- Why do I want to blog?
- Who is my audience?
- What do I want to achieve?
Posted Monday, September 24, 2007 by
Marty Bird
I held a webinar with a group of Compendium’s customers last week, the topic was Jump Starting Your Blog. I’m finding our customers have a broad range of knowledge about blogging (many classify themselves as beginners) so the material presented started with making sure the blog authors had answers to the following questions before they published their first blog post:
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Posted Thursday, September 20, 2007 by
Marty Bird
Reuters is reporting Americans have integrated the web into every day life to such an extent that the majority cannot go for a week without going online. Of course they can’t! The web is an excellent and necessary tool in so many ways, namely for conducting business in a much more efficient and effective way. Business blogging, being in its infancy, is only going to contribute more and more to the positive aspects of the web, giving your customers the opportunity to interact and learn more about topics that interest them. Read more about the survey conducted by advertising agency JWT.
Posted Thursday, September 20, 2007 by
Marty Bird
More and more corporate bloggers are asking for multiple ways to measure the performance of their blogging efforts (and rightly so!). One way is to include a call to action within the navigation bar. In the case of Compendium Software, we're measuring interest in our corporate blogging solutions by asking visitors to sign up for a demo from the right side navigation bar on our blogs. We can measure the number of clicks or visits to the demo page originating from the blog, the number of demo requests (form submissions) and of course the number of sales as a result. That puts a real dollar amount on that call to action. What else can you think of to measure the performance of your blog?
Our clients enjoy additional tracking details available within their accounts, and you may already be using tools like Google Analytics or other log analysis package to show results. We're looking forward to providing ongoing advice to our customers, monitoring their performance and sharing their success. Stay tuned!
Our clients enjoy additional tracking details available within their accounts, and you may already be using tools like Google Analytics or other log analysis package to show results. We're looking forward to providing ongoing advice to our customers, monitoring their performance and sharing their success. Stay tuned!
Posted Tuesday, September 11, 2007 by
Marty Bird
So you have a new or existing blog, and you've posted a few times . . . but recently your business blogging activity has slowed down to a trickle and you're feeling like it's a chore. You're asking, "Where do I find the time in my already busy day?" Or you've skipped a few days and you have simply lost some motivation. Try this: set aside 15 minutes at the end of your work day. That's your blogging time. As you go about your day, be aware of what's happening around you, what news you're reading, what meetings you've attended, conversations you've had, and other blog posts you've read. Be thinking as these events unfold - "How can I apply this to my blog topic?" Instead of racking your brain at the end of the day, trying desperately to capture that great idea, you should have a few notes scribbled down based on the day's events. Then just blog it! Don't make it in to a huge project - make your point, be yourself, engage your reader and feel good about your blogging success! See? You've made it though another day.
Posted Wednesday, September 5, 2007 by
Marty Bird
As I was reading an article that covered how to use various forms of social media to help promote your business, like blogs, podcasts, YouTube, MySpace, etc., it occurred to me that a basic checklist on how to promote blogs would be good to visit. I encourage you to expand your opportunities for success by getting the word out about your blog using the resources that are available to you.
By following best practices, as well as through the compending process (for Compendium Software customers), your blog is already search optimized with its keyword rich, frequently updated content. Using a combination of search engine and social marketing optimization is the best way to promote and generate traffic to your blog. Here’s the basic list:
- Add a link to your blog in your email signature
- Add link to all of your existing web sites
- Post a news item to your web site announcing the new blog (include links)
- Add the link to all of your existing networking sites (LinkedIn, FaceBook, MySpace)
- Add a story to your email newsletter (include link to blog in all future email newsletters)
- Read other blogs and when appropriate, leave a comment (often you can link back to your blog)
Do you have more to add? Please let me know.
If you would like to read more about this topic please use the following resources:
Posted Saturday, September 1, 2007 by
Marty Bird
Now and then it's good to step back and focus. Here are a couple of my favorite resources to re-motivate myself, and serve as reminders for all of us in corporate blogging.
From Debbie Weil's BlogWrite for CEOs:
- An effective corporate blog is highly creative
- 5 traits of good corporate blogs
- 5 examples of effective corporate blogs
And from Mario Sundar's Marketing Nirvana blog "When blogging is NOT your full time job"
- Summary: So you love to blog, but can’t find time to do it. Here are five easy ways to make your blogging experience better when you have very little time to do it — how to become more efficient at blogging.
