Business blogs

A Little Blogging Goes a Long Way

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

I would like a lot of people to read Heather Benfield's blog today. Not only is she a great desk buddy, she is also the top content writer for Compendium Blogware. In her most recent post, she highlights the success of one of our local hotel clients, The Hilton Garden Inn in Downtown Indianapolis. The hotel with only minimal blogging his climbed up the Google search ranks to be the #1 Spot for their search criteria!

There are a lot of interesting facts in her post which you can find here! If you would like to hear more stories about how Compendium's affordable blogging software has helped companies ROI, check out our ROI toolkit that provides more case studies and helpful tips on how to get started with business blogging. You can find the toolkit here! It even provides you a checklist on all the steps to get started which always helps when you are starting up something new!

2 ways to improve your blog conversion rates

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by mikey mioduski

CTAs and Landing Pages.

The goal in business blogging, at least our goal and the goal we think many organizations could benefit from-- is to cast a wide net in search by blogging about keyword phrases that are directly related to your business. This content will eventually build up, and help you get found by people who are searching for you.

So once they get to your blog, you want them to do something. You want to turn your visitor into a customer, or a lead. Our marketing and design team is continually focused on ways to boost the number of conversions coming in from our blog.

In my humble opinion, the two most important metrics in measuring your blog conversion are Click Through Rates and Landing Page Conversion Rates.

Click Through Rates are the number of visitors who actually click on your CTA divided by the total number of visitors to your blog. Click through rates essentially tell you if your CTA (Call to Action) buttons are doing their job. We recently had a case where one of our CTAs was registering an all time high click through rate. Pretty awesome right? It meant the graphic/button was really drawing attention, its message was speaking to our visitors. The only problem was the landing page that the button was directing traffic to was seeing a drop in conversion. Allow me to explain...

This is a CALL TO ACTION (CTA). It directs visitors to our conversion page.

The CTA will direct the visitor to a landing page. But that's only half the battle. From there, you need an awesome landing page to seal the deal. Landing Page Conversion rate is the number of visitors who get to your landing page AND actually fill out the form, or do whatever action you consider an official conversion. In our case, a conversion is only counted when a blog visitor clicks on a CTA and fills out the form.

This was our original landing page that was seeing a dip in conversion.

Unfortunately, in our recent situtation, the landing page wasn't convincing them to finish the job. In other words, the button took the visitor to the landing page; however, the number of people who actually filled out the form to receive the Considering Blogging Whitepaper (one of our most popular resources for learning about the basics of business bloggin), was not what we wanted.

Here's the new landing page after redesign.

If we can match a winning CTA with a winning landing page, then we're really improving our blog's ROI. So we've redesigned the landing page to make a simpler and more straight forward experience for the visitor. It is also a whole lot more consistent with the CTA whereas there may have been a disconnect with the prior arrangement. The form is brought out front and center because it is the single thing we want visitors to do-- yet we still provide the same copy to the right of the form for those who want to read about the whitepaper before downloading. I can't promise that it's going to work, but it's worth testing. And if it doesn't, we try try again.

For more tips on landing page conversion, check out this great post from the masterminds at Carsonified. And gracias por su atencion.

Acquisition vs Amplification

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by Brian Millis

Often times I find myself in conversations about the benefits of social media marketing versus the search marketing benefits of corporate blogging. I do my best to keep up with the opinions of social media experts who are far more knowledgeable than I am. And today, I thought it would be helpful to highlight the insights of Doug Karr.

My favorite part is the quote he makes at the end:

"I’ve said before that social media is an amplifier for businesses online. Facebook is a big amplifier!"

That is a much more eloquent way of echoing my beliefs about the benefits of a business blogging versus the benefits of social medias like Facebook and Twitter. The corporate blog can be the content platform where an organization pushes out information, insights, and invitation to do business. Therefore, this content becomes an acquisition tool by driving greater organic visibility on the search engine. As Doug mentions in his post, he uses search engines far more than social networks when he has an intent to buy. Humanizing an organization through corporate blogging and leveraging that content as a search acquisition method is the true value of corporate blogging.

