Inside a recent fortune cookie: “Statistics are no substitute for judgment.”

Putting aside that fortune cookies are no longer fortunes anymore, they’re aphorisms (or “sh**ty observation cookies” as my friends Constantin and Paull call them), this is a pretty good aphorism about social media.

While I believe that it’s essential that social media managers, and their marketing and PR colleagues, figure out how to measure the ROI of social media – the statistics part – I also think there’s an important judgment part of social as well.  Kat French says it’s about narrative and anecdote – that you’ve got to put aside the “idiot gauges” and figure out what the customer and brand impact really is.

You have to use your judgment to determine if social media is helping your customers, brand, product or service.

Image via Wikipedia

“Help” of course means different things to different people.  Help can be about brand perception, awareness or buzz; customer satisfaction and loyalty; or reducing the load on the customer service team.  The judgment part is having a gut sense of what social is doing for the brand, numbers aside.  If there’s buzz, and it feels positive, and you’re having a good time doing it and engaging with customers/brand fans, you’re probably inclined to chalk up the effort as a good one – your judgment there is probably serving you well.

Sure, that’s a really hard sell to management.  Imagine telling your boss, “My gut tells me social is working for us and it’s a good thing for our brand” but without backing it up in any way.  You might get marched out the door, or maybe just have all your social budget pulled out from under you.  By contrast, you might have lots of positive statistics, but how do you know that your efforts are really connecting with your customers?  If you can combine good judgment with good statistics, then you’re well on your way to social media success.

Happy New Year! Here’s to your social media success in 2011!

Related articles

• The 5 Critical Social Media Skills You Need To Disperse (brasstackthinking.com)
• 3 Metrics to Prove to Your Boss That Social Media Marketing is Working (hubspot.com)

Retail organizations can differ greatly from traditional B2C businesses – with their dynamics presenting a series of unique opportunities and challenges around the development of social media strategy and tactical implementation.

On the plus side, retail has some inherent characteristics that are very conducive to social media. One colleague, David Ian Gray, often refers to retail as a “natural social network”, where brick and mortar stores act as community hubs – conduits for people with similar interests to gather. In addition, he feels that retail has a built-in “theatrical element” that facilitates experiences and fuels word of mouth communication – very helpful when it comes to social media.

On the minus side, retail also presents a series of organizational challenges around store operations, geographic dispersion and departmental silos – all of which can threaten the success of any social media initiative.

Department Integration – Social media touches all facets of an organization and the retail sector is no exception. What is unique, however, is the added challenge presented by store operations which are physically removed from head office. It’s essential to factor in the role of street level teams when it comes to executing a plan and subsequent social media campaign. One example might include in store calls to action – operations will play a key role in facilitating the transition from an online campaign to a positive in-store experience.

Brand Integration – Individual retail stores within a chain may be unique in how they operate, merchandise, promote and connect with local audiences. As a result, there is an increased need for retail organizations to implement social media strategies that communicate a consistent brand message across potentially different product offerings, stores, staff and events.

Shared Purpose – Retailers are known for implementing an ongoing stream of tactics, programs and promotions. In order for social media to be successful within this environment, it’s important for all stakeholders to understand the organizational purpose of any digital strategy – For example, one client produced a video (accessed by all employees via their intranet) that outlined the purpose of their social media program and how it would benefit the organization. Having all departments and front line staff connected to a strategy increases effectiveness of execution and creates a better chance for success.

Relevant Content – Front line staff have huge social media influence within the retail environment. Store level employees are directly responsible for the delivery of customer experience – the information they receive via internal social media i.e. product information, training, etc. helps position them to successfully deliver a positive customer experience. This, in turn, fuels positive word of mouth that builds brand equity. As a result, offering relevant social media content to external AND internal audiences becomes critical for retail organizations.

