My name Jenni Edwards and a Director of Sales at Compendium Blogware. I began dabbling in blogging and social media with the advent of the personal, web-based blogging tools and also have become a bit of a social networking 'junkie'; but what I am really energized about is what blogging can do for businesses. Blogging allows businesses to communicate, grow and build relationships more effectively and on a larger scale than ever has been possible with traditional marketing and public relations tools of yesteryear.
This blog will focus on the many benefits of blogging for business and will discuss some of the latest findings and research related to organizational blogging. I will also provide some updates about the growth of Compendium Blogware: a provider of easy to use corporate blogging software.
Would you ever buy a book with a boring title? How about name your child with a ridiculous nonsense name?
I didn't think so!
So why would you name your business blog with anything different than a keyphrase? Our business blog software makes that easy! Page title is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT factor when it comes to on site factors for search marketing. Page title lets the search engines (i.e. - Google) know what your page is all about. I am willing to guess there is more than one keyphrase that is relevant to your business blog. Compendium's unique, easy to use blog software makes ie easy to target multiple keyphrases with the same pieces of content.
Compendium Blogware recently announced a blogging survey. We are trying to prove the fact that most blog visitors are FIRST time visitors...not an RSS subsriber. Do you agree? Check your analytics and I bet you will see that most business blog visitors have never been to your blog before!
Although we aren't quite sure of the data to come from this business blogging survey, there is definitely a need for all marketers to better understand how blogging for search engine optimization works!
I assume everyone has heard now --- but the Apple iPad was revealed yesterday. A day that should have, would have and could have been a great day for CoverItLive's blogging software platform.
Well, on the heels of one of the biggest buzz's of technology, the iPad, the live blogging software failed. It's something that we often take for granted here at Compendium --- up time and stability. I figure today is probably a good day to say "thank-you" to our great development team that keeps our corporate blogging software platform up and running everyday.
I'd also encourage you to take a look at James Litton's blog where he discusses some of the innovative ways Compendium is addressing issues such as hosting and storage of data for our blogging solution.
Now, CoverItLive is in a different business than Compendium and have some great clients such as ESPN, I am by no means taking a jab at a competitor here...they have simply made a different business out of the ability to instantly communicate information online, such as live blogging and I am sure there are issues with that beyond my scope of comprehension.
How do you currently measure your ROI on your corporate blogging program? Do you have an anticipated ROI that you are looking for on any given marketing strategy? I know that our Director of Marketing at Compendium, Megan Glover, continues pretty much any program that has an 100% ROI (and why wouldn't you --- if it makes more money than it costs, it is a positive marketing activity).
Along with the rest of the Client Success team here at Compendium we have put in place a few preliminary ROI calculates for blogging for search.
Any disagreements with the below formulas? Would love some feedback --- and please utilize this for yourselves and if you aren't seeing a positive ROI, it may be time to consider using a more powerful blogging software?
B2B Client = Won Annual Search Traffic x CTA (Call to Action) Click Through % x Landing Page Conversion % x Average Cost Per Lead = Potential Revenue THEN take Potential Revenue Divided By Contract Value (blogging expenses) x 100 = ROI Percentage
B2C Client = Won Annual Search Traffic x CTA Click Through % x Website To Sale Conversion x Average Sale Amount = Potential Revenue THEN take Potential Revenue Divided By Contract Value (blogging expenses) x 100 = ROI Percentage
Twitter is great, I am probably one of the biggest fans of Twitter here at Compendium, and yes, Twitter results are being served in Google now; but true organic SEO and search marketing (not just time based like Twitter) is vital to the survival of most businesses. If people cannot find you when they have a specific problem then you become irrelevant.
I always like to put it in layman's terms --- if I am searching for a good florist in Chicago (which I am --- any suggestions?) or a doctor in Minnesota I am generally not going to my Facebook fan page or searching Twitter trends as my first action --- I am going to Google, typing in my problem, making judgments based on their corporate blogs and websites and then depending on how big or meaningful of purchase it is I MAY ask on one of my social media outlets for an additional review.
So the first day I accepted the job with Compendium Blogware (a crazy 2 1/2 years ago) I went out on Amazon.com and bought a handful of books --- one of them being, "The Corporate Blogging Book" by Debbie Weil. It became sort of a Bible to me, I had a lot to learn and not a lot of time. I decided to pay a visit over to Debbie Weil's blog today, which is fitting as she is now a consultant to Compendium Blogware and is paying us a visit today.
