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Our team of engineers deserve a lot of credit for their hard work making this new text editor interface more awesome than ever. They are always busy making our business blogging platform more powerful and easier to use.

I am using this post as a test to see if they actually did anything or if they're just saying they did, because nobody really knows what goes on back in that room. They sometimes grow beards and some of them don't wear shoes, so I don't know if I fully trust what they say. But here I go.

I will now attempt to upload a picture.

Hey, that was pretty easy. I really enjoyed doing that.

As I type my thoughts onto this editor, I am noticing how fast it is. I mean, it's a lot faster than I remember.

What about linkage? I will now place a link to a client blog, Christy Sports, because I just noticed they're a client, and I have rented skis and boots and boards from them since I was a tyke.

Wow, that was also really easy.

The work of our Dev team reminds me of a song by postitive rock legend Stan Bush. In his words, "Never surrender, never say die. You got the will to survive."

I will now attempt to embed a Youtube video into our newly enhanced text editor, and if it works, I shall dedicate the video to our Dev Team.

Gosh dang that was easy!

Well after some serious testing, I would like to give props, whatever those are, to the dev team on this one. The new features look really slick, plus they make adding content to our corporate blog much much easier. It's also noticably faster. The awesomeness is beyond words.

I think I just fell back in love with blogging. Thank you dev team for helping me rekindle this flame.

I have always love learning and reading about web usability - it's amazing how certain ecommerce sites have increased their sales dramatically by adding a button or changing the number of screens to check out; so I am naturally stoked to be using a brand spanking new UI for Compendium today...and not to mention, it motivated me to post! :)

Why does the User Interface matter you ask?  Well, first back to the ecommerce example, the easier we can make things on our business blogging clients - the more they will blog.  So what changes did we make?  Mainly, basics - aligned icons more with Microsoft Word standards and some HTML clean up, to even further search engine optimize the blogs.  It's one of the beautiful parts of a Saas solution, like Compendium -- always improving our product!  

The latest release of Compendium Blogware that went live today included a big change that will benefit our content authors -- a new editing environment.

For the past year or so, we've been using the rich text editor supplied by the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library.  It's pretty powerful, but it had enough weaknesses to motivate us to look for a replacement.

Last fall we looked at a short list of potential candidates and decided that the best match for our needs was an open source editor created by a team of developers led by Frederico Caldeira Knabben.  The editor's name bears the initials of Mr. Knabben -- FCKeditor.

For the most part content authors should find the interface very similar.  Most of the styling features are still there, but some of the toolbar buttons have changed icons.  Our support team has prepared some introductory material to ease the transition for existing customers.

Some of the things that users will find as welcome additions:

• cleaner HTML created by the editor
• availability of Undo and Redo operations
• support for keyboard shortcuts, making the editor feel more like a word processor than an HTML form

Some of the things we have improved with respect to our own editor customizations:

• oversize images are re-sized on the server upon upload so that they fit within the typical width of a blog column, making page load times much faster
• a keyword strength meter that doesn't slow down the editor on older systems and browsers

One thing that may jar long some time users is the change in the keyword strength meter itself.  Although the red-to-green gradient remains, no longer does the editor sport a numerical score. 

It was our experience that some users became too fixated on the score getting "stuck" at a certain value.  The meter's algorithm was designed to balance the desire to include keywords against the need to ensure that they weren't used excessively in a post.  When you blog for SEO, you have to keep these opposing goals in mind, lest your content look spammy in the eyes of search engines.

Rather than shooting for a "perfect score", an author should treat the meter as  qualitative barometer of whether he or she is performing this balancing act well on a corporate blog.  Moving from a number to a qualitative measure should help emphasize that.

For those marketers  involved in search marketing, we know that search is the one bright spot in the marketing landscape.  As you can see from the eMarketer forecast, search will continue to accelerate against other online advertising…and of course we all know that traditional non-online advertising is in a long and protracted decline.

Why is search winning?  Because it is the only mass marketing tool in history where you are responding to a prospects intent.   No longer do we have to analyze data and hope that certain segments might be interested in our offer. 

With Search, our prospects simply tell us when they have a need or problem they could use our help with.  Condo, Austin?   Variable Printing Services?  Chrome 4 slice toaster?  New Tires, Buffalo?  All of these and millions more indicate the needs and desires of the searcher.   Do you sell tires in Buffalo?

80% of all web interactions begin with searches.

So why, in a recent Microsoft adCenter survey, did 73% of the small business owners say they would rather DO THEIR TAXES than start a paid search marketing campaign.   

