About the Author
I'm Jeff Lefevere -- a Gen-X'er, Dot-com survivor and a wise veteran in understanding and executing technology-centric, customer sales and marketing programs for and with companies of all sizes. 

I'm at my best when working for and delivering a solution from a company that has unlimited upside, but the sensibility to continually put the customer first by offering a superior product with a partnering approach to mutual success.  Compendium wins in spades on this count and I strive to continually raise the bar with our team, on behalf of our clients.

Personally, I write a nationally recognized wine blog, have a beautiful wife and a lovable dog that also hogs the bed.
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Five Steps to Mastering Blogging and Online Marketing
Posted Sunday, August 17, 2008 by jeff lefevere
A Compendium customer, Lizan Brand, from Greenfield Liquors, was featured in the Saturday edition of the Indianapolis Star.

One of the things that Lizan is doing that is really interesting is mixing in video--highlighting drink recipes, talking about wine and the sorts of things that contextually engage a reader.

In my personal life, I’m well in tune with wine & spirits video blogging as a wine blogger (vlogger) is ascending to national attention.  In fact, wine online darling Gary Vaynerchuk from WinelibraryTV continues to grab the wine world by its shirt lapels and give a good, healthy shake.

Gary continues to not only lead the charge in creating a brand online for himself and his business by proxy, but he also continues to give advice, good advice, to folks interested in growing their business, any business.

Vaynerchuk did an audio interview with an Internet-based business coach and he provided some additional insights that are not just applicable to technology marketing, but marketing in general.  You can find the audio portion of the interview here.

Find the text transcript here.

A couple of the nuggets that I gleaned are:

* Vaynerchuk on putting content out on the web:  “If you put out great content, you will be found.”

* Vaynerchuk on leveraging your expertise: “So, if you are the best guy in your law firm in contracts, instead of waiting eight to ten years to become a partner, start (using technology) about what you know.  Give away that content for free.  It will come back to you in spades 800 times over.”

* Vaynerchuk on tapping your passion: “So you may be good at three or four things, but please site down and analyze where you feel you’re most passionate about, even if that is the most competitive genre, do it because that is where you’re going to win when you really believe it, when it goes through your blood, you’re going to win every time because even if you’re not seeing the mythical success, your heart and soul is going to be happy.  That is going to push through to the point when you will start seeing success."

* The Interviewer on setting lofty goals: “you have to have high ideals. You have to have something that you’re shooting for that’s absolutely spectacular. What you have to realize is that’s the ideal, that’s not the goal. When you achieve a certain level of success, the people that are super successful don’t compare where they get to--to their ideal. The ideal is just where they’re focused towards. To be happy and to be excited about what you’re accomplishing, you have to look backwards to where you were. As long as you make that leap and you look backwards to feel good about yourself then you can keep that excitement going. If you’re always comparing where you are to the perfect (ideal) then it’s very hard to stay excited …

The frenetic interview wraps up with Vaynerchuk’ “Five Steps to Mastering Social Media.”  If you replace the “social media” with “blogging” the same values hold true.  They are:

1)  Make sure you want to engage/learn it.

2)  Now that you know you want it, spend every living second that you possibly can on it.

3)  Put your toe in the pool.  Get involved.

4)  Humble yourself.  If you’re the best basketball player in the world, you’re playing hockey now.  Put on your skates.

5)  Know what you want to accomplish.

Good advice for all and something Lizan, a Compendium customer, is doing successfully and so can you.  Business blogging is hardly hard, it just takes a little bit of the above five items.  
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Developing Blog Post Content
Posted Friday, August 1, 2008 by jeff lefevere
Have you ever wondered how others find time in their day to write consistent (and consistently good) blog posts? 

You may think to yourself, “If only I had the time.”

It’s easy to de-prioritize blogging in order to stay caught up on email and the real core of your business -- growth.

De-prioritizing your blogging, however, is a mistake, especially in the face of your in-box and business growth.

Simply, you likely write close to two thousand words a day in email.  One blog post is the equivalent of 250 – 300 words.  So, in the course of business, on a daily basis, you likely write at least 8 blog posts, at a minimum. And, likely, at least half of those emails are internal and operationally oriented, not affecting the acquisition of a new customer.  

Secondarily, as an adjunct to your daily email, your real daily focus is helping the business run smoothly and drive growth.  

When you think about where you can save time, or shift time to focus on blogging, it would have to be getting out of the email in-box and into the blogging platform.

