Text Blog Software

Some Helpful Advice on Text and Video Content Creation

Monday, August 3, 2009 by P.J. Hinton

While scanning my RSS feeds today, I stumbled across a couple of great links for content creators.

Perfectionism is the Enemy of "Done"

Over at Copyblogger, Michelle Russel provides five good reasons why you shouldn't let perfectionism overwhelm you into not finishing a post that you're not fully happy with. Because steady content creation is fundamental to the success of blog marketing, this should be required reading of all of Compendium's clients. In fact, Russel's post motivated me to write a post for my own somewhat neglected blog!

Vlogging Software Selection for Beginners

Including some video on a blog post can make for a compelling experience, but creating and editing video might prove to be a bit daunting to someone who doesn't work with the software on a day-to-day basis. Serdar Yegulalp has an article over at Information Week that takes a look at several video editing applications based on the availability of three features -- video capture, editing, and upload to hosting services. Weighing in at six pages, it's a substantial read, but a worthwhile one if you are considering an investment in this area.

Blogging for Business, Not for Your Co-Workers

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 by Allison Bowen

As I sat in traffic on my way home from work last night, I began to think about how weird it is that this many people live in one place and all want to get home at the same time. For a small town girl like myself, the number of people driving out of downtown Indianapolis around 5 o'clock just baffles me. Where do they all come from? And how did they all learn to drive like this?? I mentioned my frustrations to a friend of mine and she, being from Chicago, proceeded to explain to me just how peaceful Indianapolis traffic is. What?!

Traffic during rush hour is a lot like traffic to your blog. Imagine yourself as my friend from Chicago. For you, having four paragraphs of just text seems ordinary. Big words and acronyms are very easy to read because you're accustomed to using even more during the workday. You may think that you're making your post extremely readable when in reality all that industry jargon is not understood by anyone but you and your co-workers. For the "small-town reader" all of your posts may be very frustrating!

The purpose of blogging for business should be to reach out to potential customers. Trust me, these customers will not appreciate a massive amout of text, industry jargon or any confusing acronyms. Instead, you should use simple terms and include items such as pictures, graphs and other visuals to break up your post. Visuals are a great way to explain a topic or even just make the post more enticing to read. You could even try a video!

Don't get stuck in traffic. Potential customers are just like me... small town people trying to get what they need!

Image Use in Blog Posts

Monday, July 13, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

They say a picture can tell a story, that it speaks volumes with out ever saying a word. So why not use images in your blog posts to tell the story as well? Effectively using an image in a blog post allows a reader to quickly understand what your post is trying to say, as well as, can capture their attention to ensure engagement.

Finding the right image can be a challenge as there are a lot of "free" photo sites out there, but it is important to make sure you are not infringing on copyrighted material. Below is a list of several sites that we've used but it's not all inclusive:

Try them out and see what works best for you. When in doubt it is always wise to provide attribution to the source of your photo. Every organization handles image guidelines differently so make sure to check with your administrator as well.

Also, don't forget to crop, re-size, or edit the photo when inserting it into the post so that it fits within your text, and doesn't take away from the focus of your content.

Links for 2009-07-02

Friday, July 3, 2009 by Blake Matheny

Links for 2009-07-02

Vimperator – vimperator labs - Vimperator is a free browser add-on for Firefox, which makes it look and behave like the Vim text editor. It has similar key bindings and you could call it a modal web browser, as key bindings differ according to which mode you are in.
Coffee Drinks Illustrated on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - I never know what various beverages are at starbucks. This is a handy guide to the most common coffee drinks.
cat - / Managing Music from the Command Line - I use audacious for playing music under Linux but I kind of hate it. I should really move to mpd.

