Posted Monday, November 10, 2008 by
Jason Gergely
Blog, which is short for Web logs, is almost like an online journal or diary that is visible to the public. You can blog about pretty much anything on the face of the earth. If you want to blog about Global Warming and your opinions on it, there is someone out there that will most likely read it or there might even be a blog about it already. You can talk about your kids and how much you care about them and how you think everyone should raise their child because your children grew up so well. There is probably a few out there already on the idea of parenting. Some people find a feeling of relief when they blog because it is almost like typing without thinking. Just get an idea in your head and let your fingers go (unless you use the old school way of “hunt and peck”, in that case it will take a bit longer). There are great benefits to blogging too. In fact, I didn’t start blogging until I started my internship here at Compendium Blogware and now I feel that I should write something each day (crazy… I know). I realized the power that blogging can give to a company. By using a business blogging technique, a company can increase its search engine optimization which can and most likely will lead to more sales. If you are reading this right now and have never blogged before… go ahead and try it.
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Posted Monday, November 10, 2008 by
Sarah Sedberry
Now you can! Check out Write or Die
Now, I know the title sounds a bit ominous, but it is a great little widget to help you stay on task and get your post written in the time you allotted for it on your calendar. I have spoken with many of Compendium's clients who all talk about the time management of fitting in best practices of 2 blog posts per week, per blogger. This is the perfect tool to help you get this accomplished.
The widget allows you to set your goal of "X" number of words, the time you want to accomplish this, as well as set the settings of the widget strictness (Such as Forgiving, Strict, or Evil - again I promise this is all in good fun).
Once you set your goals, it opens a text editor that allows you to write your thoughts down. If you pause for too long the screen will turn from white to pink, to hot pink, eventually to red....then the screeching violins kick in... all a reminder to keep writing! Once you've hit your goal, simply press done and it give you the text to copy into your blog.
This is a great tool to keep you focused and on task to better time manage your schedule to assure that you are getting in your 2 blog posts per week.
Now, I know the title sounds a bit ominous, but it is a great little widget to help you stay on task and get your post written in the time you allotted for it on your calendar. I have spoken with many of Compendium's clients who all talk about the time management of fitting in best practices of 2 blog posts per week, per blogger. This is the perfect tool to help you get this accomplished.
The widget allows you to set your goal of "X" number of words, the time you want to accomplish this, as well as set the settings of the widget strictness (Such as Forgiving, Strict, or Evil - again I promise this is all in good fun).
Once you set your goals, it opens a text editor that allows you to write your thoughts down. If you pause for too long the screen will turn from white to pink, to hot pink, eventually to red....then the screeching violins kick in... all a reminder to keep writing! Once you've hit your goal, simply press done and it give you the text to copy into your blog.
This is a great tool to keep you focused and on task to better time manage your schedule to assure that you are getting in your 2 blog posts per week.
Posted Monday, November 10, 2008 by
Kristen Raves
I hear it everyday in my role as a Client Success Manager, "I can't", "I don't have enough time", "I am too busy". PJ, our Senior Software Engineer at Compendium, wote a fantastic blog post about a useful little site called Dr. Wicked's Writing Lab. It is a website designed to force you to write. No excuses can be had on this site, they will not have it.
When you get to the homepage, all you have to do is fill in the box with your goals. Your goals are: word goal, time goal, and what setting you would like it on. You can chose from a variety of intensity levels such as Gentle Mode, Normal Mode, Kamikaze Mode, and Electric Shock Mode. This site is not only amuzing, but it is extremely helpful.
Some of our Client Success Managers tested this out today and found out how usefull it is when creating a blog post. Even though we are a blogging company it can be difficult to find time to write. This is something my clients struggle with daily and this tool can be a fun way to manage your time. Next time you are writing, visit the site and see how it can work for you.
When you get to the homepage, all you have to do is fill in the box with your goals. Your goals are: word goal, time goal, and what setting you would like it on. You can chose from a variety of intensity levels such as Gentle Mode, Normal Mode, Kamikaze Mode, and Electric Shock Mode. This site is not only amuzing, but it is extremely helpful.
