In my mind, there are 2 primary ways to build the success of your blogging program.
1. Target more keywords that are relevant to your business.
2. Write more content.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with RSS feeds. I'm not trying to downplay the value that links from other credible sources might have.
It's just that by and large, these two factors are the driving forces behind most of Compendium Blogware's most successful customers. Those with the most content and the most keyword targeted blogs are the most successful.
Some customers might have 100 more links, some of them quite credible, but at the end of the day, the customers whose corporate blogging programs really succeed are not the ones with the most links. In fact, some of them may have as few as 15 inbound links but these customers still see thousands of qualified visits to their blogs and great conversion rates.
Traditional SEO techniques include keyword targeting and content, but such techniques also take a variety of other factors into consideration.
All I'm saying is let's keep it simple. Experience and data here at Compendium Blogware shows us that lots of content and lots of keywords are the two best ways to build your blogging reach. The other stuff is nice to have, but it's harder to control.
Every business, regardless of size, has the ability to write frequent, good content and the ability to determine keywords that are relevant to their business. This is a winning combo.
The simple truth is that they don't care about blogs. They don't care whether or not you have a corporate blogging program or a Facebook strategy. By and large, they don't care what your CEO has to say.
Okay, so what do your prospects want?
1. They want any easy way to solve their problem.
2. They want information that is relevant to their problem.
2. They want a relationship with you w
hen they are ready.Your prospects don't care whether you accomplish this through your website, a landing page, or a blog.
Did it dawn on you that they don't know the difference between them?
Per eMarketer:
“-it is not always clear or relevant to the end user whether a particular destination is a blog….”
So again, they don't care about your business blogs.
But it just so happens that a corporate blogging strategy is one of the most effective ways to deliver on the 3 above needs of your prospects.Maybe you've even reached this blog because you searched for something like "best blog software" to help solve your acquisition problems. Maybe you found a blog titled exactly this through the search engines, and have found some good, relevant info on it.
If so, then I invite you to contact me. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't make starting a relationship as easy as possible on you...
We have a specific customer who is doing a great job generating content. The trend we see with nearly every customer is that an increase in content generation coincides to an increase in visitors and leads.
However, this customer was generating a ton of content and seeing no benefit to the blogging program. A few months into the program, search traffic was almost non-existent and they were not being found on any of their keyword terms.
After some investigation into their business blogs, we found the following:
1. Their content was pithy (good!) but the content did not appear to be very original. Their keywords were worked into the content without much natural flow, which made the content appear "spammy."
2. Their bounce rate was about 90% and their click-rates were less than 1%. This comes back to the point of "how good does your content need to be?" The answer is: compelling enough that people are engaged and take action.
Based on these results, we made immediate suggestions as to how to improve the quality of their content by naturally integrating keywords, and enticing the visitor with photos of the products that they sell.
Stay tuned on how these changes improve their blogging program.
Right now Compendium is running a blogging contest against a customer (another software company) who is just across the street.
Here's how the blogging competition works: Whoever produces the most content over the course of January has to buy the other company pizza.
Here's what's happened at Compendium so far:
- Lots of fun promotions and daily / weekly goals have been set by marketing to keep us motivated and crush the competition
- For example, we reached a target of 30 posts in a day and won breakfast bought by marketing!
- We've been getting daily reports showing these graphs below to keep us apprised of how our competition is performing
Oh yeah, and did I mention that all of that content is giving us?
Results of the blogging contest so far:
- The biggest corporate blogging lead month ever! With 100s of leads generated solely by our business blogs
- The biggest blog traffic month ever
- The best blog SEO performance ever
There are 2 days left, and we are going to be tough to catch...however, the game isn't over yet.
As you look at your own corporate blogging strategy, don't underestimate the power of contests and promotions. They are a blast and produce results.
I had a conversation with a customer late last week who has had a blogging program going for over a year now.
During that year, this customer has been watching their search engine rankings weekly and evaluating success based on what is happening with those rankings - i.e. has a rank of 100 on page 10 turned into a ranking of 1 or 2?
The customer was frustrated that they had not seen any real traction with those rankings during the past 2 or 3 months. The rankings had reached a stagnant spot, with around 25% of the keyword terms showing up as the #1 result, 25% on the first page, and the other 50% page 2 and beyond.
