Blog Publishing Software

Social Content and online acquisition, do you have a vendor or a partner?

Friday, September 3, 2010 by Julie Murphy

How many of you in business can say you have a real partner working with you with the fast paced world of Social Marketing?

I had a conversation recently with an enterprise level company who described the relationship with their Social Media Marketing Vendor. What struck me strangely was I heard nothing about collaborating efforts, sharing best practices, or how they could leverage social media for customer acquisition strategies. Social media marketing strategies are much more than purchasing a module and placing it on your site and setting up a Facebook page.

How can you get your name out there and get people who are interested in you talking? Simple, you have to ask! Email and social media make a PERFECT marriage! Check out Compendium's social content publishing platform designed to solicit feedback from your customers so they can share their stories with their friends and others who are interested in the same topics! Better yet, check out a great example of how truly powerful email and social media can work so well together! Western River Expeditions

Content is Key to Marketing Success

Wednesday, September 1, 2010 by Brian Graham

In the ocean of Internet companies strugging to differentiate themselves, trying to tell their story and relate to potential customers and clients is difficult. A content strategy will help establish credibility and increase relevance. As social media continues its popularity, it has leveled the communication playing field.

Gone are the days of formal press releases and stiff, corporate communications. Speaking in the voice of the customer and client is extremely important. Companies need to look at their content strategy differently. They need to embrace what their customers and clients have to say. The content marketing strategy needs to have three key components.

1. Content Collection/Creation
2. Content Publishing
3. Measurement and Tracking of Success

Content collection and creation are pretty straight forward. Content can be created internally by employees through blogs, newsletters, whitepapers, and press releases. Customers and clients can provide content through reviews, testimonials, discussions, and stories. What happens to the content once it's collected? It should be published through some type of social content publishing platform, like, for example, Compendium. Compendium helps organize the content to best leverage this important asset—content. The last point is measurement: measuring content is done in search through calls to action and customer acquisition. This will allow an ROI calculation for the content marketing strategy.

This strategy becomes easier if a content management SAAS is used. It makes the work flow and management of the program much easier and allows the marketer to focus on results. Compendium is designed to be the social content publishing platform needed to have a successful content marketing strategy. Call me or comment to find out how we can bring together your search, social, and email to create a cohesive online acquisition strategy.

What is Compendium?: Understanding Our Powerful Social Content Publishing Platform

Tuesday, August 31, 2010 by Max Yoder

Compendium is a powerful social content publishing tool, but its not always the easiest platform to understand. Let me help you by explaining what we do in dead-simple terms.

WHAT IS COMPENDIUM?
Compendium makes it easy for marketers to publish social content to blogs, landing pages, Facebook, and Twitter—all with the purpose of acquiring new customers. We simplify the creation of search-engine-friendly content so you can drive more organic search traffic, develop deeper social engagement, and capitalize on customer demand.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
Compendium allows marketers to distribute their content through a branded, customizable subdomain. Using our Compending™ process, this subdomain optimizes your content by generating numerous, topically-focused landing pages that are relevant to your business and revenue stream.

WHO USES IT?
Marketers who understand the power of social content publishing as it relates to organic search, social media, and customer acquisition.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
Compendium is built for enterprise scalability to allow high-level customization. Our clients invest anywhere from $7,000 to $500,000+ per year, depending on their wants and needs. Levels and specificity of strategic goals, layers of integrations, and depth of usage will all contribute to varying contract values.

Want to learn more? We'd love that!

What's your strategy?

Tuesday, August 31, 2010 by Corey Kime

I'm going to lose about 75% of the population on this post (probably more), but with it being fantasy football season I'm going to do my best to draw a comparison between my draft I just finished tonight and Compendium's social content publishing platform.

Tonight I just finished my first ever auction style fantasy football draft, and you would think with this being my first time ever trying to do this style of draft I would have spent time trying to figure out what my strategy is going in to the draft. Am I going to focus on running backs? Receivers? Get high dollar players early or wait and try to get value later? Anyway, at the start of my draft I had thought about absolutely none of that and went in thinking "What am I doing???" I went through about the entire first round before I even considered placing a bid, likely causing me to miss out on some really good players and a chance at winning my league.

While I only have to think about the ten dollars I likely just wasted by joining that league, you don't have to think about wasting your company's marketing dollars in trying to develop your company's social media marketing strategy. Using Compendium's social media solution can help your company generate content from your customers, and also bring about new customers through the ability to promote content on social media sites and in search. So do your due diligence (unlike me) and request a demo to see how Compendium can help you.

