My name is Douglas Karr and I'm VP of Blogging Evangelism at Compendium Blogware. My passion is for leveraging online technology to maximize its effectiveness. As a Blogging Evangelist, I provide consultation through this blog and privately with our clients to utilize their blogs across the Social Media and Online Marketing landscapes. Blogging is a fascinating technology that doesn't stop at the blog post - it can be integrated and automated through all your marketing mediums. I'll show you how!My name is Douglas Karr and I'm VP of Blogging Evangelism at Compendium Blogware. My passion is for leveraging online technology to maximize its effectiveness. As a Blogging Evangelist, I provide consultation through this blog and privately with our clients to utilize their blogs across the Social Media and Online Marketing landscapes. Blogging is a fascinating technology that doesn't stop at the blog post - it can be integrated and automated through all your marketing mediums. I'll show you how!If you've not realized it yet, there are distinct ways of handling campaigns when you're blogging to track links within your posts - or to even track CTAs. Tracking links is a key strategy with online marketing and blog marketing because it will provide information on where you should be applying the most resources based on the response.
Google has a URL Builder that allows a person to put all the necessary variables into a querystring so that you can track those visits with Google Analytics.
This information will then be saved to your Google Analytics account on the destination site within the Campaigns section:
This can be extremely useful to track visits from your blog to other landing pages or websites.
Google has a URL Builder that allows a person to put all the necessary variables into a querystring so that you can track those visits with Google Analytics.
This information will then be saved to your Google Analytics account on the destination site within the Campaigns section:
This can be extremely useful to track visits from your blog to other landing pages or websites.
Search engines like Google place a lot of emphasis on a site's authority. What's authority?Authority is a combination of backlinks, popularity and history associated with a domain.
For a customer who has no authority, that's an uphill battle to gain significant search engine traffic. We've got one such customer, Your Gift Baskets.
Not only does the domain not have authority, the vendor who runs the clients' site won't let him assign a subdomain off of his core site... so he's unable to even piggyback off of his core domain's history and had to set up a different domain for his blog.
Although it's a challenge, this is also where blog marketing is a perfect path to a successful search marketing strategy. As we continue to teach Dale, their blogger, how to write content and he writes it frequently... he'll begin to rank better on key terms. He's already showing up in search results - he just needs to generate some additional links to build on that ranking and generate a lot of authority.
When Dale's blog establishes that authority, there will be a lot more Cigar Gift Baskets for sale! Check out Dale's blog on unique gift baskets, he's got some great products!
Online marketing and search marketing requires some off-site promotion as well as on-site promotion.
Promote your corporate blog on your website. A link is great, aggregating your feed is even better!- Promote your corporate blog in your email signatures.
- Promote your corporate blog in your business cards.
- Promote your corporate blog posts via Twitter using HootSuite.
- Publish your corporate blog on Facebook using Simplaris Blogcast or the Blog RSS Reader.
- Promote your corporate blog posts along with other industry-specific posts using StumbleUpon.
- Save your corporate blog posts with specific keyword-driven tags to Delicious. I recommend the Delicious Firefox add-on to make this easier!
- Comment on other industry blogs and be sure to use your corporate blog address in the URL field of the comments, not your website url. People like to follow a blog from a great content!
- Offer other industry bloggers a trade to guest post on each others' blog. This will expose your readers to their readers... and their readers to you!
- Mention industry thought leaders in your corporate blog posts. Folks in the industry pay attention to who is talking about them. If you write a post worthy of mentioning, you'll get their attention, their audience, and if they link - some great authority.
Newsgator recently published a free download called A Roadmap for Successful Adoption of Social Computing in the Enterprise. I'd recommend the download. The root of the whitepaper is that companies must adopt a cultural transformation - and when they do - they benefit enormously.
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:
According to the Whitepaper:
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.
We had a regional event here in Indianapolis called Bigger Ideas put on by Pat Coyle, founder of Smaller Indiana. I'm also a co-founder of Smaller Indiana, but it is definitely Pat's vision and the Bigger Ideas conference takes this community to a new level.
