more opinions, views, and info you provide from all types of people, the better your chances of someone on the other side identifying with you.

3. Money. I have to break this out as a separate point because blogging can make you money, in the same way that your salespeople or account managers can make you money. We have clients who are making more money from their blogging efforts than any other corporate effort! Seriously! We just had a customer who hasn't even been blogging with us for 2 months tell us yesterday that his blogging program is driving the most qualified demand he's ever seen into his organization. If you're unwilling to let at least some of your people blog, you could be missing out on a whole lot of money.

It's time to put the fears and excuses to bed and get comfortable with what's possible with a powerful blogging software tool like Compendium.

To learn more, check out our whitepaper: Considering Blogging?