Chris Baggott's Guide to Blogging

Ad Week: More Marketers Use Social Media

Tuesday, August 4, 2009 by Chris Baggott

In an AdWeek story with the headline "55 percent of marketers said they shifted funds from traditional media to execute social media campagins" the real story is in the details.

Around all the breathless excitement for Twitter & Facebook, three important facts jump out of this research into Online Marketing and Social Media use by business:

The top concerns for marketers when considering newer media platforms are the inability to prove ROI
Search engine marketing was cited as the most effective new-media platform by 65 percent of respondents
In the next year, blogs are expected to be the hottest new marketing channel

So what can we gather from this?   How about the truth.

The truth about social media is that although interesting and perhaps valuable, Social Media marketing really means Blog Marketing and the primary benefit is Search.   90% of all marketing dollars are spent (and have always been spent) on new customer acquisition.   New customer acquisition in this decade is driven by showing up when a prospect uses a search engine to try and solve a problem.

By leveraging Business Blog Software you address all three issues outlined above. Actually #3 gets you the other two.   Search is not only achievable through blog software, it's easy to measure. There is no ambiguity whatsoever as it relates to ROI.

So don't make this complicated.   Use blogs to target your keywords, drive relevant traffic, engage with good content and convert to new customers.   Easy as 1-2-3.

Does blogging for search make sense for B2B Marketers?

Thursday, July 23, 2009 by Chris Baggott

Blogging for B2B Search Engine Marketing, Blog software

I get a lot of questions from B2B marketers especially from old line companies who wonder if their customers use search.   A meeting I attended a couple of days ago featured a room full of these people.   "We sell precision drill parts for manufacturing....guessing our prospects and customers don't use search. (this is usually where they sit back and cross their arms)

Here is the thing.   First of all, never forget these people are really smart. They know their businesniess forwards and backwards. They understand their products and services and the needs of their customers (actually this is one of the reasons B2B salespeople make such great business blog authors)

But of course before you can become great at blog marketing and SEO, you have to accept the reality that your customers and prospects actually use search.... a lot. But of course you have to prove it and that's where Keyword research comes in.

My point is that you don't need to even discuss this, it's not a debate when you have irefutable facts in front of you.   Like the gentleman in the precision drill parts business, I asked for the name of one item "Collet" (whatever that is)   Go to Adwords and type it in..

"Huh....what do you think of that Bob?"   246,000 monthly searches just on that one term. There are thousands of other terms that include the term collet and would be relevant and valuable for this company to show up.   Suddenly the idea of Business Blog Software makes a lot more sense...

My Comment on a blog about Social Media ROI

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by Chris Baggott

....Here is the Social Media Myth....repeat engagement (readers and followers) This is especially true with Corporate blogging. The vast majority of visitors to corporate blogs are 'first time visitors' And most of those come in from search.

What's funny is how many company bloggers resist this truth. If they embrace it...put engaging CTA's on their blogs, use twitter and facebook to drive traffic back to their blogs, suddenly there is a really easy and obvious path to Social Media ROI....it's called conversion.

Destination CRM recognizes ExactTarget and their B2B blogging program

Monday, July 20, 2009 by Chris Baggott

I wanted to point out the great article that highlighted ExactTarget's use of Compendium Blogware. ExactTarget leverages their corporate blogging not only for the typical thought leadership aspects (where they excel) but as a primary means to engage their employees and as a B2B lead generation tool. Thanks to Jessica Tsai for a really educational piece. Keep in mind also that ET uses Compendium to power hundreds of blogs. This really is thought leadership and demand generation at it's finest.

A Blog Takes Aim at an Exact Target

With Compendium Blogware, email marketing software provider ExactTarget has turned its blog into a robust marketing strategy.

When ExactTarget began its corporate blog, the company started out using TypePad, the popular blogging software from Six Apart. At the time, only four people—the chief executive officer, two vice presidents, and a director—were regular contributors, But ExactTarget envisioned a greater role for its blog, and eventually looked to Compendium Blogware.

