Greetings! My name is Lindsey Bailey and I'm a Business Development Manager here at Compendium. Before I joined the company I knew next to nothing about "Corporate Blogging" and the amazing benefits it can offer to companies seeking a new outlet for marketing and SEO. This blog will primarily focus on giving your company's blog a human voice by empowering and encouraging employees to blog creatively and professionally while at the same time conveying your overall company message. Companies are realizing it's time to take advantage of the smart and capable people they hire!
On a personal level, I graduated from Ball State in 2003, and have lived in the Indianapolis area since. I love sports (Go Colts!), my 4 pets Louie, Spencer, Stella, and Petey, going to concerts, movies, reading a good book, and home improvement projects with my wonderful huband!
Nothing is more compelling than seeing results and testimonials from an actual
Compendium client. Indianapolis area law firm
Alerding Castor is just one example of the power of our software. Please see a blog post from yesterday by David Castor entitled "
Blogging for Search". In this post Castor states:
"Not to sound to infomercial on behalf of Compendium, but the ROI in this tool (in terms of dollar and time investment) has proven big.
I can only give so many details on the clients and contacts made, but here are some recent examples:
1. This week, a SaaS company from southern city found my blog through a google search for "SaaS Law". We came up #2 on the google results page - and top law firm. That got us in the door for initial conversations where we secured the engagement. We are moving forward with an initial contract review project and counsel on future equity rounds.
2. Last month an established capital group in New York found the blog through google search for "Entrepreneurial Law Firm". We came up as #1 on the google results page. Again, this got us the initial contact. Through four weeks of discussions we have secured a good working relationship with this group. I am flying out to NY next week to work on four early stage SaaS client equity raise deals with them.
3. An established mountain-state real estate group found the blog through a google blog search for "Private Equity Attorney". We came up as #1. We helped this group structure their equity raise last month."Wow. That's good stuff. Thank you David Castor for the amazing shout out, and also providing us a powerful testimonial to reference for companies that want to follow in your footsteps using successful search marketing. Keep on blogging for search!
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.
A client that I brought on in December,
GK Elite, major retailer of gymnastics apparel, has just been featured in an article from Internet Retailer!
You can access that article here. Andrew Foss who creates the lions share of the content, says:
"Our web site wasn’t appearing in blended search results for key and common phrases, but our blogs are,” say Andrew Foss, e-commerce manager for GK Elite, which conducts about half of its sales online. In fact, the blogs, which GK launched in January, have increased GK’s revenue from organic search by 39% and the net online revenue increase as a result of the blogs is 30%."
Incorporating
blogging best practices has assisted GK Elite in their success, and using a corporate blogging software like Compendium has reduced their pay per click (PPC) spending as they are now ranking on those highly sought after terms in organic search! They are saving 30%! These are the stories I simply love to brag about...be looking for a case study on GK Elite in the upcoming months. Stop by and give Andrew a
shout out on their blog too. Have a wonderful holiday weekend everyone...
Our CEO and Cofounder Chris Baggott always tells people that
"if I give someone a business card with Compendium Blogware on it, they get a blog". I think one of the blogging goals for any company should be to market each and every employee as an individual online and let them have a company blog! Blogging as a tool for SEO drives qualified and engaged traffic for your business, no arguement there. But have you considered a "virtual" business card for your sales team? A safe and fun way for your marketing team to generate more leads? A way to humanize everything your CEO says so that everyone who's reading can relate...not just other C Level's?
If you answered yes to any of those questions,
corporate blogging software such as ours needs to be in your arsenal. With an administrative layer that allows complete moderation for your program manager, we make it failsafe to start a business blog, no matter the size of your organization. We also supply your team with blogging best practices so you do in fact get the most from the content you're creating. Why use a regular platform with a 1:1 approach, when we can maxmize the exposure and incorporate 1:MANY approach? Don't know what I mean? Shoot me a note at lbailey@compendiumblogware.com.
I don't often like to use this business blog as my own personal forum, however animal rescue is a cause I'm deeply passionate about, and wanted to get the word out. This is geared primarily towards my own geographical area, but the problem is nationwide. Here is my latest post from my personal blog:
After speaking with a coworker to help look for a new pet this afternoon, I stumbled upon
this article. It seems those of us deriving from "humankind" aren't the only ones suffering in this economy. I for one cannot imagine giving up one of my pets for any reason whatsoever, but it seems some pet owners have chosen to do so.