Social Media Planning – There are basically two overarching goals for any social media initiative…to make money or save money – These apply to the retail sector as well. But the retail environment also has some unique objectives that require an integrated effort with respect to metrics. For example, one retail social media goal might be driving traffic to store. In order to effectively measure this, retailers need to factor in offline data and have a method to correlate social media analytics with in-store performance.

Do you see any other differences between retail and B2B/B2C social media strategy models? I’d love hear your thoughts and ideas about social media in the retail sector. The comments are yours.

Related articles

• 5 tips for developing a social plan suited to your business (techvibes.com)

A while back I showed you how to visualize user interest in your content. It was the last of a trilogy of posts on Content Interest Index (CII). Now here’s a real-world way that you can measure CII on your site. It uses Google Analytics and the social sharing application AddThis. Both are free.

What are the benefits of measuring CII? You’ll be able to see, right in Google Analytics, how many people are emailing, “Liking,” Tweeting and in other ways loving your content. This is particularly important for content that moves people to buy something. The more people who are interested, the more eventually purchase!

As I’ve mentioned in another of my “CII Trilogy,” this metric isn’t for every site. For instance, there are other, better ways to measure interest in a blog. Requirements I had listed there are as follows:

1. Your site needs to receive tons of traffic — enough to calculate CII with statistically high reliability. I’m talking hundreds of views to a page every week.
2. The site needs to be measured by a cookie-based system such as Google Analytics, Omniture or Clicktracks.
3. It’s best if you have a content management system that retains archived copies of older versions of a page. This allows for comparisons. If a page’s CII plummets, you will want to know why, and revert back to a prior version!

If your site meets these criteria, let’s get started!

I use as this example AddThis sharing. To the right is an example of what shows when you “mouse over” the AddThis icon. This is generated by Javascript. You simply register with AddThis and they give you the code. But in my recommendations below, you would do a little altering.

The Magic of Open Source

Don’t worry about violating any Terms of Service. I chose AddThis because they are extremely open about their API, and encourage this type of “code hacking.” Similar to CII, it’s something we are all free to build upon!

Once you’ve grabbed the AddThis code, you’ll need to make many changes. Here is the code block I used recently:

In the code above, you’ll need to make some changes:

• Change the “xx-xxxxxxxxxxx” with your own AddThis code
• Change YOUR_DOMAIN.com with your own site’s domain name
• Replace the list of share applications, such as “facebook, twitter, google, etc.” with your own list

For instance, if you want people to use AddThis to provide “Email A Friend” capabilities, just replace one of the above with “email.”

Needless to say, you will also need to have placed the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) on your page. I use the “async” flavor of GATC, which is called in the line beginning _gaq.push(.

What You’ll See

When you’re done, you’ll see that for every “share” event triggered by the AddThis API, a virtual page view is created. Each page view is nested in the “virtual/IAG/” folder. IAG stands for Interest Action Gallery, which is what I call this AddThis application. (An IAG — short for Interest Action Gallery — can be any set of sharing functions. I described the concept in this post).

For each page where an interest action is taken, this system creates a record of that action. Here are examples of actions that might be attributed to a page called “/products/child-seats/xyz-series/”:

• /virtual/IAG/products/child-seats/xyz-series/facebook/
• /virtual/IAG/products/child-seats/xyz-series/twitter/
• /virtual/IAG/products/child-seats/xyz-series/facebook/
• /virtual/IAG/products/child-seats/xyz-series/twitter/
• /virtual/IAG/products/child-seats/xyz-series/stumbleupon/

This sample tells us that for this page (/products/child-seats/xyz-series/) there were two each of Facebook “Likes” and tweets, and one addition to StumbleUpon. This is a tiny sample. You’d ordinarily be handling dozens, or even hundreds, of similar scoring actions.

At the end of a reporting session, apply a scoring model to each of these categories of actions and calculate the final CII score for that page. I blogged about that scoring model in this post. The resulting score for the page is then divided by the total number of page views for the page  – excluding these virtual page views,  of course. The final score is used for that page, for that period. It is used for comparison with other pages’ scores, but especially for comparison with prior time periods for the same page.

