Corporate Blog Example

Linking in Posts

Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 by Sarah Sedberry

When talking to my clients there are always questions about how to get the most out of their blogging efforts. One of the steps that we recommend to all of our corporate bloggers is to use links in their posts ("Linkjuice" if you will), and with Compendium's platform, its very simple to do.

The reason we encourage linking in blogs is because Search Engines LOVE the traffic that is created when sites link to other sites. Therefore improving your search traffic, driving readers to your site, and increasing conversions and ROI.

To read more on this subject check out this article on SEOBook.com that highlights ways to improve your linking, and ideas for linking out to other sites.

Online Software --- That's Us!

Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 by Jenni Edwards

A great blog post on the WSJ.com BizTech Blog discusses the pros of online software (more commonly known as software as a service) and the post also hits how this quasi-new medium has to be sold. Talk about a more relevant post to our company?

One of our fellow software as a service companies, Success Factors (employee management software), notes re-investing 108% of their revenues into sales and marketing for this year...crazy numbers, but worthwhile if you have a good product, can prove yourself and have an ongoing relationship with an organization (think exponential growth --- renewing clients + new clients + additional services for both).

One thing that CEO Lars Dalgaard hits on is how it is hard to get the "big businesses" to buy from you. I can feel his pain in our business...there are a lot of hoops to jump through and the need for most large organizations to innovate has been relatively low --- as the big dollars and repeat customers traditionally have allowed their marketing efforts to be more or less branding exercises with little ROI attached to these activities (or habits). Things are changing...it's not just the small guys that are needing to innovate to compete, with globalization factors, a rough economic time the ears of even the 'big guys' are perking up when it comes to marketing ROI and lead generation. We are ready to talk to them about corporate blogging and bust through the challenge of selling to big business.

Lucas Oil Stadium - Measuring Success

Posted Tuesday, August 26, 2008 by Eric Romer

Pictured: Eric Romer, about to catch a touchdown pass on a slant route in the end zone? Suit him up, Dungy.... he looks ready.

So, I had the opportunity to tour Lucas Oil stadium last weekend, and it was a pretty amazing sight. As a Colts fan, this is like Christmas. The excitement in Indianapolis has been building ever since Lucas Oil broke ground. Despite some disputes about funding of the project, this beautiful structure has a serious allure to it.

One of the things I kept hearing during the public tour was people referring to the stadium as "The Luke". I must admit, it was pretty catchy, and fans love putting their own nickname to personalize their city's new baby. But as you would imagine, the sponsor is not so happy about the nickname.

I've always been curious how you measure the worth of a stadium sponsorship. Spending $122 million on naming rights for 20 years is no cheap purchase, even for a large manufacturer of oil products. I hear about the ROI of advertising dollars all the time, but this I think stadium sponsorships in general fall into what Corporate Blogging expert Debbie Weil describes as "Return on Influence". It's next to impossible to measure sales that directly result from Lucas Oil Stadium, especially when people refer to it as "The Luke". Forest Lucas was quoted in an IBJ article saying:

"Calling the stadium 'The Luke' doesn’t sell a dime’s worth of products for us. This will be a place we intend to show Lucas Oil to the world, so we’re eager to protect the integrity of the name.”

I get Mr. Lucas's frustration, but there's not a whole lot you can do when something catchy spreads with fans, especially as sports columnist Mark Rosentraub stated in the article, "exposure through the Internet can spread the nickname and entrench it in people’s minds even faster than traditional media."

My suggestion? You can't beat 'em, join 'em. Find a a way to ride the "Luke" wave, and join the conversation. Social media, affordable blogging software and other web-based tools allow you to be present, and help drive those internet trends.

Despite the nickname concern, the sponsorship "engagement" (2008's buzz word) that occurs inside the stadium, interacting with the Lucas Oil brand experience, the dragsters, race-car simulators, etc. is very creative and sets a new precedent in sports marketing.

Top 50 Companies to Watch - Are You Watching Compendium?

Posted Tuesday, August 26, 2008 by Ali Sales

According to the IEDC, Compendium Blogware is one of the top 50 companies to watch within the State of Indiana.

