Chris Baggott's Guide to Blogging

Is Corporate Blogging For Real?

My name is Chris Baggott & I'm CEO of Compendium Blogware.
Marketing is about relationships. Relationships happen between people, not brands & not institutions. In this blog we will discuss facets of corporate blogging trends and best practices to help organizations understand and succeed with this medium by giving searchers what they are looking for and putting human beings back into marketing.

$65 Billion to be spent on Corporate web sites....not on traditional media

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Here is a quote that should grab your attention:

"In 2009: $65 billion will be spent on enterprises’ own sites, dollars NOT spent on TV, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc. To scale that, compare 2009 total U.S. TV ad revenue (cable + broadcast) at $66 billion, and total 2009 U.S. Newspaper ad revenue at $42 billion. So corporations spending marketing dollars on their own sites is equivalent to (a) wiping out all TV ad revenue or (b) wiping out one and one-half newspaper industries!"

Hello! Thanks to Outsell for this great new report, but what does it mean to advertising? Why is this happening?

Simple answer is that Advertising relies on middlemen to deliver a corporate message. With Online Marketing (Search Marketing), business can now leverage their own site, Corporate Blogging software and email marketing to control and develop a direct relationship with their prospects and customers.

Emarketer already told us that the three biggest growth areas in marketing are Search, Email and Social Media (Business Blogging covers both SEO and Social Media). What is transforming the marketing world it the capacity for organizations to have direct relationships with the people who drive their business. Marketing departments from organizations large and small are rethinking their investments and strategies and going direct...to the detrement of the old model that required a middleman to deliver your message.

5 Outstanding Corporate Blog Programs

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Chris Baggott

iMedia ran an article I wrote highlighting 5 great corporate blog marketing programs. The key is to have measurable goals. What I love about Online Marketing, and Search Marketing specifically is that there should be no ambiguity. There can be no mystery as far as determining what is adding value and what isn't.

"Corporate blogging is a great marketing tool -- but not one that should be launched lightly. Like other marketing initiatives, a company's blog is an investment that should produce a measurable return. Thus, as I illustrated in an earlier iMedia article, much thought should be given to ways in which companies can enhance the value of these programs for both their consumers and their own bottom lines."

You can read the current article 5 outstanding Corporate Blogs here....

You have to target everybody

Monday, June 29, 2009 by Chris Baggott

For fast food, my family of six always chooses Burger King.....this is in spite of the advertising and their much lauded web 2.0 efforts. In fact, evidence is beginning to pop us that like a lot of advertising that's really creative and entertaining, it's not actually helping....

Ad age article on segment marketing advertising

As you can see from this chart provided by AdAge, Burger King is actually declining over the past year at a pretty rapid pace.   Why? Well...I would blame the old fashioned focus on a mythical segment. In this case the "18 to 24/male".   (same people that Taco Bell is targeting, Hardee's, Carl's Jr., Rally's etc....)

To me, what's broken is the idea that customers can be categorized into giant homogeneous groups and aiming a giant expensive missile at them will generate enough mass to make the Advertising efforts worthwhile and compensate for the incredible cost.

The problem is, you can't win with big attacks any more.   My Suburban pulling up to the drive through represents 6 individuals all influenced by something different. The driver is my wife..she like BK because of the ice (go figure?), a couple of the kids like that they have Lemonade and the burgers are better.   Dr. Pepper and the chicken fingers wins my older son over.

My point here is that for any business today, you have to sell to individuals, not to segments. For many businesses blogging and focus on organic search marketing is the best way to get in front of potential customers when they have a problem they need solving. Can't say this will help the fast food giants, although there are a couple million searches a month around the term "fast food". Clearly these people are searching for something?

For the vast majority of companies blogs will make a big difference as it realates to both getting found on the search engines, and as a platform to tell lots of stories to lots of different segments.

Great marketing video...just for fun

Thursday, June 25, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Thanks to the folks at MLT Creative for sharing this on their B2B Buzz Corporate Blog. MLT is a great partner of Compendium Blogware and really gets Online Marketing and the abilty to leverage data to build real relationship....even when focused on Search Marketing.

I guess what I love about this is how well it articulates the risks that organizations face when they continue to marketing like it's still 1999. No question the world has changed. People want to be delt with on a human level, not shouted at by brands. Have fun with this one, and pass it on....

Learn How Compendium Blogware uses our own tool!