On the surface level, their corporate blogging program was falling flat of their original goal: To have every keyword they targeted to show up on page 1.
However, below the surface, here is what happened: their blog traffic had more than doubled in the past 3 months. Their conversion numbers had nearly tripled. They were generating real interest and actions from blog visitors. Not only were more prospects finding them -- the prospects were interacting with them!
So back to the original question - are search engine rankings the best way to evaluate your blogging efforts? Not really. They are a helpful gage that will give you an indication of how visible your organization is on the web, but what happens on the traffic and conversion side is most important when evaluating blogging success.
A League of Their Own is one of my favorite movies of all time. (Cheesy, I know). I love the teamwork, the bus rides, the cast and especially the part where a half-inebriated Tom Hanks says, "Their's no crying in baseball." Simple as that.
Along those lines, there's no perfectionism in blogging. It just won't work, and it's a real shift from what we are trained when it comes to most other marketing means (whether online or offline).
If you're new to business blogging, you are probably very confused -- "What do you mean my post shouldn't be perfect?"
Well, unlike an email campaign that goes out once and then is stuck in your subscribers' inbox forever, or a magazine ad printed for all eternity, blogs are a lot more fluid. The content gets pushed to the bottom, and the newest content goes on top.
One of the most critical factors of blogging success is Quantity of Content.
Blogging, as strange as it sounds, is a lot less about Quality of Content. Business blogging is largely a volume-based strategy.
Now that doesn't mean that you can get away with writing about something completely senseless, with no point at all. It can't be a bunch of gibberish that no one can understand.
The rule of thumb for a blog post is simply: Is it good enough?
Is it good enough to compel the blog visitor to take the next step with you and click on your call-to-action.
The problem with perfect posts is that they are very difficult to create with consistency. A much better corporate blogging strategy is to create several posts that convey a meaningful thought to your visitors, rather than one post that is absolutely perfect.
So remember this as you are trying to come up with content for your next blog post -- there's no room for perfectionism in blogging. And if you're stuck on a topic and need some inspiration, I can loan you my copy of A League of Their Own.
What does blogging for search acquisition mean, exactly?
The term came up a few days ago during an internal product discussion.
Let me start by saying that Compendium is not an SEO firm. Yes, blogging for SEO is an important part of our value proposition, but there is a difference between professional SEO services and Compendium.
Professional SEO services are about content, but also very much about, linking, tagging, and tweaking. This work is done manually and does not scale. Now, I'm not putting professional services down, just trying to clarify the difference between SEO services and a software as a services (SaaS) like Compendium. Most professional SEO services company place their emphasis on keyword rankings.
Compendium, on the other hand, offers software that enables companies to get found in the search engines by leveraging keyword phrases and content. It just so happens that blogging is one of the best ways to do this. Also, many of our prospects and customers say that keyword ranking is their top priority, but that is really the tip of the iceberg.
Getting found in the search engines is the first step - but then an acquisition (i.e. the blog visitor should be able to take an action and fill in their info in doing so) is really what we are all about. That's why the term "search acquisition" fits so perfectly. Yes, you have to get found in the search engines, but what good is getting found if nothing happens afterward?
If you want to see how this works in a real life scenario, just sign up for a demo and we'll be happy to show you.
So I'm actually stealing this idea from Doug Karr, who posed the question:
"Wouldn't it be nice to have a template to use for your first blog post?"
Yes,
it would, and the reason is because the very first post can often be
the hardest one to do. Once you've gotten that first post out of the
way, you're no longer a Blogging Newbie, and every post thereafter is
going to get easier and easier, until you get to the point that you can
write a post in about 10 minutes that makes the points you want (that's
how much time I've allotted for this one).
So back to that
conversation -- Here is an idea for your very first business blog post.
Just plug and play and consider it a gift from the Compendium team!
==========================
My First Blog Post About ______
Today
is a big day -- I'm writing my first blog post. For starters, here's a
little bit about what I do for <Company Name>. In my job, I'm
responsible for _______, _______, and _____. This pertains to you
because I'm going to be sharing all sorts of insight into <Company
Name> and my position.
On that note, you're probably
curious about what <Company Name> is all about, how we help
people, and how we might work with you. <Company Name> helps
people by _______, and if you want to be able to _______ or have the
problem of ________, we're the right people to talk to.
