The Compendium Advantage

Universities should all be blogging

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 by Brian Millis

Below you will find a recent email I sent following a great conversation with a private university in New York. As a former Admissions Officer, I have a certain soft spot for helping schools realize the power of strategic blogging to better establish a school brand, culture, and communication with prospective students. Hopefully others will find this helpful as well.

Email:

Hi Current Prospect,

Thank you so much for your time yesterday as I certainly enjoyed the conversation. I wanted to provide you a few take-aways and example links for your internal conversations.

Here are a few examples of current higher education clients who are doing a great job!:

http://blog.granite.edu/blog/granite-state-college

http://blog.uindy.edu/blog/university-of-indianapolis

http://blogging.depauw.edu/blog/top-50-liberal-arts-colleges

Key Take-Aways Regarding Compendium:

Who we are: Compendium is an on demand, enterprise level search and social media platform. We provide a secure and scalable solution that leverages blogging for SEO, human engagement, and online customer acquisition.

Automation: We automate the organization of blog content to deliver the highest search engine ranking/traffic results possible.
Security: We use NO open source plug-ins developed by third parties, which require maintenance and update.
Scalable: Can have unlimited bloggers and can scale the number of strategically targeted online marketing search phrases.
Administration/Control: Admissions can easily manage the messages going out in blog posts and incoming comments from searchers.

Please let me know how I can continue to be a resource for you as you make decisions on the future of your blog program.

Best,

Brian Millis 317-777-6254

"ROI, ROI, ROI" for Engineering!!!

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 by Maureen McNamara

Today is an exciting day here at Compendium for me. We meet with the Engineering Team who is responsible for making Compendium's powerful blogging software --- simple blogging software.

The Compendium Engineering Team, led by P.J. Hinton is responsible for the development, testing, deployment, and operation of Compendium Blogware. The group uses SCRUM (not an acronym - think rugby), an agile software development methodology to manage the planning, development and deployment life cycle. Emphasis is place on short development cycles and frequent releases. Progress on commitments are measured on a daily basis to ensure any obstacles are resolved asap.

I am a Business Development Manager. I sell the best blogging software on the planet and I am certainly not a techie --- but I love attending these meetings. The Engineering Team's vernacular includes exciting stuff like "sprint planning," "strategic sprint," "burndown chart," "agile,"disciplined transparency,"and of course the "scrum" and the powerful "scrum master".

Today, we learn how easy to use blogging software becomes even more robust when it comes to my favorite bottom line --- ROI analytics --- so I'll be sharing more in the days to come. Thanks engineering. Okay, okay, RAH, RAH, RAH!!!

Using website analytics to measure blogging program success

Monday, March 15, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Often times when trying to explain Compendium Blogware and our software-as-a-service to others, I get a reaction that tells me I've completely lost the person I'm talking to...yep, you guess it...the smile and nod. I know you've seen it a million times and have probably done it yourself a few times here and there.

I've discoverd the easiest (and most effective) way to educate others about Compendium Blogware and the benefits we provide companies is to tell a story about one of our client's that has seen great success with our enterprise level blogging platform. This helps people relate to the client's situation and visualize how their company would use blogging for search.

With that being said, I'd love to share this latest success story about one of our newer clients, Raxco Software:

For over 30 years, B2B Company Raxco Software has developed award-winning defragmentation solutions and performance utilities that improve hard drive and server performance. But in 2009, the company was looking to improve some of their own levels of performance regarding their freeware blogging program.

Raxco noticed they were able to win a few keyword search phrases throughout the two years of their free blogging program, but were unable to maintain their ranking for long periods of time. They were looking for a solution that not only helps them win more keyword searches, but also provides automatic content distribution and blog scalability. Raxco found these features in Compendium Blogware’s enterprise level software, along with its ability to provide real-time knowledge of key phrase density.

After only four short months with Compendium, Raxco’s primary goal – to generate enough business from the blogs to cover the product’s expense – was well on its way.

By producing an avg. 4 posts/week distributed to 100 targeted keyword blogs, 36% rank in the top 10 Google search results and 70% in the top 50 – driving a total 23,555 visits from blogs to website.