Web App Development: Users, Goals, and Tasks

Thursday, August 26, 2010 by Randy Cox

As an application developer, it's easy to think about your application in terms of the features that it provides. That's a mistake, and it often leads to applications that are designed in a way that makes the developer's life easier without regard for how the app will be used.

If you walk up to one of Compendium's customers while she is using our application and you ask her what she's doing, how will she respond?

"I'm using Compendium's social content publishing platform."

"I'm entering text into an HTML form so that I can store it in a hosted database."

No way. She'll say that she's writing a new post for the company blog. If she's the blog admin for her company, she'll tell you that she's reviewing blog posts to make sure they meet company standards so that she can approve them to show up on the blog and promote them on the corporate Facebook and Twitter accounts.

She's going to describe her work in terms of tasks, and if you're extremely curious she will explain the overarching goal she's focused on in performing the tasks.

Users, Tasks, and Goals. These are the things that application developers need to think about every day. We need to know the different kinds of people who use our application. For each type of user we need to know the specific goal they are trying to achieve. The goals are related to the person's job (e.g. generate qualified leads to pass on to the sales team) and has nothing to do with the application. People use the application simply as a tool to complete specific tasks, and we need to know which of those tasks is the most important: the task they have to do over and over.

Only when you've got a solid handle on your Users, Tasks, and Goals can you make good choices about product enhancements. What enhancements will help your users complete their primary tasks more efficiently? Is there any chance that a proposed enhancement will make any user tasks more difficult?

Over the next few blog posts I'll be exploring the types of users of Compendium's software, what each of their goals are, and how they use Compendium to accomplish the tasks on their daily to-do lists.

Compendium Proudly Releases Updated Template Editor

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 by Krystal Featherston

Compendium template editor got a face lift, and I couldn't be more excited. I've been with Compendium for almost 2 years (in 2 weeks...yea me!), and this is something that I've been waiting for. I pretty much work in in the template editor all day everyday and these enhancements, will make not only my life -- but our designers life easier as well!

If your a designer, be sure to login today and check out these enhancements:

Designers can now save, preview, restore, delete, and publish backups of their templates.
This feature makes it possible for our customers to easily work on extensive redesigns while still tweaking CTAs on their current template. You can go back to any previous version of their template that has ever been published (provided you didn't deleted it).
New layout provides a larger preview
*****Designers no longer have to refresh their browser when switching tabs. The tabs stay in sync with each other automatically as the template is updated.*****
Do I seem a bit excited about this one??
The Template Editor now works in all supported browsers
Previously it had major problems in Internet Explorer. Our template editor now is officially supported in IE7, IE8, and recent versions of Firefox and Google Chrome.

For instructions and review best practices in using our template editor, visit Compendium's Knowledgebase.

If you have questions feel free to attend one of our training sessions -- below is the login information:

Today, Wednesday, Aug. 25th from 12pm to 5pm EDT
An open forum to ask questions about this new feature
Join our meeting: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/join/954178842
Tomorrow, Thursday, Aug. 26th at 2pm EDT
Join us for our regularly scheduled training. You will need to complete this form to register before attending.

Hats off to our engineering department for making these updates!!

SEO & Social Media Book Review

Monday, August 23, 2010 by Frank Dale

We get a lot of questions about books that cover social media and SEO. Both disciplines are fluid and require a concerted effort to stay up-to-date. I read a lot and thought it might make sense to share my experience with books that cover the space. From a marketing perspective social media and SEO are highly complementary disciplines. In practice, this means almost every book that covers social media or SEO tends to spend some time on the other discipline. For the review I picked six books that do a nice job of covering social media and SEO. This list could easily be much longer, but I think the titles below provide a great foundation in each subject area. The titles I chose can be sorted based on the primary subject matter and level of technical detail. In this case, technical detail refers to specifics of internet technologies or marketing models.

Marketing in the Age of Google

If you want to understand search beyond a cursory introduction and you are not looking for an in-depth, technical discussion, this is the best book to read. The author, Vanessa Fox, does an excellent job of organizing a potentially highly technical topic into an easily accessible format. This is a good book for CMOs, online marketing professionals, agency personnel, and anyone that touches marketing strategy. Vanessa provides a good introduction to search marketing and its place within an integrated marketing strategy.

