Chris Baggott's Guide to Blogging

About this Blog

Compendium Software's Chris Baggott bumming studs from Robin I'm Chris Baggott. I've spent the last 7 years as Co-founder & (among other things) CMO of ExactTarget. I've been a blogger since 2004 with my Email Marketing Best Practices Blog , written a book and tried to be a thought leader on Internet Marketing Best Practices. In January we started Compendium Software. The goal of Compendium is to provide easy to use and deploy blogging tools designed specifically for Business, Corporations and Organizations.

My intention with this blog is to focus completely on Blogging Best Practices in the Corporate and Organizational arena.

Follow up to Small Business Blogging Webinar

Posted Wednesday, May 7, 2008 by Chris Baggott

I just finished a webinar on small business blogging with Logoworks. In that I referenced an Edelman Trust Study. I'll put that up in a couple of days, but if you are just coming from the webinar, please just email me: Chris@compendiumblogware.com and I'll get it to you directly.

More on User Generated Content (hint: it requres email....)

Posted Tuesday, May 6, 2008 by Chris Baggott

So you took the previous posts to heart and have your employees actively participating in your Corporate Blogging Efforts.   But…you still would like to have your actual customers contribute too.

You can have success here, but you have to work for it.   The idea that you put up a social network and suddenly a “community” springs up around your company is pathetic.

Getting participation in your business blog strategy takes effort….not a lot of effort, just smart effort.

I always suggest starting with email.   As Ben Stein says: “the number one way to get people to do something is…..to ask them.”      I often suggest to our clients they send regular follow up emails to people who have had an experience with the company or non-profit and overtly solicit feedback.

Tell them you have a blog and you wondered if they would like to share an experience they've had with your company.   Not everyone will submit a blog post extolling the virtues of your company, but my experience shows that about 10% will.    Depending on your business, ask for pictures or even video….shake the tree and you will find a few creative types who will go all out for their 15 seconds of fame ☺    Email is a super-easy and effective way to solicit UGC for your Corporate or Organizations Blog.

Use your Email Marketing to Solicit Blog Content

Posted Friday, May 2, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Email Marketing is all about two way dialog. You want your recipients to engage. Well one great way to get them to participate is to invite them to write about their experience with you for your blog. This is a blogging best practice that will work for any kind of business blogging. The example below is a travel company that runs tours in Italy...it's not the prettiest email in the world but trust me...It's really effective.

Small Business Blogging

Posted Wednesday, April 30, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Compendium Blogware post about Small business blogging

We talk a lot about humanizing your business through blogging. I've not seen a much better example of that than the story I found in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about cookie-maker Katherine Novotny. The story is simple and powerful. Katherine had a blog and wrote about her business. One day she wrote a blog post about how she was running out of operating capital because of rising costs and on the verge of going out of business. As a human being, she appealed that if she didn't get some extra cash NOW she would have to close.

The net result of this honesty and the fact that she was nice (and had a good product) was an outpouring of word of mouth among her readers...with the story being emailed all over...one customer even went so far as to print flyers and pass them out. Obviously, the happy ending is that business has never been better, the cash crisis is over and many more organizations understand the blogging benefits of acting like a human being.

That's a blogging best practice. With affordable blogging software like Compendium Blogware all companies will find that Blogs will change your business....just ask Katherine.

People don't trust CEO's they Trust Employees

Posted Tuesday, April 22, 2008 by Chris Baggott

CEO and C-level blogging is not credible, post from Compendium Blogware

Wow, great article the other day by Cheryl Hall of the Dallas Morning news. In a story that references Richard Edelman she discusses Corporate Blogging and Trust. As we discussed, AdAge reported that 20% of the Fortune 500 have blogs. Almost every one of those blogs are the traditional C-level, Thought Leadership kind of blather.

Guess what? The people don't trust the C-level. A Company blog strategy needs to include the employees:

"It's clear that when it comes to traditional authority figures – whether they're chief executives or heads of state – people trust them less," says Mr. Edelman. "Employees are the new credible source of information. We have data that shows an employee blog is five times more credible than a CEO blog – and I say this as a CEO blogger."

