Corporate Blogging

View a demo, get free Starbucks.

Ali Sales, Co-founder and President

Do you know what corporate blogging is all about?

Hint: It doesn't have a whole lot to do with being a world-class writer. It has everything to do with driving marketing ROI, sharing your organization's human side, and generating demand.

Blogs are one of the most powerful tools ever available to marketers -- read on to learn how to put them to work for your company.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

I can't believe this is happening...

Posted Wednesday, November 26, 2008 by Ali Sales

Dear Mo's Deli,

I'm sort of at a loss here. Of course I've been the recipient of a never-ending stream of email spam and junk mail, but I have to say this is the first time I've ever been "fax spammed."

You see, my inbound faxes are sent to me as emails with attachments, and for the last three weeks, I've received your "fax spam" every single day. Your daily lunch menu is actually quite nice -- in fact, I may have even memorized all of the options at this point. However, I didn't ask to receive it, and never expressed interest in it.

To make matters worse, I often find myself thinking that your fax notification is actually a signed contract (for Compendium's blogging software) arriving in my inbox. Imagine my dissapointment when I realize that it is a notification for french onion soup.

You'll be glad to know that there is an easy way to fix this problem of interruption marketing (fax spamming), and it's called business blogging.

Starting a small business blog may seem like a strange idea, but you have to start with your end goal, and that's getting more customers in your door. My guess is that most of your targeted patrons aren't standing by their fax machines waiting to intercept your menu; Instead, they're searching online for things like "best onion soup Indianapolis" and "best lunch menu Indy."

That's why your best bet is being found when people search for these very things online! Blogs and business go hand-in-hand for this reason -- they are a way to help you get found in the search engines and get more people to take the next step with you.

I'd be happy to talk to you anytime about blogging tools and how they might help you. In the meantime, I'm going to hold off on that french onion soup...

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

3 Most Important Blog Success Factors

Posted Friday, November 14, 2008 by Ali Sales

If you are thinking about starting a corporate blogging program (or if you are already doing a business blogging program), here are 3 things you should be paying attention to:

1. Can you get people to your company blogs?

Well, duh. Of course that's important. Without people showing up, how will you get anyone to take the next step?

There are a couple key things to pay attention to here:

Search engine rankings (the higher the better typically)
Number of unique visitors (and where are they coming from? Any basic analytics breakdown should show you).

2. Can you keep people on your business blogs?

You'll have a really good idea by looking at these two metrics:

Average read time
Average bounce rate

If your bounce rate is over 90%, that might be a bad thing. I say "might" because your blogging goal should be to move someone on to a next step. If your readers are so compelled by what you are talking about and want to move to your call-to-action within a few seconds, then great! The reality is that this is not going to happen. The best way to benchmark here is by looking at your corporate website stats.

3. Can you move visitors onto the next step?

It's great to have people reading your blog -- but unless you're a publisher, you don't make any money based on people spending 60 minutes reading about you and your company. That's why you want to move online blog visitors onto the next step.

The metrics that will tell you whether or not you succeed are simple:

Clicks on the CTA
Leads generated from the blogs!

So those are my top 3...what are yours?

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

How to Generate 533% Blog Post Increase in a Day

Posted Tuesday, October 28, 2008 by Ali Sales

Today Compendium's marketing team (our blog program owners) put on our first ever Blog-a-Thon. As a company, we typically generate 60 or so posts per month for our corporate blogs. That means we collectively generate -- among nearly 30 contributors -- an average of 3 posts per business day.

The intent of our Blog-a-Thon was to crush this number. The marketing team notified us all by email last week the goals of the Blog-a-Thon and also let us know about a tasty breakfast that would be served to those who participated.

So, a key thing to point out here is that our blogging program owners gave us an incentive, and they work really well in motivating content contributors.

The next thing they did was block out 20 minutes on everyone's calendars around lunch time today. That's important because, let's face it, we're all busy people and sometimes blogging takes a backseat to other priorities if we don't have it scheduled.