Any sudden rise or drop in interest can be a clue to how your target audience is taking to your content. As I mentioned earlier, it’s important to look at what has changed within the content of a page recently in order to understand what could have moved the score so much.

Have fun with this new metric and be sure to let me know how it works for your site.

Elizabeth McGee had a problem. In late 2009 McGee, the chief financial officer at Apple Gold Group, a 70+ franchisee of Applebee’s Restaurants in Raleigh, N.C., was browsing through the organically grown Facebook pages of her company’s network of stores. While she was excited that the managers had taken the initiative to build connecting points with their customers on the growing social network, she was also concerned at the lack of brand continuity in messaging, logos and the like.

“It was a hodgepodge,” she told me. “In the beginning our biggest concern was around oversight and governance.”

McGee says, “in the beginning,” because a little over a year later her company is light years ahead of late 2009 in terms of social media awareness, preparedness and action. They’re live with over 20 of their stores now, each with individually managed but franchisee controlled Facebook presences. In 2011, Apple Gold Group plans to roll out more Facebook pages for their individual Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill and Bars.

“What a better way to create a sense of community around our ‘neighborhood’ than to have a Facebook page for each location which then has its own set of fans in each community?” McGee asked.

Around the same time Cathi Chuck also identified similar problems with The Rose Group‘s 59 Applebee’s restaurants. Chuck, The Rose Group’s director of marketing, was very concerned about how she would be able to manage the governance and oversight for her stores and their social media efforts, but also how she could connect Applebee’s customers with company-wide events, deals and the like, while also having some local control for store managers to do the same. It’s a ‘neighborhood’ bar and grill, after all. But that wasn’t the only challenge Chuck identified.

Applebee's Pottstown (Pa.) shows two local management posts sandwiching a corporate post in a recent screen capture.

“The amount of time it takes for one person to oversee 59 restaurants and their use of social media is overwhelming when you’re not ready to hire a dedicated person,” Chuck said. “Teaching the restaurants how to effectively post, not be too ‘corporate’ and localize the messaging then becomes imperative, but then also a big challenge.”

Both McGee and Chuck turned to the existing cadre of social media services and tools to help solve the problems of social media management. And both found Expion.

We first visited Expion in August when I reviewed five tools that might offer franchise-level social media management options. Since then, Expion has become a client of Social Media Explorer. You will get to see more about what their tool can do periodically in 2011. We will also be able to share some interesting research and information both that their tool generates and that they and I collaborate to produce as well. Stay tuned for that.

When McGee and Chuck found Expion, they both started with a problem to solve with a tool. They both ended up focused less on the mechanism and more on the communication.

“We’ve been sending out weekly updates to the stores on the platform,” Chuck explained. “We’re reiterating to all our participating stores what we thought the best posts of the week — those that were most engaging, got the most response, etc. — and asking the other stores to think about bringing those types of posts to their pages. Expion also helped us build a list of recommended posts we can have there for the local store that either isn’t sure what to post or doesn’t have time to customize something on a given day.”

McGee looks at the switch from mechanism to communications from a different angle as well.

“We started out thinking it would be a great mechanism to drive people to our store events,” she explained. “We’ve come so far from that. The tool takes care of our event postings in an automated fashion so we can actually spend more time creating an understanding with our store staff that success here is really about the conversations.”

McGee also told me since the tool allows store managers or local activation teams to communicate in real-time on Facebook without actually having to login to Facebook (Expion presents the full Fan Page experience in the Expion tool by using the Facebook API), the Apple Gold Group’s management’s initial concern about remote access to sensitive information was addressed.

“Because our store computer systems are also used with our customer’s credit card transactions and locked down from visiting many sites like Facebook, our bank that manages credit card compliance was quite relieved to learn how our Facebook management works,” she said. “It passed their test.”