With website analytics, Raxco is able to report a 10% conversion rate on blog Calls-to-Action (CTA’s). Although the company chooses not to disclose profit numbers, they are just getting started with their program and the blogs are already their 3rd highest lead source.

For more information about Compendium Blogware and how we can help your company, schedule a free, live demo today!

Return On Time Investment... priceless

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by Maureen McNamara

At Compendium we drink the Kool-Aid. We're all busy but we all are tasked to blog. I am in sales and blogging is a lead gen tool for us. That is a great motivator for me and that is why I appreciate the best blogging software, the only corporate blogging software on the planet. The user interface is so simple, so fast and the compending feature is priceless --- to coin an overused campaign sound bite.

If you can't take my word for it, and why should you, check out this internal email sent last week from Heather in the Compendium Marketing Dept. to see what I mean...

"Just wanted to share some inspiring information about our internal blogging program:

Since the start of our blogging efforts (November 2007) to today, Compendium employees have created 3,226 blog posts.

With the compending process, those 3,226 posts were multiplied a little over 117 times generating 377,683 total posts in our keyword blogs.

So, the 2 years and 3 months time to generate 377,683 combined keyword blog posts would have taken 263 years to create without the compending process!!

Have a great weekend!"

WOW! I can't tell you how many leads we generated from those posts but let's just say we're all EXTREMELY busy and leave it at that.

Should your organization be blogging? If you don't think you have the time to make an impact on your SEO, customer acquistion and lead gen goals, check out the Compendium blogging solution and let it do all the heavy lifting for you. Trust me on this one... it works!

Google as a Blogging Role Model

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

Google is a good role model for bloggers across the world. The two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are true innovators and have made their impact on the technology world as we know it. But what is even more special, blogs would never have the same effect that they have now without the power of Google's PageRank technology.

Google looks at a lot of different factors when determining PageRank, but one of the more important aspects they look at is how pages are linked together. Good bloggers should know that linking their blogs around the web helps them climb the Google ranks and gain more exposure. The more exposure means the more subscribers and for business, more money!

Compendium Blogware wants to help you climb the ranks faster by helping you compend your keywords to make every word mean more with every post. Without the need to rely on SEO directly, blogging is the most effective organic search strategy for any marketer. Schedule a demo today to see how you can grow like Google online.

I Get By with a Little Help from my Friends

Monday, March 8, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

I hope everybody has heard of our client referral program
called "Spread the Word" which is

one of the most successful ways that our company gets to meet new potential clients. The reason why is because of you! People are beginning to hear about Compendium Blogware's corporate blogging software and there are some incentives in it for you if you help them take the initiative to get in touch with us.

The program is pretty simple. You give us a referral, you get a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com with up to ten referrals! That means you can potentially get $250 bucks for just being one cool customer. Then to make the program even a bit better than what it already is, if any of your referrals close within 30 days after the referral...you get a Kindle!

So join the "Spread the Word" campaign by Compendium and refer somebody to the most powerful business blogging software anywhere. You're friends will thank you for it.

Avoid Being Passed Over

Thursday, March 4, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

If people haven't heard of what ChatRoulette is yet, it is an online chat site that allows you to pair with a complete stranger and see where any conversation can take you. However, if you are not offering interesting information to a potential stranger, people move on. So is your business blog making people stay?

The author of ProBlogger developed an experiment in ChatRoulette. He first sits normally as himself and gets ignored, but then after putting on a clown suit, people started to pay attention to him since he was interesting by looking ridiculous. Check out his article here.

He was taught a few lessons about online people. They want to move fast and will only stop if it is something that intrigues them or is relevant to them. So the point is try to write compelling content with the best blogging software you can buy. The two of them together can keep people on your site and generate what your company is looking to get out of their social media strategy.

Quickness at Compendium

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

I don't care what anybody normally says about interning but interning is awesome especially when you get to work for a company that is growing as fast as Compendium Blogware. I was just scanning through our own corporate business blog and it is so interesting seeing what everybody has to say that day about what is going on in their day. From Jim Hyslop talking about hanging out with SEO guru, Jay Baer, to Jason Harvoth talking about why Compendium's business blog software is the right thing to do for your business.