Some of our Client Success Managers tested this out today and found out how usefull it is when creating a blog post. Even though we are a blogging company it can be difficult to find time to write. This is something my clients struggle with daily and this tool can be a fun way to manage your time. Next time you are writing, visit the site and see how it can work for you.
Posted Monday, November 10, 2008 by
PJ Hinton
One of the barriers to blogging on a regular pace is the ever dreaded scourge of writer's block. One of our recurring goals is to help our readers overcome that with tools like the keyword tag cloud and the keyword strength meter. And rest assured we continue to work on new features that will aid the content author.
However, for those customers whose inertia seems insurmountable, there is a much more draconian solution, a tricked out simple text editor called Write or Die. The editor was plugged today on the personal productivity blog Lifehacker. It might well be one of the most extreme forms of timeboxing that I've ever seen!
To start using Write or Die, the user completes a form that specifies the following parameters:
At it's most severe settings, it will start to delete words from your content from the end of the text going backwards. The only way to mollify this demanding master is to keep writing.
Fortunately, the editor comes with a Pause button in the event you have to stop writing. Moreover, it plays triumphant music when you achieve your writing goal within the allotted time, so it does offer some positive feedback.
I really hope they don't follow through on the "electric shock" feature, though. :-)
However, for those customers whose inertia seems insurmountable, there is a much more draconian solution, a tricked out simple text editor called Write or Die. The editor was plugged today on the personal productivity blog Lifehacker. It might well be one of the most extreme forms of timeboxing that I've ever seen!
To start using Write or Die, the user completes a form that specifies the following parameters:
- number of words to be written
- amount of time to be spent writing
- severity of negative feedback
At it's most severe settings, it will start to delete words from your content from the end of the text going backwards. The only way to mollify this demanding master is to keep writing.
Fortunately, the editor comes with a Pause button in the event you have to stop writing. Moreover, it plays triumphant music when you achieve your writing goal within the allotted time, so it does offer some positive feedback.
I really hope they don't follow through on the "electric shock" feature, though. :-)
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Posted Monday, November 10, 2008 by
Sarah Sedberry
“Search is a larger, behavioral reality that impacts corporate strategy.”
In a recent book called Branding Only Works on Cattle by Jonathan Salem Baskin, the author rightly points out that marketing strategies that don’t include a heavy element of search won’t work well for for a company. One of the reasons why social media is a great tool for content marketing, such as writing a compelling blog post, is that it’s an opportunity to build search equity.
This is where Compendium Blogware steps in and is able to enhance your efforts, and allow your company to be found in the organic search results of a searchers query.
Writing about things that people might search for is a great way to find some new people at your door who might want a look at your product. Consumers who might otherwise have never heard of your, or worse yet, found your competitor in search results and gave their business to them.
Think about your own behavioral patterns...when you are looking for information in a search engine, who are you more likely to click on? The sponsored ads on the side of the page, or in the top 5 organic search results? What is your company doing to ensure its place on the first page of Google?
Posted Sunday, November 9, 2008 by
Jess Wehner
I wanted to highlight a couple of our newer clients to give an example of the variety of business's that use Compendium's Blogging Software and to congratulate these companies on writing lots and lots of content.
These companies do a great job of posting frequently. They all get more than 2 posts up per week and I'm pretty sure if you asked- they'd tell you it's a pretty easy task to do.
- Luxury Index- is an online marketplace where affluent internet users worldwide can buy, sell, rent, or list luxury goods and services. I always enjoy reading their blog to read about the latest habits and styles of the "rich and famous".
- US Watches- is a division of Specialty Retail Shops. They sell watches online to people who are passionate about their timepieces. They have a huge selection of watches on their website and lots of watch information on their blog.
- Dr. Clue- provides team building solutions for corporations around the nation. Specifically, they are experts at creating scavengar hunts that immerse teams in challenging, clue-solving adventures.
