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Exciting new feature release this week!

Thursday, November 19, 2009 by Abby Brosmer
This week, Compendium was excited to announce a new feature release for all standard users.  A keyword tab was added to the text editor screen you see upon login.  This tab now allows users the ability to see a full listing of their companies keywords.  It also allows for easy navigation and sorting of large and small keyword networks.  Want to know more...Check out the solution in our knowledge base.

As a blog contributor, it is important to know what topics are important to focus on.  And while the 20 suggested keywords are listed to the right, for general content ideas.  Often in a blog post, a user can rearrange a word or two of natural writing to accomplish the addition of a keyword, helping the SEO of their corporate blog.

As far as blogging best practices, I am of the belief that it is import to write naturally and to write about what you know.  My own practice is to write a post, keeping in mind a general topic about Compendium and corporate blogging as whole.  I write everything and then, I go back and revise to add in some keywords.  I never want my content to be stacked with keywords.  Not only does it look spammy to the search engines, but it looks spammy to readers as well.

I would love to hear how what you think of the new keyword tool.  Also, tell us about how you write...how do you add keywords to you posts, and what are some of your blogging tips?

Where's your call-to-action?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 by Stephanie West
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-picture-frame-gold-path-included--image432413Picture this:  You have written a great blog post.  It is well-written and full of substantial content.  You may even have included relevant pictures in order to capture your reader's eye. 

But here is where the problem is: After the reader/viewer reads your post, there is nothing left to do.  Maybe they are really interested in what you had to say, but if you need to have something for them to click on to get more information.  That's where call-to-actions (CTAs) come into play. 

Having a link within your blog post allows the reader to seek further information if they are interested.  Having CTAs embedded in your blog is also a great way for readers to learn about your product or service. 

CTAs on the top and side bars of your blog that contain links to additional resources are very beneficial to the reader, as well as the marketer.  Marketers are able to track the effectiveness of blogs by these CTAs and the leads that are generated.

When you blog for search engine optimization - great!  But you need a way to convert those leads into prospects - which is where your CTAs come into play.  Incorporating these CTAs as a part of your blogging best practices will make your blog a better SEO tool.  Compendium provides a great blogging platform, and the Client Success team at Compendium will help incorporate your CTAs so that they provide the most benefit. 

Put Your Blog on Steroids...

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 by Meghan Manning
That's right - you read my title correctly! If you aren't currently using business blogging as your search marketing startegy, now is the time to get started.  If you are currently using blogs to help you get found in search, now is the time to step it up and put your blogs on steroids!

To learn how - attend the upcoming Webinar presented by Target Marketing featuring Chris Baggott CEO/CoFounder of Compendium Blogware.

During this informative Webinar, you'll learn:

  • Develop SEO-friendly content
  • Determine the optimal posting frequency
  • Measure the value of your investment
  • Engage customers and prospects

Be sure to register now to attend - the Webinar is getting close and you'll want to reserve your spot today!

CPG Online Marketing Spends

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 by Clayton Stobbs
This morning's eMarketer newsletter caught my eye (article here) as it discussed the trend towards more online marketing spending for consumer packaged goods companies. In the past and even today, CPG firms have largely focused on traditional media and avoided mediums that are more difficult to measure (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, other social networks).
 

Nevertheless, given the trend, corporate blogging for SEO should be an important strategy to consider.  By carefully monitoring and measuring traffic, conversion etc. and tying strategies back to actual product sales, CPG firms could benefit immensely.



Don't be THAT Business!

Monday, November 16, 2009 by P.J. Hinton
Businesses come in all kinds of aspirations, sales figures, and revenue.  Some businesses are comprised of teams which include tech savvy staff, and then there are others who don't.  There's nothing necessarily wrong with that.  There are some fields where it just doesn't make sense to pay the salary of a full-time tech guru.

Regardless of your orgainzation's technical savvy, chances are there is a substantial number of  potential customers who are looking for what you have to offer via search engines.  If you're not showing high up on the rankings for the keywords they're using, then you are as good as nonexistent to these people.

Buying into the growing marketing wisdom of the age, you decide to line up a corporate blogging initiative.  When it comes time to pick a platform, you ask around.  Some point you to free hosted services.  Others tell you to use this or that particular open source package on your own servers.  Chances are, you'll opt for the open source package that a large number of businesses are using.

