I cannot believe it is already slightly past the middle of March and I have learned so much during my internship here at Compendium Blogware. The company is growing fast and it seems like I have already been here for awhile because I am no longer one of the super new people here. Everybody has had a hand in teaching me about the corporate blogging solutions and how our software is one of the best ways to build a social media strategy around business blogging.
With that said, I know there is much more for me to learn about. Blogging is one of the simplest ways to build your online search visiblity which can be more valuable than taking a risk with paying to optimize your website. Check out a demonstration today of our software to view the best blogging software available!
If you need to send large files (or sync files across computers and platforms!), I suggest using Dropbox. It's a great tool that gives you a public folder to assign a url to a document so that you can paste that url in an email for download.
Our Compendium bdm's will be able to use this when they need to get large presentations or pieces of collateral to a perspective client looking for corporate blogging software.
As a sales professional, I think it is important to highlight wonderful testimonials from current clients that we work with at Compendium. Kate Benway from Granite State University was one of those savvy marketers I was lucky enough to work with throughout the sales process to help bring her school onto the Compendium corporate blogging platform.
When a colleague of mine shared Kate's recent email about offering a glowing reference, I thought that others out there might like to read these words straight from a Compendium Blogware customer.
Hi Maureen!
I’m so happy to serve as a reference – you and your team are categorically the best I’ve ever worked with. We are regularly relieved/impressed/happily surprised/thrilled with what you do, how you respond to problems and your customer service. If you’d like to invite your prospect to call me, that’d be great. If he’d like to call one of those days next week, I’ll be right here and be happy to chat with him!
Kate Benway Media Engagement Coordinator Granite State College
Thanks Kate for such a wonderful recommendation and I look forward to watching more Granite State success in the future!
The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that as much as 80% of all web activity begins with online search.Also, compared to Audio/video instant messaging, text messaging and social networking, email and search continue to dominate online web interactions.
So what does this mean for business marketers?
Basically, in order to get in front of those prospects using email and search, you need to find the most effective, reliable and ROI producing tool out there. In today's world that tool is corporate blogging!
In order to educate marketers about the importance of blogging for search, Compendium Blogware has recently created a new Whitepaper titled: Why Blogging is Your #1 Search Marketing Tool. In this Whitepaper you'll learn:
> Commong blogging myths that hinder marketers from valuable search engine results. > Why blogging works for SEO > How an enterprise level platform helps organizations acquire new business
There's no better way to measure success than having a tool designed to deliver up-to-date success metrics. I must congratulate our Engineering team that released an update to Compendium (a corporate blogging software built for search). The update integrates with Google analytics so that our clients can measure how much traffic is being generated through their blogging program.
Not only does this demonstrate the power of our software but it also builds a foundation where future updates will expand on our analytics capabilities.
User generated content is a very powerful tool that will assist in driving more qualified leads to your web site. Below you will find an example of user generated comments that could drive potential business to an Indianapolis based Chevrolet dealership.
"I have driven several vehicles over my driving lifetime, and I recently had a wonderful experience with Penske Chevrolet in Indianapolis.
My wife and I recently purchased a Chevrolet Traverse, and are completely satisfied thus far with the vehicle. Moreover, the customer service and professionalism of your associates need to be mentioned. I never felt pressured to purchase the vehicle and was able to make the best decision for my family's needs.
This professional sales team was instrumental in acquiring our business & getting us out of our other vehicle. The vehicle that we purchased is fantastic, but superior sales team won our business. Thank you to the Penske Chevy team."
Corporate blogging has never been so simple. Especially when your customers can add your relevant content for you. Win, Win.
Here's an interactive chart provided by BBC's new series Superpower: Exploring the Power of the Internet
The data represents unique visits to websites in January 2010.
It becomes clear that people visit search engines more than they do anything else. Of course we may be able to assume that we also spend more time on sites that have less visits (i.e. social networks, blogs, e-commerce sites).
Search engines are working hard to imitate the human thought process. Because of this, search engines like frequency and recency.
Which means one of the best places to invest time and effort is in the "Blogging" segment of this chart. It's in this segment that you have the most control over the content. If you bring people to your blog, you can then use a Call-to-Action to convert them to a customer/client.
Because of this, corporate blogging is on the rise as part of a search marketing strategy. It's being realized as a powerful SEO Tool because of it's application in driving organic results. It could serve your organization well to consider a blogging platform that best supports your strategy of getting found in search.
If you are confused about blogging's value to your company, I urge you to check out our ROI Toolkit. It is one of the many resources that Compendium Blogware provides for its clients and for people who are curious about corporate blogging. This toolkit can help your company create the social media strategy that will drive lead generation and increase online visibility.
Since return on investment is one of the key deciding factors of whether a marketing plan gets implemented, Compendium has created this toolkit to show how blogging is one of the most cost effective ways to market your company.