It is so exciting to work here that you just kind of want to run around and tell everybody. Compendium Blogware has such a great software that when I got Starbucks today, everybody was so intrigued on what exactly Compendium does that I had to give my own little mini sales pitch on what we do. I doubt that lead is converting anytime soon but its just fun. Check out our company blog soon to see why our software could be the right answer for your company's business strategy.

ROI: Really Obvious Information

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Brittan Bright

I don't follow many blogs, but I do follow Seth Godin's. His marketing tips and philosophies are more than just interesting and pertinent to what I do for a living, they also tend to be short, inspirational and, frankly, obvious. As a salesperson I can appreciate his ability to re-frame typically neglected and forgotten life "best-practices" through a business lens.

His post this morning was titled "Try Different". It was simple and obvious yet, those of us who have worked in Corporate America know that this is not always how businesses operate. I have seen so many talented individuals be labeled failures when the same methods that made them wildly successful in the past, fail to produce the same results in a vastly different economy. Instead of adapting and trying something different, often times organizations continue to push harder costing themselves great employees, morale and unmeasurable amounts of $.

While demonstrating Compendium's business blogging software and overall philosophy with a potential clien

t yesterday, I was struck by their response. They gave me the "aha" moment that makes my job FUN. They confessed that they had been pressing on with the marketing methods that had worked for them for the last 5 years, despite the fact that their returns had diminished dramatically. Regardless of their hard-work, dedication and commitment and positive customer feedback, their profits have sunk and they've come to a crossroad. The "aha" in their voice was directly tied the relief of realizing that trying harder could simply mean trying something different.

Here's to hoping they heed Seth Godin's advice and choose "different". Here's also to encouraging you to do the same.

Reduce Variance in Blogging

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Kyle McGrath

Alright I admit that Toyota has had some struggles as of late, but you can't overlook the example of efficiency that they have set in the automotive world since their inception in 1937. Their process control, cost management and reduction of waste has allowed Toyota to rise to the top in worldwide automotive sales year after year. But why am I referencing Toyota's process principles in a corporate market strategy blog? Continue reading on.

The Toyota process fundamentals:
1) Quality
2) Reducing waste
3) Instilling "good thinking" with its employees
4) Highlighting problems when they arise

All of these processes help reduce variance therefore making their manufacturing process efficient.

The reason that I am highlighting these fundamental principles that make Toyota operate is that the same principles can apply to the concept of corporate blogging using Compendium's software platform.

Companies need/want to produce content that is relevant to what their customers are looking for, and Compendium's interface parallels the Toyota's process fundamentals.

The Compendium process fundamentals:
1) Quality - seamless easy-to-use user interface integration and the support of Compendium's staff and resources

2) Reducing waste - the compending software feature ensures proper posting while reducing the time lost through manually tagging

3) Instilling "good thinking" - the "content ideas" section of the user interface eliminates writer's block by giving examples of relevant articles out on the web

4) Highlighting problems - the keyword strength indicator signals the relevance of the post to the keywords chosen by a company

Spread the Word!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

One of the projects I had to complete today was analyzing the list of all the new referrals that Compendium has received from our employees and our clients. We have realized that Compendium's business blog software is appealing to almost any corporation and now our clients are talking about it. Compendium Blogware has the most unique corporate blogging software in the market today that will drive tangible ROI towards your company. Check out some of our resources if you have more questions.

We also have decided to extend our referral program a little
longer! The deal is if you give us

any referral, we will send you a $25 gift certificate. Then if that referral closes business and starts blogging in 30 days, you receive an Amazon Kindle. Pretty sweet stuff? If you would like to refer somebody, just click here. Make sure to type in your email!

Monday Morning Marketing Meeting Mahem

Monday, March 1, 2010 by Isaac Pellerin

Every Monday the Marketing Team goes to work pulling reports and tallying up the results of all the campaigns that are active. We gather to share the results, celebrating our victories and analyzing our defeats.

Today was a day of Victory. February was a good month for our inbound lead generation efforts.

Heather has spearheaded a few Blogging Contests that has helped us generate more content for our blogs. We figured out that the compendium software really multiplies our efforts helping us get found organically in search. In fact for every post we write, it is distributed to 117 keyword blogs on average. This saves us time categorizing our work and does the heavy lifting of reaching out to the searcher who is intending to find an answer to their problem. So if you start blogging, all you do is give a push to get the ball rolling and our corporate blogging software compends your post allowing you to reach out with 117 hands.

