What's a Business Blog Supposed To Accomplish?
Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 by Chris Baggott
There was some feedback from my interview on Blog Squad Radio last week about the Compendium Approach to Business Blogging was too Corporate.  

I posted this reply:
 
I wanted to thank you both for a great session last week. Your questions were insightful and I really appreciate your open-mindedness for some of these new concepts.

A successful relationship requires direct communication. To get the right to build a relationship with a customer or prospect you have to first be found, second build credibility that a relationship with you will add value to the prospect or customer.

Blogging is spectacular for this stage of the relationship. From that point however 99% of the time that relationship is going to evolve to leverage some other medium...which might include face-to-face, email, telephone or even paper based things like catalogs.

You guys are a perfect case to show that a successful blogging program shouldn't be measured by the number of comments...but from the amount of traffic and conversions.Thanks again,
Chris Baggott, CEO
Compendium Blogware

Advanced Business Blogging Strategy, requires that your employee and constituent content should be mostly about your business.  Blog about your solutions, your customers, your aspirations as it relates to your products & services.  This is what people are searching for...great blog information that helps them and builds trust
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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 BlogwareWow, 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.
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Can Blogging Be Used For Business Marketing?
Posted Sunday, February 10, 2008 by Chris Baggott
John Conroy of CMS Wire had a great summary of the 2008 Top Trends in Corporate Blogging we produced last week.

John did a fantastic job of summarizing the trends as we see them and did exactly the  right thing in making the following statement:

"2008 will be the breakout year for corporate blogging? Spaghetti-ish, high-volume, keyword-focused content is still the way to go? Employees encouraged to contribute to the corporate blog, under editorial supervision?"
"Plenty to ponder in all that. I’m so vehemently opposed to some of Baggott’s views, and so much in agreement with others, that there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll burst before I get to hit ‘Publish’."
My posted comment is below:

Thank you for getting this dialog started John.  In the short history of blogging there has been almost a 'snobbery' of what the right way to blog is.

What's right for citizen journalism however is rarely right for organizations.  The real challenge will be whether Corporations can take a tool like blogging and adopt what's right and good about it (as well as unbelievably effective) without corrupting it into just another spamming tool.


Corporations and Journalists (citizen or not) have different goals don't they?  Does that mean they can't use the same tools in different ways?  Blogging for Business is a lot different than blogging for opinion.   There really is a lack of Blogging Information out there for business.  What's the research?  What's your opinion?
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Corporate Blogging Trends for 2008 Webinar
Posted Friday, February 1, 2008 by Chris Baggott
chris baggott of Compendium Blogware Corporate Blogging Software Solution with Seth Godin I wanted to thank everyone who attended our Top Corporate Blogging Trends for 2008 webinar yesterday.  Comments from folks like Michael Lombardi in his blog Marketer Synergy were typical.    If you missed it, we will be posting a whitepaper summary shortly and we are hosting another webinar at the end of February called:  How to Measure, Track, and Adjust Corporate Blogs.

So what role can webinars and whitepapers play in Corporate Blogging Best Practices.  One word....Content.

Over the next week or so I'll be leveraging not only the top trends content, but also this webinar generated over 100 submitted questions.  All of that becomes great blogging information and a basis for blogging research....in a word:  Content Ideas (ok that's two words)

By doing webinars you have a live interaction and can actually see and hear what your audience is thinking about as it relates to your industry or business.   That's a blogging best practice that leads to success.

All empowered by easy to use blogging software
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