Safe to say that in December 2010, at least two sets of franchisees are much farther along in the world of social media than they were just a year ago. Both are planning expansion of Expion’s solution into more of their franchise groups in 2010. Sure, the tool has something to do with it, but the initiative and focus of the franchisees in question is the real driver. It’s easy for people like Elizabeth McGee and Cathi Chuck to say, “no.” It’s hard to say, “Let’s figure out how.” They did and their guests are all the better for it.

Turns out, when you’re facing social media management problems, there’s an app for that.

Related articles

• What CFOs think about social media (smartblogs.com)

I recently did a webinar as a part of an advertising agency training program, and I was asked a question that I have heard a number of times – so what will the future hold – mobile web or computer based web.

While I may not be the biggest mobile marketing expert I have had the pleasure of speaking about mobile marketing and listening to some of the smartest people in the mobile space talk about it, and there are some trends that you can see emerging.

We seem to like to frame questions like this as “either, or”, when really, that isn’t appropriate.  The reality is that there will probably be times when a computer is best, and times when a mobile device like a tablet or mobile phone works best.

When television came around, radio didn’t go away.  If you think about it, TV does everything that radio does with an audio broadcast, plus it adds the visual.

Radio adapted to do what it does best – music and talk shows – and TV took over with what it does best – telling stories.  There is space for both.  They each modified their programming to focus on what they can deliver best.  Sure radio probably declined, but importantly they adapted their programming from story-telling to music and discussion.

The key message here is that there will probably be a place for both mobile web and traditional computer web but they will be used differently.

Here are some trends in mobile consumption that help show why and how each experience is different.

Mobile is Short Snacking Sessions vs. PC Based Meals

Mobile users tend to pop-in on their devices multiple times for short sessions throughout the day.  It is like the difference between a snack and a meal.

This means that tasks that take longer will probably still be completed from a PC.  Mobile web sessions are great for killing 5 minutes here and there, or potentially a long commute, but in most cases in-depth tasks that require full attention and focus will still be completed from a traditional PC environment.

Size Does Matter

Yup, I said it.  Size matters.  Seriously.

The smaller screen size of mobile devices will continue to be a barrier for some computing tasks.  Think about things like writing blog posts where I have multiple windows open and a lot of information on my screen.  I’m currently using a 29 inch monitor and it seems too small.

Tasks and activities that require a lot of viewing space will continue to be best completed on a traditional computer.

Consider the task, and ask yourself which environment makes the most sense.  For many tasks it is a combination.  For example, I want to enter my mileage or expenses into my accounting program on-the-go from a mobile device, but when I am reconciling at the end of the month I want a big computer screen.

Power will Stay with the Desktop

It will take a long while before affordable mobile devices have the storage and computing power that PCs have.  Think about it – the 32 gig iphone was a big deal.  That device only holds a small fraction of my music collection.

Tasks that require storage or computing power (like photoshop or illustrator) will continue to require the horsepower of a PC.  Sure, with the cloud many of these things are shifting to become web-based – you can now get web based storage and accounting programs, making all of the fancy hardware on your PC less relevant – but it will take a while before we all actually get there and adopt the changes.

Wireless Infrastructure Needs to Improve

The technology empowering mobile devices has rapidly been changing how we use them, but the infrastructure still has a long way to go.

Almost any time you are at a major event – sporting event, sxsw, even big concerts – you can have outages on your phone due to network overages.  4g networks are only just starting to roll out in major cities in the US.

In order for mobile to get to the next level the infrastructure needs to be improved so that it can handle all of the web traffic that mobile users want and expect.

In Canada you still can’t get unlimited data plans (yes, seriously).  This stuff takes time.  And money.

What trends are you seeing?  Where do you think mobile will be in the future?

MKTFYI is a periodic podcast produced by Kevin Dugan and yours truly, David E. Bowman where we chat and riff on the world of marketing.  Being late December, we came up with the very original idea of looking back and reviewing marketing in the year 2010.  We even talked special guest Pete Blackshaw, CMO of NM Incite, into joining the discussion.