Her approach is really an excellent framework for marketing, rather than just online or search marketing. Marketers that are familiar with classic marketing tools/techniques (psychographics, personas, etc…) will really appreciate the way she illustrates the relevance of those tools to search. Of particular interest are the sections that cover the use of free search data for marketing research. At the conclusion of the book, the reader will understand where search fits in the overall marketing plan, how to plan/implement organic search marketing strategies, and which metrics matter for organic search. Marketing in the Age of Google is required reading for our consultants at Compendium.

The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization

The Art of SEO is also part of our training program for our consultants at Compendium. It is an in-depth guide to search engine optimization. The authors Rand Fishkin, Stephan Spencer, Eric Enge, and Jessie Stricchiola are some of the most respected thinkers in search engine optimization. This is a book for the SEO professional and as such can be thought of as both a guide and a reference manual. A technical background is not required, but certainly helpful to fully appreciate the book.

While there are several technical guides to SEO, The Art of SEO is the definitive book. The book is over 500 pages and takes the reader from an entry level overview to advanced strategies employed by experts. The authors provide extensive coverage of keyword research, linking strategies, site architecture, and performance measurement. The Art of SEO is well-written, but is not a leisurely read. If you really want to understand the state of the art in SEO, this is the book to read. The Art of SEO is my go-to SEO resource book at Compendium.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

Groundswell is a couple of years old, but unlike more recent titles in the social media category it is actually worth reading. The authors, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, have both spent time as analysts at Forrester and the book reflects a more sophisticated approach to social media marketing. This book is best for someone looking for a useful way to think about social media, marketing, and technology evaluation. It is not a step-by-step "how to" for various social media tools and sites. Social media technology is assessed from a "POST" framework. POST stands for people (target audience), objectives, strategies, and technology, which should be evaluated in that order.

What separates Groundswell from other social media marketing books is the emphasis on customer psychographic profiles and indexes. The authors emphasize understanding how/why target customers behave online before looking at objectives, strategies, and technology options. This is actually rare in social media marketing books, which tend to assume that you need a Twitter strategy regardless of the target audience’s preferences. The average book on the topic tends to suggest vague strategies for engagement and listening, but avoids measurable outcomes. Groundswell is best for marketers that are willing to think deliberately about their desired audience, objectives, and measures before implementing specific social media strategies and tactics. The emphasis on how to think about social media rather than how to use specific tools keeps Groundswell relevant despite a fluid technology environment. The social media book market is increasingly crowded, but Groundswell is still a clear winner.

Trust Agents

Trust Agents is an exploration of the development of trust and reputation in online communities. The authors, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, blend conceptual discussions with tactical advice. Trust Agents is a great book for anyone looking for an “etiquette” guide to social media interactions and relationship development. The authors emphasize integrity and providing value to customers and potential customers as the starting point for social media programs. That point is often overlooked in reviews of the book. Trust Agents is not as analytical as Groundswell, but its value as a guide to relationship development in online communities makes it a worthwhile read. If you are new to social media, this is a good early read.

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs

Inbound Marketing by Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan of Hubspot is an overview of “pull” marketing strategies using SEO and social media. The authors provide a brief conceptual overview of SEO and social media before moving into tactical recommendations. The book does a nice job of explaining the relationship between search and social media with an emphasis on content creation. Inbound Marketing is best thought of as a general tactical primer for the current social media landscape. It is particularly relevant for small businesses and marketers new to online marketing.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

The New Rules by David Meerman Scott is, like Inbound Marketing, an overview of online “pull” marketing concepts. David discusses the value of being found in search, but in less technical detail than any of the previous titles. His emphasis is the type of content that is valuable to an online audience. The New Rules shines when it helps the reader think through content strategies.

David advocates the use of personas to guide targeted content creation, which is an approach I strongly endorse. His overview of search and social media tends to be more tactical than strategic when compared to Marketing in the Age of Google or Groundswell, but this is not necessarily a fault. The New Rules is a good choice if you need to think through content development strategy and execution.

Social media and SEO are evolving disciplines with a steady stream of literature covering each topic. Hopefully, this fairly lengthy post will help you chose a book that delves into your area of need. It seems like a new book is released weekly in each field. If you have suggestions, I am always looking for good resources. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. If you are interested in learning more about our social content publishing software, do not hesitate to contact our sales team for a demonstration.

Compendium Does the Youghiogheny Rapids!

