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Conversation Turned Blog Post

Thursday, July 2, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

Today I was working through my emails from various clients who are using the Compendium Blogware platform for their online marketing efforts, when I came across an email that I often see. It typically goes something like this....

"I understand that content is what drives the success of my blog program, but I am having trouble figuring out what to write about. I have used up the content ideas I had planned out and need help knowing what to write about next."

For the answer let's start with the breakdown of the searcher to conversion path:

Searchers are using the search engine to find an answer to their problem
Your company writes content on how you can solve that searchers problem
Searcher engages with your company
You convert that searcher into a sale

So what should you be writing about? The same thing you talk about every day with your clients in email, phone calls, conferences, trade shows, etc. Talk about how your company can solve their problem. Tell them how you solved a problem just like theirs the other day with a current client. Most of us have a very active email inbox - every one of those is a blog post waiting to happen! Just like emails never end, neither do blog ideas :)

The other thing to keep in mind is that most of the individuals landing on your blog are from search and have never heard, seen, or read anything about you and your company before. With that in mind you can re-purpose old content - its OK to talk about the same things, because they don't know that you've already talked about it. You can also re-purpose old newsletters, email campaigns, marketing materials, etc.

Content is all around you!

Take the Easy Route: Blog for Business

Thursday, July 2, 2009 by Allison Bowen

It's amazing how much the marketplace has changed in just a few short years. Take for example, a September 19, 2005, Wall Street Journal article describing the crazy adventures of two men attempting to get their new product to market.

"The pair had finally scored a coveted 8 a.m. appointment with a Wal-Mart buyer -- giving them a chance to get their ergonomic pen, the PenAgain, in from of the world's largest retailer. But with only 10 minutes so spare, that chance was slipping away as the entreprenuers sat, panicked, still a mile and a half away."

I wonder what that pair would do now if I told them it's not nearly that hard to get a new product to market. They can simply blog for business! That's right, a blog can help you in many ways.

Say for instance, PenAgain knew that much of their target market spends many hours a day online. If someone were to search for an inventive writing product, he or she may Google "creative writing pen". What if the first organic search result that appeared was for a PenAgain blog? Clearly many sales would develop from those that click through to the blog and saw all that the company had to offer.

This is where Compendium Blogware comes in. Compendium provides the best blogging software that will get companies search engine optimization results. It's not just about blogging in order to relate to your customers anymore. While that is certainly still a great reason to blog, there is more that can be accomplished. Using basic blog software from Compendium, any company can increase their SEO and thus drive more potential clients to their website.

Had PenAgain been launching their product today, I would have suggested they done so online first rather than take it directly to Wal-Mart with no evidenece that the product would sell. Why go through all the trouble when there is an easy route to success? As a start-up company, PenAgain would not be able to afford pricey PPC. Instead, it could choose an affordable blogging software and be well on its way.

Blogging for business is simple. It doesn't involve a lot of money or a scramble to Wal-Mart's headquarters. Instead, it involves a committment to writing blogs and a call to Compendium today. Why not save yourself some trouble and give it a try?

Blogging with the search engine

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Brian Millis

In many of my conversations with marketers from all different kinds of companies, I often hear the misnomer that there are two separate ways to blog for your business; blogging for good content and blogging for search engines.

Why do these have to seem like two different categories? In my opinion they are one in the same. When a business employs strong blog marketing, the content is good because it addresses what the target audience is searching. Those people are searching it because it matters to them. Therefore, good content revolves around the important search terms for that business. Using authentic, helpful content is only great when people find it. So I say good content includes blogging WITH the search engine (and searcher) in mind.