2010 was an incredible year for marketers. The iPad, the Old Spice Guy, the continued rise of new media, the changing landscape of traditional media, the convergence of paid, earned, and owned media, and so much more. Kevin, Pete, and I talk about what happened in 2010 and what’s next for marketing professionals in 2011.

The episode was great fun to put together.  It reminded me just how smart and insightful Pete and Kevin are, and how fortunate I am to call them my friends.  I am thankful for the chance to be a part of the conversation.  It was a great way to finish up a great year.

Give a listen and share your thoughts on the year 2010 in marketing and your predictions for 2011.

Businesses are clamoring to hear the magic words that will let them know what to do in the social space. And those magic words are as familiar in everyday speech as they are absent in any real conversation about social media adoption:

Yes and No.

Simple Answers?

I was on a panel discussion recently in Birmingham, where the theme was trends for 2011. Our audience was not the tweet-up insider crowd — I was pleased to see that most of them were from small businesses, and most of them didn’t look like Digital Natives. I was also pleased to find out that most of them were on Facebook, and nearly all of them had heard of Twitter, even if they weren’t active.

The first question was about location-based services, and our opinions about what would happen in 2011. I was the last of the four panelists to address it, and I started with a simple question:

“Let’s establish what these things do.”

You could have heard a pin drop. You could see people leaning in. Apparently, this is the audience that listens intently when Gartner and Forrester and the other big name consultants make their predictions — and Foursquare has supposedly been this next big thing for a while now. Yet virtually no one (outside of the panel) had any real grasp of what they ought to be doing with it, or whether they ought to be engaging in location-based rewards at all!

The next question was even more esoteric: “Is 2011 the year that Social Shopping becomes trendy?” Blippy was heralded as an example.

My answer?  No.

The Power of NO.

I was asked to elaborate, and I will do so here as well. Social shopping won’t take off until there is a clear WIIFM. It also won’t take off until there is a balance in place that ensures that the valuable data goes in to make the network richer.

What makes the idea of Social Shopping desirable is the idea that you can learn from the experiences of others. You make smarter choices when you have more input — particularly when that input is from people you know and trust. But how do you deal with over-sharing, or inadvertently invading your own privacy?

The service needs to provide good information to prospective shoppers — but first must cultivate that from shoppers. It’s a chicken-and-egg, and you can’t fake it for very long without people burning out or tiring of the service.

The way to make Social Shopping work is to allow people to query the collective database, based on credits they earn on the site:

• earn credits for entering your own experiences through product reviews
• have those reviews earn you points from readers, based on the quality of your info
• earn credits for shopping from affiliate links
• earn credits through subscription

In other words, lots of ways to “play.”  But all of them geared toward either generating revenue, or enriching the database that makes it more attractive as a network.

That’s what has to happen before any Social Shopping service starts to take off. Oh… it also needs to have some type of mobile functionality. By the time any service does all of the above with any efficacy — AND develops either a mobile site or apps for iPhone and Android and Blackberry — then it isn’t yet big enough to be on the radar of a small business.

That is why I’m comfortable telling those small businesses not to worry about Social Shopping in 2011.

A Dearth of Simplicity

Now, are there examples of small businesses that ought to be looking into it. Yes, I am sure you can find a couple. I’d be willing to bet they are being run by someone whose experience in social media is heavier than average — and by someone who might be better served running their business than running a social media consultancy within their own brick-and-mortar establishment.

There are simply too many moving parts for most small businesses to keep up with right now. The sands shift daily, and it simply doesn’t pay to be your own test kitchen for every little niche network and doodad out there.

What businesses need more than anything else right now is someone who will tell them “NO… until I tell you Yes.” And someone who can even give them the explanation as to why. But to expect an entrepreneur with a balance sheet and bills and employees to read Mashable every day, and the tea leaves, and come up with their own ideas about when to “move in” on a new shiny object?

No.

The simple answer is No.

There is magic in No. Because saying No might just give you the credibility to later say Yes.

