Corporate Blogging

A search engine marketing firm, Slingshot SEO, got me thinking about bounce rates a few weeks ago. Sure, we've all heard that traffic, clicks, and conversion are all good ways to measure our marketing and corporate blogging efforts, but how many of us are paying attention to bounce rate? What sort of research are we doing in comparing bounce rates of our blogs vs. our landing pages vs. our website?

Slingshot believes that Google will one day (if they are not already doing so) take bounce rates into consideration when determining how to rank landing pages. It makes a lot of sense -- if 99% of the people who hit your page leave as quickly as they're able to, something isn't clicking. Getting those kinds of stats aren't difficult - it's making sense of them. "What" leads to bounce rate? The same things that apply to a website definitely apply to business blogs. The problem may be general design flaws, outdated content, irrelevant content, "boring" content, etc., etc. etc.

Now that I'm paying attention to the bounce rate on Compendium's own blogs, it's also interesting to see how various search terms impact bounce rate and read time. For example, "business blogging software" is one of our best terms, with people spending an average of 3 minutes on our blogs, and very few of them are bouncing off right away. The bounce rate for "business blogging software" on our website is higher, and the read time isn't as long.

What this tells me is that it would do Compendium a lot of good to be the #1 result in Google for this term. Clearly, it's attracting the right kind of attention, and higher search engine placement would likely mean more visibility. When it comes to your blogging program, as a first step, I recommend taking a look at your website stats, because then you'll have something to benchmark against. Thanks to Slingshot for getting me in the "bounce" frame of mind.

Yesterday I had a chance to be on an e-marketing panel hosted by the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS), which is geared toward marketing people from architecture firms, engineering, or construction firms.

The first question to kick-off the panel was something to the effect of, "Why should organizations in our industries try to embrace new e-marketing mediums (blogs, email marketing, etc.).”  I know it sounds basic, but in my opinion, the first place to start when answering this question is by thinking about what you want to accomplish at the very highest level. The truth is, as creative as we marketing folks would like to think we are, the goal of our efforts really hasn't changed much in several, several years.

The goal is to build better relationships, whether it be starting new relationships, or nurturing current relationships, and the fruits of our labor are more business and repeat business for our companies. (For those of you who have read Email Marketing by the Numbers, you’ll recognize this as the same goal mentioned there). The simple truth is that new e-marketing mediums will help your organization accomplish the goal of better relationships.

Of course I'm going to focus on blogging specifically here. And that means that I'm going to focus on building new relationships as blogging offers a lot as an acquisition tool (whereas email is a great retention tool). Here is exactly how to start a great relationship:

Make it easy for someone to find you. You know that saying, “Great marketing is being in the right place at the right time, when the right person is looking for you.” So as a first step, you have to be present.

Be friendly. Make conversation. That’s the very opposite tone that most of our websites take. Yes, of course you want to be professional, but at the same time, you need to be human. Once someone has found you, they need to feel like they are being welcomed by a real person, not by a marketing department.

Provide valuable insight. This all comes down to relevance. Your prospects are more intolerant than ever to irrelevant information, and they’ll quickly move on unless your conversation with them strikes the right chord.

Offer to further the conversation. You’ve got to give someone a way to get in touch with you in the future –or better yet, for you to get in touch with them. If they don’t have a clear way to do so, this beautiful relationship is going to stop just as it’s getting started.

Okay, I told you this was basic stuff. So how, exactly, does blogging help with each step in starting a great relationship? You’ll have to read the next post, which will focus on blogging for search engine optimization and how easy to use blogging software like Compendium make it possible to quickly get those new relationships started and off on the right foot.

Yes. A lot of people ask me about blog research and trends, with readership being a related item. Most people interpret blog readership more as "subscribing." In other words, they think that "reading" a blog is all about coming back and reading over and over again. At one point, blogging best practices led blog writers to believe that a consistent, steady flow of returning traffic was a key indicator of success. (Reason being, returning visitors leads to predictable impressions and the opportunity to monetize a blog through advertising).

To clarify, there are two ways that I think about blog readership: new and returning visitors.