This applies to all business, B2C, B2B, B2D2C, etc. Search engines do not discriminate. They simply want to provide the most relevant, frequently and recently updated web pages to the searcher. One of our clients, Brian LeCount, said it best in a recent blog post of his own. Here are the brilliant 10 points that he wrote:

   1. I blog about the things I think and do.
   2. I try to blog a lot.
   3. I use the search marketing keywords that I know people search on.
   4. I use a platform that automatically positions my content for maximum search
       engine love.
   5. I get ranked in Google for terms like Cincinnati Marketing (#3 in local results)
       Cincinnati Marketing Firm (#1), Cincinnati Advertising Agency (#10), Social Media
       Marketing Cincinnati (#10), and about 45 others.
   6. People search using these search marketing keywords b/c that's what the
       research tells me.
   7. They find my blog.
   8. They read and click on a call to action.
   9. They get some value, and we have a great marketing strategy conversation.
10. Some of those people choose to engage us and help them build their business.

Hi #4 point is what we provide here at Compendium Blogware. I enjoy talking with any interested business who wants to have a strategy behind the company blog and yield the best SEO results possible from the good content. Feel free to reach out to me if you would like to see how our corporate blogging software could make it easy for your online marketing as well.

$65 Billion to be spent on Corporate web sites....not on traditional media

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Here is a quote that should grab your attention:

"In 2009: $65 billion will be spent on enterprises’ own sites, dollars NOT spent on TV, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc. To scale that, compare 2009 total U.S. TV ad revenue (cable + broadcast) at $66 billion, and total 2009 U.S. Newspaper ad revenue at $42 billion. So corporations spending marketing dollars on their own sites is equivalent to (a) wiping out all TV ad revenue or (b) wiping out one and one-half newspaper industries!"

Hello! Thanks to Outsell for this great new report, but what does it mean to advertising? Why is this happening?

Simple answer is that Advertising relies on middlemen to deliver a corporate message. With Online Marketing (Search Marketing), business can now leverage their own site, Corporate Blogging software and email marketing to control and develop a direct relationship with their prospects and customers.

Emarketer already told us that the three biggest growth areas in marketing are Search, Email and Social Media (Business Blogging covers both SEO and Social Media). What is transforming the marketing world it the capacity for organizations to have direct relationships with the people who drive their business. Marketing departments from organizations large and small are rethinking their investments and strategies and going direct...to the detrement of the old model that required a middleman to deliver your message.

The Demise of the URL a Long Time Coming

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by PJ Hinton

At CNET News' Technically Incorrect site, Chris Matyszczyk is blogging on the question of whether URLs matter anymore. He uses a recent conversation with someone regarding the choice of domain name to bring up an interesting point:

There was a time when people thought URLs were the key to getting hordes to throng your site. Make it short, have one of the most important keywords--sex, free, go, eat, my, and porn being examples--and your fortune was made.

People still try to trade the most simple URLs for hopeful hundreds of thousands. They will still line up in the hope of getting a vanity URL from Facebook.

But don't most people simply go to the little search box, type in the name of what they're looking for, and search?

If it's something they want to go back to, they'll bookmark it. But they won't remember what the URL is. For the simple reason that they don't need to. The Bingoogle fraternity does it for them.

This is something that has come up in previous posts on our blogs, most notably in one titled "The URL is dead...LONG LIVE SEARCH!" that was written by Chris Baggott over a year ago.

It's interesting to take a look back over the past decade to see how things have evolved. Back in the days when AOL still was the entry point for net access for a large chunk of people, businesses marketed themselves in commercials with phrases like "AOL keyword blah".

During the rise of the dot-com bubble, securing coveted domain names became a high priority, with astronomical sums being spent to acquire domain names based on frequently used nouns.

In the late 90s, a company called RealNames arrived on the scene, providing a more human friendly layer on top of the Domain Name System that's used in locating the servers for URLs. It got support for its technology included with Internet Explorer, and it scored some deals with some big name (at the time) search engines. Nonetheless, the company never gained mainstream credibility. In a 2001 critique of the service, Gartner analyst Whit Andrews wrote:

The RealNames problem is simple: DNS, despite its well-known weaknesses, is a technically workable--and reasonably comprehensible--method of naming Internet resources. The DNS method tends to falter when faced with the complexity and variety of consumers' interests--and with the fact that human language allows for terms that aren't specific enough to provide useful returns. Nonetheless, it remains entirely adequate for most Internet users' purposes--especially when combined with the many search engines and indexes that are available.

