Business blogs

Applying more SG to business blogging

Friday, November 6, 2009 by Brian Millis

Ok, so I try not to do double Seth Godin references but he seems to be so timely for what I'm doing. His most recent blog post begins with this quote:

"The problem with "everyone" is that in order to reach everyone or teach everyone or sell to everyone, you need to so water down what you've got you end up with almost nothing."

This is what I find so hilarious about most of the corporate blogs I read. Often time these busy business men and women spend time manually tagging or categorizing their freeware blog for things like: social media, agency, advice, technology, etc. etc.

These are such general topics for organization. Most of these people tell me that they spend time blogging for SEO and do this organization so they will be found in the search engine by qualified prospects. If you are a branding agency, why would someone search just "branding" or "agency"?! They wouldn't. They would search something like "branding agency in charlotte".

Seth's advice is great to heed when thinking about corporate blogging. If you try and make your blog about EVERYTHING or appealing to EVERYONE . . . . almost NO ONE will find you. Or you could look at it this way: A company that creates one blog and fills it with info ranging from industry news to product information simply waters down the blog, trying to make it about EVERYTHING. This means it will not be found by ANYONE or be a useful vehicle for getting found in search and driving traffic.

And this is why Compendium's structure is brilliant. Blog about EVERYTHING and let the software take care of the organization that actually makes it relevant to the searcher and the search engine.

Common Mistakes in Blogging (#4)

Friday, November 6, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

(4th in a series of 5)

Common Mistake #4:

The reason blogs are successful SEO tools is because they allow you to update them as frequently as you want. This is what the Search Engines love! They will send their web crawlers to your site looking for new content, and if they continue to find new content every time, they will come back more often and more frequently.

On the same hand, if the web crawler does not find new content, it will be trained to not come back as often or as frequently. Allowing your competition to surpass you.

Your business blog will not be very successful if the web crawlers aren't able to find new content. Make it discoverable and both the web crawlers and your readers/potential new customers will be able to find you.

Answer:

There are a few ways to make a blog more easily discovered by web crawlers, but the #1 way is to always be creating new content, and posting it frequently (on average a blog network should be generating at least 25 posts per month).

Other ways include:

Adding a link on your company home page to the blog.
Publicize the blog in newsletters, email signatures, and marketing collateral.
Integrate the blog with other social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Optimize content for search engines by always using at least one exact keyword phrase in your blog post and post title. (do not keyword stuff though - its spam!)

Common Mistake #1
Common Mistake #2
Common Mistake #3

Health Blogging, Online Health Education

Thursday, November 5, 2009 by Jenni Edwards

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.

Be smarter about how you market online

Thursday, November 5, 2009 by Brian Millis

Here is a great post from Seth Godin about online ad clicks. My favorite quote is:

"It's okay to make an ad that isn't easy to measure. If it works, that's enough."

Essentially, this is what every business blog post can be. What other form or online marketing allows you to tell your story from a very human level? As Seth says, the 84% of non-clickers online are looking to make a connection. So use the corporate blog as a way to build familiarity and attention.

This is why we have clients who enjoy over a 10% conversion rate on their Call to Action off of their blog page! People like to buy from people and a blog marketing strategy allows you to take advantage of this MAJORITY of searchers. The stats that Seth discusses in his post also point to why winning organic traffic is so much more valuable (in the majority of cases) than paid search.

Of course, we feel your blog SHOULD be optimized for clicks, but the human nature of a blog works much better for those 84% of non-clickers. Our corporate blogging software makes content creation easy and maximizes its visibility online. With Compendium, you can get in front of that majority of search and use good content to increase conversion.

Get Tracking - Measure Your Business Blog ROI

Thursday, November 5, 2009 by Jess Wehner

In order to make sure your investment with Compendium is worth the dollars you put into the program, it is important to track and measure the ROI of your business blog. While not all marketing teams have the resources to do this, ideally you should have an exact or specific way to measure how much revenue you can attribute back to the blog. This can be done by setting up unique landing pages for your CTAs or putting in tracking codes on all of your blog links.