I say this not for the obvious reason that time spent emailing and blogging is a one-to-one trade-off, instead it’s because blogging for business allows you to create content that is optimized for search engines and that traffic subsequently leads to customer acquisition and a flow of potential new customers.

These two factors combined make daily blogging a no-brainer.

Am I positing that time spent blogging instead of emailing will lead to growth in your business?  Yes I am.

So, say no to those four emails that don’t advance the situation forward, though they may advance your opinion forward, and drive that energy into growing the business, using blogging as a tool to do so.

A couple of tips to take your creative brainpower into overdrive:

1) Start to view your work life in terms of story vignettes

The customer situation yesterday that was resolved and made the company look good?  It makes a perfect blog post!

2) Think about your business and blogging tangentially. 

That Fortune, Men’s Health or Cooking Light magazine you read in your personal time is a treasure trove of cultural currency that can be cross-pollinated with your business for pop culture relevancy.  That article about the healthiest cities in America?  Well, if you’re a healthcare blog, there has to be some relevant tie-in to your business

3) Keep a notebook handy to scrawl down the genesis of an idea when it strikes
  
You won’t remember the idea later, but just the scribbled note will jog your memory.

I hope these tips help drive your blogging success forward.
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The Best $0.87 You Can Spend on a Business Blogging and Internet Marketing Book
Posted Friday, August 1, 2008 by jeff lefevere
Some people like to know what time it is. Others want to know how the watch works. 

As a nation of learners, oftentimes, we want to understand context, the situation around the situation.  Besides a mellifluous voice, this is probably one of the reasons that we enjoy radio personality Paul Harvey so much; he helps us understand the “Rest of the Story” in regards to a situation concerning business or humanity.

This story/back-story element also is a reason why blogging is such a rich tool for the marketer.  In addition to being “human” with your prospect you have a tremendous opportunity to present context, which aids sales.

If you’re interested in picking up a book that will give you incredible context and “The Rest of the Story” to blogging and social media, the best $.87 you can spend is a series of 95 theses written in 1999 and posted on the Internet before being born in book form in 2000. The Seminal book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto” is as good of a primer as any that I can think of to help somebody make sense of some of the large, seismic dynamics that are taking place in the Internet space, a space you are presumably participating in or considering by developing, executing and continuing to enhance your blogging for business program. The preface of the book says:

The Cluetrain Manifesto is a set of 95 theses organised and put forward as a manifesto, or call to action, for all businesses operating within what is suggested to be a newly-connected marketplace. The ideas put forward within the manifesto aim to examine the impact of the Internet on both markets (consumers) and organisations. In addition, as both consumers and organisations are able to utilise the Internet and Intranets to establish a previously unavailable level of communication both within and between these two groups, the manifesto suggests that the changes that will be required from organisations as they respond to the new marketplace environment.

Some of the “theses” of the book are downright Nostradamus-like. When the book first came out, it was heralded and then dismissed as a part of the collateral damage that occurred with the downturn in the economy. Now, these simple maxims, some eight years later, couldn’t be more on target, correct and downright visionary, especially since they were released in the pre-blog era. A couple of examples:

* The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

* Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

* Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.

Go to Amazon.com, search for “Cluetrain Manifesto” and buy the book used for under a buck. For $0.87 you can’t even buy a cup of coffee and I guarantee this book will have a more lasting impact than a Venti with cream and four sugars.

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Tangential Brainstorming for Blog Content
Posted Tuesday, July 22, 2008 by jeff lefevere
Writing interesting, compelling content for blog posts is very simple.  Just a dash of brainpower is necessary in order to set yourself up for success.

Besides planning to write on a schedule with consistency, where how can you find writing inspiration?

1) Keep a pad of paper that serves as a brain dump for ideas

2) Think about your ideas in a story arc—with a beginning, a middle and an end.  Blog posts don’t need to be long -- 250 words can do the job.  In fact, there is a whole niche on the internet around Micro Fiction—short stories less than 400 words.  An idea, with context, with a beginning, middle and an end.  

3) Use day to day interactions with customers and situations that come up – even business fires and fire drills can turn into a blog post if you apply a bit of humanity and wisdom to the situation while tying it into your business.  Plus, the funny anecdotes that come out of customer service situations, along as the innocent are protected, serve as excellent educational items

4) Think about translating a prevailing concept and tying into a post related to your business.

One way I like to do #4 this is to read business book summaries.