This is a collection of links I have bookmarked on del.icio.us for the date 2009-07-02

Links for 2009-06-11

Friday, June 12, 2009 by Blake Matheny

Links for 2009-06-11

Home - Common Tag - Common Tag is an open tagging format developed to make content more connected, discoverable and engaging. Unlike free-text tags, Common Tags are references to unique, well-defined concepts, complete with metadata and their own URLs. With Common Tag, site owners can more easily create topic hubs, cross-promote their content, and enrich their pages with free data, images and widgets.
Why “I’d just Google it” is not an acceptable interview answer « Software++ - I have often been lectured about, if not criticized for, my interview practices. In particular, I happen to have high expectations. We make very few offers and the ones we do make are generally for very smart, senior people. I was reading this blog post and there was a particular sentence that summed up my feelings on interviews, and specifically why we ask some of the tough questions that we do. The author said, "A job interview is a competition, not a pass-fail test." and that's very true. Sure, you might not be able to tell me the difference between a hash table and a binary tree in terms of runtime complexity but another candidate can and I'm going to prefer that candidate for the job.

This is a collection of links I have bookmarked on del.icio.us for the date 2009-06-11

Can you skim your posts?

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Compendium Client Marketing

Most of your blog's traffic will be coming from search. Searchers expect to find answers to their question quickly and easily when they land on your post.

It's important that what you post about is relevant to the keywords that searchers are finding you for. If you stay on topic and use your keywords, you'll be delivering the answers they're looking for. There is a way to really stand out though! Good formatting.

The four things you can do today to improve your formatting:

Keep your paragraphs short and leave space between them. Make sure you leave space around your images. This is called whitespace.
Numbered and ordered lists stand out and are simple to digest, use them often!
Keep your posts pithy by talking about a single point in each post. If you have multiple points, use multiple posts!
Emphasize important elements of the post. Use bold, italics, and highlights. Bolded text stands out for search engines as well.

Post Idea:
Write a post using a bulleted list. Perhaps the top 3 customer compliments that your company gets. Or the top 5 reasons why prospects use your product or service.

Why Brad Brenner is Wrong about Others being Wrong about PR

Monday, June 1, 2009 by P.J. Hinton

Brad Brenner has a blog post claiming that public relations professionals are all the more relevant in this day and age. Quoting from the text of the article:

Doomsayers don’t get it. They think PR is all about writing a press release or getting a story in a magazine. Now that print media is in decline, they say PR is on it’s way out as well. They never understood that press releases and published articles are just means to an end. The core of PR has always been about communication skills and strategies - the ability to evaluate the competitive landscape, identify the right messages and succinctly and effectively communicate those messages to the right audience -wherever they may be.

Brenner's claim is that the scope of PR's function transcends traditional press release pitching and because of this, PR takes on a strategic role:

The fact is, marketing today is more complicated and more multi-faceted than ever before. Creating, managing and maximizing the success of a marketing program in the digital age requires a real pro - and today, more than ever, that pro is a public relations expert.

What Brenner fails to address in his rebuttal is that power of public relations professionals to shape the message is shrinking. Brenner would like you to think that PR professionals are uniquely qualified to compose and convey that message. An inconvenient reality that I have mentioned in a prior post puts that assumption to question:

... your reputation is controlled by a marketplace where your message competes with that of those who don't agree with your message.

There are too many PR professionals who think that some creatively spun copy will tidy up and protect a brand that is self-destructing because of product or service issues. It doesn't work that way anymore.

Carl Morris has a great post on his blog from this past January that chronicles how badly PR people screwed things up for Chrysler and Target. And let's not forget the feud between TechCruch and Lois Whitman.

Consumer sentiment toward corporate America ranges from skeptical to cynical. Quoting an excerpt from an April 28 story from Reuters about a Harris poll:

"What was surprising in this year's study was the very clear total loss of trust in corporate America," said Robert Fronk, senior vice president at Harris. "The focus on individual rewards, the focus on greed all really added up to this incredible drop."

Respondents said the brutal recession has darkened their view of corporate America, with 75 percent reporting their opinion of corporations was lower due to the downturn. They saw little hope for economic improvement, with 43 percent expecting conditions to get worse over the next six to 12 months.

Good PR professionals who understand how the playing field has changed can help a client from making gaffes, but they can no longer repair the damage that bad behavior leaves behind.