Related articles

• 5 Predictions for Small Business in 2011 (mashable.com)
• New Social Shopping App Promises No More Last Minute Shopping Mistakes (socialtimes.com)
• Social Inventory: Future of Social Shopping (techie-buzz.com)
• The rise of social shopping in 2011: 7 examples of where it is going (rossdawsonblog.com)
• Blippy, Swipely new social-shopping sites (sfgate.com)
• The New World of Social Shopping (techie-buzz.com)

We live in a new era. One of radical transparency. Wikileaks is exposing state secrets. Facebook is reconditioning us to share more of our selves, even if we don’t want to. Whether it’s making your buying preferences known to fuel smarter advertising delivery systems or leaking war strategies, the global democratization of information is forcing our hand — good or bad — to be one important thing: honest at all costs.

While I personally believe many of the secrets shared on Julian Assange’s Wikileaks to be appalling and detrimental to the greater good, he is serving as a conduit for supposed whistleblowers within organizations and governments. If (or dare I say when) he is stopped, 10 more like him will pop up. Wikileaks is the modern day equivalent of the Pilgrims setting sail for America. Those sharing the information (protesting the Catholic Church) are willing to pay ultimate sacrifices (freedom, perhaps death) for the right to share it (worship freely).

Facebook, while several hues below on the terror alert scale, is merely trying to convince us that giving them unfettered access to our habits, preferences and likes allows them to serve up smarter, more relevant advertising to us. The more relevant, the more we respond, the more effective their platform is, the more revenue they generate. They also think there’s no separation between people at work and people at play and that no one should have a problem being tagged in an image with someone else. You were there, weren’t you?

While in theory the openness of our lives certainly can produce greater user experiences, connections and the like, radical transparency is very uncomfortable for many. Sure, many of the many are older generations who see no value in gathering information about people from someone other than the people in question, but why should we trust the Zuckerberg Zeitgeist when we don’t trust our governments, or even each other, to protect our privacy, our data and keep it holy?

The notion of radical transparency offers an interesting ethical dilemma. We acknowledge in our relationship with governments, companies and brands that we want complete honesty. Yet we hesitate to share of ourselves in similar ways.

Do you consider yourself an honest person?

Let’s put a different spin on what radical transparency means in today’s world. If we demand transparent honesty from our government, our churches and synagogues, our companies and brands and perhaps even each other, who will be the first to stop lying to our children about Santa Claus?

My son’s kindergarten class wrote letters to Santa last week. The teachers wrote responses and mailed them out shortly after. Since my son attends a private, Catholic school which is partially administered and governed by the Archdiocese, I can connect enough dots to offer the opinion that the Catholic Church is complicit in the lie of the commercialized version of Christmas.

And for the record, my son’s class wrote letters to Santa Claus, not St. Nicholas. The patron saint of Russia was said to leave coins in the shoes of people who left them by their door and was an inspiration for the modern manifestation of Santa Claus, but the Catholic adoration of St. Nicholas is aimed at a person far different that what you think of as St. Nick.

As I consider the notion of radical transparency and what its implications are on our world, I worry that we aren’t seeing the contradictions in all of us.

Companies breach our trust and we don’t buy their products. Our government breaches our trust and we elect new leaders. Software breaches our trust and we stop using it.

What happens when our children treat us that way?

My hope on the eve of this holiday, regardless of whether you practice it or not, is that we can come to terms with the fact that sometimes, misinformation or even non-information is not bad. Or that we can declare it to be such and truly free ourselves from the binds of untruth.

Selecting a corporate blogging platform hasn’t been very interesting lately. Nimble solutions like Tumblr or Posterous aren’t feature-heavy enough. Open Source options WordPress or Typepad are okay, but are often thwarted by corporate IT departments for being too “unstable” or “virus prone” or whatever new term IT has come up with to mask their disinterest in learning something new. Enterprise platforms have pluses and minuses with most of the latter being pricey when you look at WordPress and see zero dollars for software investment.