Everybody loves a good business book—the one with some insight that taps that far away repository in your brain matter that then sends a synapse firing against your memory bank of experiences that creates a new idea.  Books help to feed that fire and add to our repository.

But, let’s be honest, reading books takes time, and most of us have, at best, an hour a day for leisure reading—which makes getting through a book, or several books to spark an idea something of a bit of work, and that presumes that we’re choosing non-fiction books and not a bit of escapist fiction.

There are numerous services that offer, for a reasonable fee, business book distillation summaries—a Cliffs Note version of the book—the essential truths and ideas without all of the interminable anecdotes that fill up 225 pages of a 250 page tome. Clearly, this sort of option lets you glean the ideas, quickly, retaining the good stuff and not engaging in the non-productive activity.  Most summaries are eight pages or less and that’s a program I can get behind.

So, how can you immediately apply this to your blogging?  Simple.  Google “Business Book Summaries” sign up for a sample for a service, read a book summary, glean the ideas and apply it to your business in a way that is accessible to a customer or a potential customer.

For example, for a book like “Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, I might use that as a frame of reference to discuss the influencers and your core customers that act as your evangelists and how they spread the word for your company.  Every company has these customers and it is just a matter of setting the appropriate context with humanity and authority to apply the concept to your business.  

Easy peasy.  

So, next time you get stumped, just remember that tangential thinking, or allowing different ideas to bounce off each other can be a great way to create an interesting post and business book summaries are one of hundreds of ways to do so.
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Blogging for Search Engine Optimization
Posted Monday, June 30, 2008 by jeff lefevere
As our Client Success team, the folks responsible for day-to-day work with our clients interact with current and soon to be clients, we get a frequent and re-occurring question … and it goes: 

"We love Compendium and we “get” the blogging for search, but what’s the real difference between “blogging” and “blogging for business?”

It’s a simple question and it goes to the core of what Compendium stands for.  And, the answer is equally simple and really can best be understood by understanding the division of writing for pleasure, as a hobbyist, what we like to call a “Citizen Journalist,” and blogging for results, or blogging for business.

Blogging for pleasure and blogging for results.

In talking with customers, I usually use myself as my own baseline or example.
I have a personal wine blog (www.goodgrape.com).  I happen to like wine and I happen to like to write—hence, I view my blog as a hobby, a creative outlet.
Now, mind you, my blog has yielded some interesting results for me, the least of which are wine samples, wine books and other flotsam and jetsam that are sent to me in order to try and influence me, as others view me as an alpha-influencer.

This influencer model is great and typifies what thousands and millions of other people try to do—cultivate influence with loyal readership.  In doing so, you get into a “jetstream” of community in the niche in which you write, but to get to the point where I am at today, (about 1000 - 1200 daily readers, a bunch of hits and pageviews, etc.) it has taken very consistent content creation (4-6 posts per week) and a lot of social networking over the course of 2.5 years.

While this is a fine model for individuals, it’s not that great of a model for businesses.  It’s very difficult to get somebody in the marketing department to chew off on a two or three year “influencer” model, and with good reason.

However, and thankfully, the underpinning of Compendium is to blog for business.  What that means is that instead of trying to cultivate a readership by writing good content that goes into a category bucket, you try to cultivate content for search engine optimization by writing good content that gets compended into a keyword blog (our equivalent of a category), so people who are searching for those “keywords” can quickly and easily find you in the search engines (Google dominates search) and then subsequently find something you are saying of value-- enough value to want and stay on your site for a while and do some other action that drives to a metric for your organization.

It’s very simple, but a very important paradigm shift in thinking.  Social media, as an umbrella over a bunch of different things, including blogging, is great, but it’s really only great in business if it drives a result.

Many people will tell you that influence is the new currency, and they wouldn’t be completely wrong, but the part they don’t get right is that influence doesn’t equal a sales number and using your blog as a business tool to drive engagement with customers is very important, as well.

So, what is the real difference between blogging and blogging for business, or blogging for a purpose?  

Results.

Blogging for a purpose with Compendium delivers the kind of results tied to a metric that can be delivered infinitely quicker than a two year slow burn of influence.
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Free!
Posted Thursday, May 22, 2008 by jeff lefevere
Who says there is no free lunch?  In the world of content AND promotion, *free* is a pretty darn good tool to gain attention and devotion.