The companies that will succeed in the future are those who straighten up and act in a way such that their operations align with the ideals they set forth in their literature. Letting the employees, rather than paid professionals, write the posts will go a long way towards meeting that goal.

Prioritizing Social Media Strategies.

Friday, May 29, 2009 by Lindsey Bailey

Often in my conversations with prospects investigating new means of acquiring more customers online, I hear day after day "well, we really want to get into social media". I simply ask, "why"? This is what's interesting...I think it's a classic case of Keeping up with the Jones'. Social Media can be great, you can have conversations, forums, discussions, etc with people interested in what you do. But honestly, how are you measuring it? What is it really doing for your bottom line? If you can answer that question, I'll be a monkey's uncle...er, aunt.

Twitter and Facebook are especially popular destinations with the folks I come into contact with. Listen when I tell you: Blog First, Then Twitter. I'm not going to reinvent the Corporate Blogging wheel, so I want you to check out what our CEO Chris Baggott had to say about it:

"your strategy needs to start with Corporate Blogging. Blogs are the place where you tell the stories of your organization, the problems you solve for your customers and share your thoughts. Twitter is perfect for helping you expose those thoughts with a catchy blurb and a link back.

Without the foundation of the blog, what exactly do you think you can accomplish as a company? How would you measure it? A Tweet that leads to your blogs, also leads to conversions on your CTA's. That's how you build reltionships...my moving the relationship forward to the next step."

Exactly. What is a 140 character Tweet going to tell me about your business? It can lead me somewhere, an "about us" landing page, a business blog, but that 140 characters is not the place to even begin to tell me who you are, and what you do. I like the analogy of the text message/email. I'll text my friend to tell her to "meet me at the mall at 5:30"...but I'm certainly not going to text her a novel about my day. That's better suited for a more appropriate platform. Each of these platforms does in fact have its place in your arsenal, but know where to start. Get some great content up on your business blog, make it searchable, THEN drive qualified leads there with your Facebook and Twitter.

Improve your keyword usage

Friday, May 22, 2009 by Compendium Client Marketing

When blogging for search engine optimization it is important that you lead the effort, as a blogger, by using the keywords targeted by your organization.

Keywords for you to focus on when writing your blog posts can be found in the Important Keywords Tool on the right side of your user dashboard next to the text editor. Use one or more of these phrases in your blog post to help improve search engine results.

Including keywords in every blog post:

Keeps the content focused and on topic
Maximizes the opportunity for content to get distributed to keyword blogs
Plays a key role in fueling the keyword blogs with the content necessary for SEO and visitor traffic

Post Idea:
Select 2 to 3 related keywords or phrases and write your post now.

Tips for proper image formatting

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 by Compendium Client Marketing

Adding images is easy. It's only a three step process:

Select a location in your post and then click on the image icon
Insert the image by uploading it or using a url
Format the image

Here are some quick tips for properly formatting images:

Width & Height: Make sure that the ratio proportions are locked to ensure the image resizes proportionally. Also, note that images are resized to a lower resolution to speed up load times
Padding: Add a small amount of padding around every image to ensure that there is separation between your images and your content.
Align: Adjust the image in relation to the text to ensure that it is easier for a blog reader to follow the content of the post and catches their eyes.
Description: This isn't really a formatting field. This is a field for search engines. Make sure you label the image with a description that is relevant to the image and the content in your post. If relevant include a keyword rich phrase.

If you have any questions about how to integrate images into your blog post contact our product support team and we'll be more than happy to walk you through it.

Login and Smile

Monday, May 11, 2009 by Douglas Karr

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.

A Doorway Page by any Other Name?

Sunday, May 3, 2009 by P.J. Hinton

I read an article over at Search Engine Land, written by Michael Gray, that makes the case for using contests to boost organic search results. I found portions of the post to be of dubious merit.

Gray argues that the contest prize should inclue the keywords that you are trying to target.. People get word of the giveaway, they link to your contest landing page, and then you get a result boost for your target keywords.

