In the end, some geeks might have loved all this tinkering, but from a business or marketing standpoint it was a nightmare. The solution was all encompassing SaaS tools from companies like ExactTarget, Constant Contact or Responsys...
Superior tools designed for marketers, not IT folks. In the end, both parties were happier.
The same discussion happens in Corporate Blogging Software. "WordPress is free...why pay you?" For the most part we hear this when IT folks are involved. Natuarally as they understand the Compendium Blogware offering they start to see the feature differences, but the don't really understand that Free isn't Free.
That is why I was so happy to see this post today from a big Technology focused Blog talking about how overly hard WordPress is:
"Recently I have started chatting to an engineer at Automattic, the mob which employs most of the lead programmers on Wordpress. They also run the Wordpress.com service, which is a big job — millions of blogs, tens of millions of monthly visits."
"I complained to him that one of my annoyances in life is how complex Wordpress actually is. Why? Because you don’t just have to configure Wordpress to get anywhere. To get it to perform acceptably you can either throw powerful hardware at the problem (which is how Club Troppo has done it since our donation drive last year) or you can implement a whole rogue’s gallery of tweaks and adaptations."
When you think about what your goals are with advanced business blogging the focus should be on engagement and traffic through SEO....not constantly tweaking software, messing with plug-ins or installing more powerful servers. Let the Vendor manage that stuff....
Posted by: David on Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Wordpress easy? No Moveable Type anytime - especially for ranking within days at times D
Posted by: Chris Baggott on Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Thanks for the comment, but Typepad isn't a solution for business either. It might help you on one or two terms, but with no 'Compending' it's a pretty weak marketing tool. It also lacks flexibility in design and centralized control over calls to action, template elements and content. I was on Typepad for nearly 5 years so I know a lot about it and loved it for what it did. What it didn't do are the things that compelled me to found Compendium Blogware. Best, Chris Baggott CEO Compendium Blogware www.compendiumblogware.com
Posted by: Chris Norris on Monday, July 14, 2008
WordPress is hard, it's true. Especially to get it running at high volume. I know our Compendium installation was probably fairly easy to set up. But at least WordPress comes with non-crippled RSS feeds out of the box. Compendium Blogware strips all formatting out of RSS feeds on purpose, a practice which still baffles me and alienates the more advanced blog readers.