User-Friendly Blog Software

Is it worth outsourcing your corporate blog?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 by Brian Millis

I had a great eye opening experience over the weekend that directly relates to my job here at Compendium. My fiance and I wanted to use a blog platform instead of the standard wedding website provider templates. I first started on Wordpress since I knew that they have amazing features, plug-ins, multiple page designs, and more. After about 2 hours of trial and failure, I moved onto the try Blogger. Blogger seemed to be much more user friendly and allowed me to download more creative templates. In the end, we will stick with our blogspot wedding page.

This experience got me thinking about the objections that I hear while working to bring new clients onto our business blogging platform. Here are two that I hear often:

We just don't have the personell to help put up good, frequent content.
Well, we're hiring a new PR director who will most likely manage the blog.

My wedding blog experience gave me new insight into these issues that often lead to pushing out a decision to choose Compendium. First, our platform is desiged to free up employees to blog. With the secure work flow built into the platform and the user interface tools (content ideas and keyword density meter), Compendium's blog software answers this objection. Once this is in place, it should be just as easy to write about your business as it is for me to write about my wedding.

For the second objection, I now understand why businesses pawn the ownership of a corporate blog onto other departments and co-workers. IT IS A PAIN TO START A BLOG WITHOUT HELP! I have new respect for our client success team who can create an entire business blog network in 10 business days. This set-up, design, monitoring, reporting, and peace of mind is simply icing on the cake since the real value proposition of our platform is the SEO around revenue driving search terms for a business.

So when you're thinking; Is it worth it to outsource our company blog? If getting found by your target online market, converting at a high rate, and humanizing your marketing efforts isn't enough reason, the simplicity that Compendium brings to starting a business blog is worth it all by itself.

Why Google Alerts Rocks!

Monday, April 27, 2009 by Compendium Client Marketing

Google Alerts is simple way to keep up with some of the things that are being said about you on the internet. If you want to know more about the basics like setting up Google alerts check out my How To Use Google Alerts blog post.

But the real reason I think it rocks today is because of the fantastic item that came though my alert today:

SEO Blog Changes By vdcent
In an effort to have more of a business platform for blogging, I’ve jumped on-board with Compendium Blogware. They have fabulous functionality for business blogs, are dynamite for Universities and Colleges and have a user-friendly ...

This is a great example of how Google Alerts can help find content for you to blog about! Not only is it great to see a new client excited to begin blogging but it's also a perfect example of how to close out an old blog in preparation for beginning a new search engine friendly blog!

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.

Using Markov Chains to Create Content: Introducing Robo-PJ

Thursday, February 12, 2009 by Randy Cox

Here at Compendium Blogware we are constantly searching for new ways to help our customers come up with ideas for new blog content. What if we could come up with technology that could just write their posts for them?

I've been experimenting with using markov chain software to create brand new posts based on existing content. I fed it everything written by Senior Software Engineer and prolific blogger, PJ Hinton, and the resulting Robo-PJ had a lot of very interesting things to say.

Robo-PJ is very candid about his early days at our company:

"Prior to joining Compendium, I can say there is no one right way to build user-friendly blog software. The transition proved to be antithetical toward that which makes blogs interesting."

He is very opinionated about how people are using our blogging software, perhaps placing blame on the very technology we use behind the scenes:

"Don't let your blog become a web marketer? It means that you have a chance to make sure that many a peril await those who gathered, dreamed up, and analyzed the information, those other parties have often themselves been shortchanged by the Yahoo User Interface library, XSLT, XML/HTML DOM, memcache, XML-RPC web services, RSS search feeds, just to become a one-way channel of communication with it's customers."

Robo-PJ makes strangely dark jokes about articles he has read:

"The story leads off well by asking readers to talk about the benefits of reuse comes at a conference that is as well as individual blogs. These topics are selected based on the "electric shock" feature, though. :-)"

He provides some unusual advice for blogging companies:

"His strongest argument is about tying corporate blogs to its full promise, service providers will need to build up a cheap book titled burps and Technorati."