This isn't a bad idea. However, I do believe that he goes off the deep end when he offers up advice for handling the page after the contest is over. Quoting from the text of the article (emphasis mine):

Another mistake a lot of people make is that after the contest ends they leave the page up with a notice the contest is over, or 301 the content to another page. A better solution is to leave the existing URL in place and just improve the page with different content. If you are concerned about usability, you can relocate the contest information to a new URL with a link at the bottom or even display a message based on incoming referral URL’s or referral keywords.

The portions I've italicized just happen to share the characteristics of a "doorway page", which is a big no-no in the world of legitimate SEO. Such pages are not an integral part of the website and serve as a sort of bait-and-switch to the visitor, forcing them to click on another link to get to the website.

There is no shortage of SEO advice on the web, but the web can be a misleading place. Any advice should be viewed with a critcal eye and weighed against current best practices.

RSS? What & Why?

Monday, March 30, 2009 by Krystal Featherston

Lately, we've been getting a lot of questions about RSS feeds. What they are? Why are they important for blogging?

RSS is used to publish frequently updated work—such as blog entries. An RSS document includes full or summarized text. RSS benefit readers because it provides regular updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.

RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's URL into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

Why are RSS feeds important to blogging?

RSS Feeds help writers generate content ideas by knowing what is going on it their industry at any moment.
Allows readers to receive frequent updates on content that is posted on any specific blog.

Still have questions? If so, click here to view a video.

REMEMBER: if you have a question you can search Compendium's Knowledgebase RIGHT NOW - or shoot us an email or fill out the online submission form.

Google Voice is Awesome

Monday, March 23, 2009 by Blake Matheny

I was lucky enough to get a grand central number early on. Grand Central, which touted itself as, "one number for life", was a simple service which allowed you to give out your grand central number to people and based on their call group (coworkers, friends, family, etc) could be routed to one or multiple phone numbers, screened, get alternate voice greetings, etc. Purchased by Google back in 2007, the service seemed to stagnate and at one point Google even stopped allowing new people to join the service.

Yesterday I was finally migrated to Google Voice, and I can say that I am absolutely a convert. The number of new features that are available as well as the easier to use interface simply make this a must have service. Some service highlights for me:

Can receive text messages to your Google Voice number
Can reply to text messages and they show up from your Google number
Can initiate calls from your Google number, both from the web as well as from any phone
Voice transcription of voicemails can be emailed to you

All of this is in addition to what was already available from Grand Central and all of this is of course free. One thing that I find particularly interesting is what I assume is a basic phone number multiplexing scheme that Google must be using.

When someone sends your Google Voice number a text message, their phone number is included in the message body but the sender number is not the same, it is some Google number. If you reply to that phone number via a text message, or call that number, it connects you to the original number but shows as being from your Google number. When playing with this feature, I noticed that each person who texts my Google number is assigned their own unique Google number (with a 406 area code).

What I assume Google is doing here is creating a basic mapping between your phone number and people you interact with. So when you reply to a text message at one of these 406 numbers, Google says, "Okay, which contact have we assigned this to for this Google Voice user?" and knows not only which Google Voice user you are (based on your ANI) but which destination number you are trying to reach (based on what contact was assigned that number).

This also means that Google Voice can map an unlimited number of users to each number, each one having a distinct destination contact. Hopefully this service doesn't go the way of Google Notepad and some of the other services that Google has decided to ditch in the past few months. Obviously, if you're giving out your Google Voice number to people, you are like me and hoping Google doesn't discontinue the service.

Tips for First Time Bloggers

Friday, March 20, 2009 by Sarah Sedberry

Sometimes the toughest part about a business blog is just getting started. Like many things is all about taking that first step, and developing routines. I liken it to going to the gym. You know you need go, you want to go, but you have to develop the routine before you actually do go. Once the routine is there, you're happy and you actually feel out of sorts when you don't make it to they gym.

Same thing with blogging - you know you need to write a blog post today, you want to write a blog post today to drive more traffic and convert those searchers, but you keep finding excuses to make you feel better about why you didn't get that post out today.