These companies do a great job of posting frequently. They all get more than 2 posts up per week and I'm pretty sure if you asked- they'd tell you it's a pretty easy task to do.
Posted Saturday, November 8, 2008 by
PJ Hinton
The relevance of the Long Tail with respect to search is a recurring topic among the blogging employees of Compendium. A Long Tail search marketing strategy attempts to win on niche keyword searches that are specific to the business rather than more generic phrases that may be more frequently targeted.
A recent post over at ReadWriteWeb, a popular read among us here in the Engineering team, reports on some new findings by SEO and web analytics specialist Dustin Woodward, Using statistics collected by Hitwise, Woodward found that the Long Tail is a lot longer and more substantial than anticipated. Quoting from the ReadWriteWeb post (emphasis mine):
What does this mean for a business trying to get found by potential customers? It means that there is a very good likelihood that your potential customers are using specialized keywords to find the products and services you're selling.
Another notable can be found at the end of the post:
A well done blog, keyword rich and frequently updated, will boost your profile in search engine results, and with Compendium's keyword blogs, your employee-created content is automatically organized across different search keywords, so you can get elevated search results on the Long Tail.
If this isn't a good reason to blog for your business, I don't know what is.
A recent post over at ReadWriteWeb, a popular read among us here in the Engineering team, reports on some new findings by SEO and web analytics specialist Dustin Woodward, Using statistics collected by Hitwise, Woodward found that the Long Tail is a lot longer and more substantial than anticipated. Quoting from the ReadWriteWeb post (emphasis mine):
The top 100 search terms account for 5.7% of all search traffic and include keywords like 'myspace,' 'google,' 'bank of america,' and ' yahoo mail.' Those numbers are not unexpected. However, the top 1,000 search terms only account for 10.6% of all search traffic, and even the top 10,000 search terms only drive 18.5% of all search traffic.Note that these statistics filter out keywords that would refer to adult content, so that we're referring to searches that have a greater potential relevance to mainstream businesses.
What does this mean for a business trying to get found by potential customers? It means that there is a very good likelihood that your potential customers are using specialized keywords to find the products and services you're selling.
Another notable can be found at the end of the post:
Also, looking at this data is yet another good reminder of the fact that search has replaced bookmarks and memorizing URLs for a lot of people. Most of the top search terms like 'google,' or 'usps,' are, after all, identical to their URLs.For many, search engines have become a web content database in which search terms are the primary key.
A well done blog, keyword rich and frequently updated, will boost your profile in search engine results, and with Compendium's keyword blogs, your employee-created content is automatically organized across different search keywords, so you can get elevated search results on the Long Tail.
If this isn't a good reason to blog for your business, I don't know what is.
Posted Friday, November 7, 2008 by
Jason Gergely
Companies are realizing what kind of benefits that blogging has for their overall marketing objective. The way that it works is that the company’s employees ate writing blogs frequently, discussing their jobs, their clients, as well as the product the company has to offer and then their place of employment gets something huge in return. A higher Search Engine Optimization which will in turn lead to more sales. When a person uses Google or any other search engine, they are looking to solve a problem. What if your company website was in the first few links of the organic search (which is where the majority of the clicks happen on a search engine)? That is exactly what corporate blogging does. By having your employees talk about those topics just listed they are increasing the frequency, relevancy and recency of the data on your website. Conveniently enough, those are the three things that Google uses to narrow its searches for its users.SO when someone types in an inquiry into that search bar that has something to do with your product or service, your website (or your employee blogs) will rank high in that search.
Posted Friday, November 7, 2008 by
PJ Hinton
This morning, the computing trade press and blogosphere was abuzz over a curious utterance from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
I tend to concur that Microsoft is not serious about looking at WebKit for replacing the HTML rendering engine for Internet Explorer. They tend to depend on a mix of in-house developed code and code gained from mergers and acquisitions. I just coudn't see them bringing themselves to live in the sharing oriented culture of open source.