Thursday, June 25, 2009 by Chris Baggott

So it just dawned on us that our own Compendium Blogware marketing team are probably the best qualified group in the world leveraging Corporate Blogging as part of an overall Search Marketing strategy. So we are putting on a webinar today at 2pm est where they will teach you exactly the steps and processes they use every day to increase leads by 90%. Blogging is an effective tool for both B2B as well as B2C demand generation not only because it's so effective, but also because it's really easy to execute.

Register now for the Compendium Blogware Marketing Team's Webinar and learn the steps to manage your own business blogging program.

Are Press Releases Relevant?

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 by Chris Baggott

If you are not investing time monitoring your business and industry in the social networks, you are missing a great opportunity to not only generate leads, but also to get in front of what others might be saying as it relates to your livelihood.

For example, this came up from one of my LinkedIn groups today:

"We are looking for a source to distribute press releases. Do you have one or two to recommend? Thanks for your consideration."

I replied:

Just to be a contrary.....why?

If it's for SEO, you are better off with leveraging blog marketing that feeds content out to social networks (twitter, facebook, linkedin) Press Release distribution was popular a couple of years ago as a way to goose SEO through backlinks and people finding the releases through their own searches and hopefully navigating back to the home site.

This is not nearly as effective as it once was and can't compete with the benefits of managing your own content through your businesses blogs.

For one thing you will drive a lot more search marketing traffic and secondly, you will get a lot higher engagement. We, as well as journalists, are pretty trained to tune out traditional looking press releases in favor of simple authentic stories about your business, products or services and most importantly customer use cases.

My point to everyone is that Press Releases are just another form of Online Marketing. The problem is that it's expensive and becoming less effective. Business that manage their own blogs, focus on search and produce content a lot more frequently will get significantly better results.

Business Blogs ARE Organic Landing Pages!

Monday, June 22, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Sorry to shout in the title, but I really want to drive this point home. Lets begin with this graph up top...

A new study from SEM firm xplusone reports that most marketers are not happy with their ability to optimize landing pages when targeting large numbers of keywords.

This is where widespread blog marketing comes in. (i.e. using your own corporate blogs to control your own search) If you follow the advice I keep talking about here and create blogs that use your keywords as titles and use your employees and constituents to tell the stories of your products and services you in effect create organic landing pages. Not only do these blogs help your search marketing efforts, they convert at much higher rates than traditional web pages.

When blogs target keywords, a lot of good things happen. First of all and most importantly is your searchers are really happy. They land on a page that matches their inquiry. That page has content that is not only written by humans who really understand what they are talking about, it matches what the searcher is looking for. If you follow good web marketing tactics regarding CTA's and testing, you will find that this is a lot easier than a traditional landing page strategy as well as much more effective in converting searcher to leads.

Why is there so much bad Corporate Blogging Advice!??

Friday, June 19, 2009 by Chris Baggott

I saw a blog today, quoting a well-known social media expert talking about best practices in business blogging. According to the author the expert said:

“For example, airline mergers, fuel surcharges and the fate of low-cost carriers in recessionary times have all been newsworthy topics in the travel industry over the past 12 months, and this is what a company in the sector would have focused on to attract readers."

"On the other hand, it is advisable for companies in the real estate sector to use their blog as an opportunity to offer tips on how to overcome challenges such as falling property prices, or how to take advantage of historically low interest rates when applying for mortgages. These are useful tips that go far beyond simply advertising a product and can help companies build a loyal client base, as they offer valuable information to readers free of charge.”

Uggh! Contrast that with the simple and logical advice of the master: Seth Godin…..

“If you own a lot of acres but just have a few bags of seed, you might be tempted to spread out what you've got and cover as much territory as you can. Farmers tell me that this is wasteful and time consuming. You end up with less yield and more work.”

This is fantastic corporate blogging advice….Focus Focus Focus.

First of all, it's a myth that corporate blogs have regular readers. Most corporate blogs have 80-95% of their traffic coming from first time visitors. This puts the idea that you should be talking about big picture industry issues out the window. Even big time A-list business blogs have most of their traffic coming from first time visitors... And most of your corporate blog traffic is coming from search.   If you are in the travel business should you be talking about the macro-effects of fuel prices on the travel economy? (a few seeds on a big field) Of course not.

Great corporate blog topics start with knowing the keywords your traffic is using to find you...and talking about that. For every 10 people who care about fuel prices there are 10 million looking for info on trips to Florida. The only thing that a business should be blogging about is what their customers are interested in....those customers express their interest by the use of keywords in search engines or search boxes on your site.