Well, think of the Client Success Team here at Compendium as your Trainer. We're here to help encourage you to keep up post content, write keyword rich blog posts, and to help target your blog to drive conversions. So whats the first step? Keep it simple and just write!

Here are some quick tips to keep in mind when starting out:

KISS: Keep It Simple Silly - a blog post should be quick and easy, don't worry about writing some long, thought provoking post. That's what whitepapers are for.
Be Pithy: Think of writing a blog post as writing an email to a friend. You want to be casual and relaxed.
Be Engaging: No one wants to read a computer screen full of text. Break up your posts with lists (bullet or number), pictures, and links
Be Consistent: Searchers want to find relevant and recent information about what they are looking for. If they land on your page and its been 2 weeks since any content has been posted, they will not find you credible. Be sure to stay on top of your post frequency.

Hopefully with these first few tips you'll be able to get started. If you have further questions, always feel free to reach out to our Client Success Team at clientsuccess@compendiumblogware.com.

Happy Blogging!

To Tweet or Not To Tweet

Thursday, March 19, 2009 by Jess Wehner

I was watching the Today show this morning and they had a special on Twitter. Of course, it peaked my interest, given the industry I work in and I took down a couple notes on what they were saying.

So what is twitter you may be asking? In the words of the Today show Twitter is “a cross between texting and blogging” and it’s based on “what you are doing”. They also said to think of it as a “mass text” updating all the people who follow you. So now that you know what it is, the real question is:

To Tweet or not to tweet?

With all of the things to read on the internet: blogs, facebook, news, etc. do you really have time for Twitter? I think if you have the time and enjoy it, sure, Twitter can be a great way to connect with people and share your opinion with others. But, if your resources are limited and you need to choose one tool that will increase your search engine visibility, Compendium blogs are a great way to go.

If your number one goal is marketing your business and reaching out to potential customers, you need a tool that does this the best. Compendium blogs aren’t just a social media tool, they help organize your content in a way that is search engine and user friendly. We focus your content on the words people are searching on. So in the end, Twitter is not a bad thing at all, and from what they showed on the Today show it looks like a lot of fun. They showed how it can be a great tool for celebrities and thought leaders to get their opinions across. But for everyone else out there, with only 20 minutes a day to focus on marketing, there is a need to be a little choosier with where to spend resources. Maybe there just isn’t enough time in the day for twitter.

What is RSS?

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 by Compendium Client Marketing

According to Wikipedia:

“RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed" or "web feed" or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text.”

Check out the video below for more great info on RSS and what it means to you!

Struggling with High Bounce Rates on Your Blog?

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 by Douglas Karr

Today I received an email from a client who was concerned about their bounce rates which ranged between 80% to 90%. No one wants to put in the effort on a blog and find that it's not sticky... so what's a blogger to do?

Before I even start to take action, one of the first things I compare is how the bounce rate is tracking from week to week - is it increasing, decreasing?

How is your bounce rate comparing to your search engine traffic? Typicallly, if you're reaching a larger percentage of search engine users, your bounce rate percentage will also increase. It's natural when you're casting a wider net, that many of the fish won't make the cut.

If bounce rates remain consistently high, I review the following:

Am I targeting keywords that are truly relevant to my business? At Compendium, for instance, we target a lot of blogging terms. Since we're a business blogging platform, it's natural that some of the audience isn't going to be relevant.
Am I writing relevant content? Bad content sucks and makes people jump fast. There's nothing worse than leaving a first impression with a bad blog post. Are you writing about your business? Your customers? That's why people are visiting you! Stay on target.
Do I write Post Titles that are truly relevant to the content within the post?
Am I writing content that gives back to my readers or wastes their time? If you want readers to engage and read more, you need to put some bait on the hook to get them to nibble. (Not that you guys are fish... I'm just using a simple metaphor).
Do I link to my other related posts within my content with informative anchor text?
Do I have previous posts from my blog listed in my sidebar?
Do I have engaging Calls To Action that make someone want to click through because the CTA is relevant to the content and leads the person to want additional information.