A couple of weeks ago a local radio station gave out *free* trees on Arbor Day.  The line to get a tree must have been a block long, snaking around a corner by a Starbucks and trailing out of sight of the truck dispensing the trees.  Men, women and children standing in line for an hour for something that can be purchased at any hardware store in the country for about $7.

Speaking of Starbucks, I’m a sometimes reluctant customer; I wish they didn’t get so much of my money.  Though, I do have to note that I’m taking full advantage of their *free* coffee on Wednesdays.  They are giving away tall cups of their new “Pike’s Place” roast.  I feel like I’m taking back a little bit of my wallet each week.  Starbucks bean counters are likely marking me as a “Pike’s Place” customer for the next four years ….

I bring these examples up because there is a predisposition to value things commensurate with price.  Sometimes free isn’t so good, but in the world of brand building, blogging and content, free is great and expected.  It’s our lingua franca.
Free in other arenas is good, as well.  Many magazines are *free.* They hope to keep a high subscriber base so they can sell advertising and you, the consumer, are the benefactor.

One recommendation I have for just such a free magazine is BtoB magazine, a trade magazine for marketing strategists. www.btobonline.com

You can subscribe for, again, *free* at the following link:

http://freemags.magazines.com/?afd_number=7218

While flipping through my *free* magazine, I noted a couple of articles that were really good.  One was by Phil Johnson, President of an advertising agency in Massachusetts.  The sub-title of his column was, “When looking for ways to freshen up your brand, become a provider of relevant content.”

Hmmm … starting to see a theme here.  He might as well have said, “When branding your company, consider *free* content by blogging.
A couple of the nuggets he mentioned include:
  • Mine existing content
  • Transform old content into new
  • Treat your web site like a media property
  • Partner (license content, if appropriate)
The net take-away here is that *free* is a good thing and if you can provide something for free that has a tremendous value—something that engenders a user response, then, well, you’ve just cracked the code on this little blogging thing, creating a new customer who comes to you with a high value in mind, for something you have provided to him for free and that makes the subsequent business negotiation for something that’s not so free all the better.
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One Wine and Blogging
Posted Friday, May 16, 2008 by jeff lefevere
I love blogging.  Let me say it again – I love blogging.

I love blogging for a number of reasons, but related to business, I love it because I would not be sitting in this chair were it not for a personal wine blog I started two years ago.
In January 2006 I was a technology sales and marketing guy with a nice, albeit safe career.

Creatively, however, I was stagnant.  I’ve always been more proactive than reactive and working for a Fortune 150 company, in large part, was stifling: put your time in, connect the dots, suffer the politics, don’t veer too far to the left, hope your bonus hits and wait for the 3% merit increase.  

Yawn.

So, I started a wine blog (www.goodgrape.com) to simply give myself something creative to do as an outlet.  Mind you, I was simply a guy that lived in the middle of the country that happened to enjoy wine, and I studied it a bit as an enthusiast.  I had and have no special powers and no magic palate.

Two years later I have a nationally recognized wine blog, good traffic, influence in my niche and some amazing things have happened:  First, people seek my opinion out on matters of wine and marketing, frequently.  Two years ago I would have never been qualified to provide a marketing strategy to a wine importer … which I did just prior to joining Compendium.  I’ve been both a winner and a finalist in the American Wine Blog Awards … my site is featured monthly in a wine business magazine called Wine Business Monthly … I have a wine book idea that has been validated by a publisher … The Executive Editor of Wine Spectator has commented on my site.  Celebrity chef Michael Chiarello has commented on my site, numerous winemakers have commented on my site … and, they send me wine samples. Last week I received three wine books in the mail from three different publicists … I am fully networked in the wine industry and able to send dozens of emails to people asking for a favor or a tip, and I would get a helpful response.

Whodathunk?

I bring this up not as a chest-thumping exercise (so please take this with my humility in mind), but because this same opportunity exists for everybody!

We all have expertise in our particular niche and writing authoritatively, consistently and thought-provokingly will lead to success.  Let me say it again – blogging will lead to success for your business.  In fact, you have a greater foundation to build from because you are a business!

The Compendium solution adds that additional “secret sauce” ingredient because developing a blog takes time, cultivating a readership takes time, finding your “voice” takes time.

However, our focus on search engine optimization short circuits through a lot of that cultivation and gives you the ability to drive traffic much quicker than the “slow and steady wins the race” mentality that I had.