As you know by now, I use WordPress here at Social Media Explorer and recommend it for certain types of blogs. You should also know that I work with Compendium Blogware and even have a client on their platform now because of its enterprise-level solution for companies wanting to target multiple keywords and use their blog engine as a search engine magnet. But I still have to seek out other blog solutions for various reasons when the client’s need doesn’t fit one of those two.

Enter Innogage.

Innogage is a business class blogging platform built on a WordPress core, but juiced up to provide an elegant solution for team or group blogs. It has lots of the enterprise level bells and whistles bigger solutions like Compendium, Sharepoint, Lotus Connections or Awareness Networks have. (Note: The latter two are much more robust than blogging platforms, but beyond Moveable Type there’s not a lot of neat stuff out there to be had.)

The strength of Innogage is that is is based on WordPress. If you’re familiar with blogging at all, or have used WordPress before, it’ll be like slipping on a tailor-made suit rather than the J.C. Penney special you’ve had since high school. What they’ve added to WordPress that makes it a contender for your corporate or company blog solution includes:

• Group workflow management – Beyond the administrator/editor/author levels in WordPress, Innogage allows you to manage assignments and workflow across your group in a much more intuitive manner. The system even allows you to send time-based reminders to authors that they’re due to post a new entry. It even allows you to set an administrative tattle tell reminder to report back when the staff ignores their reminder. And the reporting detail you get by blogger, by post, etc., is pretty strong.
• In-context Automated Links – The upper tier pricing levels of Innogage allow you to set certain words or phrases to auto link to specific URLs whenever they are used. If you’re me and you write something about your social media keynote speaker role, the system knows to have “social media keynote speaker” automatically link to my social media speaker website. And the system lets the author override the auto links if need be and knows not to link each instance in one post or overwrite any manually added link.
• Built-In SEO Tips – Much like Scribe SEO, Innogage offers a built-in SEO tip widget that offers you suggested keywords and optimization tips while you compose your post. It’s a stronger effort than other similar offerings I’ve seen because it delivers Scribe-type tips and instruction on improving the SEO value of your post, but in near-real time while you adjust.
• The Armada – Innogage attacks the long-tail in a similar fashion to Compendium, pulling keyword-targeted landing pages out of the content you provide. The way they do it is more behind the scenes than Compendium, so as a user you don’t really see it or even know it’s happening, but it is. Their approach is a smart solution to grabbing those multiple word searchers who know exactly what they want and search for it.
• Conversion-Focused – Probably the most appealing thing about Innogage to me is that they are keenly focused on conversion drivers. Depending upon your strategic purpose for blogging, they have the standard “buy now” or similar call-to-action buttons on their sidebars as defaults. But, as CEO Tom Williams pointed out, “The sidebar is under attack. In RSS, mobile and email platforms, you lose that action.” Williams’s solutions include the auto links but then also an automated call-to-action that appears at the bottom of each post. These CTAs appear in every version of your post, regardless of platform and have helped one Innogage client move the needle to the tune of 80% ROI in 60 days of using the platform.

While I’m not sure they’ve got quite the conversion case studies Compendium offers, that probably because of the age of their tool. Compendium has been around a bit longer.

Innogage’s pricing structure is what I would call medium, or nice for the small- to medium-sized business that knows it needs more than a free solution, but doesn’t want to break the bank. With an entry point of $350 per month and a professional version with more robust features at just $500 monthly, it’s an option worth looking into. There is a $2K-$3K setup and configuration fee involved as well, but you’ll find that with most corporate solutions.

Williams promises more features soon to come, and even told me he wished I’d wait a couple weeks on this because they’re redesigning their corporate website, so keep an eye on them. It’s a solution that certainly meets a lot of expectations out of a company blog tool and does so at a decent price.

What corporate blogging solutions have you reviewed? What do you use? What are the hidden gems and bells and whistles you’ve found? Tell us about them in the comments.