Monday, August 23, 2010 by Kaila Woodside

There are very few things that I look forward to more than the Compendium White Water Rafting Trip Weekend. This year marks the 3rd Annual Trip and once again tops every year prior! That's me and my godson Matt on this year's trip splashing through Cucumber Rapid!

The Compendium Team is a very fun, outgoing, energetic group of of people who spend the day in the office on the phone coaching, selling and programming the best social content publish platform and to see this crew on the water you would simply be amazed.

After a long week of work we all took off a few hours early and made the drive to beautiful Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania; Not beautiful drive - as in we all had to spend 5 miserable hours driving across the state of Ohio - but it was worth it. We lodged at the fabulous Yough Plaza Motel and enjoyed yummy meals from The FireFly Grill . On Saturday morning the Compendium crew broke out into rafting teams of 4, 5 or 6 and designated a captain; here was the breakdown:

Raft #1: Krystal Featherston and Kate Carrico are both on our Product Support Team. Krystal designs and programs all of our blog template and troubleshoots escalated technical issues. This is Krystal's first time rafting! Kate is responsible for the help desk emails & phone calls. She makes sure all of our clients questions are answered within 8 hours. They are accompanied by their significant others Andy & Neil.

Raft #2: Frank, our VP of Operations was the captain of

the raft. His raft mates Ken and Laura are both on the

Compendium Sales Team. Ken is a Business Development Specialist and Laura is a Business Development Manager who fell out of the raft and saw Cucumber Rapid like no one else! Frank's wife Beth & Laura's niece Andrea had the pleasure of joining the raft awarded "most improved".

Raft #4: The blue raft represents our VP of Sales (Scott Bleczinski) and two of our engineers (Dan McFadden and James Litton) accompanied by Dan's Fiance, Lihn. I am pretty sure this raft found every rock to get stuck on throughout!

Raft #5: The red raft represents a good chunk of the Client Success Team: Lee Jorgenson, Kelly Simon & Daniel Lockhart are all Client Success Managers. Lee & his friend Parke are pros @ the Yough River and styled the rapids (well.. all but this one!) with help from Kelly's friend Mike.

Jim Hyslop, Jennifer Buscher, Kyle McGrath

Raft #6: And bringing up the rear we have Captain Jim Hyslop, the only (other than myself) 3-time-rafter, with his raft mates Jennifer Buscher and husband Brett (2-time-rafters) and Kyle McGrath and his wife Danielle. Jim, Jennifer and Kyle are all Business Development Mangers at Compendium and they really styled the rapids!

And the other safety rafters and kayakers: My fiance, Jonathon Garrison (left) and long time friend of Compendium & Chris Baggott, Dave Kohl (right).

And lastly, our fearless leader, Chris Baggott. Chris has been kayaking for years and has probably kayaked the Lower Youghiogheny thousands of times - but I will speak for Chris when I say that this weekend is by far one of the most fun times on the river.

The weekend wrapped up well with continued fun at the Falls City Pub and everyone went home with great memories. Hopefully all will return for the rafting trip again next year!

Why Do Compendium's Landing Pages Have Such High Conversion Rates?!

Monday, August 23, 2010 by Paul Haynes

A Compendium landing page converts, on average, at about 10-12%, whereas a normal website converts at approximately 1-2%. When I drop this statistic on people, they immediately inquire, "What is so great about a Compendium landing page?"

There are a few things:

This landing page is ALL about one particular topic (Social Content Publishing Platform), meaning that, when someone finds this page, it's probably EXACTLY what they're looking for

As the searcher lands on this page, and finds that ALL of the posts on this page are about the topic they searched for (Social Content Publishing Platform), they view your page as a credible source.

The page has a very nice look and feel. The Compendium product support team has designers that mirror the look and feel of your website or design a template with graphics you provide—for no added cost. You can even let your designers take the reins for complete control over template design.

The page contains calls-to-action (CTAs) that allow the folks who were looking for this exact page in search to download information that is exactly what they were looking for. By downloading information, we are able to capture user data and enter it into our system as a new lead—allowing Compendium to fuel your customer acquisition strategy.

Not only do Compendium landing pages convert at high percentages, but they are also built for SEO, meaning that they drive a ton of traffic! Because Compendium landing pages are all about one particular topic—they have the title of the page in the URL, they are keyword rich, and they are full of fresh content that is updated frequently—search engines love to serve them up to users!