By 2002, the system had shut down. A paper written by Ben Edelman in 2002 presented quantitative analysis that argued Google was a much better locator of information than both DNS guesses and RealNames. The article also presaged the rise of paid search placement ads.

Organic search has become the way people figure out what's out there. It succeeded where RealNames failed because there is no sole gatekeeper of linkage between keyword and search result. Granted, Google is the 800 lb gorilla in this space, but there are alternatives.

But even within Google, the incentive is to return search results that will help its users find what they are looking for. It relies on its algorithms and tunes them to make sure that the job is being done right.

That means you don't have to write a check to Google to get the rank you want. Instead you invest your resources in creating an online presence that is relevant to your potential customers. A network of Compendium blogs is a good way to get there.

5 Outstanding Corporate Blog Programs

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Chris Baggott

iMedia ran an article I wrote highlighting 5 great corporate blog marketing programs. The key is to have measurable goals. What I love about Online Marketing, and Search Marketing specifically is that there should be no ambiguity. There can be no mystery as far as determining what is adding value and what isn't.

"Corporate blogging is a great marketing tool -- but not one that should be launched lightly. Like other marketing initiatives, a company's blog is an investment that should produce a measurable return. Thus, as I illustrated in an earlier iMedia article, much thought should be given to ways in which companies can enhance the value of these programs for both their consumers and their own bottom lines."

You can read the current article 5 outstanding Corporate Blogs here....

10 Ways to Promote Your Corporate Blog

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by Douglas Karr

Online marketing and search marketing requires some off-site promotion as well as on-site promotion.

Promote your corporate blog on your website. A link is great, aggregating your feed is even better!
Promote your corporate blog in your email signatures.
Promote your corporate blog in your business cards.
Promote your corporate blog posts via Twitter using HootSuite.
Publish your corporate blog on Facebook using Simplaris Blogcast or the Blog RSS Reader.
Promote your corporate blog posts along with other industry-specific posts using StumbleUpon.
Save your corporate blog posts with specific keyword-driven tags to Delicious. I recommend the Delicious Firefox add-on to make this easier!
Comment on other industry blogs and be sure to use your corporate blog address in the URL field of the comments, not your website url. People like to follow a blog from a great content!
Offer other industry bloggers a trade to guest post on each others' blog. This will expose your readers to their readers... and their readers to you!
Mention industry thought leaders in your corporate blog posts. Folks in the industry pay attention to who is talking about them. If you write a post worthy of mentioning, you'll get their attention, their audience, and if they link - some great authority.

Don't just leave it up to search engines only to find your content - promoting your content can drive traffic and backlinks to your blog. When you grow backlinks to your blog, search engine traffic will increase, too!

Would Kings Island Tickets Motivate You?

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by Jess Wehner

Looking for a fun way to motivate your bloggers? We recently had a contest here at Compendium - the person with the most blog posts in one week received two tickets to Kings Island and a $25 gift card to buy food/goodies at the park. I'm not quit sure how many additional posts this produced, but you can be sure the competition was fierce - the winner produced 14 posts in 1 week! I'm ashamed to admit this, but that's more than most of our clients produce during a whole month.

Blogging for business should be easy and fun! I'm sure if you asked Mitch Burk, winner of the Kings Island prize package, he would tell you that he spent less than an hour a day producing blog posts that week, and he was rewarded with $75+ in prizes. I always like to remind all of our marketing admins out there that your bloggers aren't just going to blog on their own. Sure, you may have the occasional employee that just happens to love to write, but chances are your bloggers are busy and "don't have time" to spare on writing a blog post.

Here's something to try: offer a $50 gift certificate to the person that blogs the most in one week - see how many of your bloggers that "don't have time" all of the sudden free up to post that week! (and then see your search engine results climb!)