One new customer that has done this from the beginning is Memolink. Memolink is an online rewards program that allows you to earn points for completing surveys and shopping online. Once you've earned enough points, you can redeem those points for gift cards, cash, or make a donation to a charitable organization.

Check out the Memolink Blog and you will see that every call to action and link on their site leads you to a page that has a unique URL. The Memolink team can then see how many members they are getting signed up directly from the blog, so they won't have to question at the end of the year if the blog was or was not a succesful investment. It will all be in the numbers.

If you'd like to set up a business blog program like Memolink, contact our business development team today and learn how to start generating leads and making sales from your corporate blog.

Finding Business Blogging Success

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 by Amber Mohling

Are you considering starting a blog program at your company?
Or are you looking for ways to improve your current blog's ROI?

If you answered Yes to either of these questions then you'll want to tune into Compendium's upcoming free webinar:

Finding Business Blogging Success: Real-Life Stories
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 from 2-3pm EST
Hosted by award winning marketer, Chris Baggott

During the webinar, Chris will discuss the best practices for ROI driven business blogging, real-life examples of successful blogging strategies, and how to set up a blogging strategy built for success.

Pros and Cons of Compendium Substance Abuse Training 2K9

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 by mikey mioduski

When I first heard that Compendium employees were undergoing a mandatory Substance Abuse Training session, I was initially filled with rage. Maybe not rage. Maybe fury. No, fury's probably an exaggeration too. How about this, I was slightly distraught.

I was initially slightly distraught because I'm 26 years into my life. While today is the oldest I've ever been, tomorrow I will be one day closer to my late twenties, which is daringly close to what I call the point of no return. Sure I tested my limits in college, and grad school, but how am I supposed to know the effects of substance abuse on my professional life if I can't bring them to work with me?

Having said that, I believe in the power of optimism. My scotch glass is always half full, so I tried to keep an open and limber mind, and yesterday, when the nice woman from Management 2000 came and explained why Substance Abuse at the work place sucks, I really tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.

The training session changed my whole perspective. It turns out substance abuse at work is not cool at all. Plus, Compendium is growing like crazy. Our simple blogging software is helping tons of clients get found in organic search. In fact, we are doing such a good job that we won a very large grant. And part of keeping that grant means that we must abide by certain concessions, ie we can't be hammered all day at work.

So here's my list of Pros and Cons in regards to Compendium becoming a Drug and Alcohol free workplace. You will see that my initial rage / fury / distress can be quelled, because the pro's seem to outnumber the cons.

Cons:

no in house blogging for liquor incentives. ask Megan Manning who is our blogging czar... it works.
no more kegerator.
no more of Brian Graham's home brewed beer
no pregaming for the bus ride home

Pros:

no drunken sales calls to the clients that "got away."
turns out a lot of work related deaths are attributed to substance abuse. we will have none of that.
the elevators here are pretty old. not sure how substance abuse plays into that, but if you happened to be on crack or acid, and an elevator got stuck, your bruce willis-like instincts might betray you.
not everyone drinks alcohol, so these non drinkers wont feel left out of anything
kanye west
we get to keep that awesome grant. come on!
we get to make more field trips for any substance induced fun.
more fridge space for... food?
research indicates that that people have to make up for colleagues who abuse drugs and booze, and we have enough work to do as it is.
we don't want an *asterisk next to our name in the SAAS hall of fame as the best business blogging software, or best search marketing tool with aid of Captain Morgan, or heroin. no way. we did this the right way.
nobody really drank out of the kegerator anyway. can i take that home?

The pro's have it. Downtown Indy won't be the same, but overall it's a change for the best. And congrats again to Compendium for winning the grant, truly awesome news.

November Webinar: Finding Business Blogging Success, Real-Life Stories

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 by Jess Wehner

We have a webinar coming up this month that is sure to be interesting for clients and prospective clients alike.

If you are a current client, this will be a great time to learn about what some of Compendium's most successful customers are doing on their business blog, how they incorporate blogging best practices, and what success really means to them. Come see how you can make improvements to your current blog program.

