"In 2009: $65 billion will be spent on enterprises’ own sites, dollars NOT spent on TV, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc. To scale that, compare 2009 total U.S. TV ad revenue (cable + broadcast) at $66 billion, and total 2009 U.S. Newspaper ad revenue at $42 billion. So corporations spending marketing dollars on their own sites is equivalent to (a) wiping out all TV ad revenue or (b) wiping out one and one-half newspaper industries!"
Hello! Thanks to Outsell for this great new report, but what does it mean to advertising? Why is this happening?
Simple answer is that Advertising relies on middlemen to deliver a corporate message. With Online Marketing (Search Marketing), business can now leverage their own site, Corporate Blogging software and email marketing to control and develop a direct relationship with their prospects and customers.
Emarketer already told us that the three biggest growth areas in marketing are Search, Email and Social Media (Business Blogging covers both SEO and Social Media). What is transforming the marketing world it the capacity for organizations to have direct relationships with the people who drive their business. Marketing departments from organizations large and small are rethinking their investments and strategies and going direct...to the detrement of the old model that required a middleman to deliver your message.
Here are 5 obstacles the study speaks to. We hit these obstacles in our sales process as well. Specific to blog software and search marketing, here are my reactions:
Employees already use other systems and don't want to be bothered with another alternative.
What is the strategy and measures of success for using your other system? What are the costs (maintenance, uptime, administration). When confronted with this, our prospects don't typically have a strategy in place that proves results. If you can't measure it, how do you know it's working? If you think it's working, how do you know how well it's working?
Employees are concerned about having their contributions public and uncensored.
This is why we've built approval and feedback loops into our application. It's important that employees be allowed the freedom to blog but with moderate oversight that provides them feedback if a post isn't approved for publishing.
Management is entrenched in the "old school" way of thinking - institution over community, hierarchy over collaboration.
This is a difficult obstacle to overcome. In short, I like to talk to companies about where their clients and prospects are rather than talk about how the company needs to change. Consumer and B2B behavior has changed and they are researching solutions and products via the web and search engines before ever calling you. You need to be where they are looking, reading and discussing.
Management desires more control over the actions of contributors, e.g. tagging, discussions, group creation, etc. The open nature of social computing is concerning.
This is why a Software as a Service is a fantastic solution. We continue to modify and enhance our system based on industry trends, search trends, online marketing trends and the needs of our clients. Investing in a SaaS blog software comes with a year of feature upgrades - all providing the right balance of control over openness.
Management is worried about decreased productivity as they still perceive social computing as fun.
I often ask people how much time they spend on email each day and there is always a groan. Some answer 20 emails, others over 100 emails daily - just to keep up. What's the ROI on email? What if you could prevent calls to customer service by having the content out there and the questions already answered in a means that prospects and clients can find it? What if you could write a blog post that 2,000 people read instead of the 1 person you're writing an email to? Blogging is an incredibly effective and efficient means of communicating.
According to the Whitepaper:
By 2012, more than 30% of large organizations will have deployments of social software suites available to all their employees (The Gartner Collaboration and Social Software Vendor Guide, 2009, Carol Rozwell, Nikos Drakos, David Mario Smith, Jeffrey Mann, Matthew W. Cain, James Lundy, and Tom Eid, February 19, 2009, Gartner.).
We've got a long way to go! Begin breaking down these objections within your company today to reap the benefits.
A friend of mine, Erik Deckers, once told me that the average reader of the Internet reads and comprehends at a 6th grade level.
Erik is a professional writer and marketer worth listening to. Ever since Erik told me that, I've toned down my 8th grade writing.
All joking aside, it's an important thing to keep in mind when you're explaining products or services on your corporate blog. Don't overestimate the knowledge-level of your visitors.
It's not that you want to dumb down the content of your blog, it's that you want to make sure that you thoroughly explain your post as if you were explaining it to a 6th grader.
Our business blogs and yours should reflect this! When you're speaking to the audience that's visiting your site, your blog posts should be simple to read, drawing in the person that's got a difficult problem that you solve. If the visitor needs a dictionary by their side to read your posts - you're going to lose them.
It's not difficult to take a complex topic and write it in simpler terms. Writing at a 6th grade level also doesn't make you sound less intelligent. I would argue that a blogger's ability to write about a technical topic and explain it as a sixth grader is an very talented and intelligent writer.