"Time has never been more critical for us. We are filled beyond capacity. Disease spreads quicker when we have this many animals," said Landau.That's an excerpt from a representative for the
Hamilton County Humane Society. This is one of many shelters needing our help to find homes for these animals.
When animals go into a shelter environment, they aren't as happy, and certainly not as healthy. These kennel setups foster disease and sickness to animals waiting for a new home. Overpopulation is adding to the millions of innocent pets euthanized each year due to overpopulation. If you can find room in your home, but more importantly in your hearts to foster one of these animals, or give it a loving home now is the time to do so. Help those that cannot help themselves. Save a life!
I have to put in some Compendium plug...I'm using this corporate blog as an SEO tool to get my word out. I learned in our last company meeting that I have lots of readers (whoo hoo!) so I hope all of your are passionate about something, and if not animals, maybe pass this blog post onto someone who is!
Let's take a walk...a walk back in search marketing time...
In 2005 search was much different than it is right now in 2009. I was doing a Google Image search and stumbled on this little gem of a heat map:
As with fashion trends, hairstyles, and car models, marketing efforts and what consumers are receptive to also changes. Or shall I say, evolves? Being
above the fold (positioned in search results where the searcher doesn't have to scroll down) is imperative in SEO positioning. If you're a shoe retailer the likilhood of winning the word "shoe" is probably not realistic. However, what if you were to win "Strappy Silver Stilletto". Just as valuable? No....its MORE valuable! If I'm searching for strappy silver stilletto's, I don't want SHOES, I want THOSE SHOES!!! I'm so much more likely to buy and become your customer than a searcher simply searching for "shoes". This is what is so powerful about
blogging for search, and Compendium in general. We target those terms that are winnable for your business, and get you the qualified traffic your company needs. By organizing and focusing this content the liklihood of you winning those more targeted terms is a reality...not something you have to pay for over in the paid search side. That's just advertising, we're SEO.
I just stumbled on a
terrific article from Promo Magazine. I'd like to highlight some of the stats from this article:
In the trust hierarchy, both groups said they were most likely to base purchase decisions on reader comments to blog posts (14% for overall, 18% for frequent), a niche blog covering a specific product or service of interest (11% and 15% respectively), or a blog written by a professional in the field (10% and 14%). information gathered from social network sites ranked lower than any of those groups for purchase trust (7% and 10%).
Researchers found that 50% of the blog readers among the more than 2,000 U.S. online consumers polled said they find blogs useful for purchase information.This goes to show that
blogs are a huge way of building your brands trust factor. People buy from people and trust people like them. If I read a blog post from someone who purchased a product I'm researching at the time...and they rave about it, that is huge for me. I don't typically make major purchases without researching it for a time first. Blogs are a terrific source of information and building the case for myself and other consumers to finally commit to a purchase.
A lot goes on around here when you've been gone for two weeks! I come back to find out that
Compendium Blogware has been given the honor of being written up as one of
America's Most Promising Startups! What a great honor for us a company. Here's a little preview of what they had to say at
Business Week:
Compendium Blogware and Vontoo Inc. are basking in the national limelight after placed among “America’s Most Promising Startups” by Business Week magazine.
Founded two years ago by Chris Baggott and Ali Sales, Compendium Blogware develops software that improves the odds a firm pops up high on the results page of a Web search engine.
Compendium employs 41 people at its offices on Monument Circle. “We just brought on board four more people last week,” said Baggott, also co-founder of Indianapolis-based e-mail marketing firm ExactTarget.
He said the recognition is a reminder that central Indiana has the people and technology needed for innovation.
Blogging for search is truly on the radar for most companies that are trying to market smart and effectively. People trust blogs, and they trust the stories companies can share through this medium. I'm happy and lucky to work for such a growing, influential company...and I had to take a minute to brag about it! Happy blogging!
This blog post was created on April 22nd - it's now May 4th and you're just now seeing it. I'm utilizing our new nifty
future release tool. Another change...when I wrote this post I was Lindsey Young, and I'm now Lindsey Bailey! I'm probably sitting on the beach somewhere in Grand Cayman Islands on my honeymoon...and the blogging software has done the work for me by scheduling this post during my 2 week vacation for my wedding and honeymoon. Why is this relevant to
you?
1. One or two of your employees might be creating the lions share of the blog content. What if they too go on an extended leave? Schedule their content for future release so you're still getting the recency/frequency factors for SEO.