And finally, they brought around a nice bucket of candy to everyone during the time that was slated as "Blog-a-Thon content generation" in order to give everyone some immediate satisfaction.

As of 4:45 today the Blog-a-Thon had generated an impressive 16 posts, with this post pushing the meter to 17 posts in one day.

For all of you math whizzes out there...the Blog-a-Thon gave us a 533% lift in content creation!

The immediate key takeaways here are that incentives, prizes, and scheduled time are all great blogging best practices.

The next step is for us to evaluate how all of that new content impacted our search results and traffic...more to come on that front, but all signs currently point to Blog-a-thon blogging success.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Motivating Your Blog Content Contributors

Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 by Ali Sales

We get this question a lot: As a corporate blogging program owner, or someone interested in starting a business blogging initiative..."How do I keep my blog content contributors engaged in writing content?"

Well, here are a few ideas that are working incredibly well for Compendium and hundreds of our clients:

1. Get several different people involved. The more people writing content, the less the pressure falls on one individual to write content every day. And you get lots of different perspectives this way.

2. Block out calendar time for your bloggers to write. So many of us are tied to our calendars -- this way they don't have to make time for content. You've made the time for them.

3. Give out prizes. Compendium has done a great job helping clients write content through a corporate blogging tournament (more on that later), but clients like Tampa Bay & Company made us realize how far internal recognition goes.

4. Along those lines, give prizes to the best and worst bloggers. At our company meeting today, the 3 worst bloggers had to wear home made dunce caps (pictures to come later, everyone got a great laugh out of it). Our best bloggers were rewarded with "nifty gifts" and a round of applause.

5. Use metrics to spur action. This is perhaps the most important one on the list. If your bloggers feel like their time is being wasted because they don't see results, they are going to stop writing content.

At Compendium, we put out consistent reports to all our clients that help them measure how their business blogging program is going. It's the job of the blog program owner to convey those results to the bloggers and spur action based on some key metrics, like traffic to the blogs and conversions from the blogs.

I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago that I'm not the world's best blogger. I was relieved not to have to wear a dunce cap given my lackluster content contribution over the last few months, but as a whole, our company blogs generated the most traffic ever in a single month because our employees as a group generated the most content ever.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

What's the Biggest Problem with Blogging?

Posted Tuesday, October 14, 2008 by Ali Sales

Most of the time, it's too hard.

This weekend I was reminded how much we just expect technology to work for us, and how irritating it is when it doesn't.

I have a wireless card that usually connects me to one of three different wireless networks at home and in the office. I undock, I connect. Simple as that.

This weekend it stopped working all of a sudden-- and I was crippled. I tried to fiddle around with my computer myself (I hope our IT Manager isn't reading this) and finally gave up.

You are probably no stranger to general IT problems, and blogging problems are no different. Most blogging tools are too hard to use -- you have to configure this and that and there's a plugin over here and something that needs to be tweaked over there.

Yes, there are people like my mechanical engineer of a fiancee who like to fiddle with technology, but for most of us, it's a means to an end.

Compendium Blogware is different from other blogging software tools because we're built for people who "just want it to work."

I've been listening in on some sales calls lately and have heard our reps say that if you can write in a word doc, you can use Compendium's blogging platform. And content control is as easy as hitting a few buttons.

Our goal is to make things as easy as possible for organizations of all kinds who want to start a corporate blogging program.

Along those lines, if you want to learn more about how we can help you achieve blogging success, here's a quick and easy way to do so: Take our 60 second blogging challenge with a live employee who's ready to help!

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Blogs Can Evolve (Notes from TechPoint Summit)

Posted Friday, October 3, 2008 by Ali Sales

Yesterday Compendium exhibited at the

TechPoint Summit here in Indianapolis, and I had the pleasure of taking part in an "early stage marketing" panel since Chris is out of town.

The panel was one of the best I've been on, and I think it's because all of the participants (ExactTarget, Canteloupe, and Compendium) were equally unprepared. We didn't have slides, we didn't have agendas, and we let the audience gear us toward topics they cared about rather than us spouting off a bunch of gibberish that no one pays attention to.