There's a lot of value in both. New visitors may show up, read the blog, and then take the next step depending on what kind of conversion is offered to them. Returning visitors may show up over and over again and never take a next step (perhaps there isn't a clear call-to-action on the blog!). I'm not sure what the general stats are when it comes to new or returning visitors, but I'm sure there are a lot of new blog visitors (readers) who show up, digest a blog, and have no idea at all that it's a blog they're reading. Why? Because a blog may look just like a website or any other web page!

I point this out because this blogging information recently came to my attention: 

According to 2006 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 39 percent of Internet users, or about 57 million American adults, said they read blogs, up from 27 percent in 2004, or 32 million.

I think those numbers are really low even though it's a big jump from 2004. I'm trying to find 2007 numbers but not having much luck. Just remember that when people throw out stats like this, there is probably a very large group of people who read blogs and don't know it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing -- what will make your organization's blog successful isn't that people know it's a blog. It's how they use it to gather the information and education and ultimately, start a relationship with you.

Okay, so my blogging bright and early every morning pledge didn't hold for a few days this week, but I'm back on the wagon and ready to talk about content frequency again.

I was in a meeting last week with our PR firm, who has decided to start blogging with Compendium. The owner of the PR firm (Chris Dittoe) had a great idea that came up with a pretty darn good idea of having a rotation schedule for content creation. Every single person in his organization will be blogging (wohoo!) which is a great mentality. Some clients have indicated that they're going to set aside 15-20 minutes at the beginning of each day to have their employees write, but Chris suggested a rotation schedule so that employees have certain days where they should plan on writing.

I think this is a great idea and makes for better blogging because a) people won't tire of content creation b) there is a guideline as to what's expected from those participating and c) by spreading the content contribution around to several people, he's going to get a lot of different perspectives and insights that just wouldn't be possible if it were only Chris blogging (not that we wouldn't enjoy reading his blog...).

So my point here is to find what works for your organization. Try the rotation schedule, the top 'o the morning approach, and more. It's funny how the same themes that run throughout marketing also apply to blogging (marketers are supposed to test, track, and adjust, right?). Well, no surprise...it's the same thing here.

First off, I'm trying something new in order to get the content coming. For awhile, Chris was writing his blog content at the very beginning of each day. It makes a lot of sense, because writing for your blog may be sort of like that pledge to go to the gym...as the day progresses, other things come up, until you finally just give up and go home where you eat an entire box of Krispy Kremes instead of running on a treadmill (or writing blog content). Oh, and not like I speak from experience here...

Now that we've gotten my "first thing in the a.m. for blog content" pledge out of the way, I'll jump into part two of my Blogging Right from the Start post. My first post focused on finding the right blogging solution and saving a lot of time and pain by getting started down the right path with the right tools. This post is all about adding a sense of urgency to get started writing content TODAY instead of tomorrow.

If I could tell you the single most important factor in determining how successful a client's blogging will be, it's content. And quite surprisingly, it isn't necessarily quality of content, but typically the quantity of content. That doesn't mean that the quality isn't there - obviously, blog visitors aren't going to put up with a bunch of rambling, meaningless thoughts (at least not corporate blog visitors). But the clients whom we've seen be most successful with blogging -- that is, driving traffic and converting traffic -- have spent the shortest period of time on design aspects and selecting bloggers, and the longest amount of time writing content. They jump in and start blogging "right from the start" instead of waiting to create that "perfect blog post."

And guess what? At the end of the day, the perfect blog post is just going to get pushed down to the bottom of your blog...that is, provided you keep writing additional content. 

There are two ways that you can read this title, and guess what? That's intentional!

The first way is with respect to choosing the “right” blogging solution. That's the first step in your start to corporate blogging -- and it can cause a lot of headaches if you go with the wrong platform. What kind of headaches?

Well, a lot of the time, the tendency is to go with the cheapest software. The problem with this is that even though the software is cheap, the costs associated with maintenance and growth get pretty ugly -- and can be extremely hard to predict. What you don’t pay on the software side, you’ll definitely have to pay on the services side (and probably a lot more).

Another temptation is to build your own blogging platform (again, because you think it's going to be cost effective). The trouble with this lies in the execution. It's easy to keep putting the development on the back-burner, and generally, a homegrown solution is just not going to scale. That also goes for the cheap blogging solutions I mentioned above.  Many of the automated elements included in Compendium Blogware will have to be done manually...and this will only work in the short-term.