Chris Baggott was interviewed at the event and, as always, did a great job talking about what makes companies like Compendium special.
Chris Baggott was interviewed at the event and, as always, did a great job talking about what makes companies like Compendium special.
Sigh... another industry expert telling you how to use or not use social media. This drives me crazy. There are a lot of consultants and experts in the industry who have opinions and a bully pulpit to sound off on. But are they steering your business in the right direction?In a recent PC World article, Jason Snell advised:
If you've got a blog that's connected to your business, you can use a service such as TwitterFeed to directly channel your new blog posts into Twitter posts. Sounds nifty, doesn't it? Well, don't do it. Your business's primary Twitter feed ought to be hand-fed. If you publish a flood of impersonal links, your Twitter account will just seem like a faceless promotion machine.
Don't do it? Based on what evidence? I don't believe this is good advice at all given our extraordinary results in automating our feed to Twitter. I believe the appropriate advice should have been to proceed with caution, test it, measure it, and see what the results are.
At Compendium, we've automated our feeds to Twitter using HootSuite and our followers love it. So much, in fact, that Twitter is our top referring source outside of our corporate web site and search. If that's not enough, I'll juice up the stakes a little more and let you know that about 1% of our clicks on our calls to action come from visitors from Twitter.
That means that our followers are using our Twitter account as they would an RSS feed. They are expecting our posts to show up there. And not only do they like us automating our feed, they respond to the postings overwhelmingly!
Twitter is an extension of our corporate blog and a perfect use of our RSS feed to reach a a different audience. The audience is permission-based... they opt in to following on Twitter... we're in no way spamming anyone. As well, our blogs ARE our personality and we're extending that personality on Twitter by using automated postings. It's not faceless promotion... our posts are our voice and our advice!
Legitimate marketers test and share their results so that others can do the same. Jason may not like automated Twitter posts, but he should never advise folks to not do something without evidence that it will not work. Jason doesn't understand your business nor does he understand mine. Providing evidence where it has had negative results would have been appropriate given his opinion.
If you can drive more traffic to your blog and your company by automating your Twitter account, you can save time AND remain active on Twitter. If your Twitter following continues to grow with automated Tweets, and you are getting additional traffic and business... why wouldn't you automate your blog to Twitter???
PS: I dont' disagree with any of the other tips Jason supplies... but before you bail on automating your blog's RSS feed, check out the results first.
Pagerank Sculpting is the practice of trying to change how PageRank flows within your site using e.g. nofollow tags. Someone asked Matt Cutts (from Google) about Pagerank Sculpting and his response was:
Make great content. Choose a great architecture!
Matt also recently came out with a presentation where he noted that the blogging platform (free) that's most common in the industry is about 80% optimized. 20% is quite a huge gap in potential when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. If your blog is 80% optimized and there are 100,000 results... that puts you on about page 2,000... right? How much traffic is that going to get you from a search engine?
I wouldn’t recommend it, because it isn’t the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site. The notion of “PageRank sculpting” has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us. I would recommend the first-order things to pay attention to are
1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and
2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike.
1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and
2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike.
Make great content. Choose a great architecture!
Matt also recently came out with a presentation where he noted that the blogging platform (free) that's most common in the industry is about 80% optimized. 20% is quite a huge gap in potential when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. If your blog is 80% optimized and there are 100,000 results... that puts you on about page 2,000... right? How much traffic is that going to get you from a search engine?
Just got off the phone with a corporate blogging client that has been with us for about 5 months and posted 13 times on their blog. The conversation was pretty frustrating - but definitely brought to the spotlight that the customer didn't understand the value proposition of an organic content strategy.The client was open and honest - they do pay per click, Twitter, and some other online marketing efforts. The blog is written by a part-time employee and the time the department has the employee is key. They only have certain hours to use the employee, so they have to prioritize appropriately.
In looking at Pay Per Click, they understand how much money they are spending, the traffic that is realized on it, and the instantaneous return on investment. With Twitter, again, they realize the time spent and the number of visitors who come based on the tweet. Cool - they are measuring and recognize the value of those mediums.