Think again about the real estate example in this light. What gain can a single real estate agent get from blogging with advice on mortgage rates? Last month there were nearly 10,000 searches on '2 bedroom condo, chicago'   If I'm selling a two bedroom condo in Chicago, I should be blogging all day long about my condo's countertops, bathrooms, views, coffee shops nearby etc... My traffic wants me to help them solve their 2 bedroom condo problem, not the mortgage crisis.

Make sense?

Relevant content to based on what your prospects are searching for is what should drive your blogging goals.   Engagement comes from telling compelling stories about how you solve problems for the people who find you....finally, business bloggers need to focus on converting that traffic.   Win the search, win the credibility and win the conversion...That's what makes great corporate blogging.

Compendium Blogware Webinar Questions : "Thought Leadership or Contests"

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Contiuning from the overwhelming volume of questions in last weeks webinar:

Are blogs just a platform for thought leadership or can we integrate a newsletter sign up and contests through our blog?

Who does 'Thought Leadership' serve? The customer? Your business? You Personally? I'll argue that it doesn't serve the customer or the business very well. Customers find your blogs because they are looking to solve specific problems. Odds are you found this blog because you have questions about Corporate Blogging. The goal of our team is to help you understand how Compendium Blogware can help you. The goal of the business is to build enough crediblity that we earn the right to continue the conversation.

That is a key miss for a lot of business blogs....converting visitors into relationships. There are lots of ways to encourage vistiors to take the next step in the process and email or contest signups are two very good ones depending on your business. The key to success is to be relevant to what the reader is looking for. The world is littered with thought leaders who never had any followers. It's also littered with really successful companies who tell their story very well and move prospects through a process that results in a long term mutually beneficial relationship.

Webinar Question: "Isn't this for kids?"

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Another great question from last weeks Webinar we couldn't get to:

I see only young kids reading blogs – do business people really want to read blogs?

Blog readership is actually a myth.   Here is a direct quote from the CEO of Technorati: “Most Web surfers don’t even realize they are reading blogs.” In late 2008 eMarketer found: “-it is not always clear or relevant to the end user whether a particular destination is a blog….”

Point here is that only a small portion of the people who see your corporate blogs know or care that they are by definition 'Blogs'.   What business people want are solutions to their problems. They spell out their problems using keywords that you should be researching and then writing about. Specifically, telling the stories about how your company and people address these problems.

To the searcher they land on a page that is relevant to their query...focused on solving their problem and offering some framework of humanity that engages them to take the next step in the relationship.   No kidstuff here, just good business.

Webinar Questions for Compendium Blogware: Am I Boring??

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Last week we held a webinar and were not able to get to all the questions submitted so I'm trying to address some of them here:

"What are the sure signs that my company needs to start blogging? We don’t sell the most interesting products – so I’m worried people will find the blog boring."

I love this question! I once heard a talk by a Corporate Blogging Expert who shall go unnamed but the comment was "some companies are just not cool enough to blog".   I bust out laughing!

If a business exists, it serves people who have problems.   So by definition, every product must be interesting to some audience.   The best place to start if you are considering blogging is someplace like Google Adwords or any other keyword research tool.   By studying the keywords that drive your business you will see not only how they describe the problem they have, but at what volume are they online looking for solutions.

I wrote a post a couple of months ago called Is Your Business Sexy Enough to Blog where I talked about a logistics company and their success....is Trucking Sexy?   How about Toasters? Boring? Not to the 3 million people a month who are searching. I wrote about toaster blogging too.

Start with keyword research that will help you get started with your efforts

Blogging as a list building strategy

Monday, June 8, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Fact.   The vast majority of traffic coming to any Corporate Blog is coming from first time visitors.   Our data here at Compendium Blogware show that between 70-95% of all blog traffic are from 'New' visitors.   This is great, but it really should cause the average business to rethink their blogging goals.

I've always said, the goal of marketing is to build relationships.   How do most people want to have a relationship with an organization?   Email.    Simple fact, Email is still the most popular online activity and in spite of all the noise associated with social media and engagement metrics. Your audience (customers and prospects) would still rather 'engage' with you through smart email marketing.

Your response to this simple fact should be a giant HOORAY! It's a really simple and obvious strategy. Get introduced to new people through your blog and then convert those people to a relationship with email.

I talk to so many business bloggers who lament the lack of comments when there is no evidence that comments do anything to drive the business or relationship forward. Trust me marketers, you would rather have new email permissions than comments. Embrace that simple reality...your blog draws new people, your blog earns the credibility to take the next step in the relationship and email is the best way to move that relationship forward.