Perhaps what's most interesting about Ballmer's remark isn't the consideration of open source, but rather his posture toward open source. Calling it "interesting" is a considerable departure from his past remarks, which usually categorize open source somewhere between dangerous and evil.
Still, I think that Microsoft would stand to gain a lot in the area of developer good will if they were able to embrace (without the extend-and-extinguish two-step that is so much a part of their past history) a standards-compliant rendering engine. It's hard to find a web developer who just loves using IE as a primary platform for app development.
Granted, shareholders wouldn't reward Microsoft in the short run for building up good karma with developers, but Microsoft rose to prominence with developer support, and may well suffer a long decline as developers forsake it. At some level they must realize this is true, or else they wouldn't be doing the big startup software giveaway they announced earlier this week.
- Microsoft looking at Webkit? (CNet news.com)
- Microsoft Probably Not Really Considering WebKit For IE (TechCrunch)
- Ballmer Rules Out Another Yahoo Bid - WebKit Statements Overblown (ReadWriteWeb)
Open source is interesting. Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8WebKit is an open-source HTML rendering library that was developed originally for the KDE web browser Konqueror and then embraced later by Apple for it's Safari browser. It also is used by Google Chrome.
I tend to concur that Microsoft is not serious about looking at WebKit for replacing the HTML rendering engine for Internet Explorer. They tend to depend on a mix of in-house developed code and code gained from mergers and acquisitions. I just coudn't see them bringing themselves to live in the sharing oriented culture of open source.
Perhaps what's most interesting about Ballmer's remark isn't the consideration of open source, but rather his posture toward open source. Calling it "interesting" is a considerable departure from his past remarks, which usually categorize open source somewhere between dangerous and evil.
Still, I think that Microsoft would stand to gain a lot in the area of developer good will if they were able to embrace (without the extend-and-extinguish two-step that is so much a part of their past history) a standards-compliant rendering engine. It's hard to find a web developer who just loves using IE as a primary platform for app development.
Granted, shareholders wouldn't reward Microsoft in the short run for building up good karma with developers, but Microsoft rose to prominence with developer support, and may well suffer a long decline as developers forsake it. At some level they must realize this is true, or else they wouldn't be doing the big startup software giveaway they announced earlier this week.
Posted Friday, November 7, 2008 by
Lindsey Young
Halloween is my favorite holiday. What's not to love? The leaves turning, the air turning crisp, the feel of the holiday season approaching! It's my favorite time of year. And who can resist the dressing up! And...being the animal lover that I am...dressing up my pets (see inserted photo). I know, I know, a fine line between cute and cruel, right?A blog can be so many different things, and today instead of being informational about blogging for business, I'm adding that "human" side to our marketing and making it personal! I have started reading all of my clients blogs on a pretty regular basis. I find that the ones I enjoy reading the most are the ones they add a personal touch to. I know that I can learn about their business, but I enjoy learning about them as well. Behind these company blogs are what really matter...the employees who write them.
So on that note, I hope everyone had a great Halloween - from everyone who stayed
home and handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters, to people like me who go all out, dress up and still act like I'm a kid! Have a great autumn everyone!
Posted Friday, November 7, 2008 by
Krystal Featherston
I’m not sure if you are as excited about the Compendium keyword strength indicator as I am … I’m definitely one of those people who like high scores. I always have and always will. So I finished editing my sticky post and looked at my score I was super excited!
Then a thought crossed my mind …. “Do our clients know how Compendium's blogging software determines their keyword strength when their writing a post?”
Not really knowing the answer - I thought I would share. The keyword strength indicator takes several factors in to account when getting the score. Your keyword strength score is determined by three factors:
1. Number of keyword phrase matches within your post
2. Number of distinct keywords used within your post
3. Keyword concentration within your post
It is the combination of these factors, not just the single use of a keyword.
A blogging best practice: A score of 50 or higher is recommended.
Don't get me wrong I'm not telling you to stuff you blog post with keywords only write what is relevant and what make since - but now you know how your strength is determined.
