Universal Search & Blended Search....threat or opportunity for business?
Posted Wednesday, July 9, 2008 by Chris Baggott
There has been a lot of talk about the changes in search results brought on by Universal Search & Blended Search.  

Basically, what this means is that Google and the other search engines are considering a lot more than just your website SEO when deciding what results to deliver.

Specifically, It's becoming really important to have frequently updated Corporate blogs, pictures and even video to greatly increase your chances of ranking on a wide range of keywords.

Blended Search is actually great for the marketers that are really trying to build trust and engagement with prospects and customers (although in this case we are mostly talking about prospects since your customers typically shouldn't be searching for you).   This is where people really need to rethink everything they have been taught about the Goals for Corporate or Business Blogging.  Business blog strategy has to take into account and focus on the goals of Search Engine Optimization and  Conversion.   

When I read about Blended Search I tend to hear a lot of panic that these new strategies are both hard and expensive.   BALONEY.

Let me introduce you to my friends & client of Compendium Blogware, Greenfield Liquors.  This is a tiny small town liquor store in Greenfield Indiana and they totally take advantage of  Web 2.0 marketing strategies and business blogging with very little effort and lots of great results.    Take a look at this Video that appeared in their blog.     The winery featured is Paige 23.

Paige 23 Wine from Compendium Blogware Post on Blended Search


Now, Type Paige 23 wines, Greenfield into your google search box and see what happens.  



 Home run!   Another great example of a Blogging Best Practice.   Blog management software for business is affordable and easy.   Try it! 

www.compendiumblogware.com
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Icann Domain Name Confusion: Why you have to start corporate blogging now.
Posted Tuesday, July 1, 2008 by Chris Baggott
Many of you may have noticed the announcement last week regarding ICANN dramitically increasing the suffixes available for domain names.   Here is a blurb from the New York Times:

According to new rules unanimously passed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, at its meeting here, any company, organization or country will soon be able to apply for a new Web address extension, called a top-level domain.

That could smooth the way for Web addresses that end in city names, brands and generic words. It could also sow confusion in the minds of Web users, create a host of new ways to exploit the Web addressing system and start a wave of legal skirmishes over applications to register trademarks — .coke, for example.

Uggh!  What a mess this makes for normal businesses & organizations.  People are already having a tough time keeping track of your web address.  By adding basically an unlimited number of  .anything  branding by domain becomes just about impossible. 

If anything is going to drive people even more into the arms of the search engines, it's going to be this.

What are you going to do? 

Incorporate blog management software company wide.  The biggest benefit of enterprise or business blogging is Search engine optimization.   The more people you have blogging, the more relevant content gets created, and the more likely you are to be found accross a lots of keywords.  

Forget people remembering your domain...focus on getting found by using corporate blog tools.
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People Want to Hear from People
Posted Wednesday, May 28, 2008 by jennifer buscher

While planning my next vacation I started to wonder why my research starts and ends at www.tripadvisor.com.  I am in love with this website because real people who have been to the destinations, stayed at the hotels, and dined on the local fare write about their personal experiences with no agenda other than to inform other travelers.  I personally don’t care about gold lists and stars, I care about what real people have to say. 

The same idea applies to business according to The Edelman Trust Barometer for 2008.  People want to hear from people like you and me.  They don’t necessarily always want to hear from the CEO or the webmasters and marketers who create a company site.  By empowering everyone from the secretary to the sales team to blog you are giving your employees an outlet to share industry knowledge thoughts and expertise all while boosting your search engine rankings if done correctly and on the right platform.  Compendium software is an affordable, blog management software that leverages blog content created by individuals to help with online customer acquisition and lead generation.  Just as I look for feedback from travelers like me, potential customers in any industry are looking for insight from "other people like them".  High levels of trust equals high levels of conversion.


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Webinar: How to Track and Measure Corporate Blogs
Posted Wednesday, February 27, 2008 by Chris Baggott
Compendium Blogware Invitation to Corporate Blogging Measure and Track
Hey, I just wanted to give anyone interested in the ROI of Business or Corporate blogging a heads up about the quick webinar I'm hosting this Friday.  You can't have an ROI unless you can measure it...so I'll be giving some best practices that apply to any blog management software, not just Compendium Blogware.  So if you are one of those Companies that Blog, or want be, join us Friday.   Register  for the blog tracking & measuring webinar here
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Business Week Revisits Blog Article
Posted Thursday, February 21, 2008 by PJ Hinton
A couple days ago, Business Week published an update to a story it ran back in May 2005 about the impact of social media on business.  The update is presented as an annotated edition of the original article.  Changes are indicated by highlighted text, and the update information can be summoned by clicking on the information icon (that little circle with a lowercase "i" in it).  It's definitely interesting to see how things have changed and how predictions have panned out.

One of the more interesting updates touches on a point that is raised by businesses considering blogging.  They ask about the risks of letting their employees blog about company matters.  Here is what the update said:
Tim Bray, Sun's director of Web technologies, thinks we overstated the risks of company bloggers. He says that 4,000 bloggers at Sun, about 10% of the workforce, have had virtually no problems. And except for a few high-profile cases, like Mark Jen at Google, very few companies have had publicized problems with in-house bloggers. "I think there's a news story in the absence of carnage," he says. Jon Garfunkel responds on Blogspotting that a few punishments and firings could frighten in-house bloggers from "testing the limits"—and lead some of them to produce blog PR.
Compendium's software helps to manage this ever-so-small risk by providing administrative approval for both posts and comments.  You get blogging benefits without losing the control.
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Is 2008 the year of alternatives
Posted Monday, January 7, 2008 by Daren Tomey
I read a blog post from Mark Simon today titled, Insider Data Trading and quickly came to the conclusion that I am happy to be in sales and not directly responsible for marketing or the spending and allocation of marketing funds at Compendium!  The conversion, or soon to be conversion, of the big three (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft) as it relates to their acquisitions of online campaign management software companies continues to convolute the ultimate purpose.  Mark's post raises some serious concerns over the capabilities of these acquired solutions to provide insights (PPC rates for one) previously not readily available, to their new owners and how these insights could be used to manipulate PPC rates moving forward.  I hope that his concerns do not come to fruition, but only time will tell. 

We speak to hundreds of prospects on a monthly basis and the majority of them are actively looking for alternatives to customer acquisition via PPC, many of them are turning to Compendium and our Corporate Blogging software.  The uncertainty that Mark lays out in his blog post, in my opinion, further strengthens the need for alternatives in 2008.
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