However, that does not discount the statistics that Doug highlights and the power of social networking. Those spaces can dramatically amplify online business. I think it is especially powerful when a company connects their quality blog content to these social spaces. This method allows organizations to amplify the message they find to be most important. If and when that content gets re-tweeted or shared among networks, it has viral potential and can dramatically impact the overall online marketing.

My opinion is that corporate blogging is an acquisition tool, while social media marketing is amplification tool (thanks Doug!). Compendium can help businesses connect and exploit these two benefits with our easy to use blog software. Call me at 317-777-6254 if you'd like to see a demo of the platform in action.

Local Indianapolis Hotel Wins #1 Spot in Google Search Results

Monday, February 8, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Check out this new success story from one of our local Indy Clients! Indianapolis Companies Rock! (As well as our football team, despite the outcome of last night's Superbowl!)

Hilton Garden Inn – Indianapolis Downtown, prides itself on its convenient location just minutes from Indianapolis sports arenas, shopping malls and convention centers. However, the hotel knew they were competing with hundreds of other downtown hospitality locations and was looking for a way to increase online reservations through organic search.

The company looked to Business Blogging Software Provider, Compendium Blogware, for a solution to help boost SEO by creating a continual stream of keyword-rich content. In May 2009, they developed a business blogging strategy that targeted the top 25 keywords Indianapolis travelers are searching for.

After only 47 blog posts (an avg. of 5 posts/month), Hilton was winning the #1 spot in Google Search Results for 3 of 25 keyword blogs while an impressive 84% were ranking in the top 50.

The hotel used Call-to-Action buttons (CTA’s) on their blogs to convert traffic into guests by driving them to their online reservation site. By using Google Analytics, Hilton was able to determine that the CTA’s were a top referral for online reservations and that 95% of search traffic was comprised of brand new prospects!

If you found this success story helpful, check out more here: http://www.compendium.com/resources.html

Humanizing your Marketing

Monday, February 8, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

I found another article to support my previous post about the importance of creating a

connection with your potential customers and people on the internet. The article is from iMediaConnection about tips for better corporate blogging. You can find the original article here. The purpose of the article is that a corporate blog is not a traditional news publication and you are not a journalist. It's about creating the blogging connection with the potential customer world by making a human connection.

The way to help your humanized blog get found is to use important keywords that people are looking for and by linking yourself to other places of interest. Corporate bloggers need to realize that their blog can't be a newsletter or just inside information that outsiders can't understand. Compendium Blogware helps you blog for business by utilizing important keywords into a blog that connects to your potential clients by making your marketing efforts more humanized. Who would have ever thought online marketing could do that?!

Make a Personal Connection

Monday, February 8, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

In one of my classes last semester, we spent an extensive time talking about creating marketing plans that created a personal relationship with a potential customer. A recent statistic I saw in a Socialnomics.net video was that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations compared to 14% trusting advertisements. So my question is...are you getting the ROI you wanted out of your advertisements?

Business blogging is the best thing that works to make a personal connection to your potential clients and it is not interpreted as an advertisement. They are your daily words sharing your daily life about your business. If a customer feels like they're on the inside of your company's thoughts and plans, I can almost assume it will be more effective than any advertisement any company has created.

If you want more information on business blogging and whether or not you should blog, read the Whitepaper Consider Business blogging here. It will answer questions for companies who are in search of finding a better way to reach potential customers. Compendium Blogware can help.

Blogging is for SEO, Not Old People

Saturday, February 6, 2010 by Frank Dale

I read an article today in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Blogging is for old people, Pew report finds.” The title references the author’s conclusion after looking at Pew’s study of the millennial generation’s internet usage patterns. If I ran a consumer-to-consumer blogging service, I might be concerned. If we are talking about B-to-B or B-to-C blogging, the Pew study data does not apply.

Blogging is still very much about communication. It is just not primarily focused on C-to-C communication anymore. Blogging is now in its third generation. We have moved past blogs dedicated to cats and into an era of blogging for customer acquisition.