I'm
really excited to use this blog as a way to share <resources>,
<tips>, <common questions>, <best practices>,
<customer stories>, <special programs>, and more.
My
picture is available in this post because I want you to know the person
who's providing all of these great things to you! You'll also notice
that on my company blogs, there are several ways that you can contact
us. I'm sure you'll be compelled to take a step furthering in getting
to know <Company Name>.
=======================
I blogged on this topic a few weeks ago and couldn't resist expanding on measurement...
"How do you know whether or not your corporate blogging program is working?"
We get this question all the time. The answer is simple:
Business blogging can be measured the same way that all other marketing is measured.
The top line measurements are: Total traffic, quality of traffic, and clicks on your call-to-action.
Yes, that means that your blog template MUST incorporate something for your visitors to do. They need something to click on. That's no different than how you treat your website and email marketing campaigns (and if you're not treating them this way, now is the time to start).
The bottom line metrics are: Leads and dollars. That could be dollars generated or dollars saved.
My next few posts are going to feature Compendium's own blogging program and I'll also feature metrics/stats from some customers.
I'll also cover the key aspects of success in order to get the top line and bottom line metrics headed in the direction you want.
So I'm in the Atlanta airport right now, with a 3 hour lay over...
I'm getting caught up on some work but can hardly think because of the BLARING overhead speaker notifying passenger Davis that he should report to the front desk. Oh, and passenger Walker, too. And now guess what? The flight to La Guardia is delayed. And passenger Walker, could you PLEASE report to the front desk?
The volume on the speaker is entirely too loud, the voice is nasal, and every single message that has been announced since I arrived has been completely irrelevant to me. I'm flying to Kansas, my name isn't Walker or Davis, and I'm being interrupted while trying to work.
In the world of marketing, interruptions are no less obnoxious and frustrating, and that includes online marketing.
The more that we are interrupted in marketing and life, the more we try to tune out the message. I now have my headphones on because I don't want to be bothered.
You should think about this as you are gearing up for your 2009 marketing initiatives. Starting business blogs should be part of your plan because a corporate blogging program will enable you to intercept prospects and customers online and with a relevant message.
The beauty of a corporate blogging strategy is that you will know exactly what is relevant to your audience because of the keywords that they plug into Google and other search engines.
Interruption marketing is becoming a thing of the past...now if I could just get the Atlanta airport to change their ways, too!
Last week I wrote about the comparison in effectiveness between organic search and PPC.
Compendium Blogware helps organizations win organic search by using business blogs. The funny thing about a corporate blogging strategy (with the intention of search engine optimization) is that is more easily compared to PPC than just about anything else.
Consider that the average marketer buys 1,000 keywords (at least) to win in the PPC area...and based on the effectiveness or winning those same terms organically (10 x more effective than PPC!), then of course any smart marketer wants to show up for those 1,000 keywords in the organic results.
There is a way to accomplish this (of course the answer is starting business blogs with Compendium). In fact, several of our customers have found that comparing the cost of their blogging program with Compendium against the cost of buying those same terms for PPC is the best way to prove the value of their company blogs.
I'll leave you with this graph from a customer that shows exactly what their blogging program costs per year (they are winning several thousand terms organically with it) vs. what those same terms would have cost to buy.
There is a really interesting study out right now that compares PPC and Organic Search, including clicks, conversion, and avg. marketer spend.
The long and short of it is this:
Even though organic search is nearly 10x more effective on the click side, marketers are still pouring 10x the amount of cash into PPC (pay per click).
Why? Because PPC is immediate, trackable, and much easier to comprehend than organic search.
Traditionally, the problem with SEO has been that it requires professional services, and a lot of "magic dust sprinkling" if you will in order to get results.
So two things need to happen in order to make the spend on Organic Search correlate to the effectiveness of it:
1. Organic search optimization needs as many elements as possible "softwarized."Oh wait...Compendium has already done this! At the end of the day, search engines want to present good, fresh, relevant content, and searchers want to find exactly that. Compendium's blogging tools make it possible to write great content once and get the SEO benefit of it across many keyword phrases. In fact, it's a corporate blogging strategy that's similar to PPC.
For point number 2, you'll have to check back tomorrow...
You can get more info about the study at
SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin's blog.
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...
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?
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