Happy blogging!!
Then a thought crossed my mind …. “Do our clients know how Compendium's blogging software determines their keyword strength when their writing a post?”
Not really knowing the answer - I thought I would share. The keyword strength indicator takes several factors in to account when getting the score. Your keyword strength score is determined by three factors:
1. Number of keyword phrase matches within your post
2. Number of distinct keywords used within your post
3. Keyword concentration within your post
It is the combination of these factors, not just the single use of a keyword.
A blogging best practice: A score of 50 or higher is recommended.
Don't get me wrong I'm not telling you to stuff you blog post with keywords only write what is relevant and what make since - but now you know how your strength is determined.
Happy blogging!!
Posted Wednesday, November 5, 2008 by
PJ Hinton
Sometimes you want to goOver at Dr. Dobbs Code Talk, Christopher Diggins has an excellent post about the importance of coming up with good names when writing code. He opens up with a brief anecdote to make his point:
Where everybody knows your name
-- Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo,
"Where Everybody Knows Your Name" (a.k.a. Theme from Cheers)
It seems much of my time programming is spent trying to come up with meaningful names for things. I recently observed a problem that arose when two things were given the same name in a library, but that were in fact different. I was trying to document the library's functionality, and it turns out that virtually everyone on the development team was confused as to what it really was. Breaking apart the concept into two names, instantly cleared everything up.I've seen this problem come up many times in my 11 years as a software engineer. It's a side-effect of the imprecision of everyday language.
The eight years I spent developing software at Wolfram Research exposed me to a corporate culture where the precise use of terminology was heavily emphasized.
Their flagship product, Mathematica, is a high end technical computing package that has at its foundation a vast, eclectic programming language. Not only does it support different programming paradigms (procedural, functional, and rule-based), it also has to straddle concepts from disparate domains like computer science, applied mathematics, physics, graphics, and typesetting.
As a simple example, consider the term trace. In linear algebra, "trace" refers to the sum of the elements of a matrix's diagonal. In software development, the same term refers to a record of function calls by a program. Since Mathematica is a program that can record its evaluation history and do matrix algebra, the language had to support both notions.
To resolve the collision, there was a compromise, with the keyword
Trace becoming the function that was used to track the execution history of an expression evaluation, and the keyword Tr being used to denote the linear algebra operation. It's worth noting that in making this distinction, the developers had to make an exception to another rule for the language, which was to shun the use of abbreviations in keyword names.In my last job, I had interaction with members of the complex event processing community, an emerging field of applied computer science which deals with the modeling and creation of algorithms that can make decisions based on patterns of observed data. They are only beginning to coalesce around some common terminology for things that we don't give much thought to, such as what exactly is an event?
Here at Compendium, we grapple with getting the terminology right in the day-to-day design and implementation of our blog hosting software. Usually these are things we can hash out with quick meetings and a whiteboard. At other times, there is a need to be more formal.
For example, during one of our strategic sprints, we did a complete redesign of the default template used for our customer blogs. To make the style sheet easy to learn for web designers, we sat down and mapped out the layout of our pages and standardized the terminology of the elements, creating an ad hoc, yet very useful, ontology.
Going back to my previous post about web APIs, the need for consistency and precision in terminology is very important. APIs have both functions and parameters that serve as inputs to the application, and they have names to identify them. When a group of APIs uses names inconsistently, it makes the learning curve much steeper, and opens up the possibility of bugs due to programmer confusion.
As for Diggins' post, it wraps up with the following recommendations:
As a closing thought, the following are some of the different naming sins that I frequently see in big libraries in no particular order:
In the field of software development, a good name can sometimes seem like everything.
