Blogs Are Search Marketing Tools

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We are BtoB marketers who drink the Kool-Aid. We use blogging as a search, lead generation and customer acquisition tool. We just happen to work for a blogging software company. Regardless we measure our blogging strategy just as we do any other marketing effort. We are truly our best in worst client. So, in the Webinar I hope we are able to share with you how we are marketers are using blogs specifically on the Compendium platform to truly leverage this dynamic search marketing tool to yeild ROI.

Some of our biggest accomplishments to date with our blogging strategy. And, we’ll show you all how we arrived at these stats but first I think it’s important to touch on Blogging 101.

What is a blog. Simply put it’s a tool that allows user to post online journal-like content, organized in reverse chronological order. Another way to think about a blog as it relates to marketing… a blog page is nothing more than an organic landing page. It is a tool marketers can use in addition to their website to yield search traffic. And, the great thing about blogs as search tools… it’s all organic. And, we’ll touch on that aspect in a minute.

Perhaps one of the biggest blogging mistakes companies make is that if they blog it… “they” will come. They being community, avid followers, etc. But the reality is that’s not true at all. In fact in our case 82.39% of all visitors are brand new. And that number continues to soar as we add more blogs and traffic grows. So, when planning your blogging strategy it’s imperative you set it up for the first time visitors and just as you would your main website.

Our Blogging strategy looks like this

There are 4 important aspects to sustaining a successful blogging strategy and we’ll explore how we do these in more detail. Keywords… after we do the research our tool has many checks and balances which we will look at ensure bloggers are using the keywords appropriately. Content – Meghan is going to explain in detail how we motivate and sustain consistent content creation with our bloggers. Conversion and CTA – Mikey is going to explain how he go about determining what the blog looks like, what offers to use on the blog and the importance of it all. Then, we’ll bring it all together with Measurement. How do we benchmark success.

There are a variety of ways to chose your keywords. We use Google analtycs to see what search terms are driving traffic, we use Google keyword tool to see what related terms we might be able to win/include. And SEO Moz has some great free tools that will show you the competitiveness of your keyword selections, etc.

Here’s an example that combines all of the elements. We – compendium – want to attract searchers who are looking for corporate blogging software. We know this keyword converts well, we know this keywords is heavily searched. And so one of our blogs is titled Corporate Blogging Software. Note – the title of our blog matches exactly the title of one of our best performing keywords.

When the searcher clicks on that first result they are directed to our blog. Again, notice the title with relevant information.

Once we identify our keywords we add them to our Compendium platform as keyword blogs. And content around these terms will be populated in each of the blogs through a tagging system and algorithm we’ve developed.

Now that we have our blogs set up we have to create content. And, it’s not as hard as it sounds… in fact it’s quite fun for our team and also the company.

Here are a few examples of easy ways to motivate your employees to blog – think of fun daily or weekly prizes to give to the top blogger at your company or reward the blogger with the most relevant useful post submitted. Our current promotion is rewarding the top blogger of this week with Kings Island tickets – see email example. Sending out these daily emails to remind your employees of the contest and where they stand is a great reminder and it also helps to keep the motivation flowing. Another great way to keep blogging at top of mind for your employees is to set up a re-occurring calendar reminder. Pick a convenient time of day and invite everyone to blog together – this has proved to be a big help in reminding our employees to blog. Along with rewarding our best bloggers, we also like to call out the bloggers who aren’t blogging as much as we would like. At our company meetings we – Dunce Cap example. Receiving the Dunce Cap at a company meeting will definitely motivate your bloggers to submit more posts next month.

I try and hold on average 2 blogging contests per month. These contests don’t have to be expensive – small gifts go a long way as well. Here are some examples of smaller/less expensive incentives we have offered. Bring in Homemade breakfast for everyone who blogs, same with the donuts – treat the office to donuts in the morning if everyone submits one blog post. Or throw a pizza party at lunch and allow this time for everyone to blog and eat lunch together. Or offer small denomination gift cards to the first person to submit 2 blog posts in one day. Important to remember that these things don’t take up a lot of your time, but they go a long way in showing your employees that you appreciate them blogging and to keep up the good work.

So now that we have all of our content generated, it’s my job to make sure that everything is on point before I hit the approve button. Here is an example of a blog post submitted by one of our employees – the first step is to make sure you don’t see any spelling errors or grammatical errors in the post. After you have checked that, take a look at the keyword strength tool that is built into our software – this will help you see how relevant the post is. The green color is what you want to see – if the post is not a green shade from the tool, that might be a good indication that the post needs to be modified a bit before approving. The next step is to check all the links included in the post to make sure they are linking to the proper page and that everything checks out as appropriate to include in the post. The last step is to make sure the Important Keywords are included in the post somewhere. Not all the keywords need to be included, but for it’s important to stay on point when writing a post – this will help to insure that employees are writing around the keywords that are important to our company.

Here are some various things we do in order to sustain content.

And – as you will see… it matters. Content is truly the driving force for traffic accumulation. Here you’ll see…

Management fellow DePauw University Studied advertising design at Savannah College of Art and Design, wrapping up MFA thesis

While blogs and site have different content they need to have layouts specific to making the content readable, accessible, etc… however, we have made an attempt to use similar features, looks, calls to action to improve performance of both site and blog… Integrating the two. - Leaderboard on blogs as of february… has become biggest converter of either site or blog. Similar, not quite seamless although can easily be done all in css,etc.. We just like to test a LOT.