Lastly, of course... is the question no one likes to answer:

Do I suck at writing?

Some people really do suck. In that case, hand off the baton to someone else in the organization who keeps the readers engaged. You may be surprised by who the talented folks are within an organization when it comes to writing compelling content.

Don't give up if you're a young blogger, though. Sometimes it takes quite a bit of time to get into a rhythm and hit a few home runs.

I would not hesitate to contact ghost bloggers, as well. Great ghost bloggers can learn your business and write compelling content on behalf of your organization, or even better, interviewing and sharing stories about your customers.

Finding what you are seaching for

Tuesday, March 3, 2009 by Brett Fritz

There is a great service where you can call or text a random question to this number and the service provider will give you the answer you are looking for!

If everyone had compendium, the answers your potential customers are looking for would be at their fingertips! Using Compendium's simple blogging software will not only humanize your marketing strategies but it will also provide you with results!

Compendium is a SaaS that is build specifically for businesses to win organic search.

We at Compendium make search easy again!

HTML Attributes in Unexpected Places

Sunday, February 22, 2009 by P.J. Hinton

Introductory discussions on good web user interface development drive home the importance of separating content (HTML), presentation (CSS), and behavior (JavaScript). The most powerful, and usually the slowest, way to interact programmatically with an HTML document on a web browser is to use the Document Object Model (DOM) API.

The principal references for DOM are the W3C standards, but the road to cross browser compatibility is fraught with pitfalls. Consider a document element. Elements can have attributes, which are expressed syntactically in the tags like this like so

    <element_name attribute_name="attribute_value">

In the DOM, elements are represented using DOMNode objects, and they are distinguished from other varieties of nodes by the nodeType property, which is set to the constant ELEMENT_NODE (defined to be 1). One can access, modify, and remove node attributes by calling setAttribute(), getAttribute(), and removeAttribute() respectively.

The collection of all attributes associated with an element is available via the node's attributes property. It is exposed as a NamedNodeMap object, which allows the manipulation of attributes by name (the *NamedItem() methods) or by index (item()).

Given this information, the API sounds fairly straightforward. You can deal with attributes individually by name or as a set that you can iterate over. However, this isn't the only way that attributes can be modified under Internet Explorer.

In IE, an element's attributes are also exposed as properties on the object corresponding to the element node. Save for a few exceptions, like className for class, the property names line up with the attribute names.

What may be surprising is that the converse is true. If you add a property to an HTML element object, Internet Explorer will count that property among the list of attributes, regardless of whether the property corresponds to a valid HTML attribute. To verify this is the case, try this out... In an HTML element, create an element with an ID attribute for reference via the DOM.

<div id="target_element">
    This text is contained by the DIV with id = "target_element".
</div>

Now, within a JavaScript function, use the DOM to get the node corresponding to this element and set a property on the element that does not correspond to a real HTML attribute:

    var target_element = 
      document.getElementById("target_element");
    target_element.fake_attribute = "foo";

Then iterate over the attributes NamedNodeMap for the element, checking to see whether such an attribute exists. In the code below, we check for an attribute name match and then generates an alert dialog informing the user whether that attribute's specified property is set to true or false.

   var attributes_node_map = target_element.attributes;
   for (var i = 0; i < attributes_node_map.length; ++i) {
        if (attributes_node_map.item(i).name == "fake_attribute") {
            alert("Is attribute fake_attribute specified? " + 
                attributes_node_map.item(i).specified
            )
        };
    }

On Firefox, no dialog will be produced because the bogus property does not count as an attribute on the element. With Internet Explorer, the dialog will show up.

This difference came into play for us recently as we were debugging a piece of third-party JavaScript code. The source poked properties in HTML element objects for internal tracing purposes. The properties did not correspond to valid attributes, but IE would report them as such via the attributes property. Another portion of the code, which based its decision on whether there were no attributes set, would malfunction on IE because the attribute counts would be non zero.

Some additional notes on the dysfunctionality of attribute manipulation can be found at the QuirksMode website.