If you want to focus solely on content, then let our software handle the organization of your content onto these pages. Let our product support team handle the design of your template. Let our keyword research team help you select high-converting keywords. Let our client success team guide you to inbound marketing success. And, most importantly, enjoy the simplicity that our platform brings you in terms of lead generation!

Click here to schedule a demo!

How can I learn SEO fast?!

Friday, August 20, 2010 by Paul Haynes

I run into this question pretty frequently from small/mid sized business owners who have recently realized that their web traffic has dropped and their competitors are coming up in search and stealing all of the traffic! The conversation is usually frantic at first, because search marketing has never mattered before.....but now it does and everyone knows it takes awhile to show up in search results by SEO optimizing a few pages on a website. To these people, time is money, and customer aquisition via inbound leads is critical!

My favorite part of these conversations is telling them something along these lines: "Well, blogging is the fastest way to start getting found in search, and Compendium is a social content publishing platform built for search!". (i.e. blogging on steroids) The best part about it, is that our platform is aimed at winning particular keywords and all of our landing pages search optimized allowing users to focus solely on generating content and nothing else!

Basically what I'm saying, is if you use Compendium, you will stand out in search. Click here and I'll show you how!

Do it Yourself Social Marketing

Friday, August 20, 2010 by Brian Graham

I am often in a conversation like the one I was just in. We are a technical company and we can build this ourselves. This is a common theme around software and technology related topics. What are the real costs of "Doing it Yourself"?

In the fast pace world markets of today are you going to focus on getting the technology to work or are you going to focus on results? Customer acquisition is too important to endure any type of lengthy learning curve or being the last thing on IT's list of things to do. As a marketer you need results now.

Marketing automation software is about leverage and results. Your business is too important to rely on the "Do it yourself" attitude. If you can get results today with out the hassle of development why would you do it yourself? Consider a social content publishing platform like Compendium.

Compendium and Palmer Trucks help Feed the Children

Friday, August 20, 2010 by Brian Millis

My posts are usually about how our social content publishing platform helps businesses drive online customer acquisition and engagement.

However, I am so excited to share a little about my volunteer opportunity with one of our great clients, Palmer Trucks. Jake and Kelly Simon (the Client Success Manager for Palmer Trucks) were kind enough to invite me along for the event.

We had the pleasure of distributing hundreds of meals to less fortunate families and children who needed the help. The operation was awe inspiring and uplifting as people donated their time to load pre-made boxes of toiletries, cosmetics, food, books, and more. As each family pulled up, Jake, Kelly and I helped greet the recipients and load the boxes into cars.

Thank you Compendium for allowing us the time to partake in this great event, and a special thanks goes out to Palmer Trucks, and Jake Nichols for thinking to invite their inbound marketing and online customer acquisition partner to stretch our collaboration past blog content and conversion rates.

To Comment.. or Not to Comment

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 by Kate Carrico

This morning, the help desk received a request from a client about changing the wording on their blog. The request: changing the comment section at the bottom of each of their blog posts to say "Add a Comment" instead of the default "(#) Comments".

Now this request is not at all an unrealistic one and Compendium's blogging platform is definitely capable of accomodating it--we often get requests for customization from our wonderful clients! What did catch my attention was the conversation among the Product Support Team that followed. During our team discussion of how to make the change, one of us brought up a great point about what message the actual wording change would be sending to readers. By changing it from "(#) Comments" to "Add a Comment," the ability to show how many comments already existed for a post would be eliminated. Also, because of the way the Compendium template works, removing "(#) Comments" from the bottom of each post would actually take away viewers' ability to read others' comments. Would making that wording change diminish the blog's potential?

I don't know about you, but to me (and the other Product Support team members), being able to read and respond to others' comments is part of the experience of reading online content. The comments become part of the overall knowledge gained from the post or story. From a business perspective, comments on your company's blog post allow an open dialogue between the you and your clients for feedback, suggestions, and Q & A--all interactions that some companies dedicate some serious time and resources to. What company wouldn't want an easy way to interact with clients and hear what clients want to see in the product? We decided a comment section would be a pretty terrible feature to pass up!

In the end, we came to a happy compromise for the wording: "Add a Comment >> (# Comments)". We hope that future blog users feel encouraged to participate in the discussion, not only with each other, but with the blog writers. After all, one of a company's primary reasons for utilizing a social content publishing platform like Compendium's is to engage their customers in a discussion about their products or services!

So what is Compendium?