Business blogging works, because it is an easy way to provide relevant content that search engines love. Search engine providers like Google and Microsoft need to provide relevant results to keep searchers happy and loyal. Blogs are particularly good at providing relevant content, because blog content is topical and easy to update. It’s a great match, because the incentives are aligned for the search engine provider and the blogger. Bloggers provide topical content that search engines use to keep searchers happy. Search engines provide bloggers with prospective customers already interested in the product or service the blogger provides. We know this because the searcher specifically entered keywords corresponding to the topic that interested them. You don’t type “business blogging software” into a search box for fun. At least I don’t. You search based on your interests or needs.

Millennials may not blog, but they will certainly read blogs. We trust search engines because they help us solve problems. When you use a search engine to solve a problem, you are looking for a relevant, credible answer. If the best solution to your problem is found on a blog, you are going to visit that blog not a random twitter page. At Compendium we know this is true, because we use our own corporate blogging software to acquire customers. If you would like to learn more about blogging for search engine optimization, you can download our free whitepaper on Third Generation Blogging.

Business Blogs Are Highly Targeted Landing Pages

Friday, February 5, 2010 by Frank Dale

When I meet people they often ask me where I work. I could say “I work at a high-growth, SaaS start-up that serves online marketers and social media experts.” If they are still interested, I could tell them more about our corporate blogging platform for search engine optimization and social media. Generally unless the person is a marketer or a tech entrepreneur that shares my passion for both topics…we are going to end up talking about something else.

Those interactions got me to think about the way we position Compendium. This is a fantastic company with an innovative product. We turn the marketers that use our product into stars. How can someone not be interested in what we do? As an operations person that is interested in efficiency (and a former business development guy), I had to find a better message. After much thought and reflection…actually probably only two minutes. I came up with something that I think this is a good start:

• Compendium clients use our software to create lots and lots of highly targeted, search optimized web pages

At a high-level that is what we do. We help our clients get found in organic search and communicate to potential customers that are already interested in what our clients do. That last piece is the important part. We connect our clients with people that are already interested in what they do. That makes Compendium one of the best acquisition marketing solutions on the planet. For now, that is going to be my answer to the usual “so what do you do” question. If you want to learn how Compendium can help you, we are happy to answer questions and provide some initial coaching. This whitepaper on the value of Third Generation Business Blogging is a great start.

Everything you Need to Know about Business Blogging

Friday, February 5, 2010 by Heather Benfield

In most of my blog posts, I share stories about clients who are rocking out their blog program because to me, the easiest way to make sense of something is by seeing a relevant problem/solution example that is similar to what I'm looking to accomplish. That's why I like to read case studies and success stories when making decisions about business tools and resources.

However, I realize that people learn and comprehend product benefits in different ways. That's why I'd like to share the Compendium Business Blogging Resources link with you:

Business Blogging Resources

These resources cover everything you need to know about business blogging. So, if you're a statistics and research person, you can read our whitepapers that offer key takeaways to get you started and finely tuned in your business blogging needs.

If your a visual learner, you can watch our webinars addressing a range of relevant topics in the blogging world. And, if you're an interactive learner (and a coffee drinker), I'd highly recommend scheduling time with one of our Business Development Managers for a one-on-one product demo, Q&A and $50 Starbucks Giftcard.

Also, feel free to leave a comment on my blog post to get any question you may have answered or to request additional resources that may help you further understand the importance of blogging for business and getting found in organic search results.

Happy Learning!

I Love Everyday Experts

Friday, February 5, 2010 by Brittan Bright

I love to try new things, but I have been burned by my own susceptibility to hype more times than I care to admit. Thus I ask an obnoxious amount of questions before I buy, or buy into anything new.

For answers, I look to my people. This includes my social networks, and awesomely knowledgeable strangers.

The Compendium office is conveniently located over a Starbucks. Although I love coffee, I also value sleep, friends & family, and my job, all of which I put at risk if I go into caffeine overload. I allow myself ONE single solitary A.M. caffeinated beverage per day. However, I've been looking for ways to cheat the system and an awesomely knowledgeable Starbucks employee helped me tremendously. She knew EXACTLY how many milligrams of caffeine were in every single beverage and walked me through my options with patience and understanding.