The truth is, I'm pretty skeptical about some of Robo-PJ's sage wisdom:

"Compendium's approach to the bottom line? Be relaxed in your proofreading. That's just a search engine."

I don't think this technology is quite ready for prime time.

Best Blog Software

Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by Jason Gergely

I know this is all a matter of opinion, but here is mine. When talking about the best software for blogging, there are several things to consider. You have to consider ease of use, organization of website, user-friendliness, and feedback (along with any other personal preferences that you might be looking for).

Ease of use is important for any interactive website. If you can’t understand what the website is showing you, there is no way that you would want to go back to that site… right?

On the same page, if the organization and setup of the blogging platform is essential too. If the look is off, if the color is weird, even if the font of the website is not to your likely, you will find that there might be animosity towards your blog spot.

User-friendliness is an absolute must, no matter what kind of interactive site you have... but especially so in a blog website. No one in their right mind wants to find it difficult to answer questions or solve issues you might have with your blog.

Finally, feedback is essential. Wouldn't it be great to have instant feedback while you are typing your post? To see how effective it is going to be? Giving you a kind of number, showing you how strong your post is in relationship to your keywords?

If these points are something that you are looking for, I have a suggestion for you. Compendium Blogware. It offers all of the listed above for your company weblog along with other helpful pointers that will make your company's marketing strategies much more effective. So go out and check out the website, get more information, and get started with Compendium.

Blog Alternatives

Friday, October 3, 2008 by meghan peters

I often think that when people are contemplating the thought of starting a blog, should it be for business or personal use, the thought that comes to mind first is having to generate copy. Don't get me wrong, obviously blogs require copy, but there are other tools that can be integrated into your blog to help break up the repetitiveness.

A few things I have seen work in blogs to help boost your blog visually include: CTA's (Calls to Action), links, pictures and video. CTA's and links can definitely work hand in hand with trying to provide your readers with more information. CTA's are great from a design perspective (if you have that capability) and links work to provide quick, easy information if you don't have the luxury of someone designing for you. Either way, both tools can be utilized to provide a break from the mundane, and readers will appreciate the fact that you have provided an outlet for more information.

Pictures and videos are also great resources and bring a lot of enhancement to your posts. The benefits can really be two fold, pictures provide a quick view of a point you may need to get across, or your blog topic, and they can be linked to another site. Video excerpts in your blogs are a tremendous tool that should be utilized if you have the capability. We recently had a client referral program that gave away a Flip Ultra. This is a very user friendly gadget that can be used in conjunction with your blog.

Chris Baggott has a post in his blog explaining how video blogging can bring new life to your post. Read the entire post here.

The most important information to take away from this post is that blogs don't need to be all about copy. Learn to branch out and be creative, this will pay off in the long run and give you a break from the burden of creating copy!

Facebook, Ebay, & Fantasy Football are all the same

Saturday, September 13, 2008 by Brian McKay

Why are Facebook, Ebay, and fantasy football all the same? Because they are online social environments that your employees invest time in nearly everyday. I make this statement because you and your employees DO have time to employ advanced business blogging.

Start by selecting a user-friendly blog software for your company make sure it is built to grow the natural listing on Google for your company. Once that purchase is made you have made a gateway into employee time that is currently not being invested in work.

Encourage your employees to share their stories and talk candidly about the real differences your company offers customers in your industry.

Advanced business Blogging will create more opportunities for internal education and growth for your employees.

Taken as a whole, employee Blogging is not only a great investment for your company it is abundantly rewarding.

Join us for our Webinar: Business Blogging: The Key to Local Search September 17^th 1-2 EST. Blogging is a powerful SEO tool when you employ the right partner for your company.

As you see your employees quickly changing screens to bring up that inventory spreadsheet you had them working on, go ahead and ask them if they're starting Peyton Manning this weekend in their league. Let's get them Blogging!