Both should be treated like a landing page, in fact, our blog now has a lower bounce rate… Should be able to convert anywhere, anytime. People don’t care which one they’re on.

Conversion – so now that you have the blogs with drive the traffic and visitors you MUST give them something to do. It’s no different than your website. If you are selling pots and pans… you need to make sure you ask that visitor Hey, do you want to buy some pots and pans. Your blog is no different than your website in this regard. The only way you’re going to make money through your blogging strategy is if you ask for it. And here are a few ways we’re collecting leads (which ultimately will turn into new business) through our blogs.

Sidebar conversion. Now, let’s say I click on the ROI tool-kit. Yes, I do want that valuable piece of info.

That takes me to a landing page with a form to collect your information.

Once a person fills out that information they are put into our CRM.

Here are a few best practices when developing your own CTA’s

Tracking – perhaps one of THE most important elements to your strategy. How do you know if you’re doing well if you don’t track it. We use Google analytics and Sf.com to track from visitor to lead to closed business. In fact it’s the same tracking we use for our Website. Here are weekly metrics we track. And we’d be happy to share this worksheet with you post webinar.

The key elements to tracking…

2 Groups

NSW Department of Education at NSW Department of Education, added this to the group Social Media
NSW Department of Education at NSW Department of Education, added this to the group Enterprise 2.0

Blogs Are Search Marketing Tools - Presentation Transcript

Thanks for Joining Us Today Compendium’s Marketing Team Mikey Mioduski Creative Designer Megan Glover Marketing Director Meghan Peters Marketing Coordinator
Who Are We?
- BtoB Marketers
- Using Blogs as Search Marketing Tools
- Focus on:
Accomplishments
- 90% Growth in Lead Generation (since Jan 2009)
- 9% Click-through rate
- Average over 185 posts/month
- Online journal-like content , organized in reverse chronological order.
What’s a Blog??
Who are my visitors? 82.39% OF ALL BLOG VISITORS ARE BRAND NEW - PROSPECTS
Our Blogging Strategy Compendium Blogware Number of Blog Authors 36 Average # of Posts per Month 182 Number of Blogs 540
Top Four Sustaining Factors
Keywords Google Analytics Google Keyword Tool www.seomoz.org/tools
Keyword 3 Keyword 1 Keyword 5 Keyword 9 Keyword 6 Keyword 11 Keyword 12 Keyword 16 Keyword 14 Keyword 13 Keyword 38 Keyword 2 Keyword 27 Keyword 7 Keyword 8 Keyword 10 Keyword 49 Keyword 50 Keyword 21 Keyword 20 Keyword 15 Keyword 19 Keyword 18 Keyword 17 Keyword 22 Keyword 4 Keyword 23 Keyword 46 Keyword 48 Keyword 47 Keyword 45 Keyword 39 Keyword 40 Keyword 28 Keyword 29 Keyword 26 Keyword 25 Keyword 31 Keyword 30 Keyword 34 Keyword 36 Keyword 41 Keyword 42 Keyword 43 Keyword 44 Keyword 37 Keyword 35 Keyword 33 Keyword 32 Your Website How Compendium Works
Keyword Blogs
Writing Your Blog Post
Post Revelency
Admin Preview
This is Meghan Peters, the Marketing Coordinator at Compendium. She is in charge of motivating folks to generate the content for our blogs. Meghan spends 15 minutes a day on our content generation strategy.
Creating Content WIN Kings Island Tickets Compendium Runs on Dunkin
Motivate your Employees
What’s Worked Best
- Daily or Weekly Incentives:
- 1. Homemade Breakfast
- 2. Donuts
- 3. Pizza Party and Blogging
- 4. $10 or $15 Gift Cards
What to Look For… Step #1: Check for spelling and grammatical errors Step #2: Look at the Keyword Strength Tool Step #3: Make sure any links in the post are working properly and that they are on message Step #4: Check for Important Keyword Usage
- Everyone blogs
- User Interface Helps Content Stay on Track
- Inexpensive Weekly/Monthly incentives WORK:
Recap: Content Creation
Volume/Traffic Correlation
BLOG DESIGN
- Mikey Mioduski, Creative Designer
- Main role:
BLOG DESIGN
- Blog vs. Site.
BLOG DESIGN
- Blog vs. Site: Resources & Offerings.
Redesigned blogs 2/2009 to give more options to visitor, improve usability & conversion Results: Dramatically improved Bounce Rate & Conversion Rate. BLOG WEBSITE
CONVERSION FLOW “ The Circle of Life.” (Blog feed: indirect) (Direct cta) (Direct cta) (Convert!) (Site link: indirect) BLOG WEBSITE
CTA Exampls: Newsletter Sign-Ups Newsletter Sign-Ups
Form Capture
Form Capture to CRM
Top 5 CTA Do’s
- DO USE:
- Big Buttons
- Clear Action
- Education Focused Content
- Landing Pages That Meet Expectation
Tracking
Tracking
- Establish Goals:
- Track Weekly
- Adjust Weekly
Questions and Comments? Megan Glover Director of Marketing [email_address]