Oh, and did I mention switching costs? The time needed to create content is one of the biggest investments you'll make in your blogging program, and moving content is usually unpleasant.

The last item I’ll mention is that the wrong blogging solution will make it hard for you to follow best practices. The wrong blogging tools will make it hard for you to get content out the door, will lack control and compliance features, and will leave you wishing for a platform that makes your life as easy as possible.

All worth considering as you contemplate which blog platform is right for your organization.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with more on the second way the title can be read: as in, actually creating content as soon as possible. 

I know it sounds funny, but we have a lot of conversations with prospective clients that go like this:

Prospective client: "We are really excited to blog. We know we should do it. We can't afford to wait."

Compendium Blogware: "That's great! Let's get you started."

Prospective client: "There's only one problem. We have nothing to write about."

Write about...talk about...speak about...no matter how you refer to it, we understand that content creation can seem daunting to an organization, even if they understand that it's a critical part to their blogging program's success.

For the most part, we're learned that the road block isn't that the company or enterprise has nothing to say...it's that they aren't sure who should say it (or write it).

The short answer to that question is:

Whoever you want! It may be marketing, customer service, sales people, etc. The key is to throw it out to several people and to let the interested folks filter to the top of your company blogs. It shouldn’t take away from their full-time job, but if it’s working, you’ll want to put more time into it (and eventually, you may have dedicated resources, much like what’s happened to email marketing)

Spreading the content around to lots of people is key – it takes the pressure off just one individual or a few. If you think about it, you'll probably find that executive level people aren't the most active bloggers because they tend to be the busiest. While meanwhile, 3 layers down, someone isn’t as busy and dying to share their insights. (And that’s the great thing about the admin layer of enterprise blogging software like Compendium).

And the last thing I'll add to this is that inspiration (and content) are all around you within your organization. It may be locked within your email, inside articles that are in PDF's that don't get search engine optimized very easily, or paper-based marketing collateral. It's all perfect blogging fodder, and the beauty of this is that with an easy to use blogging solution, you'll be able to quickly submit this content, have someone approve it, and make the most of it on the Web.

It's not very often that I use this blog as a way to do news that's only related to Compendium Blogware, but this is one of those times.

We're growing rapidly and looking for great people to fit into the following roles...

If you're interested, please send me an email (ali@compendiumblogware.com) with your resume and a bit about yourself.

Compendium Blogware is hiring:

1. Experienced SEO Specialist

2. Senior level software developer in testing

3. Senior level systems engineer

4. Senior level software engineer
5. Senior level UI Engineer

Again, if you're interested, or know someone who's interested, please send me an email (ali@compendiumblogware.com) with your resume and a bit about yourself.

To share a bit about Compendium Blogware:

Compendium provides blogging tools to organizations of all sizes and kinds. Founded in 2006, we currently work with over 50 clients. Our blogging platform is one-of-a-kind—our proprietary compending process helps organizations win the organic search, while at the same time, establishing early one-to-one relationships with their clients and prospects. Learn more about us.

You know your organization should be blogging, but maybe you're having trouble convincing other people within your company that it's a good idea. I hear this a lot from prospective clients, which is why I thought I'd share some compelling info and stats to help you build your case.

* Yes, blogs will help your organization show its human side and help you establish one to one relationships early on, but blogs are even more than that. Blogs are the perfect acquisition tool because search engines love them. Keyword-rich content, linking, and age are all big factors when it comes to how search engines rank their organic results, and all of these elements are inherent in blogs. Blogging for SEO placement can't be your end goal, but being present when someone is searching is a great start.

* Why is placement in the organic results so important? Because to say that 99 out of 100 clicks take place in the organic search results is probably an underestimate (MarketingSherpa Search Engine Guide 2008). If you're not in the organic search results, you're missing out on a HUGE audience.

* Also consider the fact that 44% of all web visits begin with a search (Harvard Business Review). More and more, this is how individuals are finding what they are looking for, or solving the problem that they need to solve.

A really exciting stat to wrap this up with is that 50% of Compendium clients' blogs show on page 1 of Google for a related search term. (Our analysis includes clients who have been blogging for 60 days or longer).

Tomorrow I'll be back with more to help you build your blogging case -- but this time, I'll have some points on how to get buy-in for a blogging solution geared specifically towards organizations.