I came across a lot of content that I have missed in my RSS Reader and came across this specific post "Is Your Blog the Hub of Social Media?" which strikes my interest as more and more of our agencies and clients are hopping on the Twitter and Facebook bandwagon and struggling with which medium is right for which activity. There are some great comments to the post too on both sides of the fence (some claiming they are stopping their blog in favor of Twitter and Facebook). Debbie asks a few questions around the need for an ongoing corporate blog...I'd like to pose the same question --- is Corporate Blogging still necessary in today's world filled with so many social media outlets? I'm also working on an idea and trying to get some clients to test specific Twitter feeds based off of unique RSS feeds from their keyword blogs (i.e. - Corporate Blogging Software) to see how the Twitter community reacts to niche auto feeds versus broader auto feeds (i.e. - a feed that pushed all of your company's content out) and think that this could be one reason (beyond the obvious, search) to continue with your corporate blog as it does provide content that can be easily pushed to these social media outlets.
Please Note: This is somewhat of an exaggerated rant from my perspective dealing with current Compendium clients meant to serve as a reminder to stay on topic! I see it happen on company blogs everywhere - outside of Compendium as well.
Your products are great, right? I mean, I bet you sell the best handcrafted luggage this side of the Mississippi! I bet your service is amazing too, your carpet cleaners move all the furniture for free and will usually find the missing earring you lost a year ago.
My question is - why can't you tell me about this? Why do you want to tell me about your political position? If politics are your passion, then that should be your business. I absolutely love online marketing, blogging, social media, marketing, search marketing, etc. and I hope that you love whatever area of business you are in as much as I love mine.
So please talk about your business...stay focused and remember that 80% (plus) of your blog visitors are going to be first time visitors; so they REALLY don't care about the legislative voting that will influence your business taxes, they probably care more about how well of a job you've done in the past, how easy it is to do business with you and most importantly how great your products are!
I'm a bit behind on Seth's Blog - but today came across a post that seems to outline one of our common sales questions here at Compendium Blogware. Why would I pay for a corporate blogging solution when I can start a blog for free?
Seth continues down the line of thought that if the market isn't valuing your product than you more or less need to find a new market rather than change the market using Groucho Marx' transition from vaudeville to the movies as an example. I agree with Seth, but also think it's important to point out the importance of pre-emptively knowing where the market is going. Pepsi pulled it's Super Bowl advertising in favor of an attempt of an online initiative called "Refresh". My bet is that it's a lot cheaper too.
Seth - You are right, you can't change a market; but there is still such a thing as being ahead of the market. People never thought they would pay for email, but they do. My Grandpa scoffs at the idea of paying for bottled water to this day...but it's a multi-billion dollar industry. Early players in the game have an advantage in all of this and as marketers continue to progress and see organic search as a top priority in customer acquisition they will continue to become more and more willing to pay for tools that make winning organic search easier and scalable.
Although this post has its roots in traditional media; I think Apple continues to be a good example for so many marketing related topics. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the idea of "branding" and think for most businesses try as you might - but you will never have the type of cult following that Apple does. With that being said, I am continued to be shocked by the amount of advertising that Apple gets through other parties. Everyone wants to be a part of Apple, giving Apple free advertising time after time. One example is Geico which has created a seemingly super useful app for their customers. Geico is running a heap of television ads to advertise their application and their services, but really highlighting the iPhone at the same time.
Does Apple really need to advertise for itself anymore? Those PC vs. Mac commercials are getting a little old after all. More importantly, how do you get others to market for you? One way from a business blogging perspective is to write great content. When you write compelling content, others are more likely to link to your content and send visitors your way (not to mention improving your "link juice").
Another option is to have a really great compelling product or service and ASK people to market for you. This seems simple enough, but oftentimes businesses have raving fans that would be happy to write a testimonial, but no one ever asks these "fans" to do so. We've begun to implement programs with several clients that involve just this through something we call "web to post" that allows these raving fans to tell their story and then that story is automatically sent to the administrator of a blog network. Free marketing? I think I'll take it!
This is a bit off topic from business blogging, but I ran across this article today on CNN talking about a website and Twitter account that focuses on putting stories behind homeless individuals and wanted to share. While most of our clients here at Compendium are in the business of making money and only a handful are non-profit bloggers focused on search marketing; it is nice to see how social media can allow someone with a low budget to be heard and for altruism to flourish in this case. Mark Horvath who is profiled in this piece likely can't afford a billboard, however, he can afford a website and a Twitter account to portray the lives and stories of hundreds of homeless persons really just showing how powerful of medium online marketing can be.
I am admittedly an online hypochondriac; I feel as if the readily available medical information has resulted in many of us "self diagnosing" ourselves with a multitude of conditions and syndromes --- not to mention the amount of worry that results when you have a simple ailment and the Symptom Checker on WebMD lists a plethora of debilitating illnesses that could be the root cause of your headache, back ache or dizziness.