Then the fun begins.  Suppose you're one of those businesses whose technical skill on the low end of the spectrum.  You'll be faced with a sea of arcane knowledge that will be confusing at worst.  Is setup that hard for non-techincal people?  Look no further than a blog post published today by Kit O'Toole over at BlogCritics.  In setting up a WordPress blog for herself, she ran into a steep learning curve with PHP and CSS, and she learned the hard way what damage can be done when the database gets corrputed.

So then you plonk down a few grand to bring in a social media expert, or you roll the dice and put up an ad on craigslist's computer gigs section offering some amount of money for someone who knows what they're doing.  That will cost you maybe a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars just to get up to speed.

Once you've gone live and started creating content, you'll face the challenge of ongoing maintenance.  When your blogging platform choice ships a new upgrade, or when there is an advisory about security that needs patching (see Tech Crunch story from June 2008 and Robert Scoble's blog post from September 2009 for some good examples), chances are you'll need to track down that guy who did the original setup (you did keep his contact information, didn't you?) or expend effort getting someone to help you out.

This problem is one of the core value propositions of Compendium.  Not only are you buying into a platform for your SEO efforts, you're also getting the backing of a multitenancy application. There are no more installs or upgrades for you to fret about.  In fact, new code releases occurring ruing the middle of the week ensure that you'll always have the latest and greatest version of our platform.  We worry about uptime, maintenance, and backups, so you don't have to!



Gen Y women. What influences their brand discovery?

Friday, November 13, 2009 by Chris Baggott
search, social media and Gen YCan I buy stock in eMarketer?   Every day they send me this great email with relevant content to my business....and yours.

Like this report for example.   Clearly this blog is about education, and persuasion that we offer best blogging software for Business.   Our firm belief is that that Social Media helps a company serve two masters.  One is the search engine, and two is the need to humanize your business.

When you see a chart like this, it really helps make the case that if you just look at the responses related to search, online profile, and the two blog mentions (blog written by someone like me and professional or subject experts), you can clearly see that Corporate blogging is the critical hub of todays marketing strategy. 

Blogs drive search traffic better than almost anything else...and it's a lot easier and legitmate to simply write often about how you help customers and solve problems than a lot of other SEO tools you might be tempted with.

I also love the phrase: "someone like me".   Obviously, you have people in your organization who fit the professional/subject expert catagory.    But think about it.   Among your employees and your current customers you also have lots of people who can be classified as "someone like me".   

Now either Gen X or Gen Y women represents an extremely large catagory.   If you had to make a persona around everyone who could be slotted into these groups you would struggle.   But tactics like triggered emails to existing customers are amazing ways to solicit relevant blog content and engage the long tail of this diverse yet consistant audience.

Steering the Titanic

Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Lee Jorgenson
How does your company adapt to change?  Does it move like a gazelle, or is it like steering the Titanic?  If your business is trying to be competitive in search marketing, it better not be the latter.

The search marketing industry is ever-changing, and if your business plans to hang with the pack, it better be ready to handle change.  Watch out for red tape and processes that will keep you from being able to make quick decisions.  The SEO tools you were using three years ago may not be the best tools available to you today, and the moment you realize that there is a better opportunity, you need to be ready to act.

BizSurvey is sold on the value of Compendium's blog platform

Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Compendium Client Reviews
BizSurvey wasn't sure of the benefits of blogging. After further research, they were sold on the benefits of blogging with Compendium blogging platform. An employee at BizSurvey, Matt Braun, made the following statement about Compendium's software: "Had to convince my boss of the value of blogging, but once I got him to look at Compendium's solution, he saw the light - and within weeks we saw the results in our SEO improvement." The results don't lie - SEO improvement is just one of the many benefits of blogging with Compendium.

Name: Stephanie West
Company: Compendium Blogware
BlogURL:

Blogs and Online Marketing

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry
Join in the Blog ConversationSeveral years ago (we're talking like 2004), if someone was talking about a blog the typical reaction was "huh - whats that?". 

In today's world, as we start thinking about entering the year 2010 - blogs are everywhere and are increasingly becoming a leading online marketing tool, even Presidential candidates have blogs. 

This type of online marketing has changed how things work - consumers now know, and look for a way into a company to see the true side.  They don't buy the hype of PR and Marketing ads, they want to know what the person they are going to be buying from really has to say.  Blogs allow this conversation and potential customers are listening in.