This past week, BtoB ran a case study on Compendium Blogware and one of our early clients, Carmen Commercial Real Estate.

I won't go into much detail on the case study as I've linked to it below, but the bottom line is that everything our blogging tools have helped them accomplish to-date is measurable and trackable.

As Chris Carmen himself puts it within the interview, he wasn't convinced that a blogging solution was going to be the answer to the issues they were trying to solve, but they jumped in, began creating content, and with the help of our blogging features, are well on their way to a very successful program. 

What's your pain? What problems are you trying to solve? Perhaps blogging truly is the answer.

Check out the Carmen Real Estate and Compendium Blogware BtoB case study here.  

There are a lot of things in life that just don't mix. Drinking and driving. Steak and marshmallow fluff. Herding and cats.

The same could be said for the "do it yourself" mentality and a blogging platform. While DIY and your new bathroom sink may be a good thing, DIY and blogging software is bound to cause some heart burn and even lost opportunity. There are a few reasons why:

1. It’s gonna take time, a whole lotta precious time. Just like George Harrison said it would. And while you wait for your company’s IT department to build the blogging platform of your dreams, that’s precious time that could be spent blogging. Maybe time doesn’t seem like a big deal, but delaying your content creation and posting is going to delay your success. What, exactly do I mean by that? Content is what makes blogging so powerful. As Chris Baggott likes to say, “When was the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago.” It’s the same thing with content and blogging. When was the best time to start blogging? Yesterday. That’s because content, recency, frequency, and age all big factors that Google will take into consideration when determining how to rank your blogs within the search results.

2. It’s gonna take money, a whole lotta precious money. More wisdom from good old George. Time and money tend to go hand-in-hand, don’t they? The problem with DIY and a blogging platform is that the requirements can tend to get out of control. And more time is more money. At the same time, why would you ever want to recreate the wheel? There’s a reason why I don’t milk my own cows and build my own television set. If there are other people who are experts in their areas and are already offering what I need, it makes more sense to use their resources rather than coming up with my own.

3. You may get a station wagon rather than a Porsche. What I mean by that is that all cars aren’t created equally, and neither are all blogging solutions. While your IT department may be able to create a home-grown blogging solution that enables you to publish content, there are going to be other features that don’t get included in the mix. What about an administrative layer to keep your organization safe and secure? What about a compending process that maximizes your content for search engine exposure? (Note: this is the proprietary part of Compendium Blogware that makes our blogging platform so unique).

The bottom line is that there are countless things that you and your organization could do yourself. But the real question to ask yourself is: why would you want to?

I'm excited to be posting twice today as I just wrapped up an email response that is very relevant to SEO and blogging.

After sending over a sample of search terms to give a prospective client an idea of how Compendium Blogware bringing blogging and SEO together, he remarked that the results I shared weren't very compelling because they were all long tail terms (and therefore, any blog, whether a Compendium blog or not--would be able to win those kinds of searches).

Bingo! My email back pointed out a few key things, such as:

1. With Compendium's blogging tools, you're able to have several keyword focused, topical blogs, which means that you get to cast a wide net on search terms (including long tail). There's no other blogging solution on the planet that enables you to easily create multiple blogs and that's going to put the content into the appropriate topical blogs. Maybe you could create 50 keyword titled blogs in Wordpress, but it's going to be incredibly painful.

2. Yes, the examples I sent are long tail terms, but the important part is that:

a) back to point 1, you get to have a lot of them with Compendium, and the traffic across those long tail terms certainly amounts to something.

And b) you get to show people the immediacy of your efforts and know that if you continue contributing content, you'll see movement on the competitive terms. As I mentioned in my "If it sounds too good to be true" post about empty promises and how they relate to blogging, there's no silver bullet to winning the competitive terms overnight, but it sure makes a more compelling case if some progress can be seen along the way.

At Compendium, we get a lot of questions about the kinds of metrics and goals that organizations should think about when it comes to blogging.

And despite the fact that a lot of people don’t know what an RSS feed IS let alone how to use one, several companies seem to be of the mindset that the number of subscribers is the best way to gauge the success of the blog.

Well, unless you’re a publisher, that’s a bunch of baloney, and I’m here to tell you why.