Are you watching us? Well, the reality is probably not. Of course I care a lot about Compendium Blogware, and so does my family because they have to put up with me talking about work all of the time. But do you care about us?

I'm not offended if you don't. With the exception of brands like Apple and Starbucks, nobody is watching companies so to speak. As a society, we are bad at it. We're busy. We have short attention spans. Just about the only thing we watch is Dancing with the Stars.

Instead, we've become really good at looking for something and finding it when we need it. We aren't interested until we have a problem and someone offers a solution. Then we're all ears, but only for a brief period of time.

The funny thing about the list of the top 50 Companies to Watch is that I know that business blogging could help each any every one of the nominees capitalize on this phenomenon of "looking and finding" instead of "watching."

Each company, regardless of industry, faces the same challenges of getting found online by people who have a problem and would welcome some help with it. Maybe I'll have a chance to talk to them about all the benefits of corporate blogging at the event being held tomorrow night at the Indiana Roof Ballroom...

In any event, congratulations to everyone at Compendium for the recognition. It's nice to be appreciated, but even better to be found by those who are looking for something that your organization can help with.

Blogging for Acquisition

Posted Monday, August 25, 2008 by Daren Tomey

Forrester, which is a tremendous research center, recently published a new report which, for a lack of better explanation, paints a very negative picture as to the future of corporate blogging as a viable marketing medium. The one area of their report which continues to strike a cord with me is that they state that corporate blogs are having trouble sustaining a conversation....

You see, their findings are probably correct based on the corporate blogs that they reviewed during the research phase, but those are not an accurate depiction of what business blogging or corporate blogging really looks like today.

It is really interesting, once a prospect goes through one of our webinars, such as the one that Chris Baggott is hosting on Tuesday, August 26th on Demand Generation through Corporate Blogging, or speaks with one of our consultants, those individuals get what corporate blogging is all about. It is not about developing a dialogue, it is about generating highly engaged traffic via organic search which converts quickly into recognizable revenues.

For more on the topics of blogging for business or if you are looking for help to create a corporate blogging strategy, I recommend that you contact a consultant at Compendium or register for an upcoming webinar.

Sponsored Blogging Not Your Best Bet

Posted Saturday, August 23, 2008 by PJ Hinton

The Valleywag blog had a great post tonight about the ineffectiveness of sponsoring a celebrity blogger. Citing Seagate's sponsorship of Robert Scoble's blog as an example, post author Owen Thomas notes that the computer storage manufacturer's stock price has decreased significantly since the sponsorship began. The post goes on to cite some interesting statistics.

In April, a study by Canadian research firm Pollara found that word of mouth works — nearly 80 percent said they'd buy products recommended by a friend or family member. But word of mouse? Only 23 percent said they'd buy something touted by a blogger. "This shows that popularity doesn't always equate to credibility," Pollara executive Robert Hutton told MediaPost. "Marketers might have to reconsider who the real influencers are out there."

This is an reinforcement of the case that Compendium CEO Chris Baggott been making both in his presentations and blog posts like one from late May, where he wrote:

2. Celebrity. So many journalists covering Social Media focus on Celebrities and celebrity bloggers. There are 20,000,000 businesses in the United States…and this doesn’t count non-profits. Hearing stories about Jimmy Wales, Michael Arrington, Kerry Miller or Jonathan Schwartz is great if you’re People Magazine, but this is Business Week. Tell me about real businesses using these tools. The story at Sun Microsystems isn’t the story of a CEO/Celebrity blogger (Jonathan's Blog), the story is the thousands of normal everyday Sun employees that blog. Who are they? What are the benefits to the organization? (hint…it’s not touchy-feely....the ROI is found in winning searches and converting those visitors to prospects….)

The takeaway message for businesses is that you'll get more mileage for your marketing dollars if you invest in a company weblog, continuously stocked with content by plain-spoken employees who believe in what you're doing. Compendium's Multi User Blog Software helps you achieve that goal.

Favorite 80's fad?