I have no idea what Starbucks considers their average customer acquisition cost to be, but they just increased my spend by simply having a knowledgeable employee willing to share that knowledge with me. A person who is darn good at her job, a person who I now consider one of my people.

So, even if it's tough to define business blogging for some, the simple fact is, it lets the everyday experts of your organization shine. Shiny things get a lot of attention.
People want to pay attention to your organization, they just need to find you. Let your experts lead the way.

Greater Exposure Through Strategic Blogging

Friday, February 5, 2010 by Jason Harvoth

Is your company looking to take its sales to the next level in 2010? Perhaps bring sales back to pre-recession levels? The budget that was put in place for customer acquisition in 2007 may not work in 2010. So, you'll spend the remainder of the year reactively trying to "Fix It."

Compendium's business blog software focuses your search marketing dollars on driving more relavent traffic to your drive. This traffic is then converted through your Calls to Action. Empower your employees to create blog content through Compendium's simple blogging software, and lower your cost of customer acquisition immediately.

Or, you can take Sammy Stevens' approach below and craft a catchy video? Good luck with that.

Raising the Bar: Business Blogging Software

Thursday, February 4, 2010 by Brittan Bright

Being a sales professional and new to Compendium, I've had to wrap my mind around my personal perception of blogging. I had never fully understood it's function as a business tool. It's cool, it's trendy, it has potential to engage our current clients, but who cares? I, like many of you, didn't get the point because I couldn't see any measurable way that corporate blogs drive business, a.k.a SHOW ME THE MONEY!

I also had to overcome my perfectionist (blog)writer's block caused by my B.A. in English. Thankfully, my competitive sales nature trumps the literary standards that stood in the way of my understanding the actual function of a business blog: new client acquisition.

I am not here to write a book, I 'm here to win your business. What company, sales pro, or marketer, is not trying to do the very same thing?

Being open to a new perspective, a new idea, service, or tool, isn't that where innovation comes from? Don't we all want to be, or be part of, or believe in, "the next best thing"? Isn't that what any business needs their potential client's to do?

Seth Godin writes, "You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it's getting raised regardless."

Compendium is raising the bar, let us show you how. Be as open to new ideas as you would like your potential customers to be. Think of all the people out there with a problem that you have the expertise, product, or service to solve. Now think about how you got to my blog and consider giving us a shot.

How do you Measure Your Business Blogs' Success?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 by Heather Benfield

The beauty about working at Compendium is that not all of our clients have the same goals and objectives, but we are still able to provide a solution to whatever their business blogging need may be.

For example, I was writing a case study today about a successful client of ours, Indium Corporation, and while I was gathering information about what makes their corporate blogging program so great, I noticed there was no ROI information available.

Errrr...uh oh. What do I do now? WELL...after talking to the company's Client Succes Manager, Jess Wehner, she said that Indium measures their blogging success on organic search exposure and online lead generation. So I went back to gather more information and realized they are rocking it out!

755% increase in online presence and 83% increase in online lead generation!

Check out what else they're rocking out on by reading the success story below:

Indium Corporation develops and manufactures electronics assembly materials, but that’s not the only thing they developed before meeting Compendium Blogware. Indium had 9 blogs in operation with 12 contributing authors however; blog scalability, organic search exposure and lead generation were all missing from their blogging success equation.

Indium chose to integrate their old content into Compendium’s corporate blogging platform in order to manage and organize content in one area as well as increase their number of blogs from 9 to 68. This solution allowed the company to increase organic search exposure without increasing resources.

After transitioning to Compendium’s blogging software, in less than a week the company increased their online presence by 755%. Within the first four months, 30% of Indium’s keyword blogs were ranking in the top 10 Google search results and 65% ranking in the top 50. This boost in organic search exposure directly resulted in an 83% increase in online lead generation.

To learn more about Compendium Blogware's corporate blogging platform, sign up for a free, 20 minute online demo!

An Inbound Marketing Stategy that Includes Social and Search

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by Megan Glover

I just wrapped up an IM conversation with a former colleague and friend about inbound marketing, Facebook and blogging. It went something like this:

Friend: Quick Question. We're setting up a Facebook page for my company is it OK to post content from someone elses blog?