When the client analyzes the blog, they utilize the same methodology - this is where the logic goes awry. Measuring the time the blogger took to write the post and then calculating the instantaneous traffic derived from the post is not accurate.
PPC and Twitter are temporary. They happen and then they're gone. A blog post is forever. I still have posts that are several years old that rank well and provide traffic to my blog. Sure - if you've got a great following - recent posts will drive the most traffic. That's why we want our clients to post as frequently as possible.
Posting regularly educates web crawlers and search engines that they can come back regularly for great content. It's no surprise that when we look at the web crawling statistics, in Google Webmasters for our clients, clients who regularly post are crawled more frequently and ranked quicker in the search engines.
Today's traffic to your corporate blog isn't just about today's post. It's about yesterday's post, the day before, the day before, etc., etc. You're building up authority and reputation and you're compounding the interest of searchers.
When you stop talking, people move on. Having a consistent blogging strategy educates readers that they can continue coming back for the content they value on the topics they value. Post frequently and, not only do search engines return, so do clients and prospects! (Ironically - this is my first post in a while, so I'm guilty of not following my own advice.)
More blog posts doesn't simply provide more search engine results, it also helps build up your domain as a source of relevant content for readers, searchers and search engines. As well, the ripples of those posts begin to travel further and further into the blogosphere. You're building influence over time.
So what is the value of a blog post?
In fact, the value of a blog post changes each day. As you write more, the value increases. When you stop writing, the value decreases. Post every day for a year, calculate the amount of traffic you obtained from your blog (each year, that traffic will increase), calculate the dollar results, and divide the number of blog posts by that amount.
If you blog once a day and your company does $1 million dollars in business resulting from your blog, each of your blog posts is worth $4,000.
Could that change your priorities?
Last week I had the opportunity to speak privately with the blogging team at Walker , a premier consultancy specializing in customer strategies. The team at Walker has embraced blogging and has one of the best blogs on customer service, customer loyalty, and customer strategies.
When Walker invited their clients in for a user forum, they wanted to give their customers something useful... so they printed their blog into a blog book! What a great way to showcase the efforts of the team as well as promote the blog. It's a beautiful book as well (I left with 3!).
This is a company that recognizes the value of the effort they've put into their corporate blogging strategy.
Not everyone is going to put their blog into print to provide their clients, but I do hope that each of our clients is as proud of what they've achieved on their blogs. Kudos to the team at Walker for such 'out of the box' thinking!
I have had the pleasure of working closely with Jeff Wiggington on the Promoting Your Program team. Jeff understands the value of the blogs - not simply because they're getting a better return on investment than Pay Per Click, but because of the thought leadership and authority Walker has been able to achieve in their industry.
As for the book - it's a fantastic read. I'd encourage all companies to subscribe to Walker's blog!
When Walker invited their clients in for a user forum, they wanted to give their customers something useful... so they printed their blog into a blog book! What a great way to showcase the efforts of the team as well as promote the blog. It's a beautiful book as well (I left with 3!).
This is a company that recognizes the value of the effort they've put into their corporate blogging strategy.
Not everyone is going to put their blog into print to provide their clients, but I do hope that each of our clients is as proud of what they've achieved on their blogs. Kudos to the team at Walker for such 'out of the box' thinking!
I have had the pleasure of working closely with Jeff Wiggington on the Promoting Your Program team. Jeff understands the value of the blogs - not simply because they're getting a better return on investment than Pay Per Click, but because of the thought leadership and authority Walker has been able to achieve in their industry.
As for the book - it's a fantastic read. I'd encourage all companies to subscribe to Walker's blog!
In the event we haven't invited you already, we've started a Compendium Blogware account on Slideshare. We'll continue to post advice that we are providing the corporate blogging industry as well as featured presentations from time to time - be sure to subscribe!