To quote the master himself, Self Godin:

"It is now common and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about, with the world"


At Compendium we have been in the front row seats to see this first hand.  We have over 400 clients of all shapes, sizes, and industries that are embracing a business blog platform and adding it to their SEO tools.  Our clients are allowing the human voice of their company resonate with potential customers in order to generate sales and increase profit. 

Richard Edelman, President and CEO of Edelman stated it best when he said:

" Blogs represent the best chance for companies to inform the conversation"


Is your company in on the conversation?  To find out more on how to get started, check out our whitepaper on "Considering Blogging" or schedule a demo today.



More Great Keyword Usage Tips

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 by P.J. Hinton
Yesterday, I blogged about Compendium's Keyword Strength Meter, touching on the dos and don'ts of keyword phrase usage.  It turns out that Indy online marketing authority Doug Karr was thinking along the same lines and posted a very useful article on keyword usage and SEO on the Marketing Technology Blog that expands on this topic.  If smart and non-spammy SEO is your goal, his post is definitely a must-read.

Improving a Call to Action

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry
Compelling Calls to ActionOne of the most important pieces of information to have when measuring the success of any marketing or SEO tools is the number of conversions, leads generated, or data captured to put into nurturing campaigns.  All of this data will eventually lead to a larger pipeline and more sales!

A corporate blogging software, such as Compendium Blogware, allows a company to increase their online marketing efforts, as it is a platform built for search engine optimization.  Our powerful blogging software takes on all of the heavy lifting and allows the user to focus solely on creating content.

Another piece that makes our our blogging solution so easy is that we incorporate CTA's (Calls To Action) on every blog network with us, to help track visitors that come to the blog then click through to the company wanting more information or to take that next step towards conversion.

Recently Compendium held a Client Only webinar focused on understanding and improving the calls to action (CTA's) on your corporate blogging network.  This webinar allows you to get a better understanding of what makes a great CTA, and how to incorporate best practices to draw more leads into your sales pipeline.

For a replay of this webinar, contact your dedicated Client Success Manager or our Product Support Team at help@compendium.com.





The path of successful business blogging

Monday, November 9, 2009 by Michael Burton
The purpose and success within Compendium's powerful blogging software breaks down into three simple steps...

Blogging --> SEO Opportunities --> Customer Conversion Opportunities

Obviously, the goal for anyone reaching out to customers online is customer conversion.  It is not enough for visitors to spend time looking at your blogs; you want them to find your website, find your products/services and make the purchase!  All of this comes most easily through strong SEO Tools.

SEO Opportunities are the best way for a searcher to find your blog.  Nearly every searcher ends up clicking on the top few listings in a Google or Bing search and having your blog listed at the top will lead to visitors finding your page.  And this all comes from consistent, relevant blog postings.

Blogging is the obvious starting point.  Without a strong base to begin your online marketing campaign, you'll have no potential to see changes.  Blogging gets those key phrases you care about listed high on Google and other search engines so searchers can find you.  Compendium's affordable blogging software will help get this system underway!

Applying more SG to business blogging

Friday, November 6, 2009 by Brian Millis
Ok, so I try not to do double Seth Godin references but he seems to be so timely for what I'm doing.  His most recent blog post begins with this quote:

"The problem with "everyone" is that in order to reach everyone or teach everyone or sell to everyone, you need to so water down what you've got you end up with almost nothing."

This is what I find so hilarious about most of the corporate blogs I read.  Often time these busy business men and women spend time manually tagging or categorizing their freeware blog for things like:  social media, agency, advice, technology, etc. etc.  

These are such general topics for organization.  Most of these people tell me that they spend time blogging for SEO and do this organization so they will be found in the search engine by qualified prospects.  If you are a branding agency, why would someone search just "branding" or "agency"?!  They wouldn't.  They would search something like "branding agency in charlotte".  

Seth's advice is great to heed when thinking about corporate blogging.  If you try and make your blog about EVERYTHING or appealing to EVERYONE . . . . almost NO ONE will find you.  Or you could look at it this way:  A company that creates one blog and fills it with info ranging from industry news to product information simply waters down the blog, trying to make it about EVERYTHING.  This means it will not be found by ANYONE or be a useful vehicle for getting found in search and driving traffic.  

And this is why Compendium's structure is brilliant.  Blog about EVERYTHING and let the software take care of the organization that actually makes it relevant to the searcher and the search engine.  