If you are new to Compendium, come learn about how blogging for search can lead to an increase in traffic to your site, generate leads, and increase sales from people that have actually experienced these results.

As a snapshot, you'll hear from the following types of companies who blog for business:

eCommerce Gymnastics Apparel Company:

Over $100,000 closed business within a year, directly from blog traffic.
$10,000 in sales within the first two months of blogging with cheer uniform network.

SaaS Event Management and Web Survey Company:

500% increase in keyword reach, compared to the number of paid keywords targeted.
Receive over 50,000 keyword referrals each month.

Concrete and Services Company in Minneapolis:

Customer was searching for “spancrete”.
Found the company’s blog and called.
$3000 job complete within 48 hours of search.

Success Stories are the Best Stories

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 by Meghan Manning

No matter what stage you're at with researching Compendium and deciding if we're the best solution for your search marketing strategy - client success stories are always a great way to get the inside story on a company! That's why our November Webinar is focused on just that...

We want you to hear about our clients and learn how Compendium has helped them to successfully achieve their blogging goals. During this informative Webinar, you'll learn:

Best Practices for ROI driven business blogging.
Real-life examples of successful blogging strategies.
How to set up a blogging strategy built for success.

Don't hesitate to register for this Webinar - there are only 250 spots available and they are filling up very quickly! Also, after you register, email Chris Baggott at chrisb@compendium.com to send him your questions for the Webinar.

We'll see you there!

Common Mistakes in Blogging #3

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

(3rd in a series of 5)

Common Mistake #3:

Not allowing or enabling conversation. A blog is a great way to allow potential customers to see the human side of the company. Don't let the blog just become another masterfully skilled piece of marketing that has to go through 8 layers of approval before going live to the web. Readers expect to see a human element when they land on a blog, so make sure they receive that.

Statistics show that the majority of visitors that read a blog, are new visitors. So how would you approach a new potential customer in person? You would engage with them and earn their trust before trying to sell them a product.

Same concept with a business blog - this is the first time they have seen your company, so if all they read are marketing and PR posts, that are super "sales"y - you're going to scare them away instead of engaging them.

Answer:

Allow visitors and readers the ability to interact with your writers. Let comments show on the blog - both the good and the bad - it allows you as the company to respond and show that you are willing to be transparent with your customers.

It is also good practice to engage with other bloggers in your industry. Comment on their blog posts, highlight an article in the industry and what your opinion is on it.

Let personality show, engage and encourage conversation with others out there.

Common Mistake #1
Common Mistake #2

Alerding Castor Hewitt receives results

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Stephanie West

This firm is a great example of why a business should blog. They dedicate about 2 hours a week to blogging. That's right: 2 HOURS PER WEEK. Wrap your head around that. In addition to their two hour per week blogging dedication, they have seen 500% blogging ROI... 500%!

Those numbers (alone) should convince you that corporate blogging has something great going for it. But if those numbers don't convince you, consider this additional information about Alerding Castor Hewitt.

This case study is an excellent reason of why you should blog for business. Compendium's blogging platform structures SEO tools that help maximize your search engine optimization results. Blogging for search, just as Alerding Castor Hewitt does, is a way for potential customers to find you on the internet. Online marketing is a means of reaching those potential customers that are searching for something on the internet. By blogging (for as little as 2 hours per week!), you are helping position your company to get found in search.

Click here to view this Alerding Castor Hewitt case study and read about their blogging success!

"Real" Blogging

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Allison Bowen

Many people think that in order to write a blog post, you need to a be a subject matter expert. We at Compendium know that this is just not the case. In fact, in order to blog for business all you really need to do is blog! Using our powerful blogging software to write a post, you can get you the search results you are looking for.

We often get the question "Who should be blogging for my company?" Our answer? Any one you empower with an e-mail address you should also empower with a blog. Every person in your company has a story to tell and they should be given the opportunity to tell it!

Take for example students at M.I.T. According to an Oct. 1, 2009 article in the New York Times titled M.I.T. Taking Student Blogs to Nth D

egree, these student bloggers are free to write about whatever they want. One blogger even writes that she was "bored out of her mind" in a class. While this may seem like bad publicty for the school, it's really not. It's a real thought from a real student. This is what your readers will be most interested in.