Posted Monday, November 3, 2008 by
PJ Hinton
Back in April, Compendium CEO Chris Baggott made the following statement in a post to his blog:
Take for example a recent post by Kevin O'Keefe on his blog Real Lawyers Have Blogs. A fellow law blogger had commented on how hard it was for a new blogger to build up a loyal readership in an area that's already saturated with popular bloggers. O'Keefe responded by saying (emphasis mine):
O'Keefe cites the reputation enhancment that blogs can bring, and it's not just the boost you get from citations from your peers. It's also the elevated reputation you gain from search engines as you write frequent posts on matters that are recent, relevant, and keyword rich. It's why blogging for SEO is so critical to blogging success.
Stop thinking about Blogging as a top-down, CEO thought leadership thing, and stop thinking that you are going to implement a “Social Network” and all your fans will come out of the woodwork to post their praises.This is a position we continue to stake out in promoting our product, and it's an idea that's starting to catch on with others.
Take for example a recent post by Kevin O'Keefe on his blog Real Lawyers Have Blogs. A fellow law blogger had commented on how hard it was for a new blogger to build up a loyal readership in an area that's already saturated with popular bloggers. O'Keefe responded by saying (emphasis mine):
I don't believe you should decide whether to blog on a subject based upon the existence of other blogs on the niche. In fact, there can be an advantage starting a blog on an area of law where there are a number of successful blogs.This is exactly the point we have been making. You grow your business by acquiring new customers who find you're out there providing services that they might need.
The goal of a law blog is not just to become one of the most widely read, ie, in the top 3 or top 10 in employment law. Blogs can be used very effectively for networking, reputation enhancement, and business growth even where there are other popular blogs on the subject.
O'Keefe cites the reputation enhancment that blogs can bring, and it's not just the boost you get from citations from your peers. It's also the elevated reputation you gain from search engines as you write frequent posts on matters that are recent, relevant, and keyword rich. It's why blogging for SEO is so critical to blogging success.
Posted Saturday, November 1, 2008 by
PJ Hinton
While it's OK to take on a less formal tone with your corporate blog posts, there's no excuse for being sloppy when composing your content. People will judge you by the attention you place on details, like proper spelling and punctuation.
A recent survey of blog readers, sponsored by copy editing service GooseGrade, should help you see the light in the event you might harbor skepticism. ReadWriteWeb contributor Marshall Kirkpatrick has a post that does a great job summarizing the survey results.
Those responding to the survey said that spelling and grammatical errors were a minus in their perception of a blog's quality. Moreover, the survey revealed that readers frequently noticed spelling and grammatical mistakes on posts and were overwhelmingly less likely to share the material with others when those errors were present.
What's the bottom line? Be relaxed in your tone, but not lax in your proofreading. That's just another ingredient in the recipe for blogging success.
A recent survey of blog readers, sponsored by copy editing service GooseGrade, should help you see the light in the event you might harbor skepticism. ReadWriteWeb contributor Marshall Kirkpatrick has a post that does a great job summarizing the survey results.
Those responding to the survey said that spelling and grammatical errors were a minus in their perception of a blog's quality. Moreover, the survey revealed that readers frequently noticed spelling and grammatical mistakes on posts and were overwhelmingly less likely to share the material with others when those errors were present.
What's the bottom line? Be relaxed in your tone, but not lax in your proofreading. That's just another ingredient in the recipe for blogging success.
Posted Thursday, October 30, 2008 by
Doug Karr
Many of our customers and prospects are PPC (Pay Per Click) geniuses. PPC is a fairly simple approach to 'buying' traffic to your site. PPC also has the added simplicity of generating fantastic toolsets to gauge the competitiveness and cost of keywords and key phrases you're trying to obtain.
We pay a lot of attention to PPC at Compendium because its a great indicator for our clients when we review their compended blogs and what keywords and phrases they are after. However, there are some very important differences between Pay Per Click and Blogging.
We pay a lot of attention to PPC at Compendium because its a great indicator for our clients when we review their compended blogs and what keywords and phrases they are after. However, there are some very important differences between Pay Per Click and Blogging.
- PPC ads have a very short title and description as opposed to a blog. A blog offers both can leverage a full post title and lengthy description so a blogger can write incredibly compelling content that a searcher can decide on.