To promote your ability to answer a difficult problem easily, you should be writing at a level that represents that. Don't overestimate your audience.
The word competitor bugs me. I've never actually met nor been challenged by a competitor. Some prospects think we have competition, but every prospect's needs are different and your solution may not match the needs that another solution would.
Anyways, I had a great conversation with a blogging consultant from a firm today that implements open source blogging software for very large companies. I'm quite familiar with the platform that he works with - I host a personal blog on it and have released quite a few plugins for it.
We talked through the challenges we both had with our clients. We spoke through how many of them are concerned with the nuances of search engine optimization... links, rank, tagging, categorization, etc., but they're not actually paying any attention to writing relevant content.
On the plus side, after I walked him through the enterprise solution that we've built, he's signing up for a demonstration. He said he would love to be able to commit his time to executing on great blogging strategies for his clients instead of tinkering with the technology.
Turns out, he may not be a competitor at all... he may be our next agency client!
If you're an enterprise corporation and have people throughout the world, we released an incredibly sophisticated feature today - user-centric time zones.
In typical blogging applications, the time zone is set for the blog itself, regardless of where your bloggers are located. In other words, if my blog is set for EST and I'm in California, and I post at 6AM, the blog post is displayed and shown as posted at 9AM. Boo!
Our developers released a fantastic enterprise blogging feature today - user-centric time zones. Within your user settings, you can select your personal time zone. Once your time-zone is set, voila!
Even nicer, the team put a message reminder on login to remind our users to set their timezone with a link to the setting. That was great thinking on their part, pre-empting any confusion from the bloggers.
Also released was a smart auto-save feature and an option to schedule your post to publish at a future time. Nice job Compendium developers! These are fantastic enterprise blogging software features.
Tripp Babbitt wrote a great post, A Little Respect for the Front-line that speaks to the fact that customers (and prospects) don't deal with the leaders of an organization - they deal with the front-line employees.
Often, companies are hesitant at allowing their front-line employees to blog. The leaders wish to control the message or marketing wishes to control the brand. Both are ridiculous statements when you have front-line employees. They should all be blogging.
Whether you like it or not, your front-line employees ARE a reflection of your company and its leadership. Your front-line employees should also be key to a corporate blogging strategy. If you don't trust your employees to blog about your products, services and clients... what are they doing speaking to your customers?
When I search for a company, product or service online I would love to read customer stories from the customer service representative that I will be dealing with.
How great would it be to look up Enterprise Rent-a-Car in Chicago and read a blog post from one of their actual cashiers on 3 tips for speeding up your visit. If I were picking up a car from Enterprise in Chicago, I'd be looking for that customer service representative!
Instead, I read (and largely ignore or don't trust) content written by their marketing or leadership team. It's insincere and it's not applicable to me - because I don't work with the leadership. I work with that CSR!
My colleagues Brian Millis and BJ McKay recently returned from a great conference in Chicago, Blogwell. This conference hosted quite a few well known enterprise level companies and disucssed all things blog and social media related. Brian and BJ observed that these companies are realizing they need a strategic social media presence. Their customers are using facebook, twitter, etc... to communicate about them both positively and negatively. These companies need a professional blogging tool, a tool like Compendiums easy blog software perhaps, to particpate in these conversations and monitor what is being said online about their products and services. I found an interesting article from online marketing source Practical Ecommerce, that shared some interesting points about this very topic title Social Media: Listening Is The New Marketing.
The shrinking world we live in. While listening to NPR this morning the reporter delivered news on the global economy. The theme was "shrinking." As I jumped on the elevator this morning to head to the office, I shared a quick convo with a woman who moved her offices, to "shrink" her practice. This shrinking in a lot of cases is leaving customers without a provider. This is when smart hard working marketers can make a mint.
The need for most products and services has not diminished, it's the collective psyche of businesses around the world that has been altered. The question I'm posing to you is, instead of tying your stomach in a knot over customer attrition at your business, how are you acting on the same problem your competitor is having?
Decision makers in the household and at the office are online using search everyday to find new options for suppliers and better deals on a giant package of toilet paper. The data around the volume of search for keywords and phrases is public and available to all comers. If there is a more economical way to leverage SEO to win customers from competitors, I haven't found it yet.