Great insight Richard!

If you are evaluating blog software for your business or enterprise you need to consider how to incorporate your employees as a whole into the effort. That is a blogging best practice. Blog information can't come from the top down, but rather the bottom up.

Compendium Blogware is a great enterprise blog software to on the one hand empower employee blogging and also put in controls and workflow so Corporations can manage blog posts without squeezing the life out of the content.

Does your Company need a Chief Blogger??

Posted Thursday, April 17, 2008 by Chris Baggott

So I saw this post in AdAge about companies and having someone to hold the title of "Chief Blogger"

Below is my comment:

Ugggh! The very idea of a 'chief blogger' undercuts the very potential of corporate blogging as a fantastic social media.

Blogging is about real people...guess what? Your company is made up of lots of real people. People who are smart, who like their jobs, who think they are doing important work, who care about the customer.
These are the people who should be blogging in an organization...everyone.

The idea of a chief blogger is akin to the celebrity concept of TV isn't it? It's not any more real than having Justin Timberlake singing your jingle.

What exactly is “User Generated Content?”

Posted Thursday, April 17, 2008 by Chris Baggott

What do people mean by “user generated content” and why do you want it?

The allure of user-generated content (ugc) is two-fold: Web 2.0 marketing is about content volume and content authenticity. The benefits are that with greater content volume you have a significantly better chance to be found by the major search engines (aka: SEO benefit) in addition to the social networking benefit of having a real live human being that is creating all this content.

These humans have the appeal of actually being familiar with the product or service they are generating content on, as well as a passion and freshness that will differentiate this kind of content from the traditional brand or corporate-as-faceless-institution-speak. Additionally, real people appear more accessible than an info@ email address.

There is a big myth here however. First of all, the truth is that your business will see significant benefits on both SEO and conversion by implementing more human generated content for the reasons stated above. They myth is that your customers and prospects will be the ones generating this content. It ain’t gonna happen…

To get these benefits you are going to have to look to another group of human beings. People who share the customers knowledge of the products or services, who also have a passion for the brand and the company…..I’m talking about the people who work for the company. 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.

Instead look right around you…..all those people who will add real value through Corporate Blogging….That’s your low hanging fruit when it comes to User Generated Content.

Guess What? Your Employees Like Their Jobs!

Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008 by Chris Baggott

I’m on my way to AdTech in San Francisco. Nothing like a long cross country flight to catch up on my reading and bang together a few Corporate Blog posts on Compendium Blogware.

Good news today in the Wall Street Journal (4/15/08): Most Employees Really Like Their Jobs!

I have been saying for some time now that generally, you hire smart people, who care about the company they work for, like the customers and the products or services you offer. You employees also think they are doing important work and according to Professor Barry Straw of Berkley: “View work as a means for demonstrating some sort of responsibility and achievement.”

What this is telling us is that people want to feel valued in the workplace. They want to feel like their contributions matter. This is why engaging employees in your corporate blogging strategies is so valuable.

For one, the employees want to do it and will for the most part do a great job.

The second reason to engage your employees in your business blog strategy is because that is what your customers and prospects want to see. When people search, they want to find sources that have both knowledge and passion. Let your people blog and the searchers will find both….and convert at a much higher level.

Imagine: Happy prospects and happy employees….what a concept.

What's holding up the adoption of business blogs?

Posted Thursday, April 10, 2008 by Chris Baggott

I came across a blog called Voice out of the UK this morning that had a discussion about Business Blogging. Typical of some of the comments that focused on adoption was this one:

Do people still see blogs are a indivudual activity instead of a ‘corporate business’ tool? Is that why business are slow to adopt?

I posted the following reply:

As the CEO of a software company that focuses only on the Corporate and Business Blogging market. I’d like to take a shot at addressing some of the above comments with regard to adoption.

One of the big reasons that business has not adopted blogging is that the tools are inadequate. The typical blogging software is designed for the individual “citizen journalist”, not actual businesses.

