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Blogging For SEO

Tuesday, December 9, 2008 by Jason Gergely
Blogging for SEO is a great way to help increase your company's marketing efforts. By asking employees to contribute to a company blog, it is a very effective way to increase Search Engine Optimization. However, you can't just ask them to blog about anything. Your employees have to write about their jobs and your company.

Your company hires people because they are intelligent and they like the idea of your job. Why not let them talk about it a little. Give them guidelines to blog about. For instance, ask them to write about the company's product or service. You could also ask them to read an article that you recently read that pertains to your company and then blog about it, all while including keywords that benefit your company's website and blogs.

Guidance for Corporate Blogging Guidelines

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 by P.J. Hinton
It's understandable businesses might be nervous about allowing their employees to maintain blogs.  Decision makers contemplating a corporate blogging strategy might be tempted to throw their hands up in the air and ask rhteorically, "Is it really worth the risk?

For those who might be baffled by this and similar questions, it helps to know that you are not the first to face these questions, and you are not alone.  In fact, you're in good company.

For a good case in point, check out a recently published article on CNet's news.com website. If you're considering an enterprise blog or are in the process of rolling one out, this article is a must-read.

CNet writer Ann Broache uses as a starting point the legal issues that Cisco Systems is facing after one of its employees was outed as an anonymous blogger.  The article does a good job of driving home the significance of transparency, discretion, and delineation. 

Transparency is ensuring that when employees post content related to their employer on the net, the employee clearly identifies him- or herself as an employee of that company.

Discretion means that employees don't disclose information that would compromise trade secrets, violate confidentiality agreements, or expose the company to further legal liability.

Delineation involves making clear what aspects of an employee's writings are representative of the company and which are the views of the employee alone.

The article also is valuable because it discusses how several large companies and organizations have dealt with this question.  Links to corporate blogging policies and net conduct guidelines for companies such as Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Dell, Yahoo, IBM, Google, and the BBC are provided in the story.  With big names such as these, the story serves as a great launching point for identifying blog best practices.

One of the best ways to ensure transparency, delineation, and discretion is to provide a common corporate blogging platform like Compendium Blogware.  Employees get the ability to write original content while being clearly identified as a company employee.  Compendium's post approval feature helps mitigate the risk of inappropriate content.




Authenticity too Raw for Blogging?

Tuesday, March 4, 2008 by P.J. Hinton
Over at StraightUpSearch, there's a new post about Wal-Mart's latest blogging initiative.  The author of the post notes that some of the bloggers have been surprisingly critical of the products they mention.  The post concludes with the following remarks:
Wal-Mart is attempting to bounce back from its earlier attempts at blogging, which the blogosphere denounced as a disguise for the company's PR department. Wal-Mart learned right then that it needed to be authentic online at all times...
Honest reviews about the products they sell are obviously a good thing, and fake reviews only accenting the positives would not be authentic, but how is that going to drive consumers to the store to buy that product if its own employees are giving it a bad review? Is authenticity enough?
Authenticity is a necessity in corporate blogging, but I don't think it's sufficient for success.  The other ingredient that's needed is relevance

Over time, the accumulation of content should provide a glimpse of the company and the people behind it.  Moreover, the posts need to relate back to the customer.  In the case of Wal-Mart, the product is only part of the story.  If I want to buy something like an operating system or a DVD, I don't need Wal-Mart to tell me whether a product is that great.   There's plenty of independent sources of information that can vouch for the adequacy of a product.

Wal-Mart's story needs to convince me that I should buy a desired product from them, as opposed to one of their competitors.  If I were the one writing the corporate blogging guidelines for them, here is what I would say...
 
Buyers, like those featured on Wal-Mart's blog,  are responsible for deciding what makes it to the shelves.  Instead of singling out individual products for praise or panning, I think the buyers would better serve the company sketching out their process, the complexity of the effort, and the benefits that their efforts confer upon customers (e.g. better models, more variety, affordable prices).

Branching out into other areas of the company, there could be blog posts on what they're doing to improve the customer experience at their stores and the lessons that they have learned over time.  If they truly don't have anything going on in this area, it' a sign that they don't fully appreciate the way markets have changed.

Better yet, think about an area where Wal-Mart has encountered the most trouble recently... building new stores.  Announcements of construction are not always welcomed by the host communities, which results in very heated discussions at city planning or zoning meetings.

Imagine Wal-Mart creating a set of blogs to follow the process of opening a new store, covering the decision to select the site, the legal hurdles they encounter in getting approval, and the ups and downs of getting ready.  From planners to construction workers, it would provide a very human dimension behind the big box of a building. There's ample room to being both authentic and relevant to customer in a situation like this.

Brainstorming for Business

Thursday, January 17, 2008 by Shawna Mullen

Problem #1: How can we acquire new customers?

Brainstorm Idea: Pay people to search our URL

If only it were that easy, except it is…

Brainstorming is an idea generating technique that we can directly and easily relate to blogging and business.  Some of the basic guidelines to brainstorming are to think freely, tag on and quantity of ideas.  I highlighted those guidelines because how easy would it be to apply those same guidelines to blogging?  In turn, take those blogs to increase your business and SEO (search engine optimization)? Organizational blogging is simply a collection of good quality and high quantity of fresh, new ideas and solutions where people can tag on to improve and build on the original idea.  Fact:  Search engines continuously look for the more recent, frequently updated and related content.  So, the more people you have blogging in your organization and continuously adding new content, all the while utilizing a platform to organize and compend your content, will in turn boost your SEO.  What happens when you boost your SEO?  More clicks on your website and higher percentage of aquiring new customers. 
Problem solved.  All without paying people to search your URL.

Corporate Blogging 101: The G Word (Guidelines)

Friday, July 27, 2007 by Ali Sales Roach

In the last few weeks, as we've met with beta clients and potential clients, I've started seeing a pattern with respect to the questions that organizations ask. Perfect blog fodder, of course.

A lot of those questions surround the guidelines for business blogs. And although Compendium Software is software provide rather than a services agency, we are happy to offer insight and education when it comes to tactics that help an organization achieve blogging success.

And corporate blogging guidelines DO play a key in your company's blogging success because it will impact the nature of the content generated within the organization, the frequency at which is generated, and the quality of it.

So where to start? Below you'll find a quick and dirty list of what to consider with respect to your for blogging guidelines.

1. Who do you want to blog?

2. How often should they blog?

3. What should they blog about?

4. What should they not blog about?

5. Who should approve the content?

What's pertinent to your organization? How would you implement, modify, or amend these?

As Chris mentioned in his last post, Risks in Corporate Blogging,the key is to utilize a blogging platform that is able to reinforce these guidelines with the appropriate features, workflow, and approval processes. It will only help with your blogging success, while at the same time, making it easier for you to control and leverage the power of blogging within your organization.

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