Common Mistakes in Blogging (#4)

Friday, November 6, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry
(4th in a series of 5)

Common Mistake #4:

The reason blogs are successful SEO tools is because they allow you to update them as frequently as you want.  This is what the Search Engines love!  They will send their web crawlers to your site looking for new content, and if they continue to find new content every time, they will come back more often and more frequently.

On the same hand, if the web crawler does not find new content, it will be trained to not come back as often or as frequently.  Allowing your competition to surpass you.  

Your business blog will not be very successful if the web crawlers aren't able to find new content.  Make it discoverable and both the web crawlers and your readers/potential new customers will be able to find you.

Answer:

There are a few ways to make a blog more easily discovered by web crawlers, but the #1 way is to always be creating new content, and posting it frequently (on average a blog network should be generating at least 25 posts per month).

Other ways include:
  • Adding a link on your company home page to the blog.
  • Publicize the blog in newsletters, email signatures, and marketing collateral.
  • Integrate the blog with other social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.
  • Optimize content for search engines by always using at least one exact keyword phrase in your blog post and post title.  (do not keyword stuff though - its spam!)


Common Mistake #1

Common Mistake #2
Common Mistake #3

Alerding Castor Hewitt receives results

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Stephanie West
This firm is a great example of why a business should blog.  They dedicate about 2 hours a week to blogging.  That's right: 2 HOURS PER WEEK.  Wrap your head around that.  In addition to their two hour per week blogging dedication, they have seen 500% blogging ROI...  500%!

Those numbers (alone) should convince you that corporate blogging has something great going for it.  But if those numbers don't convince you, consider this additional information about Alerding Castor Hewitt

This case study is an excellent reason of why you should blog for business.  Compendium's blogging platform structures SEO tools that help maximize your search engine optimization results.  Blogging for search, just as Alerding Castor Hewitt does, is a way for potential customers to find you on the internet.  Online marketing is a means of reaching those potential customers that are searching for something on the internet.  By blogging (for as little as 2 hours per week!), you are helping position your company to get found in search. 

Click here to view this Alerding Castor Hewitt case study and read about their blogging success!

Blogging and Success

Friday, October 30, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

In the Client Success department we are always monitoring how our clients are doing, and measuring their success.  Every network that is set up with Compendium's powerful blogging software is set up with analytics that we are able to share with our customers in order to keep the ultimate goal in mind - return on investment/driving lead generation and sales.

We work hard to help show our clients the success of their blog program, but we are able to see even more results when our clients understand the marathon type success with a blog program. 

When looking at our most successful clients we see a few characteristics that are involved with each program - does your blog program have the following?
 

  • Dedicated Program Owner- someone who is tied to the success of a program and will work with their bloggers to stay motivated
  • Tracking - the company has tracking in place in order to see the a visitor from the blog through to conversion


For more information on how to add our powerful blogging software to your marketing's SEO tools, schedule a demo today!

A Good Rule of Thumb For Content Creation

Friday, October 30, 2009 by Jess Wehner
Many clients wonder how much content it will take to start receiving traffic on their keywords - and the answer we most often tell them is you can never write enough!  But the truth is, depending on the keywords you are targeting - it could take writing content to each of those keyword phrases as much as one time a day.   When you decide to go after words organically, it takes a bit more work than targeting them via a pay per click campaign. 

Using Compendium as your business blog software is only the first step in a great SEO strategy.  Writing frequent, relevant content is the next step.  I found a great post that gives one person's opinion on how much content you can actually expect to write: SEO Copywriting Frequency.  Ian Lurie says to look at the competitiveness of the term, and then gives this scale for how much content you should be producing based on the number of competing pages showing up when you search for that term in Google:
  • <10,000 competing pages: Write once a week.
  • 10,001-100,000 competing pages: Write twice a week.
  • 100,001-200,000 competing pages: Write three times a week.
  • 200,001-2,000,000 competing pages: Write every day.
Keep in mind, these theory applies to each keyword - so if you are targeting 100 keywords, you need to write a lot of content! (You can see why we just tell people to write as much as possible). 

Fortunately, Compendium gives each of your posts the biggest bang for your buck, pulling each post out to several different pages based on the number of keywords you use.  So instead of having to write 100 posts a day for 100 keywords, our software will take 1 post and put it towards 2-5 keywords (or however many you target).  For more information on exactly how our software works, view a demo with one of our business development managers. 