- PPC ads obtain 5% of a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) where as Organic Search results obtain 95% of the click throughs.
- Blogs are seen as trusted resources for conscientous purchasers online. So not only do more people click-through, they're more likely to purchase after reading a blog rather than a web site.
- A PPC advertisement is a one-time event that you have to actively pay for for the duration of the campaign. A blog post is there for as long as your blog is alive and well - always ready to be a relevant response to a visitor's request.
- PPC ads don't 'combine' to build trust nor authority with Search Engines. Blogs do! The more content you post, the smarter you're making the search engine on how your website is relevant to searchers.
- PPC ads are only an acquisition tool, to get people to your site. Blogs are both an acquisition and a retention tool to obtain new clients and continue to maintain a relationship with them after they are on board.
- PPC can only be won by spending more money than the next person. Blogs can win organic search simply by being more relevant. The popularity of a blog through trackbacks, number of blog posts, and the richness of the content can drive your result to the top of the Search Engines.
Posted Wednesday, October 29, 2008 by
Sarah Sedberry
The girls of the Client Success team are at it again.....
One of the major topics heavily covered in Client Success with our customers is Content Development. We talk about it on a daily basis here and are always stressing how important it is in driving search engine results, improving a blog's rankings, and driving traffic to your site.
As you can imagine, we need to come up with creative new ways to engage our customers on this topic in order to keep things "spicy". Below you will find the latest video by the Client Success team, starring Kristen Raves and Jess Wehner, in the Compendium rendition of "Lazy Monday". The video involves best practices in writing a blog post, and driving those SEO results!
**Note: If you haven't seen the Saturday Night Live spoof of this, check it out here, as it will give you the basis to our version.
One of the major topics heavily covered in Client Success with our customers is Content Development. We talk about it on a daily basis here and are always stressing how important it is in driving search engine results, improving a blog's rankings, and driving traffic to your site.
As you can imagine, we need to come up with creative new ways to engage our customers on this topic in order to keep things "spicy". Below you will find the latest video by the Client Success team, starring Kristen Raves and Jess Wehner, in the Compendium rendition of "Lazy Monday". The video involves best practices in writing a blog post, and driving those SEO results!
**Note: If you haven't seen the Saturday Night Live spoof of this, check it out here, as it will give you the basis to our version.
Posted Wednesday, October 29, 2008 by
Jason Gergely
Blogs? Ten years ago (when I was in middle school) if someone said the word blogs, I would have thought it was some dirty word that my mom would be ashamed if she heard me say. However, in the age of the Internet, Web Logs, or more commonly known as Blogs, have become more prominent in the way that people communicate. Stereotypically speaking, they are a way for people to get their frustration out about any topic they want to talk about, or to just talk about how their dog has twelve puppies and they are just soooooo cute. BUT, a blog can be used for much more than just an online diary. It can be used to humanize marketing for companies both large and small. As an intern, I have learned how blogging can reach to people on the Internet by adding that human element to the company website.
Blogs can really help out any company, and they aren't hard to write and aren't time consuming. If you want more information about I would suggest checking out Compendium Blogware by clicking here!
Blogs can really help out any company, and they aren't hard to write and aren't time consuming. If you want more information about I would suggest checking out Compendium Blogware by clicking here!
Posted Tuesday, October 28, 2008 by
Jess Wehner
Thanks to our marketing department and their commitment to our blog’s success, I recently won a “nifty gift” for getting the most posts up in one month (along with Kristen Raves and Sarah Sedberry). What’s most exciting about this award is that I’m not really a writer. I’ve always been more of a “math person” and usually take most opportunities in life that don’t involve writing. I say all that to prove that I didn’t win the award because of all of the enlightening things I said, or how poetic my words came out. (Trust me! Read my blog and you’ll see I’m not the greatest writer in the world.) No, I won the award purely on the number of posts that I put up. It was that simple! Number of posts is all that really counts and all that we ask of our clients to be accountable for. Sure, being an awesome writer might help you get a nice fan base and people who keep coming back to read your blog. But, that’s not what blogging for business is all about. Increased sales aren’t driven by people who enjoy your writing style. Increased sales are driven by sending new customers to your website. If your ultimate goal is to make more sales (which I haven’t found a marketing manager who doesn’t have that goal) then don’t stress about having the most well-written post. If your company is blogging two times per week, per user, you will see your keyword rankings improve, your traffic increase, and consequently your sales go up! Seems like a pretty simple three step process to me!