Posted Friday, August 22, 2008 by Sarah Sedberry

Since it's Friday, I decided to take a moment while drinking my coffee to write a "Casual Friday" post...

Recently, I had a friend of mine throw an 80's themed party. To my dismay I could not attend as I was out of town at the time. Although, she was kind enough though to replay all of the fun throw backs and happenings that I missed out on.

While recalling this to my colleague Kristen, another Client Success Manager here at Compendium Blogware, during our morning trip to Starbucks - it started us on a rambling of our favorite 80's fads. (Everything from New Kids on the Block, our favorite cassettes, Connect 4 and Operation, to the wonderful fashion trends of neon, knot ties in your shirt, spandex, and air-pump sneakers)

Our conversation continued on into the elevator for the ride back to our offices. In the elevator others jumped in on our conversation and soon we had good banter and had shared several smiles with our building mates.

Since we were having such a great time with this topic, I wanted to share with everyone else, and allow you to get in on the fun.

What was your favorite trend or moment to come out of the 80's?

In Client Success, we often will have discussions with our clients regarding content development and how they struggle to come up with ideas to blog about. Ideas can come from daily conversations, newsletters, frequently asked questions, industry news, other bloggers posts, and anything else that strikes your fancy. For example....the 80's! A corporate blog doesn't have to be dry. Check out this company blog post from our client Circle City Tickets who had fun with her post.

Why Companies Should Have a Blog Post Approval System

Posted Friday, August 22, 2008 by Chris Baggott

I'm the only person in the history of our own blogging program to have to pull a post after it's gone live. Could it have anything to do with the fact that I'm the only person in the Company that doesn't have his posts go through a review process?

I recently wrote a blog post about something I thought I overheard at a recent Indianapolis blog software conference.   Turns out that I heard inaccurately. Ooops!

As you know, from a Business or Corporate blogging standpoint, we here advocate widespread employee blogging.   Employees generate the best content, telling real stories about real people, by real people. Compendium clients see signifcantly higher SEO benefits from this sort of blogging and much higher searcher engagement.

But...as I've proven, it's not without risk.   This is why we have incorporated a workflow system so that all employee posts have to be reviewed by someone else.   It's not that your employees are malicious or that you are trying to squeeze the life out of them and their content.

It's just that blog authors tend to let passion get in the way of judgment & for a business it's just a blogging best practice to keep an eye on your content before it can do you any harm.

I'm not mean, but the most junior member of my team would have looked at this post and said: "Chris....are you sure this is what you are trying to say?"

There are a lot of blogging benefits, and only a couple of risks. Once bad content goes live, you can't get it back...only ask for forgiveness.

Blogging For Better Business

Posted Thursday, August 21, 2008 by meghan peters

I am happy to announce that I'm currently going through one of the most stressful times in my life...planning a wedding! I've done a lot of research on venues, churches, florists, bakeries, DJ's and etc. But there is one thing that I have found astonishing...not many people in the wedding industry have blogs! I know that when I do research on something the most important thing to me, like many people, is gathering other opinions.

I have a great example of how blogs would work perfectly for the wedding industry. My fiance and I were going around town touring reception venues and we narrowed our decision between two places. We were very interested in getting a tasting of the food to help us with our decision, but one of the venues wasn't equipped to have a tasting. I was shocked and started to actually consider becoming a wedding crasher to taste the food, when the venue told me they have 100 comment sheets from past weddings that I could look through. So they printed out all the sheets and faxed them to me for my review. This made me think how great a blog would work for them! Not only could they blog about their services, but the past brides could post comments for them. This idea alone would save 10 trees a year and along with saving the environment they could boost their bookings.

There are many aspects as to why business blogging can be beneficial to an organization no matter how they plan to use it.

Blogging Tournament - Round 2

Posted Thursday, August 21, 2008 by Sarah Sedberry

Content for the Crown Trophy

As the Olympics in Beijing start to wrap up, fear not as your competition appetite can be feed through the current blogging tournament taking place at Compendium. Where we have pitted our clients up against each other in a March Madness style, winner take all competition.