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 by Brian Millis

I've been working with our Community Manager, Max, on an upcoming presentation. He's the creative arm to my limited, left-brain-driven mind. Max has a unique ability to translate visually and verbally what I hear from customers every day about what they need in terms of social content marketing tools, and how I help businesses map the Compendium social content publishing platform to those needs. Together, we've created a succinct "What Is Compendium" document. Here is the gist:

What is Compendium?
Compendium makes it easy for marketers to publish social content to blogs, landing pages, Facebook, and Twitter—all with the purpose of acquiring new customers. We simplify the creation of search-engine-friendly content so you can drive more organic search traffic, develop deeper social engagement, and capitalize on customer demand.

How does it work?
Compendium allows marketers to distribute their content through a branded, customizable subdomain. Using our Compending™ process, this subdomain optimizes your content by generating numerous, topically focused landing pages that are relevant to your business and revenue stream.

Who uses it?
Marketers who understand the power of social content publishing as it relates to organic search, social media, and customer acquisition.

Hey, Social Content Publishers, Be Choosy!

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 by Max Yoder

As Compendium's Community Manager, I take the reins of both Compendium's social media presence and its internal communication flows. In the social media realm, I administer our corporate blog, our Facebook and Twitter accounts, and various outward-facing educational materials.

When it comes to the Facebook and Twitter accounts, I find myself judging content on a Facebook-worthy or Twitter-worthy scale. What I mean is this: I look at each piece of content, break down its message, and decide if it is appropriate for just Facebook, just Twitter, both, or neither. It may seem obvious, but all of our blog posts are not primed for Twitter. All our tweets do not belong on Facebook. All our educational material does not belong on the corporate blog.

I, for one, am fortunate to have a steady stream of new content to constantly choose from, and let me tell you something: it feels good to be choosy, and I am sure it creates a better social presence when you can be.

My word of advice is to create a lot of content that is pertinent to your business and your customer's desires so you can publish it wisely and relevantly. It sounds daunting, but it's not, and you'll like the results.

Is AOL on to something?

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 by Chris Baggott

I just saw Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL on CNBC.

The announcement was that he's hiring 500 reporters around the country.   The goal is to become the largest digital media company in the world by owning the local verticals in every community in America.

What do you think?   I'm thinking that this is still an old fashioned publisher/advertiser business model that is proving to be broken...perhaps forever.

Publishers are middlemen.   They create content that draws people and sell access to those people to businesses.   But in this world of business executing their own social media marketing strategies and combining search marketing with social marketing....well, the businesses don't really need the middleman any more.   They can in fact build direct relationships with customers, leverage existing customers and most importantly use search to drive new business.

In a recent article in Fortune they offered the following scenario:

"Say you want to buy running shoes to train for a marathon. Today....increasingly you might pose the question "What running shoes should I buy?" to your friends on Facebook, or maybe write "Who knows about training for marathons?" on Twitter."

Search plays a critical role here too.   People search for everything. One thing Fortune didn't mention is that search volume is up 47% over the past two years...or that Googles share of search has grown to 72%.

In the above scenario the person might start with search and then ask their network about experiences with a specific brand or type based on what they found.   A second scenario might be for the network to recommend a brand or type and the person searches for the best price or a local provider.   In either scenario, advertising plays very little role.

Customer Acquisition today is a strategy of leveraging all of a businesses content and relationships to have a direct relationship with their customers and prospects.   The need for a middleman to draw in people and interrupt them with advertising is in a long decline.   I totally support the idea of local content to drive engagement.   What I'm skeptical of is a business model of monetizing that content through advertising.

Why the Search Party isn't Over Yet

Monday, August 16, 2010 by Corey Kime

This weekend, I went home to see my family and go to a friend's wedding reception and while at home I read an interesting article in Fortune magazine titled, Google: The Search Party is Over. To sum up the article in brief: the writer states that Google just may be past their peak years, citing the lack of diversified revenue streams, a slowing in the growth of search, and increased competition from sites like Bing and Facebook. This was a very interesting read for me because Google for the last decade has always seemed to be receiving very positive press, so to see something that isn't overly positive about Google definitely made me think. Here are a couple of thoughts I had after taking time to think about the article:

1) Search isn't going anywhere

This article, at least to what I can remember, seems to paint the picture that not just Google is past its prime, but also search is too. I don't think this is what they intended to do with this article, but with as big of a share of search that Google has, they almost go hand-in-hand. However, this isn't really quite the truth as, even according to the article, "Long-term projections for growth in the search business are more in the 15% to 17% range." This tells me that search is still going to be growing and companies still need to be creating customer acquisition strategies with organic search. Google may not get every single search in that increase, but the searchers will still be out there.