Indianapolis Gyms Need Blog Software... Part 2

Thursday, October 29, 2009 by Amber Mohling
In my previous post, I discussed my experiences of researching online to find possible gyms I could join in the Indianapolis area.  My frustration came when I wasn't finding relevant search results, and I was able to determine that these gyms probably aren't using effective SEO tools to help market themselves online.  My suggestion was that these gyms should use blog software.


Today, I continued my online research because I'm determined to find a gym with all the qualities I'm seeking out.  After digging and digging online, I finally found a gym that really interests me.  They even have a blog that discusses many of the qualities I'm looking for when google searching:  Indianapolis personal trainer, sport fitness training in Indianapolis, etc.  However, this gym was not present in the search engine results for any of these keyword phrases.


Compendium's blogging solution is different from all others out there and is helping our clients get found on numerous keywords related to their business... whether that be a gym, an ecommerce site, a brownie company, or anything inbetween. 

Check out the Compendium website to learn more and request a demostration of our software today!

Tracking Newsletter Readers in Google Analytics

Thursday, October 29, 2009 by Kaila Woodside
A few weeks back the Client Success Team met up with a Google Analytics expert to learn more about what Google Analytics can do for our clients who are leveraging corporate blogging software. The more SEO tools and tracking ability a client has, the more they will know what their blog is doing for them. One feature really stood out to me during this session is the ability to tag links and track them throughout the analytics.

For example, lets say you are putting together a newsletter campaign. If you are leveraging email software, like ExactTarget, you are able to track open rates and click through rates through the software - but how do you track the reader after they have clicked through to your blog? With Google's URL builder you can do just that.

A few easy steps to follow: 
1.) Enter the URL of your blog site

2.) Fill in the fields: 
- Campaign Source
- Campaign Medium
- Campaign Name
3.) Generate Code

4.) Use the generated hyperlink to send newsletter readers to your blog and track them through your analytics.

Tracking these readers:
Find your Direct Traffic. Within your direct traffic look, for your campaign source (IE: October Newsletter). Count of the conversions, read times, pages viewed/visit, etc to understand what these readers do after they leave your newsletter!

A blogging strategy is an important investment for clients, but if you don't know where all of your traffic is coming from and where its going... then you might not understand how powerful of a tool it really is.

You Don't Peak In High School

Monday, October 19, 2009 by Chris Baggott
You don't peak in high school.Seth had a great post the other day talking about the goal of High School being basically to draw as much attention to yourself as possible. 

The point being that most of the time this attention getting is short lived and without any real long term goal.  As my wife says to our kids all the time: "You don't want to peak in High School!"

We see this a lot with the business people we talk to who are enamored with social networks without having any real goals.  Like high school, the goal is to be popular with no other objective.  This was perfectly manifested in the eMarketer story we talked about the other day.  Their survey said that marketers had a goal of being Thought Leaders?

Seth's brilliance is that we have all seen this in our own lives.  Popularity for the sake of popularity..."If I'm popular lots of good things will happen".  Now some people are naturally going to be popular while most are going find themselves doing lots of compromising activity in a desperate attempt to be popular.....as you remember I'm sure, that popularity didn't last long and the memory is probably pretty bitter for all associated.

Then you have your ten or twenty year reunion and you find out who is really successful in life.  Almost always, it's not the people who peaked in high school.  The successful people are the ones who focused on the fundamentals and had a vision of the future.

How does this tie to Corporate Blogging?  Widespread employee blogging is an investment in the future.   The goal isn't popularity, followers or fans.  The goal is to lay a foundation of stories about the problems you solve.  That content will target search traffic.  SEO is better for everyone...it's scalable,  sustainable and puts you in front of people (prospects) who have problems you can solve.   Corporate Blogging is real life, not high school.

Free Webinar

Using Blogs to Generate and Nurture Demand into Closed Business.

Hosted by Richard Cunningham, VP Marketing of Right On Interactive and Chris Baggott Co-founder, CEO of Compendium Blogware. Thursday, December 3rd 2009.
Sign up here »

Meet Our Team

Abby Brosmer-Rivera Ali Sales Brian Millis Chris Baggott Chantelle Flannery The Client Corner Dereck Martin James Litton Jennifer Buscher Jenni Edwards Jim Hyslop Jess Wehner Krystal Featherston Kaila Woodside Megan Glover Meghan Peters mikey mioduski P.J. Hinton Randy Cox Sarah Sedberry Chandra Chavez Julie Murphy

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