There is a real difference between being a “citizen journalist” which I am as a wine blogger and being a business blogger, but there are some shared tenets in terms of creating a sphere of influence and driving to success metrics.  It starts with content and ends with content.  And, Compendium helps you do it the right way.  

But, don’t take my word for it (though you could). Find out for yourself.  Blog consistently with good content for a year and I’ll give you a personal guarantee that your business will be richer for it.  If it’s not, I’ll buy a bottle of wine of your choosing.  In fact, when you realize that your business is better off, I’ll still give you a bottle of wine.  It might be a sample I received, though.
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Three Resources to Get Your Juices Flowing
Posted Friday, May 9, 2008 by jeff lefevere
I’m an information junkie.  I admitted it.  I read almost exclusively non-fiction books and I’m a giant consumer of magazines and online content.

It’s a problem.  30 + magazines come to my house and it’s all I can do to keep up, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  The guilt of missing out on something that leads to an idea or gets my creative juices flowing is greater than the guilt of falling behind on a stack of magazines.

And, frankly, I’m a blogger, so ideas are gas for my engine.  There are no new ideas in the world there are only new combinations of existing ideas.  Therefore, in my worldview, reading diversely helps the brain synapses fire and ideas form from disparate pieces of information.

I do realize, however, that other people are normal and don’t do this.

That said, there are a ton of excellent content options online that you can check out on your lunch hour or as you ease into your day, cup of coffee in hand.

We all need a spark now and again, and these are three resources that provide a spark in spades, and it’s likely you haven’t checked them out. When you’re looking for something to inspire a post, take a look at the following:

Slideshare – a site where users upload presentations across a wide body of topics, many of them business oriented.

ChangeThis – a site of presentations as well.  Excellent thought-leadership content around mostly business topics

YouTube – of course, we’ve all watched YouTube videos for fun, but have you used it to search for business-related and/or education content?  Type in something you are interested in from a business perspective and you’re likely to find something engaging and valuable.  I had the good fortune to see Mark Burnett, the producer of Survivor speak live.  Suffice to say I would pay to listen to this guy read the phonebook.  This link is a fun example.

Have fun and fire up your creative juices.
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The Eloquence of Passing Time
Posted Friday, May 9, 2008 by jeff lefevere
There’s an obscure Chicago-based band called Poi Dog Pondering and a lyric to one of their songs, Collarbone, says the following:

“ … The only thing that speaks the truth is the eloquence of passing time”

This speaks volumes to me, particularly when you consider blogging as a marketing paradigm.

Our Co-Founder and CEO, Chris Baggott did a webinar this week with a partner company and we were made privy to some advance questions from the audience.  One of the questions was:

“Is blogging a fad or a trend?  Should I just sit on the sideline and catch the next ‘big thing’ earlier on in the process?”

Good question.  

The difference between a fad and trend, as we all know, is a fad is sizzling hot and then fades away.  Croc shoes come to mind, though I am so far abstaining from wearing molded plastic as footwear.  If I had to make a prediction I would say Crocs will fall somewhere into a 2020 fad retrospective of the last 30 + years—probably somewhere between big hair from the 80’s and grunge music in the 90’s.  

However, a trend is something that is enduring; something changes the landscape of how we function.  Think Starbucks coffee.  A scant 10 or 12 years ago nobody would have imagined paying $3 for a cup of coffee as a part of our daily routine.  Now, you can’t imagine not having a Starbucks nearby.

Given that blogging started in earnest at around the same as Starbucks ascension (blogging history here), I think it’s pretty safe to say that this little thing called blogging is a trend.

Heck, there’s probably a Master’s Thesis project in drawing correlations between the notion of the Starbucks “third-place” and blogging as an engagement mechanism, but we’ll save that for another day.

I guess my overall point is that blogging is here to stay, and while blogging itself has been around for a decade, we’re just now heading into an era where there is widespread adoption for business.  And, this adoption is all a part of a larger quilt of trends that suggests, no, demands that business optimize themselves on the web for search while cultivating their customer and prospect base using an “authentic” voice.

So, to our friend that was optimistically skeptical, my response to his benign question would be, “The only thing that speaks the truth is the eloquence of passing time.”  The next big thing has yet to emerge, but if it’s a trend instead of a fad, you’ll want to engage in that AFTER blogging for business because our lives don’t get simpler, they get more complex and what comes next is likely to be iteration on top of our existing prevailing wisdom. 

I hope you are or are planning on heeding the truth, as well.
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How to Write Smokin' Content
Posted Friday, May 2, 2008 by jeff lefevere
You can almost hear the refrain from the crowd:

“I don’t have time.”