Even if you are the funniest, most perceptive human being alive, it’s unlikely you’re your prospects are going to read your blog over and over again, day in day out. And the important question is: why would you want them to?

If you think about it, using RSS subscribers as your basis for success is comparable to using returning web visitors as your all-telling metric for your website. It’s a bit laughable, when you think about it. The way you measure success on your website is (or hopefully is) conversion, and guess what? You should be in the same mentality when it comes to your organization’s blogs.

I am not saying that returning visits or RSS subscribers should be ignored – quite simply, they are not the most important or telling metrics. Maybe I will return to your blog or your website three times – heck, even thirteen—before I’m ready to take the next step, but the key here is that you have to tell me what the next step is, and make it easy for me to do it. Thus, a conversion. And if you could get me to convert after three visits versus thirteen, that would be a good thing, right? So if you think about it in this way, people who are returning day after day to read your blog—and not doing anything else—may not be as desirable as people who read, get a bit of info, and move on.

An important part of this is the kind of blogging platform that you use—does it make it easy to include conversion points—but the most important aspect is knowing up front that no matter what anyone has told you in the past, RSS subscribers is not necessarily what you should be blogging for…

"Lose 50 pounds in 3 days!"

"Make a million dollars in 2 hours!"

"Get on the first page of Google -- guaranteed!"

Sound familiar? Are you skeptical? Yeah, you should be. You know that anything that sounds too good to be true typically isn't true. As much as we'd like to find an easy route to the end goal, most of the time, it takes a lot of patience, perseverance, and much longer than we'd like it to.

While there's no silver bullet when it comes to successful blogging and getting great organic SEO results, here's some good news: combined with the right blogging solution and the right approach, blogging is a really effective way to help win natural searches.

So what do I mean by the "right" blogging solution? Well, it's one that enables several people to contribute content and makes it as easy as possible for an organization to focus on content creation and the end goals instead of execution. In other words, the "right" blogging solution takes on the heavy lifting on the technology side.

The other side to effective blogging falls on the organization, with the biggest part being the ability for the organization to create a steady stream of conversational and relevant content. The key here is giving more than one person the ability to create that content. Content is what's going to fuel the "right" blogging platform, and the "right" blogging platform will make the best use possible of that content by structuring it for easy reading and SEO exposure.

Sound complicated? Doesn't have to be...we marketers have been tasked with an awful lot lately (getting a blogging program up and going, higher SEO rankings, better one-to-one communication), so instead of looking for the silver bullet, I encourage you to get educated and look at the best tools to help you make the most of all the work you're going to be putting into your marketing initiatives.

In my last post, I talked about the merits of more content. Now, I know what you've been wondering since then: If more blog content is better than no blog content or some blog content, then how am I going to get that content?

The key is spreading content contribution around to lots of people within your organization.

Traditionally, corporations have made the mistake of electing "Our Blogger," which has its disadvantages.

First of all, the weight of content creation falls on that person's shoulders, and if they are sick or on vacation, the content creation comes to a halt.

Also, the person elected as "Our Blogger" is typically an executive-level individual who has about a million things to do...and guess what falls off the list at the end of the day? You got it: generating content for the organization's blog.

Another problem with the "our blogger" approach is that you are getting only one perspective from this person...and what if it's the perspective that doesn't fit into what your prospects and customers want?

At a recent conference, I used the example of going into Home Depot in search of help with a new kitchen sink, and the CEO greeting me in the aisle, reciting reports and company initiatives. Well, guess what? I don't want to talk to the CEO, I want to talk to Betsey Jones, who has helped 600 people install new kitchen sinks and knows exactly what I'm going through. Please put Betsey in the aisle to greet me, not the CEO.

See how this translates to your organizational blogging program? By limiting the blogging torch to one individual, you're automatically limiting your content, not to mention missing out on several people who are interested in your business, but want a different perspective.

Chris Baggott did a great post on MicroSegments on his Blogging Best Practices blog, and it's completely pertinent here. More blogging torch carriers means more content which means more perspectives which means more chances to be in front of someone at the right time, and with the right information.

In order to take this kind of approach, you'll need to select blogging tools that include an adminstrative layer that makes it easy to manage and approve all this content before it hits the web. (As you may have figured, this is a standard part of Compendium's blogging platform).