Blogging for SEO is a turnkey way to show ROI from your first play in optimizing search to earn customers. There is affordable blogging software with all of the built in consultation necessary to realize ROI for small businesses and enterprises alike.
Customer attrition is a real issue right now, are you addressing your problem by capitalizing on the same problem your competitor is having?
Yes! It's the cardboard PC! - Green is the new black, or so it seems. So an enterprising designer’s inked plans to build a desktop PC that does away with the traditional metal and plastic exterior, in favour of… er… cardboard.
Why Windows Must Go Open Source - To maintain its developer ecosystem and protect its apps business, Microsoft has no choice but to loosen its grip on the Windows source code and drive down costs.
When you Blog to earn customers, it's comes down to promises and consistency. Blogging is about telling human, relevant, stories that tie into your company's value proposition. Why am I different? Why should you choose me? This is vital for small business marketers and enterprise level marketers alike.
Here's a real life illustration of what I mean. I was coming home late last night, hustling to hit the deadline that the babysitter set for me to relieve her of her duties. At 7:45 PM I remembered that I hadn't eaten since 11:30 AM.
I saw a McDonalds on my left, turned in and hit the drivethrough, and there I sat for 8 minutes to 7:53 PM behind a car sitting at the kiosk where you yell your order. 8 minutes! This is McDonalds, the mecca of greatest fast food system that the world has ever known! I turned out of the queue, and headed home without my McNuggets.
At 8:15 PM I called Jimmie Johns, ordered a sub for delivery and in 15 minutes I was enjoying dinner. Seamless, inexpensive, and right on their brand promise. The winner is.... Jimmie Johns.
By employing affordable blogging software you can begin to win organic search traffic by generating keyword rich content that hammers home your brand promise, not your brand. Your company solves problems, makes life easier, saves money, and helps my business accomplish our goals.
Now, if you make a promise, be a Jimmie Johns and follow-through, not a McDonalds and leave me waiting to do business with you.
If you knew your company would be in front of billions of people at the same time, and you had the money to invest, would you? YES. I just had to answer that one for you. The marketing minds behind the companies listed above are bright. They based decisions on metrics and pure ROI. Per dollar invested, a Super Bowl ad is an effective vehicle to get noticed. Engagement however, is all about timing. That's where Blogging for SEO comes in.
Blogs will change your business much like the Super Bowl ads listed above. It's about reach, volume, and targeting. In search, content alone is not king. keyword dense content that is stacked vertically is king. At Compendium, we build a Blog network that is aimed at acquisition through organic search. A powerful platform, and a team of experts, is charged with fueling this strategy for your business.
When you are watching the Super Bowl this weekend, think about your business, and your acquisition goals for 2009. Then call us and we'll discuss an enterprise search Blog platform customized for your business.
New memcached extension » Andrei Zmievski - The API is more extensive and provides for such features as server-specific hashing, read-through cache and value callbacks, asynchronous multi-gets, and other stuff. It’ll be apparent in the docs.
Open Source Systems Monitoring & Management Software | Hyperic - Hyperic HQ manages web applications wherever they are: in your data center, a virtual environment, or the cloud. Hyperic HQ automatically discovers, monitors, and manages software and network resources, regardless of type or location. HQ provides a single pane view of performance and availability for companies running apps on any or all popular platforms, including Unix, Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, VMware, and Amazon Web Services. With fast deployment, enterprise security, and extensibility, organizations will save time and meet SLAs.
http://haproxy.1wt.eu/download/1.3/doc/architecture.txt - This document provides real world examples with working configurations. Please note that except stated otherwise, global configuration parameters such as logging, chrooting, limits and time-outs are not described here.
100 cool things you can do with HAProxy
Jonathan Ellis's Programming Blog - Spyced: All you ever wanted to know about writing bloom filters - Bloom filters are surprisingly simple: divide a memory area into buckets (one bit per bucket for a standard bloom filter; more -- typically four -- for a counting bloom filter). To insert a key, generate several hashes per key, and mark the buckets for each hash. To check if a key is present, check each bucket; if any bucket is empty, the key was never inserted in the filter. If all buckets are non-empty, though, the key is only probably inserted -- other keys' hashes could have covered the same buckets. Determining exactly how big to make the filter and how many hashes to use to achieve a given false positive rate is a solved problem; the math is out there.