The toolkit includes:
- 2 Case Studies - 1 White paper - 1 article about the 10 Ways to Boost the Value of Your Corporate Blog - A Checklist to Get your Blog Started
It's just a start, but the ROI Toolkit can really help your business blog. Check out a demonstration today if you want more information.
Congratulations to Dun & Bradstreet! Today they launched their new Corporate Blog complete with clear calls to action (A great way to capitalize on using blogging as part of a search marketing strategy).
Below you will find a recent email I sent following a great conversation with a private university in New York. As a former Admissions Officer, I have a certain soft spot for helping schools realize the power of strategic blogging to better establish a school brand, culture, and communication with prospective students. Hopefully others will find this helpful as well.
Email:
Hi Current Prospect,
Thank you so much for your time yesterday as I certainly enjoyed the conversation. I wanted to provide you a few take-aways and example links for your internal conversations.
Here are a few examples of current higher education clients who are doing a great job!:
Who we are: Compendium is an on demand, enterprise level search and social media platform. We provide a secure and scalable solution that leverages blogging for SEO, human engagement, and online customer acquisition.
Automation: We automate the organization of blog content to deliver the highest search engine ranking/traffic results possible. Security: We use NO open source plug-ins developed by third parties, which require maintenance and update. Scalable: Can have unlimited bloggers and can scale the number of strategically targeted online marketing search phrases. Administration/Control: Admissions can easily manage the messages going out in blog posts and incoming comments from searchers.
Please let me know how I can continue to be a resource for you as you make decisions on the future of your blog program.
I read a great article in the Wall Street Journal this morning entitled Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media that disccussed the frustration small companies have in measuring the ROI of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. There is no arguement that in the past few years these social media sites have become powerful marketing tools for small firms due to their low cost and ease-of-use, but the disconnect comes when the number of followers doesn't correlate to the number of sales at the end of the day.
The article quotes Chris Lindland, owner of Cordarounds.com, an online clothing retailer in San Francisco, who says that "he spends up to 90 minutes a day managing Cordaround's accounts on Twitter and Facebook, but his million visits hasn't led to millions in sales." This 1.5 hours/day equals 7.5 hours/week which equals 30 hours/month and 360 hours/year. WOW! All of this time spent for a return that is difficult to measure.
This is why utilizing an enterprise corporate blogging platform is so important for any size business. Compendium's platform not only improves a company's organic search result, but can easily measure ROI which is important to any company's bottom line.
I received a project today to update records in our database of people who attended a webcast that our CEO and Co-Founder, Chris Baggott, spoke at recently. He covered many things about the importance of business blogging and strategies to help your business, like which platforms to use and how to optimize your companies performance in search.
One of things I had to update was what questions people asked and there was a common trend. People realized that blogging was the solution, but they did not know what type of software to use. The answer is easy, Compendium Blogware! Our affordable corporate blogging software can help businesses large and small. It also only takes roughly 10 business days to complete the Getting Started process so you can begin to maximize your web presence. If you would like to get some questions answered, view a demo today!
Thanks a lot to Interactive Agency Fat Atom for sharing this great video. We talk often here about your Corporate Blogs being the hub of your social media strategy. There are lots of reasons for this, but one of the most compelling is control. With Blog software like Compendium, you own your blogging strategy and nobody can take it away from you. Who can say what happens with Facebook or Twitter in the future...but as a business you need to control your own social presence. This is not to say that you don't feed relevant blog content out to these social spokes, but you need to control the hub. Enjoy this great video :-)
Exciting news at Compendium today. The results of our first Corporate Blogging and Social Media Trends survey are in.
With the help from our marketing advisory council, Debbie Weil,Jay Baer and Jason Falls - we set out to find answers to the question: What percentage of your blog traffic is brand new?
Why tackle this question? Well, up to this point, marketers have struggled to find a concrete way to measure business blogging. Repeat visitors, RSS subscriptions and "community" have all been words used synonymously with blogging success, but what's reality?
The reality is, when blogging for business - 80% or more of your traffic is going to come from brand new visitors. And, this is a great thing! By altering the way in which we've previously measured blogging success, we can take this new found knowledge and turn new visitors into potential clients. Thus, business blogging becomes another marketing tool in your suite of demand generation tactics.
Other great pieces of info are included in the study but it's really great to have data that helps marketers build the case for business blogging in a way that breeds tangible ROI.
As Google continues to roll out new search enhancements (personalization, real time search etc.) it is truly interesting to see how much value is created for the end user. For instance, Salesforce was creeping along this morning so I decided to search "is Salesforce down?". Naturally, salesforcewatch.com and downornot.com won the top two organic search results (Salesforce.com had the only PPC ad) but I found it very valuable to see that right below the main organic results, Google was pulling Twitter results directly applicable to the search.