In other words, we let the session evolve. We didn't plan. We jumped in and adjusted as needed.

And guess what? That same approach can be taken with any kind of online marketing initiative, including business blogging.

You can do all of the research in the world and spend thousands of dollars on a new website, but as most of us have learned the hard way, the message that we think is going to strike a chord when we start a business ends up being drastically different a few months later.

Sure, corporate blogs are a way to help get found in organic search and humanize your marketing, but story telling is still a fundamental part. Good stories engage us and make us want to learn more. And good stories get better over time. They become funnier and more interesting...ever played the game telephone? Try to think of a time that you haven't laughed at the end of it, or at least been mildy entertained.

So before you spend too much time writing and rewriting a company blog policy, or investigating every blog software review available, consider the fact that a corporate blogging program can grow and evolve with you over time, as the most interesting things in life tend to do.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Why I'm Bad at Blogging...

Posted Friday, September 26, 2008 by Ali Sales

Okay, I don't really think that I'm bad at blogging. I just wanted to capture your attention with an ironic title given my role at a certain blog company.

In all honesty, I'm okay at blogging. I'm not the best blogger in the world, or the worst. I'd like to be able to write content every day, but just like you...I'm really busy and sometimes I just need to unwind in front of my reality TV shows.

I don't feel one bit ashamed to admit this -- even to people who tell me that corporate blogging sounds like a good idea in theory, but that it's too hard to execute.

I'm comfortable with being honest about the quality and quantity of my blog posts because despite my mediocre personal performance, Compendium's blogging program is an enormous success.

And by "successful business blogging program," I mean that we get found on the first page of Google for thousands of keyword terms related to our business, send thousands of people to our blogs each month, and convert many of them into prospects and customers.

So how does that work? How can I be mediocre at blogging, and participate in a highly successful program?

Well, a few things:

1. We have several content contributors (all of our employees. As Chris likes to say, if someone is worth a business card, they're worth a blog).

2. All of our content contributors are free to write about what they select, but they're expected to include info that's relevant, helpful, and on topic.

3. How can we monitor this? We have an administrative portal where content can be reviewed, approved, or declined, with feedback sent to the writer (i.e. Sally, your post stunk, it was totally off-topic and didn't include a single keyword relevant to a blog software company like us).

So, the program is successful because it includes great blogging tools, a lot of contributors, and an easy process (i.e. someone writes content, the other approves).

I'm perfectly fine letting other Compendium folks like Chris Baggot, PJ Hinton, and Eric Romer take the individual blogging superstar awards.

As a team, we still have a program that wins.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Video: How Should Companies Blog?

Posted Thursday, September 18, 2008 by Ali Sales

Pop Quiz:

1. What does WWSD mean?

2. Who are the best people within your organization to write blog content?

3. How can you organize blog content around topics instead of authors?

4. What's the difference between a website and blog?

5. What does "Compending" mean?

6. And finally, why is Compendium Co-Founder and CEO Chris Baggott stalking Seth Godin?

Whether you're entirely new to corporate blogging or a business blogging expert, you'll find some great info and good laughs in Compendium's new video.

Without further ado:

View the "How Companies Should Blog" Video Here.

After viewing the video, a good next step in order to learn more about how to start a business blog is to fill in your information in order to talk to a blogging specialist. Enjoy!

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Should You Have a Blogging Policy?

Posted Tuesday, September 2, 2008 by Ali Sales

I'll start by saying that we don't have one at Compendium. Maybe at some point we'll have to reconsider the parameters we put around our corporate blogging strategy (I've learned to never say never), but right now, the sheer power of the Compendium administrative interface is enough for us and many of our clients.

The problem with rules and policies is that many times, they squelch the very spirit of the initiative at hand. I don't think it's any different when it comes to business blogging programs. Like most businesses, here at Compendium, we want our employees to be able to express their views and opinions in a natural way, but at the same time, we want to protect our company.