Or,

 “I’m not creative.”

And, my personal favorite,

“But, I’m not a good writer.”  

Don’t believe any of it for a second.

The reality is that in this day and age we have a hard time writing a greeting card without using a word processor, and our written communication has exploded in the age of the Internet.

If estimates are accurate, the amount of emails that we receive and send daily is our foremost communication vehicle.

Chances are, the Marketing Manager who says he/she doesn’t have time to write is likely writing at least a 1000 words a day via email.

Hmmm …

A good, well-thought through blog post is the equivalent of that two paragraph email that is being sent to Betty Joe in accounting. You know the type:  you’re never sure which side of the bed she woke up on and email is easier than making the walk over to see how bearish she is on a ten point scale.

So, let’s just acknowledge that everybody has the capacity to write, everybody has ideas and that the “time” notion is really a function of prioritization.

The other thing to take into consideration is the quality of the writing that is a reflection on your organization.  Ideas are one thing, and everybody has them like a nose, but sloppy grammar can kill a message.  Now, make no mistake, the blogosphere is forgiving for some loose grammar.  I should know, as my use of the possessive is a grammatical Achilles heel.  However, poor syntax can be a problem in writing.

Because syntax is really the only impediment to blogging, I always recommend that clients take a look at a software program called WhiteSmoke.

A very-well regarded and well-reviewed software program, WhiteSmoke promises:

… An innovative software tool that improves and edits your English writing. Based on patented natural language processing (NLP) technology, WhiteSmoke performs advanced and context-based English grammar, spelling, and punctuation checking, as well as text enrichment to enhance your writing. From well-written letters and emails to friends, through to professional business documentation and presentations.

Priced at about $80, it’s an affordable solution to help give folks the confidence to let their ideas shine through and acts as a super adjunct to your Microsoft Word program.

This reminds me, it’s really a good idea to write and edit a post in Word and then save as a .txt file before copying into the Compendium platform.

Next time you hear an organizational limiting statement about blogging, be armed with a couple of solutions to help unleash the embedded knowledge in your organization.  WhiteSmoke can be a tool that helps build confidence for intrepid bloggers that need a boost.
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The Blogging Imperative
Posted Friday, April 25, 2008 by jeff lefevere
First there was the housing fallout, then the credit crunch, and now some softness in the stock market.

The “R” word is on everybody’s lips.

Under these circumstances training and marketing are usually the first budget items to get whacked in a business belt tightening.

However, in an Internet world there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In fact, as a marketer you can demonstrate incredible ROI and business development using your blog as a means of a low cost way to cultivate prospects and engage your customers in one-to-one feedback, or “engagement.”

I read an article at the marketing resource site Marketingprofs.com about “engagement.”  It says in part,

Lester Wunderman, founder of Wunderman Inc., is a proponent of seizing the day, even when it's a gray one. Here he shares his latest definition of advertising, for the tough times and the long run. "We have made a commitment to a new global dimension of advertising," Wunderman reports from his agency. "I call it engagement."

What is engagement? According to Wunderman, it is the commitment to creating long-term relationships between buyer and seller, business and prospect. This isn't old-style relationship marketing. Engagement requires ongoing work on the part of your business to stay relevant to prospects and customers. More details:

"Engagement is a promise that carries an obligation by all parties to do something. [And] to continue to do it for each other. It can be in the form of an agreement, contract, or commitment."

What Mr. Wunderman doesn’t note in his article, as an underpinning to his theory, is the fact that this engagement is taking place online today—via social media and blogging.

There is no better marketing vehicle available today, at such a low entry cost, as blogging for your business.

Instead of tightening the belt, loosen it up like Thanksgiving at the in-laws and blog for engagement.
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Are you Setting the Industry Standard?
Posted Thursday, April 17, 2008 by jeff lefevere
They say timing is everything in life.  Woody Allen is quoted as saying, “80% of success is showing up.”

Well, those that are interested in Internet marketing are lucky because in this period of time, the timing is good and if you show up there is a great likelihood of having success.

Some background:

I had the good fortune to get bit by the technology bug when I was coming out of school in the mid-1990’s—smack dab mid-90’s; 1995 to be exact.  At that point, the Internet was the much discussed, but somewhat mystifying “Information Superhighway.”  Remember that?