Your readers will appreciate the posts where your writers offer up their advice or suggestions and they'll enjoy posts of cute stories. But they'll really get into posts were your writers tell exactly what is going on within your company. A product recall? A down quarter? Blog about it! Explain the issue, how it occured and how your company is working to fix the problem. Blog posts should be an area in which you can "get real" with your readers.

So go ahead, let your employees blog about anything they want! Who knows - it could even end up in the New York Times!

Great Blogging Templates

Sunday, November 1, 2009 by Kaila Woodside

New clients coming on board with Compendium are always wondering if they can see some of our best-looking templates . Obviously, "best" is a relative term - and when I say best I mean a template that has great calls-to-action, high conversion rates and high read times. Here are some of the templates that I send new clients to:

CVENT Web Survey Software
CVENT Event Management
Lydia's Uniforms
Roto Rooter
ExactTarget
Widen

Each of these blogs has a great design that follows blogging best practice and makes it easy for the searcher to take the next step with the company. A blog for business should highlight the company's' brand and give the searcher in each stage of the buying process a possible next step. If you'd like to learn more about how to update your blog software template, email us at help@compendium.com!

A Good Rule of Thumb For Content Creation

Friday, October 30, 2009 by Jess Wehner

Many clients wonder how much content it will take to start receiving traffic on their keywords - and the answer we most often tell them is you can never write enough! But the truth is, depending on the keywords you are targeting - it could take writing content to each of those keyword phrases as much as one time a day. When you decide to go after words organically, it takes a bit more work than targeting them via a pay per click campaign.

Using Compendium as your business blog software is only the first step in a great SEO strategy. Writing frequent, relevant content is the next step. I found a great post that gives one person's opinion on how much content you can actually expect to write: SEO Copywriting Frequency. Ian Lurie says to look at the competitiveness of the term, and then gives this scale for how much content you should be producing based on the number of competing pages showing up when you search for that term in Google:

<10,000 competing pages: Write once a week.
10,001-100,000 competing pages: Write twice a week.
100,001-200,000 competing pages: Write three times a week.
200,001-2,000,000 competing pages: Write every day.

Keep in mind, these theory applies to each keyword - so if you are targeting 100 keywords, you need to write a lot of content! (You can see why we just tell people to write as much as possible).

Fortunately, Compendium gives each of your posts the biggest bang for your buck, pulling each post out to several different pages based on the number of keywords you use. So instead of having to write 100 posts a day for 100 keywords, our software will take 1 post and put it towards 2-5 keywords (or however many you target). For more information on exactly how our software works, view a demo with one of our business development managers.

Put A Survey On Your Blog

Friday, October 30, 2009 by Jess Wehner

One of my clients asked how to add a survey to their blog. We don't get this request a lot, because most of our client's business blogs are focused on lead generation or increasing sales. While a survey might not be a good fit for all blogs, a survey might be something you would be interested in adding to your blog if you are wanting to engage with your readers, get feedback on something, or just get your readers' thoughts on a subject. They may even give you content ideas to write a blog post!

If you would like to add a survey, there are a lot of free, easy to use sites out there - glowday.com, polldaddy.com, surveymonkey.com - just to name a few! For the most part, I found these sites are simple to use - set up an account, specify what you would like your survey to look like, then copy and paste the code into your blog.

Like any call to action you put on your blog though, make sure you have a reason for adding a survey and a tangible way to track and use the results.

5 Tricks for Fabulous Blog CTAs

Friday, October 30, 2009 by Compendium Client Marketing

In the spirit of the Halloween here are five fabulous tricks to help you get the treat (business blogging leads).

1. Use images of people. People respond to people and buy from people. Just make sure that the person in the image is looking at the action you want them to take not away from it.