However, medical information is a positive powerful tool online as it educates the newly diagnosed, can provide a support group of sorts and allows for suffers to be aware of the newest treatments. One example that Compendium has of a client that is playing in this space of "Health Blogging" is Simplex Healthcare, better known as Diabetes Care Club. They are one of the leading suppliers of direct diabetes supplies and their blog has recently kicked off and provided some great information for diabetes patients.
So while we do focus on all companies on providing an ROI from their business blogging efforts, it's important to occasionally take a step back and look at the great resources that online health blogs and tools can provide at no cost and hopefully help someone through their own medical struggles.
Empathy doesn't come to natural to most of us. Potentially it is a lacking quality across my seemingly selfish generation, but I have to make a conscious effort towards empathy in any given situation.
Our friend, Seth Godin, recently wrote about empathy in marketing noting that marketers and the fact that as marketers we can try as we might to be empathetic and we may think we understand the hopes and dreams along with the woes of any given demographic, but we really don't. And when we think we do, we are likely making broad, incorrect generalizations.
What can we do about this? And how does empathy really work? I consider empathy to be very close to the idea of a "similar situation" sales approach (i.e. - I'm just like you; let me solve your problem like I did for someone just like you, etc.). The truest form of empathy is truly being in the same situation...not faking it or making assumptions. How do you create this feeling of empathy through blogging? You enable multiple individuals throughout your organization to create content. It's amazing even within a small company the socioeconomic, life stage and other diversity that exists and opening this up can be a powerful marketing tool.
Another way in which empathy is natural from a search perspective is through known data. Although I can agree as Seth warns that mixing empathy in marketing is rather dangerous --- the fact that through search and tracking tools we are able to tie back the search terms that an eventual buyer or "conversion" came to our website or blog from, therefore, as we learn more about the individual we can begin to make these somewhat dangerous assumptions such as "Stay at home moms generally search with terms such as XYZ where as working mothers usually search on terms such as ABC" and using these data backed assumptions to create better custom landing pages, blog templates, calls to action within a blog and so forth.
It might be a stretch and empathy may never be a natural quality in many of our everyday lives, but I believe that some of the benefits of empathy in marketing can be found through blogging and search.
I have to share this video I ran across today while preparing for a presentation to college juniors & seniors next week in which I am talking about opportunities in technology.
Sometimes (in a very dorky way) I get so excited to be a part of the future and be working within this world we call "new media" at a blogging software company. This video (produced by The Economist) does a great job of highlighting the increased focused on online advertising (SEM, SEO, PPC, etc.) versus traditional media - the real take away I have here for businesses is that you must adapt your business model and your marketing to this new economy and new technologies --- the statistics are startling!
This past week while attending the MBO Conference once again in Indianapolis there was still a surprising amount of chatter about Facebook Ads. I am shocked by this. Granted I am a small sample size; but I truly have become a master at ignoring these ads on social networking sites. First of all, they are generally way off the mark --- I am not the least bit interested in a Career in Genomic or becoming a chef (Potentially because one of my interests is "cooking" and "ethnic food" means I want to be a chef?) I know this is more of an ad server issue than anything; but the larger point I want to make is that I wouldn't go to Facebook if I did decide that being a chef was my long term passion. I'd go search, without a doubt.
While Facebook ads may work for some as many things do --- I have to keep questioning the ROI of this versus search marketing when you now can market to those that have truly said they are interested and looking for your product versus marketing based on simple assumptions that anyone who likes to cook wants to be a chef.
As a side note, I am a Facebook addict (Go ahead and connect with me on Facebook) & I am starting to see a few brand and charity sponsored applications that do make a lot of sense in certain demographics, but still believe that search marketing is a much more powerful medium for most businesses versus display ads on social networks.
I was recently attempting to clean out my Inbox and came across an internal note that discusses using properly sources or purchases photos for your corporate blog content. Now, I know I am not the only one guilty of grabbing pictures from a website or Google Images (oftentimes copyrighted); however, I bet you did not realize that even if you offer to take down an image you can still be charged for the use of it in the past...and it can be PRICEY!
My advice? Use something like iStockPhoto; the images are of great quality and you'll never have to worry about being charged at a later date for the usage. Another option is to use the advanced search options within Flickr and find Creative Commons photos that are allowed for commercialized use (just to be safe).
I'm not sure if I plan to go retroactively and change my photos out quite yet, however, on an ongoing basis - for your own business blog I'd recommend going one of these more legitimate routes!
Tomorrow Chris & I are presenting a webinar on "Selling Search: The Compendium Approach" specifically for our agency partners.
So to give some of you a sneak peak and others of you an only peak, how do we sell corporate blogging software and what can you take away for your own "internal selling" of a blogging strategy -- my basic outline for the webinar.