Our latest presentation was on measuring Return on Investment on your Compendium Blogware account. The ideas could be applied beyond our application (even though the results won't be as good, though! ;)
We want to help our clients maximize their blogging efforts beyond what our corporate blogging software can achieve for them - and carefully measuring traffic through their blog can make a significant impact.
Our latest presentation was on measuring Return on Investment on your Compendium Blogware account. The ideas could be applied beyond our application (even though the results won't be as good, though! ;)
We want to help our clients maximize their blogging efforts beyond what our corporate blogging software can achieve for them - and carefully measuring traffic through their blog can make a significant impact.
When we approach businesses with the thought that blogging isn't simply a means of gaining thought leadership, authority, trust, etc. in their space but present it as a viable means of growing your business and driving leads, it throws some folks off.
The businesses that understand it; however, see that by publishing content - and subsequently growing traffic through search, referral traffic, subscribers, etc. begin to then question the return on investment on a corporate blogging program. That's when we really get them to envision business blogging as a great marketing opportunity.
When you put numbers in front of a marketer like cost per lead, return on marketing investment, average deal size, customer value, etc... they begin to envision a blogging strategy as they do the rest of their marketing strategies or campaigns. They compare it to PPC, print, display, broadcast, etc.
Corporate blogging is unlike any of those marketing mediums. By creating an ongoing content strategy, you actually build momentum and continue to improve on your results instead of starting over with each campaign.
The typical marketing timeline with a number of typical marketing campaigns may look like this when generating leads:
Each time you start a new campaign, you start at zero, finish the campaign, and start over. Costs continue to climb and the Return on Marketing Investment bounces based on the expense and results of each campaign.
A corporate blogging strategy; however, builds momentum over time - increasing leads, decreasing the costs per lead and growing your Return on Marketing Investment. This is why Compendium engages customers on an annual basis! It takes time to see the results of blogging for business.
The great news is that as you continue to grow your readership and search results, the following year's return on investment is better than the first year. Third year is better than the second, and so on.
The businesses that understand it; however, see that by publishing content - and subsequently growing traffic through search, referral traffic, subscribers, etc. begin to then question the return on investment on a corporate blogging program. That's when we really get them to envision business blogging as a great marketing opportunity.
When you put numbers in front of a marketer like cost per lead, return on marketing investment, average deal size, customer value, etc... they begin to envision a blogging strategy as they do the rest of their marketing strategies or campaigns. They compare it to PPC, print, display, broadcast, etc.
Corporate blogging is unlike any of those marketing mediums. By creating an ongoing content strategy, you actually build momentum and continue to improve on your results instead of starting over with each campaign.
The typical marketing timeline with a number of typical marketing campaigns may look like this when generating leads:
Each time you start a new campaign, you start at zero, finish the campaign, and start over. Costs continue to climb and the Return on Marketing Investment bounces based on the expense and results of each campaign.
A corporate blogging strategy; however, builds momentum over time - increasing leads, decreasing the costs per lead and growing your Return on Marketing Investment. This is why Compendium engages customers on an annual basis! It takes time to see the results of blogging for business.
The great news is that as you continue to grow your readership and search results, the following year's return on investment is better than the first year. Third year is better than the second, and so on.
The long weekend is over and many people have a difficult time getting back on track with their business goals. If you're going to utilize blogging as a tool for SEO, you need to be sure to write relevant content frequently.
So... with that in mind, we had some fun with our messaging for our clients today:
So... with that in mind, we had some fun with our messaging for our clients today:
MarketingProfs just released a comprehensive whitepaper on how 11 different companies are utilizing Twitter effectively in their business, Twitter Success Stories. I'd encourage everyone to purchase the article - and pay close attention to some of the finer details (highlighted by me below):
According to the MarketingProfs survey, Twitter ranks behind only blogs as the social media tool that delivers the most value. On a five-point scale, 41 percent of respondents said Twitter delivers "great value" to their company, ranking well ahead of LinkedIn, which garnered 25 percent of that category, and Facebook, which recorded 17 percent. Corporate blogs ranked at the top of the list with 52 percent saying it delivered great value.