2) Social sites (such as Facebook) need to be considered

The end of the article discusses how Facebook is now a threat to Google not just for advertising dollars, but for searches as well. As a marketer, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed at the thought of now having to not only optimize your company's organic search presence, but also now creating a social presence as well. To help simplify the process of doing both, why not consider using Compendium's social content publishing platform? Not only can you use Compendium to improve your organic search presence, but it can also now be used as a means to push out user generated content to social sites with our Facebook and Twitter integration. This can turn two tasks into one, and do a good job with both!

With search not going anywhere any time soon and social sites like Facebook becoming ever popular, why not consider using Compendium to help your company grow?

What's your Social Strategy?

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by Brian Millis

Or do you even consider it a STRATEGY? I read this awesome post from eConsultancy about how companies should rethink their social move if it involves just throwing up a Facebook and Twitter account.

At the end of the day, I think most quality social media strategies revolve around the content. The most successful Compendium clients integrate their content marketing by using our platform as a social content publishing tool. A great internal blog post appears on specific keyword pages aimed at organic search. then, they use Compendium to publish and promote that content on Facebook and Twitter. Some clients leverage user-generated stories via email that flow through Compendium, update their keyword blog pages, end up in social spaces, and most importantly . . .

DRIVE TRAFFIC TO A PAGE WITH A HIGH CONVERTING TEMPLATE

I love how the article above states it:

"It is more realistic, and likely to provide more predictable results if you plan how to grow your online following steadily by engaging with the right people, on the right platforms, with well-considered content which adds value to your audience."

If you're wondering how to improve an online customer acquisition strategy, and you feel social media marketing strategies are an important piece of the puzzle, I encourage you to:

1. Start creating valuable, engaging content
2. Organize that content for maximum organic search visibility
3. Promote that content in the right social media spaces for your business
4. Track traffic, click through, and conversion analytics and results
5. Stay time relevant
6. Make sure you own the Hub of your social media strategy (i.e. you don't own Facebook)
7. Be present and consistent with your content

Let me know if you're interested in learning more about how Compendium can help you formulate your strategy and maximize results.

Two reasons why search runs my life

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by Stephanie West

One week ago, I was that person that tried to refrain from technology. Not all technology, but some of it. I honestly just tried to refrain from the part of technology that made my life easier. Ironic, huh? I was completely straying from anything that search engine marketers were trying to tell me - and these marketers are specifically trying to target their product to meet my needs.

So what were my needs? To simplify my life on a single device.

Background information: I've had the same Nokia phone for the past two years. All that it does is send text messages and make phone calls.

I recently received the new Droid X and I am absolutely amazed at how much easier my life is because of it! I can organize my life with a calendar at my fingertips, have access to numerous applications - all designed to make my life easier, and most importantly, I can SEARCH - I have the internet at my fingertips.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because I believe in search. It makes my life so much easier. My two main points about search are as follows:

1. When a consumer is searching for a product/service, they are looking for something in particular. YOU (as the marketer) may have what the consumer is looking for. And consumers are looking on the internet - searching on the internet - for your product/service. As a marketer, you just need to make sure that you're getting found in search. At Compendium, we are providing consumers with a solution - a social content publishing platform - to allow marketers to publish their content to help them maximize their search engine optimization results.

2. As a consumer, I am constantly searching (especially on my new phone!) for products/services that I'm interested in. I want to find this information through specific keyword phrases that I enter into my search engine. I would specifically like to find the user generated content because I can find relevant information from "real-life" user of the product/service. This is exactly what I did with my "new phone search." I looked for user reviews on the internet... and the results were overwhelming.

Takeaway from all of this: generate content and search. If you generate content around your product or service, you are automatically helping your inbound marketing strategy.

What Are the Best Search & Social Media Videos of 2010?

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 by Max Yoder

Search and social media are not just about words and images anymore—videos matter.

Realizing this, Compendium would like to find the greatest search and social media videos of 2010. If you've created or seen any top-notch videos that deal with search engine optimization, social content publishing, or social media marketing—send them our way! We'll sift through your choices and compile a greatest hits list. There's some high caliber content out there, so don't be shy!

You can email any suggestions to myoder@compendium.com