It’s not a lack of desire or a lack of intelligence, what most web folks fail to recognize about small business marketing is that they are constrained by both time and money.   This is what  makes and internet business blog such a compelling option.   

With a business blogging solution designed for business, they get two things.  The first is a managed solution.  One of the beauties of SaaS is help.  Unlike “free” blogging tools where you are completely on your own,  hosted business blogging tools have actual people that work to make their clients successful.  

At the end of the day, all the business needs to do is tell stories…as Sienfield’s Kramer says…talk about your day.  The more they talk, the more search traffic they drive.   Easy to use blogging software makes search marketing a LOT easier than doing taxes…. Blog for SEO...and win.

 

We are proud to announce a successful lauch of a couple of new pieces to Compendium Software and Compendium Product Support today! 

Our first item is and most exciting piece is the launching of an updated and enhanced text editor.  Thank you to our engineering team for all of their hard work and dedication to the product.  As a part of the Product Support Team at Compendium we strive to hear and communicate with Product Planning what our clients are wanting, what sort of dfficulties they are having and move to enhance those pieces of the software. This new text editor, is exactly that.  Our clients asked and we listened!   

Our second item we are excited to announce, is the self service portion of the help page.  In the past, clients have had the abiltiy to submit support requests via email - help@compendiumblogware.com, phone - (317)777-6255, or by completing the webform.  Product Support quickly responded to all requests. 

But as we grow and expand this Support functionality to our business blogging software, we want to make getting support for our clients as easy as possible. Our solution, we introduced a self service portal to the help page.  Clients can now

• search answers for Frequently Asked Questions
• find out how to accomplish different items with in the software
• Ask question and look for support easily on their own

We still love feedback, so if there is anything we can do, let us know!

Happy 2009!! Wow it's hard to believe that is actually already 2009 - I can't seem to figure out where 2008 went! Oh well, what can you do. Every year I make a some kind of silly resolution that by the end of January I've usually given up on - well this year is different.I've decided to actually make commitments that I know I can keep - both professionally at Compendium and in my personal life.

At Compendium ...
I've been a complete blogging slacker - writing a blog post has not been a very high priority. Well this year I've I have made it my goal to write  at least 2 blog posts per week.

Being a Support Manager here at Compendium - we get a lot of blogging software questions that I could easily write a post on - because chances are more than 1 person has the same question.

Personally
I've have signed myself up for a mini marathon (which if you know me I'm not really a runner), but this is something I've always wanted to do. So I made the commitment to do it.

So what is your "New Year" commitment (not resolution)? Make one that your have to be accountable for ...

I blogged on this topic a few weeks ago and couldn't resist expanding on measurement...

"How do you know whether or not your corporate blogging program is working?"

We get this question all the time. The answer is simple:

Business blogging can be measured the same way that all other marketing is measured.

The top line measurements are: Total traffic, quality of traffic, and clicks on your call-to-action.

Yes, that means that your blog template MUST incorporate something for your visitors to do. They need something to click on. That's no different than how you treat your website and email marketing campaigns (and if you're not treating them this way, now is the time to start).

The bottom line metrics are: Leads and dollars. That could be dollars generated or dollars saved.

My next few posts are going to feature Compendium's own blogging program and I'll also feature metrics/stats from some customers.

I'll also cover the key aspects of success in order to get the top line and bottom line metrics headed in the direction you want.

Journalspace is no more. Countless bloggers have lost all of their content because the folks behind Journalspace were convinced that RAID drives were an appropriate backup methodology.  Ouch.  The only recommendation on the site is to try to get back content via Google Cache.  Double-ouch.

Feedburner is having severe caching issues where feeds are not updating for 30 minutes to several hours.  For retailers and businesses with initiatives that are time-dependent, this is unacceptable!

• GM's blog post about the bridge loan
• Chrysler's blog post about the bridge loan

... Fastlane is much more respected in the automotive world as a blog about cars on GM’s site, whereas the Chrysler blog is simply a marketing exercise. The distinction is subtle because technically both are marketing tools but the Fastlane blog has substance that is conspicuously lacking in the Chrysler blog.

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

1. Customer Testimonial
2. Explanation - describe your products
3. Tutorial - describe how to do something
4. Recent News - what's going on in the industry
5. Lists - top 10, top 5, etc.
6. Problem/Solutions - state a problem and how you or your company solved it

1. Numbered Lists
2. Subheadings
3. Ordered Lists
4. Short Paragraphs
5. Bolding and Highlighting

• 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)