2. You just adopted our platform and you have a ton of backlogged content. Go ahead and put it all on our platform, just schedule the posts to role out at increments of daily or every other day.
Compendium Blogware is the
best blogging solution for your business. When I return on May 11th let me tell you why myself.
Yeah yeah yeah. We all know how awesome Compendium is for
corporate blogging. But what about all of those other mediums you want to dip your business toes into on the web? Compendium Blogware can be your one stop shop for all of these social media strategie
s. By launching a blog software such as ours, we can leverage all of the awesome content you're producing out to these other platforms and become a one stop shop.
Check out our Facebook page that requires NO upkeep from us...just posts our blogs automatically--->
You can do the same for your Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn...all of it! Time is an enormous factor that companies have to evaluate before assigning someone to head up these projects. However, the need to be involved in social media is becoming more and more of a necessity. Kill all birds with one stone by having an affordable blogging software do all of the work for you. Spread out the content amongst multiple bloggers, and get started!
Please see this post from our CEO and co-founder Chris Baggott.
Compendium Blogware and Duplicate Content.
What Google (and all search engines) want to see is organized content in ways that are more useful to the searcher. Voila! This is what Compendium Blogware does! Google won't penalize anything that makes searchers happy. Compendium can be proud to say we have some of the most advanced online marketing companies on the planet and they're extremely savvy as far as this issue is concerned. I do hope this issue is finally put to rest!
Ultimately there are 3 main goals for a
business blog. Aside from the social media aspect, humanizing your marketing etc...your business blog is there to make an impact on your bottom line. See: ROI.
1.
Find - blogging is an SEO strategy. Meaning this is an integral tool to getting your business found online. No one can utilize your product or service if they don't know you exist.
2.
Direct - your relevant content will direct the searcher to what they're looking for via the blog.
3.
Convert - a clear call to action (CTA) is necessary for the conversion to take place. Give them a next step! Click for a demo, call for more information, sign up for your webinar....
check out one of our CTA's for an example.
Another helpful tip that I learned in our morning meeting today is always include a keyword in the first sentence of your posts. This is what the search engines are going to pick up and show as a snippet. What's a snippet? The first sentence or part of the paragraph on the web page, highlighted in red below:
Happy blogging.
If you want to learn more please sign up for a demo of Compendium Blogware.
The first being a great webinar tomorrow discussing "The Top 5 Missed Opportunities of Business Blogging" hosted by none other than our CEO Chris Baggott. It takes place at 11am EST and you can register
here. Check it out, you might learn something.
The second is that we're welcoming our agency partners in for an exciting agency training seminar! I'm so excited to meet some of my clients face to face that I've only had phone contact with so far. You can read more about that
here. It will be a day and a half of training is sure to pack a wealth of information and fun. It will commence April 16-17.
Our agency partners will depart the Compendium Blogware compound with a greater understanding of the core value propositions of Compendium. We’re constantly helping our partners build foundations for supporting current clients using Compendium, and provide suggestions on how to utilize Compendium to its fullest potential as an affordable SEO strategy.
That's all for now...I'll leave you with a juicy tidbit from Chris' article in iMedia Connection. He covers 10 ways to boost the value of your corporate blog...here's a teaser:
- Focus on what's important
- Blogging for Search
- Rethink Social Networking
- Content and Volume
- Keyword Awareness
- Dumb it down
- Widespread employee blogging
- Get local
- Coupons and offers
- Measurement and metrics
This picture really has no relevance to my post...I just like it.
The explosion around blogging has typically centered around SEO and driving qualified search traffic online. While business blogging is terrific in those two areas...if you think outside the box a little bit, you can leverage them for so much more. The one thing customers of every industry, niche, and sector always complain about is.....customer service! Or in some cases...lack thereof. What about using your company blog to directly communicate with customers and improve that one thing that every company strives to be the best at. Satisfying their customers so that they remain their customers time after time.
Also....after reading
this article on Chris Brogan's site, why not also use to get new ideas for product development lines? I know being a relatively new company like we are here at Compendium Blogware, we are constantly using client feedback to put new things on our deveopment docket. They ask....we implement! That makes customers feel as if they have a say in the direction the product/service they're paying for is headed. What is better customer service than that?!