We do not have an intensive review process for the content generated by our employees. Quite simply, after they write their content, it gets submitted to an administrator account where it can be reviewed and a) approved if it's okay or b) declined if it is inappropriate or needs to be changed. More often than not, declined posts are not marked as such because they contain inappropriate content, but because they have an obvious typo, error, or perhaps are completely off-topic.

Note that there are no editing capabilities on the part of the admin -- which completely removes the temptation to edit someone else's content. Again, I want our employee's content to be their own...why change it when I can empower them to do so, without any risk to Compendium?

And why go to the great lengths of putting a policy and all sorts of rules in place when I can easily view content before it goes live and make a decision from there?

I'm not saying that a blogging policy isn't a good idea for some organizations, but before putting policies and rules in place, it's usually a good idea to think about the trade-offs...and better yet, if technology can be the answer.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

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.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Your Biggest Problem Solved

Posted Thursday, August 14, 2008 by Ali Sales

I've been trying to find a new briefcase for work. My intent was to purchase a really nice one -- like Tumi quality because I keep buying cheapos that look nice and then fall apart in a few months. Except I didn't want a Tumi because...well, I just don't like their styles all that much.

So what did I do, given that I knew exactly what I wanted, just didn't know who to buy it from?

I searched. I typed in "best women's black leather briefcase." Talk about being a dream prospect. I used a lot of descriptive keywords to indicate exactly what I was looking for.

Okay, so of course you're wondering what my briefcase dilemma has to do with you.

Well, as a marketer, I'm guessing this is the biggest problem on your hands.

You want people to find you. You want people to find you online. And you want people who don't know a bit about your company or brand to be able to find you online.

What you may not realize is that starting a business blogging program can help you solve this problem. Taking it a step further, a blogging solution like Compendium Blogware will help you target hundreds or even thousands of terms that have something to do with your company.

Believe it or not, people are going online and looking for the products and services you provide every day. They aren't necessarily looking for your company, your website, or your company blogs, but they are asking for something you can help them with.

Yet how satisfied and happy would they be if they did their search, found a result titled exactly what they were looking for, and clicked through to find a blog featuring friendly, educational content generated by several people within your company, and a way to act upon exactly what they are looking for, whether if be making the purchase directly from the blog or just requesting more info?

I'll end this with 2 things:

1. A really relevant quote from William Flatz of Avenue A/Razorfish

“People don't go to Web sites anymore. Web sites come to them. This is, perhaps, the best way to explain the impact of search on the online experience.”

2. My briefcase outcome. After picking through countless websites for places like LeatherTree.com, I decided that I'd had enough and went straight to Target, where I spent $30 on a new briefcase. Sigh. Briefcase retailers, are you out there? It's time to start blogging.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

What do Rafting and Blogging Have in Common?

Posted Friday, August 8, 2008 by Ali Sales

A lot if you're an employee at Compendium Blogware. A few weeks ago we took the entire company on a whitewater rafting trip to Pennsylvania. The event was planned by our very own Kaila Woodside, who was a whitewater rafting guide for several years in Ohiopyle. Not only is she a fantastic part of our sales organization, Kaila can steer you through a drop the size of Niagra Falls.

Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, but as someone who's never rafted below, that's just about what it felt like for me.

What did the company get out of our whitewater rafting event? Of course we got team building, bonding, and all sorts of great stories (and pictures), but we also got a lot of great blogging content. And that content helps visitors that show up at our business blogs understand that yes, we are a company that provides blogging software, but we're also an organization full of smart, fun, and hard working individuals who aren't afraid to roll up our sleeves, dig in, and kick some butt.

A big part of any company blogging program -- regardless what industry you're in -- is showing your human side. That's why I'll leave you with this great picture of me and my raft mates on the Yougheny River!

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Does the Thought of Corporate Blogging Make Your Head Explode?

Posted Wednesday, July 30, 2008 by Ali Sales

You're not alone. This article, 25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog, made me think of how daunting business blogging can be for any kind of organization.