2. Eye-catching colors are always good to use - in moderation of course. Get my attention but don't overpower me.

3. Say something that will really get them to think. Starting a CTA with a question is always a good start.

4. Make sure your offering a variety of Calls To Action. Your corporate blog will have visitors that are ready to purchase right now as well as visitors that are only ready to commit to a newsletter. Don’t miss out – cater to all of the groups.

5. Never give it away for free. Make sure you capture your visitors data.

While creating quality CTAs can be tricky don't worry we are here to help. Just reach out to your client success manager for strategy and guidance around improving your CTAs.

What's the deal with social media?

Thursday, October 29, 2009 by Michael Burton

So you may be asking yourself, "What's the deal with all this talk about social media? It seems like people are talking about it everywhere, but I have no idea what they're talking about..."

That is a common question these days. Social networking has been growing for the past couple of years and recently has boomed into playing a huge role in business and marketing.

At Compendium, we know the potential of social media and the seemingly endless ways it can be used in helping your business.

In a recent webinar, Compendium Co-Founder Chris Baggott teamed up with Kyle Lacy, the CEO of Brandswag, to discuss why marketers and consumers are becoming obsessed with social media and how it can play a role in your company.

If you would like more information on this topic, as well as ways to combine business blogging software with social media to create ROI, I suggest checking out the replay of the webinar.

If you still have questions after watching it, contact a Compendium representative, and they can help you figure out where exactly blogging fits in your business.

Increase Your Calls To Action Clicks

Thursday, October 29, 2009 by Compendium Client Marketing

What is the best technique for increasing your corporate blog Calls To Action (CTA) clicks?

Give a specific action don’t be passive!

It is your job to guide your corporate blog readers to take the next step with you. How will they know what to do if you don't tell them or encourage them to take action?

NOTHING

Be direct and make the offer appealing. Try using some of these methods:

Deadline - Act now to get X
Price save or price increase
Trial/Introductory period
Free gift
Only available through this offer
Upgrade
Free accessory

Have you tried using any of these methods with your blog CTAs? What method saw the best results? We love to hear business blogging CTA success stories so please share yours today.

Top 10 Google Analytics Resources for Corporate Bloggers

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 by Compendium Client Marketing

You can leverage your corporate blog analytics to gain insight into your blog including:

Where your business blog traffic is coming from
What visitors are most engaged with
The search keywords your traffic is finding you for
Guiding your visitors to take the next step

It is important that you listen to your analytics closely when your blogging for search. Don't worry everyone has questions about Google Analytics.

Here are the top ten resources I use to find answers to my Google Analytics questions.

Official Google Analytics Blog

Google Analytics Official YouTube Channel

Google Analytics Support Page

Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

A Guide to Google Analytics and Useful Tools

50 Resources for Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics

AnalyticsSearch: Search dozens of Google Analytics support websites with 1 click

EpikOne: Analytics Talk

Follow & Tweet with @Google Analytics on Twitter

Software as a Service Compendium Blogware's Product Support Team

I hope that these resources help you with your analytics questions. Do you use a resource not listed here? Please just add it to my list via comments.

Communicating with Your Blog

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Stephanie West

Corporate blogging is a great way to update your clients (or perspective clients) on what is going on within your company.

Corporate blogging is a great search marketing tool. It also helps businesses get found in search. Blogging is also a great way to generate leads. And it humanizes your business.

But another great aspect of blogging is communication.

Simply communicating what is going on within your company is equally as important as getting found in search or generating leads.

So as the marketing intern, I'm here to tell you what's going on within the marketing department at Compendium.

This month, the Marketing department is hosting a blogging competition amongst the 5 departments at Compendium. Our Marketing Manager, Meghan, assigned each department weekly blogging goals to reach. The Client Success department won two weeks in a row. No one has caught them yet!
The Marketing department hosted a successful Webinar last week! Look for the replay on Compendium's website soon.
We're preparing for another Webinar and follow-up this Thursday, Sept. 17 from 2-3PM, Third Generation Business Blogging. Click on the link to sign up for this FREE webinar!

These are just a few of the fun things going on at Compendium - particularly within the Marketing department. From now on, look for more regular updates from me on what's going on at Compendium in the Marketing department!