Blog Research Stops Here

Wednesday, September 10, 2008 by Brian McKay

We are not running our businesses in a thriving economy right now, so it is vital to be diligent in actively earning new customers. If your current model of reaching new customers needs reevaluated and you are considering Blogging you come to the right place.

As you scour the web for Blog best practices, it's important to have a foundational knowledge to know what to look for. I've compiled a Top 10 list that can serve as a checklist to guide your research.

1. Blogging for SEO is VITAL

If content is being generated to drive new business, it must be leveraged to win search in the most powerful way possible. Time spent during a workday must be invested wisely, and your Blogging tools need to deliver keyword specific ROI from day one. Having one Blog does not constitute an SEO friendly strategy.

2. Blogging as a sales tool

True business Blogging can be viewed as a salesperson for search engines. Whenever you post, keyword relevant content should be winning search and driving new leads for your business. Picking the most effective keywords is a start to making this a reality. If you are listed organically in Google before your competitor, you are already one touch point ahead to earning a new client.

3. Out Blogging competitors

Have a Blogging platform that will not only provide author centric Blogs, but keyword specific Blogs on 20 or more relevant search terms for your business. Again, having a true business Blogging platform will produce content light years faster than your competitor can.

4. Control of Blog content

When you have multiple Bloggers for your company make sure there is a centralized point where each new post can be reviewed prior to going live. This is a must for maintaining brand consistency and delivering the right message to prospects and clients alike.

5. Blogging consultation

Find a Blogging partner that can provide consistent support to your business Blogging strategy. Purchasing Blogging software is only the beginning of effectively using Blogs to win search and drive new business. Having someone on call to make sure that the strategy is being implemented correctly is vital.

6. User friendly Blog software

This is self explanatory.

7. Conversion is key

Find a platform built for conversion. If a qualified lead reads your Blog, make sure they have a next step to act on to build a relationship. This is a foundational element of successful business Blogging.

8. Employee engagement

Open the flood gates for employee involvement in Blogging. If the appropriate admin has been put into place, employees can humanize your marketing through their experiences. This also further engages your employees in retaining the brand and value proposition of your company.

9. Content is King

On the web in general, if you produce the highest volume of keyword specific, relevant, fresh, and engaging content you are king. Blogging is the answer to your prayers. Especially if you are always struggling to keep your website content fresh. With business Blogging content can be produced daily and be working for you online.

10. Content is King

So important I had to list it twice.

As you continue your due diligence on Blogging please check out our white papers and Webinars. Everyday we are consulting businesses of all sizes on effectively choosing and implementing a Blogging package that will make a sizeable impact on winning search and earning new business.

Our next Webinar is Business Blogging: The Key to Local Search September 17^th 1-2 EST

Hope to see you there.

Obsession...

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 by Sarah Sedberry

Alright, I admit it. I have completely given into to the iPhone craze (although, I still retain some pride as I did not stand in line for 5 hours to get the phone on the first day, I waited until day 2).

This is my first Apple product so I am certainly no apple-head, but I can now understand the passion expressed by Apple users. However, this conversion of loyalty is not caused by what you would think. As Jon Fortt over at Fortune Magazine mentions in his article:

"The iPhone’s magic isn’t in the features – not the 2-megapixel camera, or the Safari web browser, or even the music and video capabilities. It’s in Apple’s knack for making all those features easier to locate and use." Not only is Apple making it easier for consumers to use, they are also reshaping the wireless game by making a move "from phone sales to software development".

The iPhone's impact on business is monumental as well. There are endless choices out there for the professional looking to be mobile; but with the iPhone's ease of use, larger screen, quicker web access and user-friendly internet tools make it an easy choice for me. Having access to the internet no matter where you (as long as you have a signal) without having to carry around a clunkly laptop/computer bag will only breed more and more users surfing the web.