Results have been posted and you can see check out how the Corporate Blog's fared in the first round of the "Content for the Crown Tournament". Check out the tournament brackets here:

Compendium Blogware Blogging Tournament Brackets

Congratulations to the following clients who have made it out of Round 1 and are now blogging their way through Round 2...

On the line for these Corporate Bloggers is the coveted Content for the Crown trophy, along with a bottle of Champagne and $50 gas cards for the administrator and all bloggers - that in itself gets the competitive nature going when gas is hovering around $4.00 a gallon!

For those that got knocked out in the first round, don't fret as we will have more competitions in the future. Also, don't forget to keep that content going as we are still in the competition for Search Engine Results!

Team building at Oliver

Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008 by Sarah Sedberry

Those of us in the Client Success area at Compendium Blogware (as well as our entire organization) work hard and pride ourselves on our ability to work well together in order to ensure our clients are seeing ROI on their Corporate Blogs. Every now and then, we do break out of the office for some team building.

Last week the Client Success team took a team trip to Oliver Winery, located in Bloomington, Indiana. For those not familiar with the Indiana terrain, Bloomington is home to Indiana University, and is south of Indianapolis.

Client Success Team with Bill and Dennis in Oliver Vineyard

(Front Row: Dennis Dunham (Oliver), Chantelle Flannery, and Abby Brosmer-Rivera)
(Back Row: Loren Sandman (ICVA), Kristen Hanschu, Sarah Sedberry, Jeff Lefevere, and Bill Oliver (Oliver))

It was an experience none of us will soon forget, as we were taken on a personal tour of the Winery and Vineyard by Bill Oliver (Owner) and Dennis Durham (Winemaker), and treated to a fantastic dinner prepared by Oliver Winery's own Heidi, at the Oliver Farmhouse.

Our team was able to see how wine is made from start to finish at Oliver, complete with tours of their lab, tasting from the oak barrels, seeing them package the wine,

to sampling their new line of Skydog.

For those that are not familiar, there have been several commercials out recently promoting this new line of wines from Oliver. There are several new aspects to Skydog for Oliver, including a twist cap (instead of the traditional cork), and a economical price of $7.50 a bottle.

Most endearing about this line of wines, currently involving a red, white, and rose, is the mascot. To quote straight from the bottle...."Watch out…it's hard to resist a dog with a jet pack."

Dennis, Sarah, and Bill with the Skydog line

The day was a special one for all of us, and we could not be more appreciative to Bill and Dennis for their personalized attention and the patience to answer all our questions! We will not soon forget the experience and hope to plan a return trip soon.

Official Blogging Tournament Rules

Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008 by Chantelle Flannery

The tournament began on August 11th and we are now moving into round two. Customers will compete to advance in a Compendium organized blogging tournament based on number of posts written by the client, week-by-week. The Blogging Tournament is designed to create some spirited competition amongst our customers in a battle of the ultimate team game—business blogging. You will be pitted randomly against another Compendium customer in the ultimate blogging championship.

Tournament Rules

You need do nothing to enter the tournament. To participate write blog posts as you normally would, or with a great deal more frequency to more effectively compete.
Winners in the tournament will advance from a field of over 100 on a weekly basis based on the amount of posts generated by each team.
If there is an equal number of posts between the two teams over the course of the week the previous week’s posts will be used to determine who will advance. We will review as many of the previous weeks as necessary in order to break the tie.
A week's worth of posts start on Monday and end on Sunday.
In order for a post to count it must be considered legitimate blog posts. This means that the post must be at least 5 sentences long and contain at least two keywords.
Remember that you’re writing on a corporate blog so talk about appropriate topics that relate to your industry and company.
Please note that sticky posts don’t count.

Tournament Prizes
The winner of the Championship earns a handsome trophy denoting blogging superiority and a bottle of Champaign. There will also be a $50 gas card for the account Administrator and a $50 gas card for the top blogger on the team. The other three final teams will receive a $50 gas card.

Tournament Contact Information
Please have fun with the tournament - use this as a tool internally to mobilize around content development. Keep an eye on Chantelle Flannery’s blog and the tournament bracket for updates.