Some examples include control and compliance. Corporations have a responsibility and liability to control every syllable of content that appears to be associated with them. We see clients that want to have lot’s of employee and customer involvement but the solutions mentioned offer no method to manage approvals, edits, etc… Forrester cites ‘Fear’ (which means lack of control) as one of the main reasons corporations don’t blog.

Another huge reason has to do with ROI. If it can’t be measured many organizations find it difficult to justify investment in either time or financial resources.

Our clients measure ROI on Search Engine Optimization. As a business software, Compendium includes an analytics package and integrates with other commercially available tools, so that the ROI of blogging becomes clear.

Additionally, most blogging software organizes content around Authors. This works for journalism, but not for SEO and not for Topic driven business need. Content needs to be organized around keywords based on what people are searching for to be a truly effective business asset.

Thanks for the post,

Chris Baggott
CEO/Co-founder
Compendium Blogware
http://www.compendiumblogware.com

Is "Compending" good for the web?

Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Compendium Blogware, Corporate Blogging, Blog publishing software, Blog Best Practices

So the other day we talked about the Google threshold of being "good for the web". I think we all agree that Corporate Blogging is good....but what about Compending?

The idea of Compendium Blogware is to present a Corporte Blog Authoring Tool that isn't Author-Centric. Most blogging is about thought leadership within companies or industries which at the end of the day has very little value. If you buy off on the concept that you empower your employees and constituents to blog, and blog with SEO as a goal, the whole idea of blogs organized around individuals kind of goes out the window.

What the searchers and visitors actually care about are the topics these people are blogging about...so by definition that content needs to be organized differently.

The idea of a compendium is a "collection of similar content". Compendium Blogware empowers business and non-profit bloggers to automatically organize blog posts around topics or specific keywords.

The net result is a happier searcher. They find a page that is spot-on to the topic they were searching for...all in one place. Happy searchers lead to good customers.

Better Blogging by Compendium Blogware

Posted Tuesday, April 8, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Ok...I was looking to make a point about keywords and conversion through Corporate Blogging. Kaila pointed me to this. Chuck can tell you a lot better than I can LOL

Is Corporate Blogging "Good For The Web?"

Posted Monday, April 7, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Google Guys. Is it good for the web on Compendium Blogware

Generally speaking, the Google guys get a lot of grief about the whole "Do No Evil" thing.   What's less known is a question they ask for every new development that comes along: "Is it good for the Web?"

At Compendium Blogware, we are challenged by this surprisingly often. Is Business Blogging good for the web?

Here is my argument for the affirmative:   Good for the web means that the people who use the web (searchers) are happy when they have a Corporate blog show up in a search result.   Do they click?   What do they find? Do they Bounce or stay? Do they click through? There is no ambiguity...the data tell the story.

Generally speaking we find that Corporate Blogs have very high engagement. I'm reminded of the Newsweek story I blogged on a month or so ago. People are looking for experts. When researching they want authority and a simple path to the answer. Good corporate blogs that leverage real employees are often the best source. Just be honest. There is nothing wrong with enthusiasm and passion. You are allowed to love your product, service...your job...that's what blogging is all about.   Just tell the truth.

Corporate Blogging on Vacation

Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Compendium Blogware Vacation post

Should you blog...or do any business related activity on vacation? Hmmm...I guess it depends on who you ask. My little kids might say no. My wife understands where the money comes from so she's pretty tolerant. My father-in-law (pictured) is one of those "time is passing quickly" kind of guys so I won't even ask him.

But, here's the thing. Since I'm blogging for search, almost any content that I create has a lot of value to our overall business blogging efforts from Compendium Blogware.

a blogging best practice is to keep posting frequently. When you blog for your business it becomes kind of fun and challanging and best of all it's really easy to simply log on from anywhere and blog a few random thoughts.....

Or maybe I'm just suffering from too much sunshine....

Compendium Blogware is Growing

Posted Thursday, March 27, 2008 by Chris Baggott

If you have a moment, I'd appreciate your help. Compendium is growing very fast and we need to add several new business development managers to our team. We are looking for vibrant, confident, passionate individuals to join our growing sales team. Please take a look and forward this job on to anyone you think would be interested in the position, or anyone else who could help me find a great candidate.