Posted Monday, August 27, 2007 by
Marty Bird
Recently a client new to blogging asked me, "How do I know if I’m doing it right?" I thought this was a very good question, and worth stepping back from time to time to revisit your blog’s purpose, evaluate your style and ask yourself how your audience might perceive you.Coming from a technical writing background (meaning not creative and not conversational), I’ll read a draft post I’ve just finished and find it much too stuffy, too upright. I’ve read that you should write a blog post like you might be writing a letter or note to your mom. Remain conversational, make a point and ask a question. Keep your content focused on your topic, and to remain fresh, relate your post to something that will resonate with your reader, like a current event, news item or book you’re reading. It becomes more natural as you starting writing on a regular basis to keep your eyes and ears open as you go about your day, always being open for that nugget of information that’ll inspire a blog post. When that nugget presents itself – write it down! Find that notepad in your glove box and scribble a note you can use later.
How do you know if you’re doing it right? Post on a regular basis for practice, ask your readers and colleagues for feedback, read and comment on some other blogs and don’t be too critical of yourself as you get started blogging.
Posted Saturday, August 25, 2007 by
Marty Bird
As I strive to deliver services and support to help you meet your organization's goals through the use of our blogging platform, I'll be seeking out success stories. How do you define success through blogging? First, you have to have a solid strategy and employ blogging best practices. Then, you'll need a measurement device and have checkpoints in place to help you make adjustments.
I know you must be thinking, "This is starting to sound harder than I thought it would be." If you are already making sound business decisions by measuring other initiatives, simply apply those practices to your blogging strategy. Be sure to decide ahead of time if you plan to tie blogging to your bottom line, or consider it as a way to increase your brand's visibility through word of mouth, search engine positioning, press mentions and traffic to your blog.
Now, your blogging platform of choice should not complicate your process. In fact it should simply be a tool to help you reach your end game. That's why our focus will continue to be providing a simple to use solution that enables you to concentrate on your goal. Let's face it; blogging is out of its infancy, hurtling towards maturity. With apologies to Kit De Luca, "you just can't turn tricks forever."
I encourage you to check out these other resources on the ROI of blogging as you develop your business strategy. And prepare yourself; I may call on you to be my first case study!
Posted Monday, August 6, 2007 by
Marty Bird
Now that you’ve decided that starting a corporate blog will help your company succeed at reaching its goals, you might come back to the question, “What are a few best practices to optimize my blog for search?” Certainly begin by following the general guidelines as outlined in this post “Corporate Blogging 101: The G Word (Guidelines).”
But what about getting those good search results? Today I had a conversation with a customer that prompted me to follow up with an email that included these basic pointers:
But what about getting those good search results? Today I had a conversation with a customer that prompted me to follow up with an email that included these basic pointers:
- Start with descriptive blog post titles.
- Include keywords in the title and in the body text specific to your organization for those terms you want to optimize for search.
- Be consistent, three or four posts per week is a good amount.
- Include links within your posts to other relevant resources.
- When your blog post was inspired by an article you read, link to it as a reference.
- Comment on other blogs within your topic area and include a link back to your blog.
- A great resource is a post from the copyblogger, Internet marketing strategist Brian Clark, titled SEO Copywriting 2.0.
Posted Tuesday, July 31, 2007 by
Marty Bird
So what is this compending business anyway? For a few of our beta clients the compending concept has taken some explanation, giving us the opportunity to step back and re-evaluate how we're presenting a key component of our blogging software.
Our differential advantage over other blogging platforms is that we are easy to use blogging software, and our technology automatically structures and organizes blog content in the ideal way for search engines. For you as a new or potential client this all happens behind the scenes. The result can be described as a "master listing" that combines and organizes all blog posts. That's compending! It's really all transparent to you, the client. But the results aren't so transparent:
When you write a blog post, you include specific keyword phrases we identify during your initial setup, helping to win keyword searches. That's the real benefit! You win those keyword searches and expose more people to your brand and to your organization. And by working with easy to use blogging software, as much of the work as possible is done for you.
Webster defines "compendium" as a list of a number of items, a collection or compilation. Here are some other words and phrases that work as well: aggregate, combination, taking all units as a whole, a list of a number of items.
What else might help to explain and illustrate this concept?
Posted Tuesday, July 17, 2007 by
Marty Bird
You're not the champion of blogging in your company, yet you've been asked to create a blog and post every few days. "Who, me?" you ask. How do you overcome this hurdle?
- Visit with your blogging champion (your supervisor?) to get a clear understanding of what the company goals are with regard to blogging in your business.
- Agree on a specific topic for your blog.
- Be sure your supervisor uses your strengths and is not asking you to accomplish the impossible.
- Ask for some resources on corporate blogging.
Use those tips as a starting point. You surely won't be a productive blogger if you aren't convinced it's the right thing to do. Ask your supervisor for some time to do your research. Once you've warmed up to the idea, jump right in - the water's fine!
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