I'm a huge fan of Twitter, but in assessing its value MarketingProfs provides some key advise - measure Twitter's effectiveness to your business by how many visitors it brings back to your site.
As you view your Analytics, you'll find that the majority of new visits come from search engines - and other referring sites follow. These are social media sites like Twitter. I happily advise our clients to utilize Twitter and other sites - but I encourage them to always measure the impact and apply resources appropriately.
If you're looking at the possibility of incorporating Twitter into your Social Media and Online Marketing strategy, automatically push your RSS feed to Twitter using tools like Hootsuite. This is an ideal way of bringing prospects into your sales funnel... providing them a clear path to engagement.
According to the MarketingProfs survey, Twitter ranks behind only blogs as the social media tool that delivers the most value. On a five-point scale, 41 percent of respondents said Twitter delivers "great value" to their company, ranking well ahead of LinkedIn, which garnered 25 percent of that category, and Facebook, which recorded 17 percent. Corporate blogs ranked at the top of the list with 52 percent saying it delivered great value. I'm a huge fan of Twitter, but in assessing its value MarketingProfs provides some key advise - measure Twitter's effectiveness to your business by how many visitors it brings back to your site.
As you view your Analytics, you'll find that the majority of new visits come from search engines - and other referring sites follow. These are social media sites like Twitter. I happily advise our clients to utilize Twitter and other sites - but I encourage them to always measure the impact and apply resources appropriately.
If you're looking at the possibility of incorporating Twitter into your Social Media and Online Marketing strategy, automatically push your RSS feed to Twitter using tools like Hootsuite. This is an ideal way of bringing prospects into your sales funnel... providing them a clear path to engagement.
Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Online Marketing Summit in Houston, Texas and then attending a panel discussion in Austin, Texas. This was my first visit to Texas outside of an airport so I was excited to meet the local businesses.
Both summits were fantastic! There's a "no selling" rule and any company speaking is kept on its toes because attendees are encouraged to begin booing the speakers if they break the rule. Since every company has compelling strengths and weaknesses, its very difficult to avoid promoting your own tool... but it's for the greater good!
Aaron Kahlow, OMS Chair, spoke quite a bit about the challenges of the economy and its impact on Online Marketing. My favorite analogy that Aaron brought up was how most companies spend more money decorating their lobby than they do on online marketing... followed by the obvious question, "Where are you getting the most visitors?"
Trips like these are also a fantastic time to get to know the regional sales directors. In Texas, we have a seasoned online marketing and advertising professional in Tracy Donaldson. Tracy has close ties with a ton of companies throughout Houston, Austin and Dallas... many of whom were at the event. On Wednesday night we met one of our clients, Jarrod Vrazel - who runs a couple of blogs - including a Country Music blog, ACountry.
Jarrod is an engaged client, attending our weekly webinars and always putting our business blogging advice in action. Simply put, he said, "When I blog, I get traffic... when I don't, I see it slow down."
Jarrod runs some affiliate marketing on his blog and told us that the blogging return on investment is much better than any of the other online marketing programs that he's running. That's what we love to hear from our clients! He's a huge fan of Compendium and said that the education and training he's received were worth the cost of his package with us.
Tracy drove us from Houston to Austin so we had a 3 and a half hour drive to discuss Compendium getting a foothold in the region. Since a Software as a Service blogging platform is a new concept, there's one argument that companies bring up:
Why wouldn't I do this using a free blogging platform?
Plain and simple - free is not FREE. If free worked, than 75% of corporate blogs wouldn't fail. If free worked, than we wouldn't hire graphic artists... we'd make our own logos in Microsoft Paint. We wouldn't hire web designers, we'd download a free HTML editor and build our website. We wouldn't hire SEO experts, we'd just rely on search engines to find us.
Going it alone is difficult with blogging. There's a TON of complexity to maximizing your blogging for measurable results, especially for a business. Moderation, security, performance, scalability, theme design, theme SEO, plugins, widgets, gadgets, maintenance, back-ups, upgrades, enhancements, features, layout, calls-to-action, hosting, copywriting, keyword usage, keyword targeting, analytics integration, reporting... these are all factors that can kill a corporate blogging strategy or maximize its impact. These are also all issues that cost time and money to ensure your human investment in blogging pays off.