Thanks for your help! Please contact:

Daren Tomey
VP of Sales
Compendium Blogware
www.compendiumblogware.com
(317)777-6106 Office

Company: Compendium Blogware
Job Title: Business Development Manager
Description: A Business Development Manager identifies, manages, and closes new business opportunities for Compendium Software.

A Business Development Manager must be articulate, persuasive, and able to develop and close a large pipeline of business within a short period of time. In addition, the Business Development Manager must be a self-starter who can roll up his or her sleeves and wear several different hats, think and act at multiple levels of abstraction, and identify and implement key selling initiatives.

Responsibilities include:

-Develop an agreed business development plan which will include lead generation activities such as tradeshows, cold-calling, networking, and more.
-Manage sales planning, forecasting, and analysis activities within our internal CRM system
-Manage sales opportunities throughout the sales cycle, with online demos, phone calls, email communications, and more.
-Qualify all leads and sales opportunities.
-Maintain high activity level with prospects.
-Generate additional business opportunities through dedicated prospecting and cold-calling.
-Meet and exceed all quarterly and annual sales goals.

Corporate Blogging with Travel Companies

Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 by Chris Baggott

There was a nice (if slightly mis-guided) article in the USA Today about Corporate Blogging in the Travel Industry. I love that these guys are promoting the benefits of creating a blog for companies. With affordable blogging software, blogging for business becomes a increasingly effective strategy.

What I though was wrong was the comment in the last paragraph:

But official forays into the blogosphere remain scarce — with good reason, says Troy Thompson of the Arizona Office of Tourism and the blog Travel 2.0. "We talk about all these new technologies, but maintaining a blog takes a good chunk of time,"

What Troy doesn't understand is that if you empower your employees and other constituents to participate, using professional blog software, the burden of content creation gets spread out to all interested parties. The more employee blogging, the more success and the easier it is to leverage your blog for SEO.

Affordable blogging software that is specifically designed with blogs for Companies in mind are mostly SaaS offering meaning they are easy to set up and easy to use.

Troy, you are just using the wrong corporate blogging software.

The Gap Between SEO and PPC and how business blogs help

Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2008 by Chris Baggott

The problem with SEO vs. PPC

Ok...so this is the world as I see it.   Suppose you do a really good job on SEO for your site.   At best, you can probably get that site to rank on a few terms...maybe a dozen if you are really solid.

The average company that participates in Pay Per Click targets around 1,000 keywords, and many target thousands more than that.

So we know that something more than 90% of the clicks on a search results page happen in organic area.   Soooo..... The gap between traditional site SEO and PPC seems pretty gigantic.

This is where Corporate Blogging comes in.   Either an Enterprise or a Small Business can benefit in a big way from Corporate Blogging.   By organizing blog content around topics or keywords organizations are able to greatly increase the reach of their keyword traffic.

It's not a blog secret, blog sites for business really help organic search.

You think you don't have time to blog?

Posted Friday, March 14, 2008 by Chris Baggott

In reading a blog post today I came across this comment by a consultant in Vermont who focuses on Automotive SEO named Dan Durick.

"I get asked by local business people about how they should get more links, and I go into my spiel on blogging, creating useful content, link baiting, etc. Most of the time the response I get is "we don't have the time for that kind of stuff" followed by "we can't afford to pay you to do it".

What Dan's clients are missing is that there are some great strategies for any small business marketer who thinks they don't have time to do blog writing.

The first thing for these Local Business Bloggers to understand is that it doesn't take a ton of content to be successful in your local market. Try this: Do a Google search for Office Relocation, Indianapolis.   The number one result is a blog from Carmen Commercial Real Estate.   This is a small five person firm that blogs infrequently (the post you land on is from October)   They title their blog pages with the keywords they are targeting and then add some content. No big deal.

The most common misconception that business bloggers have is that they think that blog posts have to be really thoughtful...like they are going to have to spend hours crafting some deep insisght into the state of the Automotive Industry all the time. This is just plain WRONG.