Megan: Why do you ask?

Friend: My boss just read a book about inbound marketing and he's is all over me about posting content to Facebook, twitter and linked in.

Megan: So, what are you trying to accomplish by setting up these pages ? And, do you have a blog and updated website to support your efforts?

Friend: Not yet but I'm getting the Facebook page and Twitter accounts up this week.

Megan: Ok, well, not to complicate things but when I think of inbound marketing, I equate that with getting found in search and acquiring new leads/prospects.

Friend: YES EXACTLY!!!

Megan: Well, then... you are going bout this the absolute wrong way. :)

Social Media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn aren't going to generate new demand. They may help further relationships and eventually turn those existing relationships into demand, but they aren't the best new points of acqusition strategies.

And here's why, below is a graph I've shared before. It's a funnel which represents the amount of new traffic/viewers to each of the following areas:

The main take away from the funnel is this, to get in front of brand new prospects - search needs to be your area of focus. There are many, many more people searching opposed to joining your fan club, page or community.

In order to be found in search you need a strategy. At Compendium we firmly believe that business blogging should be at the hub of your social efforts. Blogging by nature not only helps you get found in search but it serves as a great resource for content that can be syndicated to these other social media sites.

All of this in mind, be careful not to put the cart before the horse. Invest the time to map out a complete inbound strategy that not only includes social media but search and most importantly, a strategy that is always driving your end result.

If my performance was measured on blog comments and RSS... I'd be fired.

Friday, January 29, 2010 by Megan Glover

It's true. If my performance as Marketing Director for Compendium Blogware was measured on the number of blog comments and RSS subscriptions, I would have been gone a long time ago.

Joking aside though, lots and lots of business blogging strategies are measured exactly this way. But why?

Here at Compendium we measure our own strategy and our clients' strategy with tangible revenue generating metrics such as:

1. Leads

2. Closed Business

I suppose I'd like to have more folks comment on our blogs. It would certainly be an ego booster. But that thought is quickly put on the back burner when I report that our blogs had a 150% ROI in 2009 and averaged around 100 brand new leads/month.

Metrics and tracking are going to be enormous soical media marketing buzz words for 2010. So, if you haven't started thinking about how to quanitify your own strategy check out this recent post by Compendium CoFounder/CEO Chris Baggott. Great data to start the conversation.

How Important Is Page Title?

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Jenni Edwards

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.

Do I have your interest? How about you sign up for a demo of our blogging software here.

Compendium's Blogging Survey

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Jenni Edwards

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!

Please fill out our survey today!

Twitter and Blogging

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Allison Bowen

In the world of Product Support, one of the questions we often get is actually in regards to another form of popular social media today - Twitter. Whether or not you actually "tweet" yourself, you know you've heard the type surrounding the site lately.

The question we receive is this: "Okay, I've been using Compendium's powerful blogging software and am seeing results. But how do I incorporate my blog posts into Twitter?"

There are a few days to accomplish this goal, but the easiest is to use a service called Twitterfeed. By signing up for a free Twitterfeed account, you can use the URL of your RSS feed to simply and painlessly feed your blog posts to Twitter. Each time you write a blog for business, the first few sentences of your post and a URL that links to the rest of your post will automatically appear as a new Twitter update.

That's the amazing thing about the world of social media. Somehow, it all integrates together.

Return on Investment of Business Blogging

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Jenni Edwards

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

Great SEO Point

Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Brian Graham

I just read a great post by Rand Fishkin that surfaced recently from 2008 that talks about the gap in spending between SEO and PPC. Check out the post it's a great read.

If you read through the comments it is very clear companies are more sure of the results from PPC. Effective SEO tools are hard to come by. Businesses need measurable results. Having a blog for business is the best affordable business SEO solution. Content is a great way to amp up your search marketing.

Having a powerful blogging software can help a business maximize the content they create and purpose it consistently for search. If you have automated tools to give you a strategy and keep things easy and consistent success is sure to follow. Measurable results are possible with SEO tools and a blogging solution can get you there.