Morgan Stewart of ExactTarget along with Ball State University has done the definitive work as it relates to List Growth Strategies.   As you can see from the chart below, Site Registration dominates when it comes to the best way to build quality.   Your blogs are sites! They are actually superior sites because they are visited by people who are trying to solve problems that you are very specifically talking about. This is what social media is all about: Humanize your marketing with real people talking about the problems you solve. Build credibility and convert that credibility into mutually beneficial relationships.

ExactTarget List Building Strategies Blogging as a email name capture tactic

Questions from this week's Compendium Blogware webinar #3

Friday, June 5, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Q: What is the best way to educate my employees about blogging - if they all don’t completely understand the benefits?

Wow what a great question.   What makes it great is that you are totally thinking about your blogging goals right up front. Blogging Best Practices start with widespread employee participation.   Employees are 5 times more credible than CEO's as corporate bloggers according to Richard Edelman, and that only makes sense.   Who better to tell the stories about your products and services in the context of your customer success?    If your goal is to convert your blog traffic into meaningful relationships then the best content is focused on the customers problems and how your business can solve them.

So how do you get the employees interested?   First of all, you have to open up blogging to everyone. If you let people talk on the phone then you should empower them to blog. You never know where your best bloggers are going to come from. And this is not something that can be necessarily appointed.   Bloggers are born not made.

Secondly you have to share your metrics with them. Since you are doing this with clear ROI objectives, you should be very public internally about how it's going and who's helping. Making hero's of the people who are doing a good job is the best way to get others to join the bandwagon.

For the most part people want to feel empowered and important. Marketing's job is to continually reinforce the importance and appreciation of those that participate.

Here at Compendium Blogware, we often have little contests. Small weekly prizes and a public recognition monthly for those that generate the most readers, are the most prolific bloggers. We also have funny Dunce caps for the three least productive bloggers. It's all fun and good natured but at the same time reinforces that this is an important part of being on the team.

The benefits are not only search engine optimization, but also conversion.   Call this out. We chart our monthly metrics in real obvious places so no one can miss that this activity is important to the success of the entire company. Blogging is our number one demand generation activity.

Time Magazine: "Twitter as a pointing device instead of a communications channel"

Thursday, June 4, 2009 by Chris Baggott

I was just pointed to a new Time article on Twitter.

Here is one of the most relevant statements:

"But in recent months Twitter users have begun to find a route around that limitation by employing Twitter as a pointing device instead of a communications channel: sharing links to longer articles, discussions, posts, videos — anything that lives behind a URL. Websites that once saw their traffic dominated by Google search queries are seeing a growing number of new visitors coming from "passed links" at social networks like Twitter and Facebook. This is what the naysayers fail to understand: it's just as easy to use Twitter to spread the word about a brilliant 10,000-word New Yorker article as it is to spread the word about your Lucky Charms habit.

This is exacly why I'm advocating that Corporate Blogging has to be at the center of your online strategy. Social Networks are great at supporting and guiding traffic back to your blogs....but you have to start with the hub.

Questions from this week's Compendium Blogware webinar #2

Thursday, June 4, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Q: Do you think B2B blog promotion via social networks such as Twitter and Facebook is effective?

Yes. Now you may think this an inconsistent answer based on my previous post but let me explain. For almost every blog on the planet the vast majority of traffic comes from First Time Visitors. We talked on the "Corporate Blogging Myths" webinar this week and hopefully exposed this fact. Most blogs generate 65% to 95% of their traffic from first time visitors. Depending on the age of the blogs, this traffic comes from either searchers or referral sites. If your organization is newer to blogging, most of this traffic is going to come from search.

This is why I so strongly advocate that the search audience is the audience you need to serve first. From that base, then sharing your blog content with your social networks becomes a nice Add on strategy. This week I got a couple nice comments and two leads so far from my social networks that tracked back to my blog. As a company we brought in hundreds of leads through our blog network. Where should I be the most focused? Obviously on our corporate blogging network and SEO. From that base, reach out to your social networks.

Don't forget: Compendium has created the Business Blogging Survival Kit that's available for a free download.

Great Article: Beware the Social Media Charlatans

Thursday, June 4, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Social Media Hippie, corporate blogging software argument

PC World put out a great article with the above title that I felt like I should share. The Author, Robert Strohmeyer basically discusses the noise and the flames being fanned by so-called social media experts fomenting excitement about Twitter and Facebook business strategies. A couple of my favorite quotes:

"Unless you define success by the sort of loosey-goosey standards that might make your horoscope appear to actually predict the future, the real measure of any business undertaking is that it increases your profits. But in the vast majority of use cases, neither Twitter nor Facebook stands any significant chance of doing that for business users. And if you're a small business that depends on, say, actually selling real products and services to actual paying customers, wistfully tweeting about your daily specials is almost certainly a waste of resources."