Having an oil change special this week? Blog.   Like the new Ford Focus in Teal Green? Blog.   Hire a new salesperson? Blog.   Fire a lousy salesperson? Blog Too many SUV's in stock? Blog.

My point is that in Corporate Blogging the Best Practice is to just talk about your day. Talk about your business, your inventory, your customers, your likes and dislikes.....just don't over-think it.

For you SEO's out there who focus on Small Business, help your clients target the right keywords, title their blogs with those keywords and teach them how to blog using those keywords and they will see how successful a simple blog strategy can be.

The second point I want to make is that all the content burden doesn't have to fall on the owner or president.    Look around, encourage your employees to blog or even your customers.   Use email marketing to solicit feedback (CONTENT) from your customers.

Your salespeople are trying to build their reputations and credibiltiy right? Invite them to blog. Now chances are they all won't, but even a couple of employees posting something every month or so can have a dramatic difference. In my company we invite everyone to blog. Our most prolific and insightful blogger is actually a software developer!

And don't forget your customers.   Imagine if you sent an email out to everyone that experienced your service in the past week...anything from repairs to buying a car.   Tell them you have a blog and you would like to feature them in the next post...can they please write a paragraph or two and perhaps include a picture?   Say you send 10 emails a week, you don't think you would at least get one or two replies a month with stuff that's good enough to post?

I live in the small town of Greenfield Indiana. Do the search: Chambers Rosewood winery greenfield. The top result should be a blog by Greenfield Liquors...the blogger is a customer who happens to like wine and wanted to participate. She blogs at twice the rate of the business owner.

Advanced Business Blogging doesn't have to be that advanced. Blog software is easy to use and affordable...but most importantly, business blogging is perhaps the most effective local search tactic available.

Corporate Bloggers: Stand up! You are the Experts!

Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2008 by Chris Baggott

I just read with (glee) the Newsweek article called Revenge of the Experts.   Top quote:

"People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information," says Charlotte Beal, a consumer strategist for the Minneapolis-based research firm Iconoculture.

I absolutly agree with this premise.   People search, the want information from experts...people who know what they are talking about.

Guess what? YOU ARE AN EXPERT.   This is why business should blog. Nobody should know more about your business, your products or services than you do. Your employees are also experts as are your customers and constituents. Give them a platform.

Blog Creation Software is so easy to use and inexpensive there is no excuse why you don't free your 'inner expert" and give the people what they want.

Jason Fried has been an inspiration: Thank you.

Posted Monday, March 10, 2008 by Chris Baggott

Jason Fried of 37Signals Compendium Blogware post in Corporate Blog

I've never met Jason Fried, and my life is a little empty because of it. Jason is one of the founders 37Signals, and his e-book: Getting Real was a complete inspiration to me and the rest of us here at Compendium Blogware.

A core idea of the 37Signals philosophy is to think small and narrow. What is the big problem in Corporate Blogging Software? Why doesn't the Enterprise Blog? What does Blog Software really need to accomplish to add value to Business?

Work on that that causes your customers the most pain and release in a hurry. What's great about Software 2.0 is this ability to iterate on the fly. Trust the users and the Community to give you the right feedback...they know a lot more than any product manager about how to create the best blogging solution.

Jason spoke the other say at the South-by-Southwest event and his comments were summarized brilliantly by Sean Ammirati on the ReadWriteWeb blog.

My favorite thought as it relates to Compendium Blogware was this:

Jason claimed that the "Biggest sin on the internet right now is bad copywriting ... paying too much attention to pixels and not enough attention to words." Beyond this he pointed out that words are actually less expensive to correct and improved copy will make doing the design second result in a stronger design.

Bingo! So often, people get so sidetracked by "design" they lose track of the goals. Blogging for business is a Content Driven Strategy beyond all else. Our Blog Authoring Software is the best manager of content on the market. Is it the easiest to micro-customize a template design? I'll be the first to say NO. We are getting there and our community is giving us continual feedback.

But at the end of the day business tools are about results not about pretty pictures. I thank leaders like Jason to keep reminding the Art Directors out there to focus on content and lose the obsession with pixels.