Let us know the results, and if you have a contest that works- please share so we can recommend it to our other clients.

Links: Why they matter to your blog program

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by Jess Wehner

As a Client Success Manager, one of my main goals is to ensure that the clients that are putting effort towards their business blog program are getting search marketing results (and those that aren't putting effort in - start to!). Every once in a while our team will come across a client that has been writing frequent, relevant content but is not seeing the search engine results they would expect. While there are many areas we trouble shoot and look through in order to understand what's happening, one area that always seems to stand out is having links.

No matter how much great content your business blog might have, if you don't have any links pointing back to your site, it's hard for Google to recognize your site as an authority and consequently rank it. Links can happen naturally, for example, as you write better and better people will begin to link to you naturally. But in order maximize your search marketing efforts you can build links too. Here are a couple easy ways to get links out to your blog.

Put a link to your blog...
1. On your website
2. On your social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
3. On your partner's websites

Additionally, SEOBook has a list of 101 ways to build links - starting with having good content that people naturally want to link.

Links for 2009-06-29

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by Blake Matheny

Links for 2009-06-29

How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary - I particularly liked section 3 which had comments on personal skills, team skills and judgement.
HTTP PubSub: Webhooks & PubSubHubbub - igvita.com - A good way to think about webhooks is as Unix pipes for the web. While PubSub is a great application of the technology, Webhooks allow bidirectional communication, which opens up our possibilities to: publishing notifications, chaining web services to perform complex actions, or allowing external plugins to enter the workflow. All of this functionality is accomplished via simple HTTP queries (both POST and GET), which means no special libraries or servers to make it all happen.
Sacrifice your health for your startup - Blog - Small Business Start Up - Ideas - Resources - "We're told to lead a zen-like balanced life. But imbalance and obsession are what makes us great."

This is a collection of links I have bookmarked on del.icio.us for the date 2009-06-29

Search Marketing - It Doesn't Have to be Magic

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by meghan peters

Search Marketing can be a difficult game to play. Figuring out how to generate organic traffic in a cost-effective way can be even more challenging. Luckily, for the marketing team here at Compendium, we get to employ our very own blogging platform.

The success we have seen from our internal use is proof of the power Compedium offers as a search marketing tool. The blogging platform is built from the ground up with a focus on generating traffic through search.

To see the blogging platform in action, see where Compendium ranks with a popular keyword - affordable blogging software...

Click Here to see the result

If this doesn't have you convinced, download our Whitepaper: Are you Considering Corporate Blogging? Get it here.

After you read it, be sure to contact us so you can view our demo with a blogging expert to see how Compendium can work the same for you.

Let's Chat - Marketer to Marketer

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by meghan peters

Would you like to learn how marketers are producing blogging ROI in just 10 minutes a day?
If so, then our upcoming Webinar will be perfect for you.

Now more than ever it’s important that marketers chat with their peers and share success stories to help businesses grow and generate demand during these hard economic times.

During this Webinar, you'll not only learn how we run a successful blogging strategy in just 10 minutes a day, but we'll also cover:

1. How our marketing team allocates time and resources to blogging.
2. How we’re able to generate over 185 posts each month.
3. How we consistently maintain a 9% click-through rate.
4. How we acquire new business through our blogs.

Make sure to register for this Webinar soon - there's a limited number of spots available!

GK Elite - Revenues Increase 40% with Blogging Program

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by meghan peters

Our client, GK Elite, is the most recognized manufacturer of Gymnastics apparel around the world. They realized that they needed a world class blogging program to go with their world class business.

They turned to Compendium because GK Elite was searching for an affordable way to increase their web presence and leverage their impeccable reputation to earn more business.

Check out our brand new case study to learn how GK Elite's blogging program has driven over 14,000 unique visitors and increased revenues 40% within the first 6 months of blogging.

Get the full study here.