Write content. Get found in search. Convert traffic. Demonstrate ROI. Crush the competition in business blogging, tournament style!

Blogging from Blog Indiana

Posted Saturday, August 16, 2008 by Megan Glover

Sitting here in the lobby at the IUPUI Campus Center where Blog Indiana is taking place. A great turn out, lots of great bloggers and a really impressive line up of sessions and speakers. Here are some examples:

What makes a great corporate blog,

Blog Review/Critquie Open Discussion,

Showing off you blog.

Blog Etiquette and Ethics

Great to be around blogging enthusiasts from Indiana and beyond. Blog Indiana runs today and tomorrow - there's still time to register for the afternoon and tomorrow's sessions. You can do so here: http://conference.blogindiana.com/

Ready, Set, Go!

Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 by Sarah Sedberry

Our implementation manager here at Compendium, Abby, has done an excellent job of graduating several clients this week and we are very excited to see what they can do.

Check out the newest Corporate blogs to Compendium's platform:

Data Recovery Specialists: A company that focuses on data recovery and computer forensics. Their success rate for data recovery is one of the highest in the industry and they offer extremely competitive rates for their services.

MediaTile:MediaTile is one of the very few companies in the world that provides a comprehensive, all-in-one digital signage platform that integrates an LCD HD display, media player, network access, and a web-based control system.

Roberts Distributors: Roberts focus is on Photo, Video, Electronics, and Imaging. They offer comprehensive classes as well as all the equipment needed to make you a pro!

We look forward to great content and although they were not able to get into this month's Blogging Tournament - Content for the Crown, I'm sure they will give the next round of competition a run for their money!

Search Engine Optimization spending increases

Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 by Eric Romer

A new survey from the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) shows that both advertisers and agencies are ramping up their spending in Search Marketing, particularly organic SEO. This shouldn't be shocking news, as Search Marketing has steadily grown, and will continue to grow as less and less people use destination websites.

It's not rocket science. If I am looking for a particular brand of jeans, or a specific tea pot my mom was talking about, I search. I Google "cast iron asian tea pot", and start my research.

As the survey shows, advertisers are increasing their organic SEO by 28%, and agencies by 73% (the highest increase of all the categories!). So what does this mean? It means companies are trying to optimize a traditional website to be found on many different keywords. The only problem is a website will only be able to capture a handful of keywords. There are hundreds, thousands of different ways I can search for that tea pot. As a business who sells that product, I need to cast a wide net and be found on as many of those terms as possible.

Don't believe me? If you have 5 minutes, check out this Whitepaper that discusses how traditional SEO efforts pale in comparison to a corporate blogging solution when it comes to organic search.

Blogging Indiana!

Posted Friday, August 15, 2008 by Sarah Sedberry

This weekend marks a great event in downtown Indianapolis, and no I'm not talking about Gen-Con. I'm referring to Blog Indiana 2008!

Blog Indiana is a 2-day blogging and social media conference, hosted at IUPUI, that aims to promote education, innovation and collaboration among Indiana’s fast-growing blogging community. There will be several keynote speakers at the conference, including our very own Chris Baggott.

This blog conference for both experienced and new bloggers alike. Sessions will include topics such as blogging for beginners, using blogs in your business, monetizing your blog, political blogging and more advanced topics. So if you are a blogger looking to get started, looking to add a corporate blog, or wanting to capitalize on the success you're already having with the blog for your business - this is a conference you should attend.

Compendium Blogware will also have a booth at the conference, so feel free to stop by and say hello to two of our Business Development Managers, Jenni Edwards and Eric Romer. They will be happy to help answer any questions you may have about blogging for your business.

Happy Blogging!

Blog Indiana 2008

But...how will I find the time?!

Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008 by Lindsey Young

Time is money. This statement just becomes more and more literal as families, businesses, and life get more demanding. Between juggling day to day duties of our positions within our companies, employers and employees alike are hesitate to add one more responsibility to the mix, such as blogging. A common misconception within the group of people I speak with is that investing in a corporate blog is going to eat up too much of their time. Erroneous! I like to negate this idea with the following information: the beauty of our compended blogs is that the responsibility is spread out among several people, the time needed to create a post is minimal...and here is the point I really want to stress to potential clients with the time constraint objection:

Each user should post 2-3 times per week
Approximately 250 word blog posts
Conversational in tone
10-15 minutes MAX to create

If you did the math there, that's about 30 minutes a week! Blogs shouldn't be rocket science, just engage your reader enough to take the next step. Finding relevant information through your company blog will point them in the right direction to becoming your client, customer, or consumer.

The New Age of Recruiting

Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008 by meghan peters

Many organizations are used to posting open positions or internships on their website, compiling submitted resumes and then weeding out for interviews. But what if this process was changed and all the work was done by the student and all the company had to do was show up for an interview? This may seem like a strange idea, but it's not so strange for those ambitious and creative college students. With hard times in the economy and job market, many college students are trying to find another way to land their first big position or internship.

This introduces you to the idea of informational interviews. Informational interviews are basically when a soon-to-be college grad does some research on a company they find interesting then contact a specific department to see if they can conduct an informational interview to get to know the company and positions they offer, and to sneak in some advice from someone who has been in the business for a while.

Now you are probably wondering how this pertains to blogs? In a recent blog post on MarketingSherpa by Anne Holland she found that the blogosphere is a great place for college grads to do some research on potential future employers. Not only does blogging boost your SEO but it also puts a human voice to your company, which helps students identify with your company a bit easier.

There are a lot of students that graduate from college every summer and companies want to be sure they get someone who is going to bring something to the table. So why not attract some bright stars? I'm sure you already have plenty of great reasons to implement Corporate Blogging, but I think you can add this to your list!

Blogging Tournament!

Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008 by Sarah Sedberry

It is Tournament time here at Compendium Blogware. The quest "Content for the Crown" has officially begun!!

Content for the Crown

To see who you are up against, check out the tournament bracket.

Let your competitive spirit out and make sure you post! Click here to login and start writing content for your corporate blog now.

Also, we encourage healthy competition and banter. Feel free to post comments, as trash talking is allowed. Please do keep in mind that unsportsmanlike conduct is not condoned and could result in disqualification from the Tournament.

When it comes to witting content for the Blogging Tournament - One thing to remember is that content will be reviewed and all posts must be considered legitimate blog posts. This means that the post must be at least 5 sentences long and contain at least two keywords. Remember that your writing on a corporate blog so talk about appropriate topics that relate to your industry and company. (Please note that sticky posts don’t count.)

You can follow the blog tournament progress on Chantelle's blog.

Finding Time to Blog

Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008 by Jim Hyslop

So I know that I have already blogged about this issue but it seems to come up a lot. In fact I just read a post by Shel Holtz where he also addresses the issue that I hear all the time, "my staff is already maxed...we just don't have time to blog" and it got me thinking again.

The truth is by saying you don't have time to blog you are really saying I don't have time to communicate. I know I would never hear the same answer in regard to email or phone calls. The idea of not communicating by phone would be unheard of! We need to re-tune our minds to look at the blog in this exact way....as another form of corporate communication with our clients and business prospects on a human level. The beauty of the blog is now our method of communication is serving multiple purposes. Engaging our prospects, optimizing your company in the search rankings, and turning visitors into customers by your ability to do both of the first two things. But to do so you need the tools that allow you to do this.You need to incorporate methods of advanced business blogging.

The real time issue with managing a corporate blog does not come from communicating...it comes from managing the blog for ROI. There is a lot of lifting that happens to leverage that communication for your maximum benefit. At the end of the day if your company uses the right blogging tools to do this for you, you will inevitably secure the many benefits of blogging you deserve while at the same time never allowing your clients and potential customers to rank below the number one spot on your lists of priorities.

Driving business comes from the ability to acquire new customers by communicating to them you have exactly what they need. So by saying you don't have time to blog you are really saying I don't have time to obtain new forms of revenue. From a business perspective that just doesn't make sense. Blog for SEO. Blog for engagement. Blog for ROI!!!!

Business growth = Good Stuff..........Happy Blogging!

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