Last analogy... I could go buy a grill and a bag of charcoal and have a decent meal, but it won't ever live up to the drive out to Driftwood Texas to The Salt Lick (that's the Bar-b-que pit above). As soon as I met Tracy, she told me she was going to take me... and it did not disappoint. I'm going to have to admit that my family style meal of beef brisket, pork ribs, and sausage was the best bar-b-que I have ever had in my life.
That's not an understatement.
I'd like to think of Compendium's platform as The Salt Lick of Corporate Blogging, but it wouldn't do it justice if you've never eaten at The Salt Lick. Of course, if you're in Texas and looking to capture organic search traffic, Tracy would love an excuse to head out to Driftwood again! Give her a call at 713.520.1697 or email tdonaldson@compendiumblogware.com.
Both summits were fantastic! There's a "no selling" rule and any company speaking is kept on its toes because attendees are encouraged to begin booing the speakers if they break the rule. Since every company has compelling strengths and weaknesses, its very difficult to avoid promoting your own tool... but it's for the greater good!Aaron Kahlow, OMS Chair, spoke quite a bit about the challenges of the economy and its impact on Online Marketing. My favorite analogy that Aaron brought up was how most companies spend more money decorating their lobby than they do on online marketing... followed by the obvious question, "Where are you getting the most visitors?"
Trips like these are also a fantastic time to get to know the regional sales directors. In Texas, we have a seasoned online marketing and advertising professional in Tracy Donaldson. Tracy has close ties with a ton of companies throughout Houston, Austin and Dallas... many of whom were at the event. On Wednesday night we met one of our clients, Jarrod Vrazel - who runs a couple of blogs - including a Country Music blog, ACountry.
Jarrod is an engaged client, attending our weekly webinars and always putting our business blogging advice in action. Simply put, he said, "When I blog, I get traffic... when I don't, I see it slow down."
Jarrod runs some affiliate marketing on his blog and told us that the blogging return on investment is much better than any of the other online marketing programs that he's running. That's what we love to hear from our clients! He's a huge fan of Compendium and said that the education and training he's received were worth the cost of his package with us.
Tracy drove us from Houston to Austin so we had a 3 and a half hour drive to discuss Compendium getting a foothold in the region. Since a Software as a Service blogging platform is a new concept, there's one argument that companies bring up:Why wouldn't I do this using a free blogging platform?
Plain and simple - free is not FREE. If free worked, than 75% of corporate blogs wouldn't fail. If free worked, than we wouldn't hire graphic artists... we'd make our own logos in Microsoft Paint. We wouldn't hire web designers, we'd download a free HTML editor and build our website. We wouldn't hire SEO experts, we'd just rely on search engines to find us.
Going it alone is difficult with blogging. There's a TON of complexity to maximizing your blogging for measurable results, especially for a business. Moderation, security, performance, scalability, theme design, theme SEO, plugins, widgets, gadgets, maintenance, back-ups, upgrades, enhancements, features, layout, calls-to-action, hosting, copywriting, keyword usage, keyword targeting, analytics integration, reporting... these are all factors that can kill a corporate blogging strategy or maximize its impact. These are also all issues that cost time and money to ensure your human investment in blogging pays off.
Last analogy... I could go buy a grill and a bag of charcoal and have a decent meal, but it won't ever live up to the drive out to Driftwood Texas to The Salt Lick (that's the Bar-b-que pit above). As soon as I met Tracy, she told me she was going to take me... and it did not disappoint. I'm going to have to admit that my family style meal of beef brisket, pork ribs, and sausage was the best bar-b-que I have ever had in my life.
That's not an understatement.