The next time I'm standing in line, have a lay over in the airport, or waiting on my friends for a get together - guess what I'll be doing - that's right, checking in on all of my clients blog posts (ha ha).

In all seriousness though, with the focus on technology, it is important that a business get their name out there and be searchable. Corporate blogs are a perfect answer to this, as search engines love the fresh, relevant, and frequent content that blogs create. Our blogging platform keeps the process simple, as well as, delivers powerful results (like the iPhone). Not to mention, we also partner with our clients, and provide day to day support, and are available to answer any questions that may arise.

Millions of searches are run every day, and we here at Compendium Blogware want to help ensure that it's your company that is showing up in those searches, for your targeted consumer. With our easy to use software, active support and customer service, your corporate blog will see success and perhaps you'll become "obsessed" as well...

Cuil Search Engine: An Outsider's Review

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 by Jenni Edwards

Another search engine? Are we really in need? Maybe if it is drastically better, maybe if it makes my life easier; but in general I am not sitting there wanting a new search engine, but I also have to assume that most marketers aren't sitting wanting for a corporate blogging tool --- it's my job to show them that they need one. So has Cuil convinced me to switch from Google? Not quite. Although Cuil was founded by Google engineers and brags about the increased number of pages that are combed through and the ability to search the so called 'deep web'. In addition, the search results look more like a magazine than a list, as traditional web searches do. Not to mention the $33M in venture-capital money.

Interesting concept...but a bit confusing for my first try. Also, was a bit surprised with the results of a few test searches. Unfortunately, it looks like this evening that their servers were a bit overloaded and I wasn't able to get results for a few terms. I like the innovation, pushing every search engine to be better and better. However, this doesn't seem game changing for Compendium because at the end of the day --- a search engine's success will always be based on its ability to serve up the most relevant results based on the search terms in the quickest and most user friendly way.

What does this mean to our business? Not much --- we measure some of our client's success with Google and benchmark search standings there as well; but the topically driven corporate blogs that are created from the Compendium system are search engine neutral.

Unscripted Thoughts on Scripting

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 by PJ Hinton

Yesterday, InfoWorld ran a story on the rise of scripting languages and an interview with Mozilla JavaScript architect Brendan Eich. Both are very worthwhile reads because they provide a nice mix of the state of the art and the historical context of scripting languages.

Prior to hiring with Compendium about six months ago, I had tinkered with scripting languages largely as side tasks. The mainstay of my work lie in compiled languages like C, C++, and occasionally some Java.

As I sought out new job opportunities both locally and nationally last year, I began to realize that openings for compiled languages were on the decline. Indeed, a friend of a friend out in the Bay Area advised me last summer with these words:

In terms of technical skills, C++/Linux is a great foundation, however, there is a caveat. In the SF bay area overall, companies are more likely to use newer technologies for R&D/new development. There is still a lot of support work out there, but I would say the growing trend is to outsource support work, so those jobs are ever decreasing... Also, I would suggest making a larger investment on learning newer technologies, such as Java and other technologies on the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP, Python, or Perl) stack.

That turned out to be some very solid advice, even though I wound up staying in Indianapolis. Here at Compendium, scripting languages like PHP, JavaScript, and Perl are the bread and butter of our day-to-day efforts to build user-friendly blog software. The transition proved to be pretty smooth because PHP's syntax borrows so heavily from C and C++. I was lucky in the sense that I was learning the language within a disciplined environment that made sure web apps were developed properly.

One of the quotations from the article that jumped out at me was the remark by Andi Gutmans, co-CTO at Zend Technologies.

"It's very easy to pick up and then it will also scale with your needs," Gutmans explains. "I often call it the Visual Basic of the Web."

The ease with which the language is learned is a double-edge sword. On one hand, it flattens the learning curve, but on the other, it gives mediocre programmers enough dynamite to be dangerous.

Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror noted as much about a month ago in his bluntly titled blog post "PHP Sucks, But it Doesn't Matter". Atwood does a pretty good job of surveying the disdain as well as the widespread usage that PHP has managed to garner, but I don't think he quite closes the loop in his analysis.

Syntactically, PHP is a pretty elegant language. It steals enough syntax from C++ to be familiar but escapes the hideousness of template meta-programming because a dynamic language doesn't have to worry about how to deal with generics.

From my own experience the bad reputation of PHP has two origins.

The first lies in its original use as a way to embed server-side executable code within an HTML document. Web programmers latched onto this in droves and abused it, creating websites that did not separate the business, presentation, and application logic cleanly.

The second sore spot is how PHP has managed to assimilate just about every third party library under the sun. If you've ever had to install PHP or build it from scratch, you already have a deep appreciation, or at least a healthy fear, of how many optional elements can be integrated into the system. A lot of times, these APIs are written to parallel the nomenclature of library APIs in C or C++, which makes for inconsistencies.

Ironically enough, both of these things are probably among the factors that helped speed the adoption of the language.

What has helped sustain PHP? Two things come to mind, based on my limited experience.

For one thing, the PHP development community got Model/View/Controller religion. Nowadays, there are tens of PHP frameworks designed to help developers employ the MVC design pattern, which helps separate the logics and avoid the ugly code for which PHP became notorious. Granted, not all of them are of equal quality, and some have already gone dormant. What's important is that enough developers realized that the old way of doing things was neither sustainable nor scalable.

The second thing was the under-the-hood change of basing PHP on the Zend engine, which has helped it to achieve performance levels that you might not expect from a dynamic language.

For all of the speed of development that one achieves with a dynamic language, there is one thing I could live without. The incredible syntax flexibility of a scripting language like PHP can allow you to create code that is syntactically correct but semantically crazy.

For example, I recently wrote some code that was intended to build up a string that you could pass on to a logging facility. It looked something like this:

$logger_string = 'problem with operation foo '  . 
 $print_r($some_variable, true) . ' some more text';

The bug in this code was that there should have been no dollar sign in front of print_r. It's a function name, not a variable. PHP sees this as just fine and dandy, converting $print_r into function name, provided that the variable name evaluates to a string. This kind of thing will pass the PHP syntax checker but will cause a fatal error at runtime. It's similar to the situation where a spell checker won't save you from using mistakenly using a homophone.

In spite of all of that, I'm happy to be coding with PHP. Errors like those above are pretty rare. Moreover, I don't miss having to worry about type declarations and memory management. In spite of numerous sins of programmers past, I firmly believe that PHP is a great language to build a solid blogging platform. We're already doing that!

A Good Post Spoiled?

Thursday, March 6, 2008 by PJ Hinton

Over on ZDNet Asia blog B.T.W., Eileen Yu issues a caveat to businesses scrambling to get onto the Web 2.0 bandwagon with corporate blogs and social networking services.

Getting their employees to post a blog is easy, but companies forget that they'll also then have to get someone to moderate every blog and manage the infrastructure.

It's a bit like golf, isn't it? I remember how businesses here used to spend thousands of dollars sending their sales teams for golf lessons and signing them up for club memberships. Companies were willing to do all that so their sales staff will be able to network with clients over a game of golf and seal multimillion-dollar contract agreements.

...

Just like they do now with blogs and Facebook, some organizations won't hesitate to jump on every chance they can to cozy up to clients in hopes of signing that mega deal.

But, blogs and Facebook aren't quite like golf. Web 2.0 tools require more resources to manage and there are other issues to worry about also, such as security risks.

Businesses thinking about a company blog rollout can benefit by giving Yu's point some serious consideration. Professional blog software should not only be user-friendly, it should also be easy to set up and administer.

Compendium Blogware is a multi-user blogging application that provides built-in administrative control. And because it is Software as a Service, you don't have to worry about installs and upgrades. We help you to mitigate many of the costs that Yu brings up in her post.