Where are we now? Compendium is a third generation blogging tool, past the peak of inflated expectations in Gartner's hype cycle and into the "slope of enlightenment". It's a perfect time to strike or redo your blogging program - let your past failures or others be teaching lessons for a ROI focused blogging program
How do we specifically sell Compendium? Well, we try to solve the problem of the customer; generally this can be tied back to "increased sales/conversions". Next, we discuss how Compendium can solve the given problem and finally as any good sales organization would -- we ask for the business.
Finally, what is compelling about Compendium? A lot! We are the only corporate blogging software platform out there built specifically to organize content in the best way for search. There are hundreds of graphics and stats to prove to someone organic search is valuable (not to mentioned the billions that is spent on PPC). Once someone realizes the value of organic search and how Compendium helps in winning organic search it begins to be a no brainer decision.
I love when great comparisons are made from everyday life and applied to more complicated concepts. Simple analogies are a great strategy for any blogger trying to get through to an audience.
Nicki goes into detail about your "Web Marketing Pie"....I won't rehash her entire post because you should really go read it! However, a few points...
Lemon Meringue Pie - "Your Blog is the HUB of your web marketing efforts." AMEN Nicki! This is a great point, however, Nicki does seem to focs a bit on making your blog a destination within your industry, while this can be a great side effect of quality content, I would recommend for most companies to use a more search marketing mindset when beginning their blogging strategy.
Cherry Pie - Nicki compares social media to a cherry pie in a looser way, but I agree with the potential for top line profit, however, would be cautious in her statement of "You probably also know businesses are starting to leverage them in a way that is gaining a ton of business." I actually don't' know a lot of businesses that are gaining a "ton" of business from social media; I would place social media in the same bucket that Nicki places PPC in "not right for everyone" or in other terms, Sweet Potato Pie...the acquired taste that some may never understand.
I figure a few months has passed since Bing's well hyped launched and it might be a good time to review some things we (search marketing folks) can learn from Bing so far...
Content is king. Bing has an increased emphasis on content versus Google's emphasis on backlinks which has come to be one of the easier scammed areas of search. And as Doug Karr says "distorting relevance".
Offline marketing can compliment online marketing - especially for the masses. As hardened internet marketers, this can be hard to admit and I feel somewhat immune to Yahoo!, Bing, Apple and Microsoft commercials - but let's give some credit to a good hype campaign both on and offline.
Default integration helps...I always use my mom as the example here; she's not a super user --- but she uses Bing because she has a PC and that's the default. We've also noticed bigger gains from Bing traffic in our B2B markets - one could draw the conclusion that this is from similar reasons (PC's are the way of Corporate America and Bing is likely the default here).
One convenient site is Google vs. Bing if you are interested in looking at some of your own searches for your company and how the results differ in the two engines.
Side note: I actually originally forgot this post by my friend, Doug Karr, referenced above; but when doing some searches around "what has bing taught us?" I came across the post. Just another point to prove how important search traffic is for blogs and that a majority of blog visitors are first timers out there searching.
Working with agencies day in and out - I oftentimes catch myself having to take a step back and think about what it is like to be new to selling Compendium. Chris is going to be presenting a webinar titled "How To Sell Search - Compendium Blogware's Strategy" to our agency sales people in the next couple of weeks.
Basically, Chris put things into perspective today as we were prepping the presentation --- beyond the fact that we aren't really selling blogging in it's truest sense but rather customer acquisition which is something that we talk a lot about internally Chris also discussed the Gartner cycle and how this applies to the sales process. The basic "nugget" to take away for anyone selling Compendium (whether internally to your organization or externally, as in agencies) is that open source platforms are generation one --- yes, selling blogging in it's traditional sense is silly, the ROI is hard to measure and sometimes non-existent, therefore, it is dropping off into the "Trough of Disillusionment" which also in the cycle allows for Compendium's rise as the technology and approach are improved and utilized in a more effective way. Basically, you've got to take the next step to true results and ROI for a technology to stay successful - hype and newness are only cool for so long.
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My name Jenni Edwards and a Director of Sales at Compendium Blogware. I began dabbling in blogging and social media with the advent of the personal, web-based blogging tools and also have become a bit of a social networking 'junkie'; but what I am really energized about is what blogging can do for businesses. Blogging allows businesses to communicate, grow and build relationships more effectively and on a larger scale than ever has been possible with traditional marketing and public relations tools of yesteryear. 
s a great point, however, Nicki does seem to focs a bit on making your blog a destination within your industry, while this can be a great side effect of quality content, I would recommend for most companies to use a more search marketing mindset when beginning their blogging strategy.