There are some good tips in this article, don't get me wrong.

It's just a lot to think about, and you're a busy person, right? I am a big fan of using subject matter experts (SMEs) as much as possible. I don't want to be an accounting pro or a legal pro -- I want to have a basic understanding and then pay and rely on people around me to help.

Okay, so you know where I'm heading with this:

Wouldn't it be great if you could do the same thing with a corporate blogging program?
Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a blogging partner who can worry about all the details so that you can focus on writing content for your company blogs?
Oh, and wouldn't it be great to use a blogging solution that lets you log in, type your content, and then the blogging software itself structures that content in a way that helps you get found in the search engines?

Well, stop the head explosion and accept that you don't have to know all the answers in order to get started. You just have to find the right partner, and by default, the right blogging tool.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Is Blogging Only for SEO Wrong?

Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 by Ali Sales

Blogging for SEO isn't wrong, but it can't be your only goal. Why? Because it's the tip of the iceberg. Of course you want your business to get found through search as many ways as possible, but your goal can't stop there.

You want a prospect to find your business blogs through search, and then what?

There is a next step. What is it? You want them to find one of your corporate blogs and then read sixteen posts before leaving the page? You want them to find one of your blogs and then subscribe to an RSS feed in order to come back over and over again and do nothing but read?

You see what I'm getting at here of course.

Your corporate blogging strategy can't focus on only the search engine optimization aspect. SEO is a means to the end, and your end is to make money by creating new relationships. That's it. If someone clicks to your blog from search and finds a webpage that's impersonal, unprofessional, and full of pointless information, then your blogging program is completely falling flat.

Today Compendium's very own Chris Baggott, will be hosting a webinar that goes into more detail on these topics. The webinar will also cover blogging tips, blogging best practices, and more. This is a great opportunity to ask any burning blogging questions. Get details and sign up for the webinar here.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Your Acquisition Dream Come True

Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2008 by Ali Sales

I don't care what kind of business you are, or what industry you're in. Your acquisition dream is probably pretty similar to mine. And it goes something like this:

1.    A prospect that knows nothing about your company "Googles" a problem or a need that you can solve.

2.    The prospect sees your result on the first page of Google in the organic results, and the title of the result matches the phrase, which causes them to click on it

3.    The prospect lands on your webpage, does around 60 seconds of credibility checking, reading, light research, and likes what he/ she sees.

4.    The prospect notices that there is a way to engage with you immediately and contacts you to start a conversation.

My dreams come true on a daily basis because of our corporate blogging program, and today was no different. Here's what happened:

1.    A prospect with no knowledge of Compendium or our blogging platform "Googled" what the needed -- "Blogging Solution”

2.    Prospect found Compendium’s “Blogging Solution” blog as the #1 organic result. Prospect clicked on blog, did brief research

3.    Prospect clicked on "Instant Chat" available in the sidebar of the blog and immediately engaged with someone from our staff.

How can you make this happen for you? Well, funny you should ask...see that little "Instant Chat" ad on the side of my blog? Go ahead and click to talk to us. We're ready to share our blogging secrets anytime.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Why You're Wrong If You Think About Blogging This Way...

Posted Tuesday, July 15, 2008 by Ali Sales

Okay, I'm back to my comments about the Forrester report saying that B2B blogging is on the decline.

In my last post, I tackled one of my primary concerns about the report: The audience surveyed.

Now let's get to the heart of the matter: The message.

As a person with a marketing background, let me say that I think Forrester is a great resource and historically has turned out some pretty great whitepapers, studies, and analysis. But boy, I think they really missed the mark on this one.

My biggest problem with this whitepaper is the core message, which is that marketers should view business blogging as a way to build a community. Whether you are currently thinking about corporate blogging or have already started down the path, just promise me that you will not make this same mistake.

Why do I think that it's a mistake to consider the major goal of blogging to be community? Because it's impossible, intangible, and quite frankly, it's not going to generate business for your organization.