Posted Monday, October 27, 2008 by
Jenni Edwards
To continue the case for old emails making great blog content, let's dive back into this recent Compendium Newsletter and show another example of how this one newsletter can easily be turned into multiple business blog posts.
Here is the original content section with our "employee profile", our Agency Client Success Manager, Sarah Sedberry.
Here is the original content section with our "employee profile", our Agency Client Success Manager, Sarah Sedberry.
Sarah graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida in 2004 where she played collegiate softball and was a member of the Greek community. As a Client Success Manager at Compendium, Sarah works with clients to help them understand the value of blogging and the application of Compendium's platform, while keeping track and analyzing their blog in order to ensure they are seeing the ROI results they desire.
The most enjoyable moments of Sarah's work include creating and designing a client's blog network and the "eureka" moments with clients when they see how successful blogging can be for their marketing efforts. In addition to being a day to day resource for clients, Sarah blogs about the Compendium platform, tips and tricks to writing blogs and blogging best practices.
Read Sarah's blog here.
And --- I quickly can turn this into my own blog post!
Title: Getting To Know My Company
Content: Wow! Our company newsletter just came out and while there was a lot of information about business blogging and our upcoming events at Compendium Blogware, however, one of the articles that really caught my eye was that of our "Employee Spotlight". We have grown really quickly the last few months so it's hard to really get to know everyone! Sarah Sedberry was featured this week and while we interact quite a bit in the office as she is our Agency Specialist, I learned a lot about her in a brief article within our newsletter. First, I had no idea she went to Rollins College, a beautiful school in Florida. Also, I knew she was athletic, but collegiate softball? Impressive!
It's always fun to learn tidbits about our team at Compendium which is quite the interesting bunch of business blogging experts! I know we continue to grow so keep an eye out as we post all of our jobs on LinkedIn and it really is a great place to work!
In under 5 minutes I was able to create this above post --- completely inspired by the newsletter!
Posted Sunday, October 26, 2008 by
Doug Karr
Why in the world would an employee be blogging on a Saturday night? Did someone twist my arm? Am I paid a bonus for blogging? Did my boss tell me that this was part of my job responsibilities?
Nope!
The reason why I'm blogging is because Compendium actually drinks its own Kool-Aid, with a majority of its business coming from its blogs. It need not be all about the bottom line, though. It can be fun!
Compendium has a contest for those employees who write the most consistent and relevant blog posts each month. As the VP of Blogging Evangelism, I'm compelled to ensure that I better always be in the top 5 bloggers in the company, regardless of the day of the week.
The competition is pretty fierce as well, the VP of our Business Development team appears to also be blogging today.
My Point: Aside from just looking for relevant content for your blog, it's also great to encourage your employees through internal blogging contests, some ideas:
Nope!
The reason why I'm blogging is because Compendium actually drinks its own Kool-Aid, with a majority of its business coming from its blogs. It need not be all about the bottom line, though. It can be fun!
Compendium has a contest for those employees who write the most consistent and relevant blog posts each month. As the VP of Blogging Evangelism, I'm compelled to ensure that I better always be in the top 5 bloggers in the company, regardless of the day of the week.
The competition is pretty fierce as well, the VP of our Business Development team appears to also be blogging today.
My Point: Aside from just looking for relevant content for your blog, it's also great to encourage your employees through internal blogging contests, some ideas:
- Most posts (with relevance, of course).
- Most hits
- Most backlinks
- Most Diggs
- Best Blog Post of the Week
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