The software now organizes blogposts into “pages” based on content rather than author, explains Chris Baggott, Compendium’s cofounder and chief executive officer. What’s more, the title of each “page” matches a specific keyword phrase that improves search engine results. Since implementing Compendium in June 2008, ExactTarget’s keyword-focused blogs have increased blog traffic tenfold—and the number of unique visitors between mid-March and mid-April 2009 topped 8,000, according to Jeffrey K. Rohrs, ExactTarget’s vice president of marketing. The original quartet of corporate bloggers has expanded to more than 25 employees, and the designers, developers, and marketers involved have made the blog a place where, as Rohrs puts it, the “strategic and tactical, promotional and practical commingle.” And because bloggers write in their own styles, the blog matches real-world consumer phraseology. For instance, bloggers may use “email” or “e-mail,” which reflects searchers’ own inconsistencies.

Internally, the blog has generated a stronger corporate spirit as more employees get involved in creating relevant and useful content. “We’re actually seeing blogger-employees become more self-assured and assertive within the organization,” Rohrs says. In elevating these formerly “untapped voices,” he says, ExactTarget anticipates continued growth from a content and marketing perspective, with additional plans to enhance the look and feel of the blog and to bring in Web analytics to better mine the data.

Corporate Blogging: Social Media ROI

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 by Chris Baggott

I had a good talk with Kyle Lacey yesterday who turned me on to this post by Olivier Blanchard on Social Media ROI. It's still suprising to me that this needs to be spelled out to some of the Social Media Glitterati.....ROI means Return on Investment.

Investment is the time and money that goes into something....return = the Dollars that come out. Olivier has a nice diagram shown here:

Now as you can see, lots of things may happen in between the Investment and the return, and some of those things may be good....but not as good as money!

When you accept this, then you can really start to frame your Corporate Blogging Strategy around a focus towards what really drives your return.    Search Marketing brings the biggest return for your social media efforts.   Starting with targeted keyword blogs full of relevant content. Remember relevance is in the eyes of the searcher....so use the keywords because those are their words....

This shouldn't be so much of a mystery.   Talk about what the new visitors want to talk about....they are telling you exactly what they care about by their use of specific language.

Make sure that your blogs have strong calls to action and test them frequently.   The goal is much more about conversion than conversation.   You will have plenty of time and various methods once you take the first step in the relationship...get them to click through: the online marketing equivalent of raising their hand.

Can you measure Social Media ROI? duh!

Monday, July 6, 2009 by Chris Baggott

To protect the innocent, I've altered this question a little to disguise the firm:

"I need to convince management that social media is worth investing in, but they're concerned about tracking results of such activities when today's focus is very much on proving ROI through reporting."

My suggestion is to focus your Social Media efforts where they will do the most good.   It's not true that you cannot accurately report ROI from Social Media efforts.

Start with blogging as the hub of all your SM activity. Blogs (multiple based on topics or keywords) will hit the biggest target out there first, and that is Search....for every Twitter follower, there will be hundreds of people searching to solve problems that will find your blogs.

For most companies, 65% to 90% of all traffic is coming from first time visitors. With Corporate Blogging as the hub of your strategy, use a sharing tool like Share This (built into Compendium Blogware) to share your content with your social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Groups.   Time Magazine very accurately defined Twitter as an excellent "pointing" device.

The idea is to use your social media to drive traffic back to your blogs, and then using CTA's on the blogs, convert that traffic into leads.

I've seen this strategy work wonderfully for hundreds of our clients.   The measurements you need to focus on are: Bounce Rates, Time on site and most importantly....click through rates. Ultimatly the goal of any marketing effort is to build relationships that turn into business, so like all Online Marketing these efforts should be tracked all the way to revenue.

Anyone who says that social media can't hold up to ROI scrutiny is stuck in Social Media 1.0.

$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.