Other victories were seen as Meghan delivered the results of the referral program she launched last month. We've seen more people using our software connect more businesses with our seo solution. Because of it's success, she has now made this an ongoing campaign, open to all. So Spread the Word of Compendium!

Our website and Blog pages saw some great results as well. More to come soon...

Compending Blogs - What a Concept!

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Here at Compendium, we like to practice what we preach. What better way to show a prospect how our software works than by using it ourself and sharing our fantastic results!

Here is some inspiring information about our internal blogging program:

Since the start of our internal blogging efforts (November 2007) to today, Compendium employees have created 3,226 blog posts.

With the compending process, those 3,226 posts were multiplied a little over 117 times generating 377,683 total posts in our keyword blogs.

So, the 2 years and 3 months time to generate 377,683 combined keyword blog posts would have taken 263 years to create without the compending process!!

Think about that...even the smallest business can generate a ton of content with compendium's enterprise blogging platform. Check out a demo today to see how the compending process works.

Enterprise Social Media and SEO

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Frank Dale

At Compendium we have the opportunity to be at the forefront of enterprise adoption of social media tools. This is an email I sent to our sales team last night that shows why we are so excited.

Team,

This article shows that the Fortune 100 are beginning to adopt social media. A couple of key passages:

“A study by Burson-Marsteller finds that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using social media tools.”

“Fifty-percent of the Fortune 100 companies from the Asia Pacific have blogs. Burson-Marsteller says Asian companies prefer blogging due to the control they can have over the conversation. Only 11% of active U.S. company blogs had posts in the past three months as compared to 83% of European blogs and 77% of Asia-Pacific blogs. The U.S. blogs also had fewer blog posts."The results show the increasing popularity of the real-time web and its use across the enterprise. But is it smart not to update a blog? We wonder what company fares better. The one that is active on its Twitter account and its blogs or the one that has an active Twitter account but infrequently updates its blog?”

This is great news for Compendium, because we solve a major problem….we give the marketer control over the conversation in a secure, scalable environment. The administrative control we provide coupled with platform security make marketers feel comfortable sharing the content creation responsibility with more people than ever before. Companies with few blog posts all have one thing in common….only one or two bloggers. We solve this problem in a way that works for the marketer and the company. Final takeaway, this trend is not just happening in the US…it is a global movement.

Cheers,

Frank

In a global market, you can't afford to fall behind the competition. Check out our new whitepaper on Third Generation Corporate Blogging to learn more about the best customer acquisition strategy available.

Alerding Castor Hewitt Seeing 500% ROI

Monday, February 22, 2010 by Compendium Client Marketing

We've finished another client success story and today I'm happy to report some great blogging numbers from our client, Alerding Castor Hewitt.

Alerding Castor Hewitt is an Indianapolis based law firm that handles a wide array of business law matters. The firm has looking for a way to reach out to new national and international clients through organic search. They also wanted to further establish their firm as one of the leading Entrepreneurial Law Firms worldwide.

So Alerding Castor Hewitt turned to Compendium, a powerful blogging software, to increase their ROI from online activities and provide them with high client conversion.

Here are their results after a year of relevant blogging:

Using 60 targeted keyword blogs, they were able to calculate a 500% ROI with just a 2 hour a week investment.
The company produces on average 12 posts per month and 46% of their keywords rank in the Top 100 of Google search.
Because of these great results their blog generates hundreds of unique visitors per month.

In an effort to not give away all of Alerding Castor Hewitt's great results - click here to get their full case study! Or if you would like to check out their Compendium blog, click here.

Congrats to Aldering Castor Hewitt for their awazing results - keep up the great blogging!

500% ROI for Professional Services Client with Enterprise Blogging Software

Friday, February 19, 2010 by Heather Benfield

Just completed a new success story from one of our professional services clients, Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP. Seriously, who wouldn't love sharing great search marketing success stories every day as their job?! I couldn't ask for a more positive, cheerful and rewarding experience.

Enjoy!

Alerding Castor Hewitt, LLP., an Indianapolis based law firm, handles a wide array of business law matters from formation, employment, licensing and trademarks, to litigation, collections and commercial real estate. With such a diverse client base for a local company, the firm was searching for a way to earn new national and international clients through organic search as well as further its recognition among the leading Entrepreneurial Law Firms worldwide.