I'd like to think of Compendium's platform as The Salt Lick of Corporate Blogging, but it wouldn't do it justice if you've never eaten at The Salt Lick. Of course, if you're in Texas and looking to capture organic search traffic, Tracy would love an excuse to head out to Driftwood again! Give her a call at 713.520.1697 or email tdonaldson@compendiumblogware.com.
Even at Compendium we talk about search engine traffic the majority of the time. Our corporate blogging software was built to ensure your company's content is discovered by search engines.
Everyone discusses SEO, keywords, search traffic, trending, pagerank, etc. when discussing online marketing and search engine marketing... but there's a critical component that many companies overlook... conversions.
Spending time to design them well, measure the results, have a variety that speaks to different visitors' motivations can significantly improve your corporate blog's return on investment.
Everyone discusses SEO, keywords, search traffic, trending, pagerank, etc. when discussing online marketing and search engine marketing... but there's a critical component that many companies overlook... conversions.
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De-cluttering your sidebar of widgets, gadgets, and other shiny objects... and replacing them with effective CTAs will provide an effective path of engagement to your business. Spending time to design them well, measure the results, have a variety that speaks to different visitors' motivations can significantly improve your corporate blog's return on investment.
Set some blogging goals for your company. It takes a single post to connect you with customers that require your products or services. Every blog post that you write can be the connection between you and your next highly profitable engagement.
Blogging as a tool for SEO works so well because blogging platforms like Compendium Blogware allow businesses to easily post engaging content without the need for search engine optimization expertise.
Not all blog posts are created equal. One of the questions that needs answered for How to Start a Business Blog is - How to effectively write a blog post that's going to drive traffic. We encourage all of our clients to work on posting first... then educate them to be effective bloggers throughout their engagement with us.
This is a presentation that Chantelle (Compendium Blgoware - The Client Corner) and I are doing today with our clients on the elements of an effective blog post. This isn't a theoretical presentation - we've actually analyzed the conversion traffic from our own corporate blogs to come up with this list.
This is a presentation that Chantelle (Compendium Blgoware - The Client Corner) and I are doing today with our clients on the elements of an effective blog post. This isn't a theoretical presentation - we've actually analyzed the conversion traffic from our own corporate blogs to come up with this list.
Sometimes it simply takes an email to motivate someone in their corporate blogging strategy. We've had some luck with past emails that were soft on text but strong on image.
Today we're sending out a nice email announcing our next webinar and so I put together the following image to drive home the message:
How to Start a Business Blog?
Post relevant, compelling content every opportunity you get! Talk about your customers and how you solve their problems.
Today we're sending out a nice email announcing our next webinar and so I put together the following image to drive home the message:
How to Start a Business Blog?
Post relevant, compelling content every opportunity you get! Talk about your customers and how you solve their problems.
David Castor, a private placement law firm, wrote us today to tell us we were cool. Why? Another attorney wrote him after finding him ranking in the top ranks of Google for Private Placement Law Firm.
If you look at the Alerding Castor blog, though, Private Placement Law Firm is not a keyword that we selected for David to target. The beautiful thing about blogging and having an effective keyword strategy, though, is that you get a ton of peripheral traffic based on those keywords.
Private Placement Memorandum was the keyword that had high volumes of searches and an opportunity to attract search traffic and win organic search placement. This user typed in Private Placement Law Firm, though. Since David's blog posts mention law firm - the combination of keyword targeting and content won him the search.
This is why it's so important to be aggressive about writing content. The more content you have, the more search results you'll find yourself relevant for.
It is pretty cool! Thanks David!
If you look at the Alerding Castor blog, though, Private Placement Law Firm is not a keyword that we selected for David to target. The beautiful thing about blogging and having an effective keyword strategy, though, is that you get a ton of peripheral traffic based on those keywords.
Private Placement Memorandum was the keyword that had high volumes of searches and an opportunity to attract search traffic and win organic search placement. This user typed in Private Placement Law Firm, though. Since David's blog posts mention law firm - the combination of keyword targeting and content won him the search.
This is why it's so important to be aggressive about writing content. The more content you have, the more search results you'll find yourself relevant for.
It is pretty cool! Thanks David!