Blogging is Thriving...Not Diving

Monday, June 29, 2009 by meghan peters

So we've heard it all before - blogging is out-dated and on the decline. That the rise of social networking and media have given to the demise of the more labor-intensive blogging. The critics claim that quick and short content found on Facebook and Twitter are more appealing to marketers. However, smart companies know that blogging can be an effective bridge from social networking to customer.

This recent, daring, article by CopyBlogger titled Blogging is Dead (Again) articulates this attack on blogging and stands up for all blogging-kind. Corporate blogging, specifically, still provides emense momentum for a company's web presence.

The ultimate test of blogging's staying power is not the trendiness of blogging, but the return on investment (Blogging ROI) that it produces. Corporate blogging initiatives, especially built with Compendium Blogware, can easily measure their ROI; and here at Compendium we let that speak for itself.

You have to target everybody

Monday, June 29, 2009 by Chris Baggott

For fast food, my family of six always chooses Burger King.....this is in spite of the advertising and their much lauded web 2.0 efforts. In fact, evidence is beginning to pop us that like a lot of advertising that's really creative and entertaining, it's not actually helping....

Ad age article on segment marketing advertising

As you can see from this chart provided by AdAge, Burger King is actually declining over the past year at a pretty rapid pace.   Why? Well...I would blame the old fashioned focus on a mythical segment. In this case the "18 to 24/male".   (same people that Taco Bell is targeting, Hardee's, Carl's Jr., Rally's etc....)

To me, what's broken is the idea that customers can be categorized into giant homogeneous groups and aiming a giant expensive missile at them will generate enough mass to make the Advertising efforts worthwhile and compensate for the incredible cost.

The problem is, you can't win with big attacks any more.   My Suburban pulling up to the drive through represents 6 individuals all influenced by something different. The driver is my wife..she like BK because of the ice (go figure?), a couple of the kids like that they have Lemonade and the burgers are better.   Dr. Pepper and the chicken fingers wins my older son over.

My point here is that for any business today, you have to sell to individuals, not to segments. For many businesses blogging and focus on organic search marketing is the best way to get in front of potential customers when they have a problem they need solving. Can't say this will help the fast food giants, although there are a couple million searches a month around the term "fast food". Clearly these people are searching for something?

For the vast majority of companies blogs will make a big difference as it realates to both getting found on the search engines, and as a platform to tell lots of stories to lots of different segments.

What Billy Mays can teach us about blogging

Monday, June 29, 2009 by Ali Sales Roach

In very sad news, Billy Mays passed away over the weekend. I am not ashamed to admit that I have three bottles of OxyClean in my basement, and my ears couldn't help but perk up when hearing about most of the products linked to his name.

Even though Billy Mays didn't give me or anyone else personal advice about blogging best practices, his sales tactics can be applied to just about any sales and marketing activity, including your business blogging program.

There were three key components when it came to Billy Mays' pitches:

1. He made it obvious that he understood your problem
2. He made it clear that he had something that could help you
3. He made it clear that he was really excited about his product and how it could help you

I know, very deep stuff. It seems so obvious! As a marketer managing a corporate blogging strategy, why wouldn't you want to apply these tactics? After all, we know from the staggering sales of products like OxyClean that they work.

When it comes to blog marketing, you can make it easy on your visitors and make Mr. Mays proud at the same time - make it obvious that you understand your audience's problems, make it obvious that you have something that can help them, and deliver your message in the most human, optimistic way possible.

Client Highlight - YourCover

Monday, June 29, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

I realized I have been lack in my posting lately, but am happy to be back blogging, and wanted to take a moment to highlight a relatively new client to Compendium Blogware - YourCover.

YourCover creates personalized magazine covers for any celebration, from birthdays, to holidays, to important life events. They are able to custom design these unique gifts for a very affordable price.

They started their blogging program only a few months ago and are seeing tremendous success, due to their commitment to write keyword rich content frequently. They have only 1 writer who has been able to write almost 30 posts already. In the last 30 days they have seen almost 900 visitors from search alone! Their search traffic and referring keywords are both trending exactly as they should for a client at their stage of the game.