This is a collection of links I have bookmarked on del.icio.us for the date 2009-01-29
Suse Studio: Linux customization for the masses | The Open Road - CNET News - Suse Studio is a new, innovative Web-based service to enable (independent software vendors), developers, and the community to quickly and easily "mass customize" Linux. Suse Studio is the first tool to enable users to create fully supported, customized variants of Suse Linux Enterprise and OpenSuse, add additional software, and test the resulting image--all in one simple and easy-to-use interface.
Taxes: Everyone Can Now File Their Taxes Online Free - You used to have to make less than $56,000 per year to use the IRS' Free File program to submit your income tax forms online (with help). Now everyone can e-file for free this year.
Doom - This is just a fantastically hilarious tool. Use Doom as a user interface for managing your system processes.
patterns & practices: Application Architecture Guide 2.0 (The Book) - Release: Application Architecture Guide 2.0 - Application Architecture Guide 2.0 project guide provides design-level guidance for the architecture and design of applications built on the .NET Framework. It focuses on the most common types of applications, partitioning application functionality into layers, components, and services, and walks through their key design characteristics.This guide is a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, product teams, and industry experts. This guide is related to the project http://www.codeplex.com/AppArchGuide/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=20586
Gmail-template Generator - Google Modules - You can use this module for generating your own gmail templates. Mark the generated page, you can save the template. The default value can be set from Edit menu.
You want to know something that made me feel really old? Wii Fit. Based on my limited flexibility and terrible balance, my Wii Fit age is 40! That's pathetic considering I'm actually only 25. This presidential election has also made me feel old. For the first time, I genuinely care about my 401k, healthcare benefits, and my taxes. Don't those topics make you feel old? Today, my boss told me that I need to get more sleep. He said that getting a full 8 hours could increase my performance during the day. Budgeting my sleep time? That makes me feel really old!
When I talk my grandpa how to use a computer, and when I described my job to my Mom, I saw how a conversation about technology, especially an internet business blog can make someone feel old. Again, during a phone call with a future client, we discussed a blog for SEO versus advertising in the phone book, and I think he felt old.
This is never my goal while in a business conversation, and I am striving to simplify the importance of a corporate blog. However, in these economic times, feeling old can be a productive catalyst. Now more than ever, businesses are looking for NEW ways to get in front of their target market. For small business marketing or even enterprise level strategies, blogging is that perfect NEW solution . . .. even if it makes you feel old.
As I sit here on my couch and watch the neighborhood ball for the new President, I'm struck with a sense of pride for working for Compendium Blogware. You might wonder why. Well, because I am part of social media. I'm a part of a company that empowers businesses to connect to others online. A corporate blog opens up a conversation and brings people together. Even though my role is small, when I help set up a multi user blog platform and give a company a new voice and presence online, I am part of a greater social media.
How powerful can this be? How can a strong message online make a difference? The Obama campaign is a perfect example. During his thank you at the ball, he mentioned how this started in neighborhoods, and the message spread. That viral spread can be largely attributed his campaigns understanding and respect of social media. They used it to Obama's advantage and history was made.
This same theory can be applied to small business marketing or even an enterprise size internet business blog. On the right platform, a cohesive marketing message can be viral within social media; building your business. For companies who are not blogging, twitting, facebooking, myspacing, or linkedining, you are missing out on a tremendous tool. Compendium can help you get started in this realm with a great blog that is easy to use and easy to manage.
I just saw this commercial on tv and couldn't help but think about how it relates to a great corporate blog.
What a genius tag line,Because it's everybody's business. I think they are exactly right here. Popular brands belong to the people who love them and use them every day. A multi user blog platform like Compendium is exactly what these enterprise level companies need. They could allow their employees to create great content about the brand, and yield all the comments from people who love and use that brand. This type of corporate blog would be the best "ear" for a company to listen to their consumer in order to make better marketing decisions. I think that Kate Bayne should call me about setting her up with a slick Compendium Blog platform. She would get all the golden nuggets she would ever need.
When is the last time you've experienced decent service by a commissioned sales rep?
I've become more and more impressed by sales professionals with college degrees and a broad foundation of business knowledge. I have become less and less impressed with retail and service reps for local businesses and franchises. This is where Blogging to earn customers comes in.
I write Blog posts that are relevant to Compendium Blogware and to the customers and prospects that value my experience. If your business, whether it be enterprise level or small market, has talented sales professionals that you like to brag about. Get them Blogging for your business!
