Happy New Year, Innogagers! (Innogageans? Innogaginos? Never mind.) It’s a brand new year and a good a time as any to take a good look at your digital marketing strategy for 2013. Like many people, you may be making a slew of resolutions, both personal and professional, and maybe secretly preparing to let those resolutions slide in a few months…or weeks…or (gulp) days.

I have a love-hate relationship with resolutions. I love making lists and checking them off. It makes me feel organized, capable, and important. I hate, however, the feeling I get when I don’t check things off: chaotic, incompetent, and a bit like an impostor. (Maybe a bit more melodramatic than usual too.) I also hate how to-do lists can cover important and even enjoyable tasks with that nasty veneer of “have-to.” So far in the first week of 2013 I have … Read More »

Did you know that teachers are the ultimate content marketers? It’s true! They generate squillions of activities, assignments, and assessments in order to move their students toward that noble but slightly nebulous goal of “learning.” Their payoff is not in dollars but the very tangible benefits of an educated populace.

More than once in my teaching career, I had the arduous task of designing an entire course from scratch with nothing but the Ohio Academic Standards to guide me. I had a flashback to that past life this week as we sat down to plan Innogage’s content strategy for the coming year.

If you feel like your online content marketing is a bit haphazard when it comes to form and/or function, maybe it’s time to sit down and plan a little. As a teacher (and, further back, a student), I found that the keys … Read More »

Businesses that serve a small local area always want data down to their neighbors for their SEO. I don’t blame them, but unfortunately we can’t spy on our neighbors through their windows without having some legal problems. So we turn to our great internet search tools to find out what our neighbors are looking for and how they put it into words. PROBLEM! There isn’t enough data in Google for this area…

As a business that is pushing into the internet marketing world you have probably come across this problem when looking at a very specific geographical regions. I’m talking about towns, townships, small cities, and places where the town center may just be a post office!

We face this same problem with clients who sell to local cities and towns. Local search engine optimization tips are something our clients ask … Read More »

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) today released a whitepaper / presentation on 8 amazing content workflow technologies which greatly enhance your content production efforts. We are very proud that the Innogage collaborative blogging tool, Innoblogs, was included in that list of eight. In fact, Innoblogs was THE ONLY CONTENT TOOL recommended under the category of Blogging Workflow Tools!!

The other categories covered were Content workflow tools (4 recommendations) and Content workflow tools combined with writer networks (3 recommendations).

This report covers information about Innoblogs, what it is and what kind of customer stands to benefit the most from the powerful blogging workflow tools inside our technology. It also gets in under the hood to tell you exactly what you get in the areas of workflow, search engine optimization, and customer conversion. It even covers cost and who some of our … Read More »

Last week I put together what I feel are the first two steps to building trust when it comes to business blogging. “Purpose” gives us direction, and its connotation to me

portrays a reason why others would want to trust you. They believe in your purpose, and they are either striving to go in the direction you are creating too or would like to see you succeed in your purpose. A purpose in a business plan is something people can connect to emotionally and believe in at a deeper level.

Here is the next step…

Appear “polished” when people are looking.

How does “polish” build trust you may ask… Have you ever been to a site where you can tell they shot the images themselves? How about their headshots? Or do they not have a … Read More »

InnoGage was recently accepted into the WhippleHill Communications Technology Ecosystem. WhippleHill Communications provides targeted communications solutions for independent schools seeking next-generation Web services. In addition to offering their proprietary technology, Podium, WhippleHill partners with best-in-breed technology companies to extend their offerings without over-extending their expertise. It is an honor to be counted among so many other great companies such as HubSpot, Google and Omniture, and many more. Be sure to visit WhippleHill’s Ecosystem page to check out all the great partner companies.

For InnoGage, this is a significant affirmation that our InnoBlogs product drives real value to many markets including education. InnoBlogs currently powers both the Student collaborative blog, Journeys, as well as … Read More »

I recently had a chance to be a guest on Digital 411 on Talktainment Internet Radio with Dr. Erika.  It was a complete blast and I thoroughly enjoyed talking about one of my most favorite topics: Business Blogging and how it relates to return on investment, social media marketing and search engine optimization.

On the Digital 411 show with me was Lori Crock from WrittenImpact.  Lori helps companies and entrepreneurs succeed in social media including blogging strategically, sprinkled in with a lot of coaching.

It was a really good discussion with a lot of tips for small and medium sized businesses.  If you’d like to listen to the radio show you can hit the archive link here.  It will be well worth your … Read More »

I decided to take a year off from the Innovation awards this year… or so I thought.  After going for best startup for a couple years now and not progressing past the Finalist round, I decided to skip the awards this year and just keep cranking on work.  However, my good friends at TechColumbus asked me to help them spread the word about the conference and I agreed immediately.

So – I am here to officially announce that I WILL be in attendance this year, not as a contestant or a finalist, but as a pumped up member and active contributor to the vibrant Technology community in central Ohio! If you’re attending the Innovation awards on Feb 3rd, I will see you there!  If you’re on the fence about attending, I would like to encourage you … Read More »

One of the things that drives me nuts about most software is the disconnect between the technical coders and the nontechnical users.  Have you ever bumbled around inside Facebook or Flikr?  I have.  Just because you have a huge presence doesn’t mean that creating intuitive software is easy!  At InnoGage, we strive to make our business blogging software incredibly easy to use.  It’s part of our core mission.  I was encouraged recently to discover that we are doing something right with ease of use…

Case Study: the InnoBlogs Search Engine Optimizer at Incept

We recently released InnoBlogs version 1.4 which changes the business blogging game.  Simply put, I got tired of not being able to answer the CFO’s question of “what’s my return on investment (ROI)”.  I know there are many people who believe that you shouldn’t … Read More »

I read a great article yesterday by Ben Elowitz on the rising importance of Social Media Optimization or SMO.  In this article, Ben predicts the death of SEO as SMO continues to rise to power pushed along by the partnership between Facebook and Bing.  So, is Search Engine Optimization actually dead?  Is Google shaking in their boots as reactive (vs. predictive) searching falls by the wayside?

Well, probably not quite yet.

Before you throw your SEO strategy out the window in favor of SMO I would caution you that a blended approach is probably the best bet for now.  If you’re doing neither SEO nor SMO, you may be in trouble (contact us!)  If you are doing only SEO or SMO, you are likely leaving value on the table.

The reason I think … Read More »