In this instance, several results were also being pulled back from recent blog posts and this was quite valuable. If your company is using your blog as the hub of your social media strategy, you can truly begin to dominate a space simply because you're present in so many arenas. For instance, if someone searches "affordable blogging software", our corporate blog wins that search and in some cases, real time Twitter results have shown up related to the topic. Naturally then, it is important to first, win the organic results and give searchers what they want, but also to utilize other strategies capable of making the searcher happy through other social mediums.
One of the greatest days of the college basketball season is Selection Sunday which is when the NCAA picks 65 teams to play in the big tournament. This tournament is what we all fondly call March Madness or the Road to the Final Four. However, this tournament also creates inspiration for your company's blog! You can create your own blogging tournament like we have done at Compendium Blogware.
Heather, our blogging coordinator, has made a tournament with every department competing against each other. Then at the end of each week, a department is eliminated for their lack of blogging. Luckily, the Marketing department is leading in the 2nd week of the tournament but we still have to survive the last two weeks of the tournament. We, as the marketing department, pride ourselves on our blogging frequency and expertise so all the rest of the departments are trying to beat us.
I do not have any worry though that we will be victorious of our little tournament. Either way, blogging tournaments and incentives can really help your company's blog and add some fun to your corporate blogging strategy.
One of things I did today was upload old Compendium webinars to a site called slideshare.net. Compendium uses the website as a place for people to review some of the webinars Compendium offers. I uploaded around five to seven of our webinars that can provide insight into your corporate blogging strategy.
The old webinars cover topics such as:
"5 Compelling Reasons for Small Business to Blog" "2009 Top Corporate Blogging Trends" "Why Blogs are Affordable, Dynamic, and Efficient Marketing Tools"
Those are just a few of the webinars that are uploaded. Most of these webinars are not offered directly off of Compendium's website so I would suggest checking out slideshare.net to view them! I am sure one of the webinars on the website can be useful for your business!
One of the greatest resources Compendium offers is the Whitepaper "What Third Generation Blogging Means to You". It is also one of the most frequently downloaded Whitepapers off of our website. The reason why it is such a popular Whitepaper is because it shares what is the true value of a corporate blogging strategy.
The only problem is that many business people are unaware of the positive influence blogs can have for a company. Businesses are losing credibility since many of their marketing campaigns do not seem personalized. Blogging can help change that. Businesses are not being found online because they have not created content that is compelling. Blogging can change that.
Social Media is here to stay! It represents a paradigm shift in the way we communicate. While it can be overwhelming to process all of the information presented in the following video remember this: Social Media is the future of business.
My good friend, Marty Bennett, introduced me to this concept and has a very progressive perspective on how important Social Media is to students making college decisions. With all of these media available it's important to have a hub. Last week we had a great webinar with Jay Baer, he went into detail explaining why a blog makes the most sense to be this hub. My biggest take-away from his presentation was how important it is to use a blog within the context of your business. So being sure to have effective Calls to Action so that decisions are made.
When it comes to corporate blogging, it's important to have content that is ready to be re-purposed and shared.
With the current state of our media driven world we have more and more "connectors". The most effective social media marketing strategies are those that empower this army of connectors with targeted, meaningful information that spreads across their network with authority.
As it sinks in, I begin to feel overwhelmed by it's implications and excited by what the future holds.
The Compendium Blogware team had a brain storming event last evening and the collaboration was fantastic. We bounced ideas off of one another, and built the camaraderie needed to become a world class sales team. When selecting the appropriate venue to host our event, we wanted something close to our office (which is located in downtown Indianapolis). We needed an area to meet/mingle; an area to eat our meal; and hopefully the facility would have something fun for us to do afterwards.
Jillian's was our selection. We decided that some competitive bowling would bring out the competitive juices, and show some of our true colors. While the service and food were good, the bowling alley was far from decent. Pins wouldn't re-rack appropriately and this happened to each of our four lanes about every three frames. The pricing was too high for the value, but the space is superb for company functions. So, if you choose Jillian's then stick w/ the food and drink...no bowling.
Corporate blogging software companies are good dinner guests, but our platform for criticism too powerful.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that as much as 80% of all web activity begins with online search.Also, compared to Audio/video instant messaging, text messaging and social networking, email and search continue to dominate online web interactions.
If you are confused about blogging's value to your company, I urge you to 
webcast that our CEO and Co-Founder, Chris Baggott, spoke at recently. He covered many things about the importance of business blogging and strategies to help your business, like which platforms to use and how to optimize your companies performance in search.
One of the greatest days of the college basketball season is Selection Sunday which is when the NCAA picks 65 teams to play in the big tournament. This tournament is what we all fondly call March Madness or the Road to the Final Four. However, this tournament also creates inspiration for your company's blog! You can create your own blogging tournament like we have done at 
One of things I did today was upload old 
Blogging Means to You". It is also one of the most frequently downloaded Whitepapers off of our website. The reason why it is such a popular Whitepaper is because it shares what is the true value of a corporate blogging strategy.