What markets have to understand is that the goals of a blogging program are really no different than the goals of every other marketing effort that we put money into: generate new business opportunities, and make money.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to quote Jerry Maguire here: "Show me the money."

Back tomorrow with more thoughts.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Why Blogging Has Taken a Nose-Dive

Posted Monday, July 7, 2008 by Ali Sales

Maybe you've seen this new report from Forrester Research, or just heard the buzz about it from MediaPost.

The 5 second overview is this: Fewer companies started corporate blogs in 2007 than in 2006.

Now the interesting parts are this:

Who Forrester paid attention to in the study

What caused the decline

First up, who Forrester paid attention to. Well, that would be Fortune 500 companies. Why is this problematic? Because I don't think that it paints a very accurate picture of what's happening within the business blogging landscape.

Here's why. Fortune 500 companies a) have huge budgets, which tends to squash creativity and humanization. Why do something like creating corporate weblogs when I can run a commercial that will reach 10 million people all at once? Old habits certainly die hard here.

b) Fortune 500 companies are the most afraid of blogs. Control and compliance is important to them, and with an increase (someone find this article, because I know it's out there) in employee-related blogging incidents, they're scared. And that fear prevents them from doing blogging the right way.

Hopefully that's a good start to getting the wheels spinning and not necessearily taking this report at face value. I have a lot more to say on the topic, but I'll be honest. It's 6pm and I need to be somewhere. More tomorrow.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Cheers to Local Search and Blogging

Posted Friday, June 27, 2008 by Ali Sales

This year, local advertisers are expected to shift over $13 billion of their budgeted funds to the Internet, according to Borrell Associates. That number is up by 50% over the last year.

Why is this relevant to you? Because we can't ignore the huge role that local search is going to play for nearly every kind of business, even national chains and enterprises who are stretching themselves for ways to get back to the basics of relationship building. And guess what?

Business blogging will most certainly play a role in the migration of dollars from off-line to online and in the local search arena.

There are a few key things driving this shift:

1) People want to buy from people (i.e. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, like in Cheers)

2) People want to buy from people who *are like them* -- of course regional/local means common ground

3) Search is the #1 online activity these days, right behind email marketing

If you attended our Humanize Your Marketing with Blogging webinar this past week, you know that company blogging leverages all of these factors. If you were unable to attend, here is a link to the instant replay.

The numbers and actions of advertisers and all kinds of companies will continue to prove that local/personal marketing is the way of the future. Starting a business blog is one of the best things you can do to get headed in the right direction and jump on a trend that's going to become the norm.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Write a blog post in 8 minutes...

Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 by Ali Sales

It's 1:52. I have a meeting in 8 minutes. That's not a long time to get much of anything done, but I'm going to write a blog post during it. Why? To prove that generate content for your business blogging program doesn't have to take a ton of time.

Here are a few quick tips for writing good, quick content:

1. Use your arsenal of existing content. We tend to forget how much content all of us accumulate over just a few weeks. There is nothing wrong with re-purposing content for your corporate blogs. Some places to look:

Newsletters
Whitepapers
Old articles
Your inbox
Industry News

Tip: Subscribe to Google Alerts for the terms you care most about. For Compendium, that means things like "blogging software" and "business blogs."

2. Just do it. You can't waste too much time thinking "what should I write about." Look at your arsenal and start typing.

If you're using Compendium Blogware, you'll see the things you should write about on the righthand side of your user account, so that should help you get focused. More doing, less thinking is good for all of us sometimes.

3. Don't be afraid to reiterate and repeat. Assuming that you're blogging for SEO, you can expect that it will mostly be new visitors returning to your blog. They haven't seen your best stuff yet, as content is continually getting pushed down to the bottom of your blogs.

It's 1:59 and my post is finished. I didn't have to spend hours coming up with content (I got the idea for this post based on the conversations taking place at Compendium headquarters around time commitment and content). I logged in. I started writing. I used my keyword suggestion tool, brain, and eye on the clock to keep my content on track.

We Know Business Blogging.
Take our 60 Second Blogging Challenge, and you will too. Start here

Next