Here's a brief story... I am in a new city and I decide to go to Walmart to pick up a few things. I get in line and the woman at the register is finishing up with the customer in front of me. Except, she's not. The bags are sitting in front of the guy, but they continue to chat and completely ignore me. This goes on for at least another minute and a half. Which if you've ever experienced this feels like eternity! I was now staying in this "quick checkout line" as a matter of principal. Knowing I was going to write this Blog post.
After he moves along she begins working through my items, not making any eye contact or greeting me. I swipe my card and move along. With no "good bye" or "thank you." Now... I was at Walmart, and I got what I paid for. Was the experience worth the $1.25 I saved by going to Walmart rather than a local grocer. NO!
Blog for SEO please, and Blog so I can find you. Especially if you are a local retail or service company. I do want to do business with you, and I am far less interested in how much money I save. I want stellar customer service from friendly professionals who know their craft. This is worth a premium price, and I'll pay it with a smile. I hardly believe that I am alone here.
When you're ready to explore business Blogging as a peice of your small business marketing plan, call us for a consultation at no cost. 25 minutes with one of our experts at Compendium will have you miles ahead of local and enterprise level competitors.
Earlier today I blogged about my conversations with a charming B&B in East Hampton, New York and how they are hoping to use Compendium as a marketing tool. It really floors me that I was able to talk to a large marketing consulting firm, MCorp, that works with enterprise level businesses and have a great conversation around Compendium and how it can work for their business needs.
These two businesses target markets are very different, couples looking for romantic getaways vs. C-level marketing and customer service execs. Wow, talk about two different target markets! :) Their budgets are very different and the messaging they want to put online is very different. The obvious thing that still tends to amaze me is that both of these businesses potential customers are using search to find what they need. Whether it is a Valentine weekend getaway or the best customer experience management tools and the consultants to work with, everyone is using online search as a key part of their research. The ability to put your business in front of them with engaging, humanized information about exactly what they have requested is the beauty of blogging and of search marketing.
2009 will be our big push to build out our field sales team. We are looking to add three people in time for a February start in training.
Description Below:
Compendium Blogware Field Sales Representative
The Field Sales Representative creates, identifies and closes sales for Compendium within a specific geographical region. This individual must be a self-starter with a large network of local and enterprise business contacts, ideally with marketing-related roles.
Responsibilities:
• Create and drive revenue within a specified region. • Generate business opportunities through professional, dedicated networking, prospecting, and cold-calling. • Drive company awareness campaigns and lead generation via networking, associations & chambers of commerce. • Own the sales cycle - from lead generation to closure. * Develop strategic territory business plan. • Maintain account and opportunity forecasting within our internal SFA system. • Meet and exceed all quarterly and annual sales quotas. Qualifications: • A proven sales hunter and closer. • Minimum of 3-5 years of sales experience. • Track record of sales excellence. • Proven relationships and knowledge of territory assigned. • Articulate and persuasive oral and written communication skills. • Must be able to work independently in a fast pace, rapid change environment. • Superior professional presence and business acumen. • Thorough understanding of MS Office applications and Internet. • Marketing experience a plus.
"In 2009: $65 billion will be spent on enterprises’ own sites, dollars NOT spent on TV, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc. To scale that, compare 2009 total U.S. TV ad revenue (cable + broadcast) at $66 billion, and total 2009 U.S. Newspaper ad revenue at $42 billion. So corporations spending marketing dollars on their own sites is equivalent to (a) wiping out all TV ad revenue or (b) wiping out one and one-half newspaper industries!"
A friend of mine, 
The word competitor bugs me. I've never actually met nor been challenged by a competitor. Some prospects think we have competition, but every prospect's needs are different and your solution may not match the needs that another solution would.
Tripp Babbitt wrote a great post, 
etc... to communicate about them both positively and negatively. These companies need a professional blogging tool, a tool like Compendiums easy blog software perhaps, to particpate in these conversations and monitor what is being said online about their products and services. I found an interesting article from online marketing source 
and hit the drivethrough, and there I sat for 8 minutes to 7:53 PM behind a car sitting at the kiosk where you yell your order. 8 minutes! This is McDonalds, the mecca of greatest fast food system that the world has ever known! I turned out of the queue, and headed home without my McNuggets.