"Unfortunately, the dirty little secret about using social networks like Twitter and Facebook to promote your business is that, with the rarest exceptions, nobody wants to be buddies with a company. We live in a society that is absolutely sick of being advertised to and marketed to, and most of us turn to social networks to escape the forces of commercialism. We have a word for people who use social networks to send out unwanted offers and announcements about their business, and that word is "spammer."

I can hear your question now....'But Chris, isn't corporate blogging a form of social media?'

The answer is that business blogging is a human media. Your blogs give you the ability to humanize your business. Rather than trying to join a society where you are probably not welcome, you focus on being helpful when people ask you to help solve a problem. People express their needs to search engines plain and simple. If you want to be a helpful business, you need to make search your number one marketing priority. People don't want to join your club, they want you to solve their problems. The first step in solving problems requires that your business appears as a possible solution. This is what business blogging is all about and why it is a completely different strategy than Social Networking.

Compendium Blogware has created the Business Blogging Survival Kit that is available for a free download.

Questions from This Weeks Compendium Blogware Webinar. #1

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 by Chris Baggott

What do you recommend: one blogger for a company blog for a unified message, or multiple authors from different departments for multiple viewpoints?

Of course you have to preface this question with stating your blogging goals. From a goals standpoint, you know I'm always going to focus on two areas:

Blogging as a tools for SEO
Engagement by the reader

So in light of those goals I would argue that it is better to have multiple authors. The best blog content for businesses, centers on stories about the product and customers who use the product (or service). Think about it, people come to your blog to help them solve a specific problem: The problem they described in their keyword phrase. By telling stories about that phrase and how you have helped people in similar situations, you gain high engagement from the reader which transforms into conversions.

The people best at telling these kind of stories are probably not your CEO, more likely they are the folks who work in customer service, sales people, product managers or developers. Whoever is closer to the customers. A big part of SEO is based on frequency. This is another area that makes business blogging better than traditional websites for SEO. The more frequently your blogs are updated, the better chance they have to be found. Saying that, it's better to have a lot of people participating....naturally you get more content.

SEO: Business blogging and the 'message in a bottle' strategy

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Blogging best practices, business blogging image

I think this picture describes the point I'm trying to make better than a lot of corporate blogging words in a post.   Just like if you were hoping to be found by using a message in a bottle, more blogging is better, more blogs are better.

If you were stranded on a desert island and had one bottle, you have a really small chance of being found.   Imagine how excited you would be if you tripped over a case? Of course you would throw 24 messages out and dramatically increase your opportunity to be found.   Suppose you stumbled across a wine cellar in on your Island? Wouldn't you throw a thousand bottles out if you could?

Point being that when using blogging as a tool for SEO (as every business should) you need to consider how to maximize the opportunity for your content to be seen. Corporate Blogging Software like Compendium's facilitates SEO by organizing your content around blogs titled with your targeted keywords.    Think about the message in the bottle. One or a thousand, the message is probably pretty much the same, it's the distribution that changes.

All Things Digital defines Web 3.0

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 by Chris Baggott

The Wall Street Journal hosted the seventh annual All Things Digital Conference last week in Carlsbad CA. The meeting opened with a discussion of the emergence of new concepts around Web 3.0

"The real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean simple software, against cloud-based data and services."

What does this mean for your business?   Think about that phrase "cloud based data..."   That's you. We live in a world of data on demand.   How do people call up data?   They use search engines.

The old world of marketers focused on interruption. They find a destination where you might likely hang out (bus stop, TV show, Social Network) and try and interfere with an offer or a pitch.

Web 3.0 says that you no longer need the middleman.   You now have to be the one providing the information and organizing that information in ways that help the people searching the cloud for solutions to their problems.

This is why corporate blogging software is such a fast growing category.   Business is recognizing blogging as a tool for SEO and that in order to compete in this 3.0 world they are going to have to come at the ideas of content creation in a different way....a better way.

I love the other sentence in this description of Web 3.0   "The complete integration of computing into every part of our lives in a way that is seamless, ubiquitous and, ideally dead simple."

Search rules the 3.0 world because it fulfills all those requirements.   If you want to play, you have to advance your thinking regarding blogging best practices.