In May 2008, Alerding Castor Hewitt looked to Compendium Blogware for an enterprise blogging software solution that would increase their ROI from online initiatives and provide high level client conversion.

After a year of producing highly relevant content for 60 targeted keyword blogs, Alerding Castor Hewitt calculated a 500% ROI with just a 2 hour/week investment. For a further breakdown, the company produces on average 12 posts/month ranking 46% of targeted keyword blogs in the top 100 Google search results. This online exposure generates hundreds of unique blog visitors per month.

Alerding Castor includes a unique phone number as a Call-to-Action (CTA) in the sidebar of their blogs encouraging prospective partners to contact them for more information. Although the firm does not provide revenue numbers generated from this CTA, they do note they receive several calls per month from businesses stating they found their blogs in organic search results and have converted enough of these leads to achieve a 500% ROI within the first year of their corporate blogging program.

To find out how you can experience such great success, sign up for a demo today!

Blogging Best Practices - Content, Content, Content

Friday, February 19, 2010 by Sarah Sedberry

One of the most critical things a blogging program can do to get off the ground is to generate content on a frequent and consistent basis. Without content a blog program will not see results. Here are some ideas to help make sure your team is creating content as they should be:

Set up a routine posting schedule
- Rotate the responsibility of content generation
Assign specific topics to certain writers
- Help fill all blog pages at the same time
- Don't let pages sit blank
Provide motivation for your bloggers
- Prizes
- Celebrations
- Recognition
Ensure your team is filing all of your keyword blogs
- Utilize all keywords on your network

Remember that content is king and to have fun with it. A blog post should NOT be laborious or time consuming. A post can be about anything, as long as you can relate it back to the keywords that your particular program is targeting.

For example take this post that you're reading - it include blogging best practices, but also allows me the chance to show this wonderful video that an employee here at Compendium stars in.......(yes, he'll be murdering me as soon as this goes live....). I was able to create a post that is relevant to our business, our blog keywords, and our end marketing goals, but still able to have fun.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Its Easy...Start Writing

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Ford McAlexander

I was scanning some articles on ProBlogger.net and I was looking for
some helpful advice

about what is the best thing to do when you first start your blog. And you know what I found was the most common piece of advice....WRITE and keeping writing! Honestly, for any blogger, the blog will become more popular by the more posts you write and the more information you share with the outside world. Blogging is a great platform to share your business with strangers at a lot more cost-effective marketing price than your average marketing campaign.

Compendium Blogware has create corporate blogging software that is easy to use. It helps your company pick out the most important keywords so you can target your blog posts to drive the most traffic. Read some of the case studies from our resources library for some reference of what the best business blog software can do for your company.

Wednesday Release Day

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Abby Warner

Today was an exciting day for our client success managers. We released a new feature for SuperAdministrators to export a CSV file of posts per keyword blog for each network. Prior to today we were running these report for all networks on a nightly basis. Today we made it possible for client success managers to pull this CSV when they need it. To save on server loads, this information updates nightly similar to the Manage Keywords tool available to network administrators.

Some may ask why this is a big deal, but working here at Compendium, we have come to notice there is a direct correlation between content, search traffic and ultimately conversions. The key to success with a powerful blogging software, such as Compendium is to esure you are creating consistent content that is relevant to your targeted keywords. This new tool will help our client success managers to be more equipt to advise our clients on which keywords to focus attention on during the efforts to create content.

Inspiration for Web Designers 5by5

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Isaac Pellerin

I listened to a great Podcast yesterday from The Pipeline on www.5by5.tv. Jason Fried was interviewed and offered some great perspective on what it means to give attention to details of Web projects without losing site of the context that the individual elements belong to.

Lately my thinking has been greatly challenged as I consider design tecniques such as Object Oriented CSS and endlessly employ Firebug with YSlow to check Compendium's site performance.

Yesterday, Mikey (Compendium's Creative Designer) and I started throwing around a few ideas of ways we could improve our Blogs performance to ultimately increase the value for the real estate we use for our CTA's. While so much of the focus of our business blogging software is to be an effective SEO tool, we also realize that taking into account what happens when we are found is just as important!