Kudos to Michelle and her team at YourCover!

Five Obstacles to Social Computing Adoption

Monday, June 29, 2009 by Douglas Karr

Newsgator recently published a free download called A Roadmap for Successful Adoption of Social Computing in the Enterprise. I'd recommend the download. The root of the whitepaper is that companies must adopt a cultural transformation - and when they do - they benefit enormously.

Here are 5 obstacles the study speaks to. We hit these obstacles in our sales process as well. Specific to blog software and search marketing, here are my reactions:

Employees already use other systems and don't want to be bothered with another alternative.

What is the strategy and measures of success for using your other system? What are the costs (maintenance, uptime, administration). When confronted with this, our prospects don't typically have a strategy in place that proves results. If you can't measure it, how do you know it's working? If you think it's working, how do you know how well it's working?
Employees are concerned about having their contributions public and uncensored.

This is why we've built approval and feedback loops into our application. It's important that employees be allowed the freedom to blog but with moderate oversight that provides them feedback if a post isn't approved for publishing.
Management is entrenched in the "old school" way of thinking - institution over community, hierarchy over collaboration.

This is a difficult obstacle to overcome. In short, I like to talk to companies about where their clients and prospects are rather than talk about how the company needs to change. Consumer and B2B behavior has changed and they are researching solutions and products via the web and search engines before ever calling you. You need to be where they are looking, reading and discussing.
Management desires more control over the actions of contributors, e.g. tagging, discussions, group creation, etc. The open nature of social computing is concerning.

This is why a Software as a Service is a fantastic solution. We continue to modify and enhance our system based on industry trends, search trends, online marketing trends and the needs of our clients. Investing in a SaaS blog software comes with a year of feature upgrades - all providing the right balance of control over openness.
Management is worried about decreased productivity as they still perceive social computing as fun.

I often ask people how much time they spend on email each day and there is always a groan. Some answer 20 emails, others over 100 emails daily - just to keep up. What's the ROI on email? What if you could prevent calls to customer service by having the content out there and the questions already answered in a means that prospects and clients can find it? What if you could write a blog post that 2,000 people read instead of the 1 person you're writing an email to? Blogging is an incredibly effective and efficient means of communicating.

According to the Whitepaper:

By 2012, more than 30% of large organizations will have deployments of social software suites available to all their employees (The Gartner Collaboration and Social Software Vendor Guide, 2009, Carol Rozwell, Nikos Drakos, David Mario Smith, Jeffrey Mann, Matthew W. Cain, James Lundy, and Tom Eid, February 19, 2009, Gartner.).

We've got a long way to go! Begin breaking down these objections within your company today to reap the benefits.

Google Analytics - Get Read Only Access

Sunday, June 28, 2009 by Krystal Featherston

I know, I know ... its been a long time since I've blogged (insert frown face here ....) However, keeping in tradition with my posts - something that clients have been requesting a lot of lately is read only access to their Google Analytics Account.

Here at Compendium we provide everyone with a Google Analytics Report for tacking their blog and weekly PDF report of your blog analytics and statistics. But, if you want more details - All you need to do is let us know! You can request access to your Google Analytics Account by simply filling out this form with contact information and be sure to include a gmail account or the email address associated with your Google Account!

Fast!

Sunday, June 28, 2009 by Mitch Burk

FAST!

That's pretty much how we want everything these days, huh? We want our food FAST! We want to get to work FAST! We want lines to move FAST!

Well, I have two things to say about blogging and how it should be a FAST part of your life...

First, contact Compendium FAST! We have people standing by waiting to talk to you and figure out how you could use blog marketing in a way that would help your company the most. And once you get signed on, you'll have your blog up and running FAST and customers finding you waaaaaay FASTer than they are now!

Secondly, blogging is a fast process... don't think that it's going to take hours upon hours to create a post... Lets just say this blog has taken me about 4 minutes to complete... now that is FAST!