It's been a bit since I've posted! It has been so crazy around here
with the end of the quarter quickly approaching and all of the new clients we've been bringing on board! Business blogging is on everyone's radar these days...and for a darn good reason! There is a recession on our hands folks, and inbound marketing is key. Having a sound customer acquisition strategy is a necessity to stay in the competitive mix, and organic search is undeniably where you need to be. Why blogs are great for organic search/SEO:
- Recent, fresh content
- Page Title (with Compendium you get this)
- Keyword density
- Age
Thats just the short list. Get online and tell your story! People do want to read it, but more importantly, people NEED to find your business online. Blogging for search was the title of our latest webinar, and you can access that
here. We got so many accolades on this one, I encourage everyone to attend even if Compendium isn't on your list right now. (Althought I can't imagine
that) Haha!
In other news...I'm getting married in 37 days!!! I will be out of the office starting April 27 - May 11. That's right, two weeks!!! I am so excited, and it's getting so close! I'll look forward to returning and getting back to normal on the 11th of May...but change your contact lists because I'm coming back as Mrs. Lindsey Bailey.
I want to talk about the way Compendium Blogware's platform touches so many organic landing pages with the blog content that our clients are producing. For example, I own "Sally's Shoe Store". I sell all kinds of shoes....I'm writing a blog post about wedding shoes, prom shoes, and stilettos. If I as a marketer of my fictional shoe store am aggressively targeting all 3 of those keywords in organic search, my one blog post just became three blog posts . And all I did...was click the submit button. Now imagine that concept on an exponentially larger scale! Our software recognizes that Sally's post is relevant to her "Wedding Shoes, Prom Shoes, and Stiletto's" blogs. Therefore it places that one paragraph she wrote across each of those pages. Magic? No . Just SMART blogging. Blog smarter, not harder. Blogs are becoming integral in search marketing. In fact if you missed it, watch the latest webinar from our CEO, Chris Baggott, here:
www2.gotomeeting.com/register/159992497"Why Blogs are your #1 Search Marketing Tool".
The short answer: any business that wants to help their customers/clients with
problems. I had a meeting today with a local company looking to expand their search rankings and drive more traffic. They asked me point blank "what businesses are Compendium targeting?" My answer "any business that wants to acquire more customers". Blogs are a great outlet for companies to tell their stories. If I get online, do a Google search, and find that this company has helped someone with my exact problem, then I know they can solve mine. Save your formalities for your website, and utilize real life examples for your company blog. Chances are, someone is out there searching for a problem that your company has already dealt with and solved for an existing customer. Telling these stories is another example of how corporate blogging is one of the best customer acquistion strategies available today.
Some companies are still concerned that searchers won't click on their search result simply because it's a blog. Not true!
“Most Web surfers don’t even realize they are reading blogs. The distinction between blogs and mainstream media is blurring rapidly.” — David L. Sifry, founder and chairman, Technorati, April 2007“-it is not always clear or relevant to the end user whether a particular destination is a blog….” eMarketer 200890% of internet users are searching. Searching for information, searching for products and services, and your companies blog can be providing all of that information from an actual human being employed at your organization. Studies are showing people trust and buy from people like themselves.
(The) most credible source of information about a company is now “a person like me,” which has risen dramatically to surpass doctors and academic experts for the first time. -7th Annual Edelman Trust BarometerThere aren't too many of us that are CEO's out there. However, tons of us are passionate about our jobs, like the work we're doing and want to talk about it. Why not leverage the resources you already have at your company for an SEO strategy? Create a business blog and generate engaging content will do wonders for your search traffic. Blogs will change your business.
I know when I'm doing online shopping I don't go to the direct website, ever. I Google everything. What if your small business sells a better product than lets say, Target...but I have no idea you exist. For that product it's extremly feasible to beat that corporate giant in rankings. Now, I've found you, you're blogging about why yours is better, and ultimately you've just won my business. Voila! Give me a shout if you're interested in generating more traffic and expanding your online market share.
A Typical Compendium Blogware Client:
Sigh. If I had a dime for everytime I've heard and addressed this question, I'd be in sunny Boca Raton FL enjoying my early retirement. But alas, I realize not everyone is as well versed about the differences in a thought leadership platform, and a professional SEO tool like Compendium. So, here's the shortlist:
Compendium: 10 Freeware Platforms: 0
If you're blogging for rankings, the clear choice is Compendium. If you're blogging for community or thought leadership then by all means choose something like a freeware as all of our features may not be an added value for you.
Compendium Blogware's architecture, functionality, and results do not even compare. Whew - and that's my Monday morning spiel!
