The social media fight in established companies has been ongoing for years now with  a few visionaries going “all-in” with Social Media and inbound marketing, an equal amount doing nothing at all.  Most, however, have been sitting on the fence (this is the 10-10-80 principle you may have heard of).  With the help of  some years of data and great companies like McKinsey taking the time to study results, I think we’re going to see a lot more fence sitters getting on board.

The McKinsey study is no small undertaking – polling over 3,000 executives with a 2/3 response rate.  From our perspective at InnoGage, we were thrilled to see the number of companies engaging in Corporate Blogging increasing to 38 percent! We’ve passed that critical 1/3 adoption rate.  We believe that number will … Read More »

I read a blog post today by Lee Odden on his Top Rank Online Marketing Blog and I felt compelled to post about it.  It’s not often that I agree with everything in a blog post but Lee really nailed it with his post called 5 Tips on Business Blogging With Minimal Resources.

One reason I got so excited when I read Lee’s post – it validates the functionality we have worked hard to put into InnoBlogs.  Lee wrote this post because blog management is NOT easy.  It takes work and strategic focus and dedication and a team – which is then hard to manage and control… With each of Lee’s points about business blogging, I immediately recognized functionality we built into InnoBlogs to assist with or relieve each challenge.  Here are the Five points Lee makes … Read More »

With your business blog, you need to be careful how you interpret the bounce rate. It’s very different than your traditional website – where you want people to go from page to page, filling up their shopping carts or browsing all the different products and services that you have to offer.

Blogs traditionally have very high bounce rates because of the nature of how a blog works. As more and more people find your business blog from keywords in posts, they will begin landing on specific blog post pages (not the blog homepage). From here, there are several scenarios. Here are a few:

1) they continue reading through your business blog and go through a lot of posts. This may be fine – i.e. it builds the brand, people like your content…etc. However, it could also … 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 »

By Kristen Carter

A few days ago Stephen Chapman wrote a fascinating blog on what he deemed the one mistake CEOs make about search engine optimization. What is that mistake? It’s that many CEOs spend so much time focusing on getting their keywords ranked highly on search engines that they never consider if their SEO strategy is increasing leads or conversion for their business. This is a problem because having a keyword rank highly is only good if it translates to increased ROI. This is particularly an issue when CEOs become attached to specific keywords, and instead of trusting SEO experts, they insist that one word or phrase is vital to their business and MUST be ranked highly.

Chapman points out that of course there is a plethora of search engine optimization agencies who will gladly take your money … Read More »

There was a great blog post recently by g2mSolutions, an Australian based consultancy helping clients improve their inbound marketing and overall sales funnels.  These guys got my attention by showing interest in our InnoBlogs product as a tool for Inbound Marketing.  Since then we have developed a friendship and were actually mentioned in this blog post.

Here is a cut from Chris Fell’s write up about the power of business blogs.  He calls out 4 ways to ensure success short-labeled as R.I.C.E. which stands for Relevance, Interactivity, Context and Ease of use.  In this great post he also discusses the power of business blogging.  You can read a teaser from his post below, but for the whole meal, I highly encourage you to visit the full post on Chris’s blog.

So we have established … Read More »

I am going to be doing a small series on Business Blogging.  What is business blogging you ask?  Simply put business blogging is the art of being real with your customers, partners and prospects.  It requires a business to take down the facade and put themselves out there in a transparent nature.

Why would anyone do that?  There are so many reasons I will not cover them all here.  As a starter, it builds trust.  Let me be clear, being honest doesn’t mean you air your dirty laundry for all to see.  It means you speak about real topics that people can relate to in language they can easily understand.  It means you admit you’re not perfect and are always trying to improve.  It also means you answer people when they talk to you on your blog via comments, or in … Read More »

Business Blogs Work!

One of my favorite companies in the world, Hubspot, has conducted another study on Business Blogging.  Once again, their results are staggering.  Hubspot conducted a study of 2,300 companies and put them in two groups.  Those who blog and those who don’t.  Before I go one, let me point out that the criteria was just “blogging”.  It was not Good blogging or Excellent blogging.  This group included those companies who blog…and suck at it.  Yet the numbers are still amazing!

Businesses that blog see an increase in LEAD GENERATION that is 126% HIGHER than businesses that don’t blog…all else being equal.  If you’ve been on the fence because you can’t justify the ROI of blogging or don’t see the value then it’s time to get off the fence – the results are indisputable.  I seriously doubt … Read More »

Before January gets away from me I wanted to give some kudos to my favorite blog post of 2009. The Award goes to Social Media Today with their blog entitled: Five reasons corporations are failing at social media.

Here is a brief summary of the Five Points with my personal insights and commentary.  For the full scoop, please click on the link above to visit the original blog.

The Top 5 Reasons Corporations are failing at Social Media……

1. They can’t talk about anything broader than their own products

It’s great that you love your products and services, but there is a limit to the narcissism that your readers can stomach.  I personally suggest limiting your “PR” to 20% or less of your social media interaction.  There are so many other things about your company and organization that are valuable and brand-building.  … Read More »

You know what one of the best things about owning your own company is?  Flexibility.

Many of you who don’t know me well have no idea that I have a 5 year-old boy, a 3 year-old boy and a newborn little girl at home.  In addition, I help to chair the AMA SIG on Social Media and the Columbus MBA Club, volunteer my time every Wednesday evening to work with kids, sit on a few boards…you get the idea.

Owning my company gives me the flexibility to bend my work around my life.   Today I had breakfast with my family, took my son to school, worked from home in the morning, ran across town for meetings and now I’m at my office at 7:30 pm.  Tomorrow will be different.  Flexibility is critical.

Software isn’t much different than life.  Software that forces you to … Read More »