In a Journalism media research class we actually had a class project that was Internet-based—as in, research this subject using  –gasp!— the Internet.  

Ah, the good old days.  It seems so quaint now.  Do college students still take class notes in longhand and go to the library to use the Dewey Decimal System?  

Taken with the Internet and technology a little over a decade ago, I pretty much chucked my Journalism degree to pursue technology sales and marketing.  I guess I was kind of an early adopter, as far as Internet technology goes.

During the go-go period of the dot-com run-up, there was a magazine that was THE BIBLE for those in and around the Internet—The Industry Standard.

The Industry Standard had a nice run for a couple of years, but eventually died an untimely death when their advertising revenue dried up with the contraction of the go-go Internet companies in 2001.

Well, I caught wind of its re-start as a Web-only magazine with the tagline, “Predict the Future of the Internet.”  

It makes sense, since most people see Web 2.0 and social media as not another bubble, but an enduring change in our business landscape as the cost of entry using technology has gone down immeasurably and the ability to measure your marketing dollars using web-based technology has gone up immeasurably.  

Predicting the future of the Internet via the wisdom of The Industry Standard audience seems like a pretty safe bet, too.

Let me give you my own prediction:  every business in the country will be (or will wish they were) blogging over the coming five years.  Customers will begin to see organizations that don’t blog as somehow less transparent and not as trustworthy.  Those that don’t communicate in a human voice will not have as great of an opportunity to acquire research and due diligence-oriented customers as those that do.

Here at Compendium, we are leaders nationally by providing a blogging platform geared towards businesses and marketers that want to translate the “conversation” that blogging offers to actual customers.  We do this with some secret sauce, but also consultatively supporting our clients to generate relevant, value-added content that drives to search engine optimization that leads to traffic to their blog that leads to a conversion of a lead (and potentially a customer) and a subsequent ROI.  Brilliant, right?

We know it and live it, but those that share our vision will likewise be early adopters in a change that is not-so-subtly occurring around us.

Will your company be the new Industry Standard for your niche?  If you’re not sure, check out this site and help predict the future of the Internet, but I'm confident you'll see the opportunity to be an early adopter and, like Woody Allen, be a part of the 80% that "shows up."
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It's Conversion and The Conversation
Posted Thursday, April 10, 2008 by jeff lefevere
The “father” of modern advertising, John Wanamaker, is attributed with a quote that goes, “"I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half"

The quote, dating to the early portion of the last century, is outdated.  The days of benignly neglectful insight are over with.  
The fact is, if you’re not measuring your advertising, if you do any at all, or your marketing efforts, then your career as a marketer is probably going to be short-lived.
Who has the budget or time to throw stuff against the wall?

If you’re not managing your spend against results, well, Starbucks is re-tooling and likely needs some talented Baristas.
I don’t say that as an affront to anybody’s sensibilities, just simple reality.
At Compendium, our value proposition around blogging heavily (READ:  Very Heavily) is oriented towards using business blogging and content generation as a part of a lifecycle that generates quantifiable conversion against any number of metrics that you establish for your organization.

It’s just good business to require metrics for your sales and marketing efforts.  If you can do so while being “authentic” and speaking in a human voice then you’re well down the road.

The conversational aspect of blogging is critical because blogging allows you to break down the linear value chain that has sales or customer facing people as the keeper of the keys to customer relationships.

Just yesterday I was talking with a client who is slow out of the blogging gate because, quote – unquote, they are busy getting customer feedback and doing product enhancements.  They don’t currently have time to blog.

Hmmm … methinks that blogging is the perfect way to engage with your customers in a meaningful way, and, oh, yeah, do so in a conversational tone that is less product development and more soft engagement.

If you’re a customer of Starbucks, it’s almost impossible to read the business section of the newspaper, or any number of blogs, and not be aware that Starbucks is re-tooling their business—more client focus, less falling into the trap of consumer mental commoditization in the face of consumer price pressure in the fast-casual niche.

To that end, they recently launched a pretty slick web site found at:  www.mystarbucksidea.com

The site allows customers to post feedback and new-product suggestions.
No, it’s not a blog, but it easily could be.  And, frankly, for most small businesses, you wouldn’t need to go to the extent of developing a site of this level of sophistication anyway.

Just blog.  Ask questions.  Be relevant.  Be genuine.  Engage in a conversation with your customers.  You’ll be surprised at the latent passion and feedback that exists for your business if you just tap the vein.  

Image Credit: Logic + Emotion
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