ContentRobot

PSST! Did you know that up until recently that ContentRobot’s company website had been running atop of *gasp* Drupal? Yes “the WordPress experts” finally converted to this superior platform when we launched our “naked theme” site last month.

While we were hoping to be farther along and show off parts of our new look, we decided to continue to work on the blog-powered website’s underpinnings first. So, we have bitten the bullet and upgraded our site to version 2.5 (and found that the conversion was rather painless).

We are ready to offer upgrades to our clients and feel confident working within the new environment. It does have its foibles, but we are pleased overall with this latest effort from Automattic.

As the weather warms here in the Northern Hemisphere, we hope you are also warming up to WP 2.5. Let us know your experiences so far. We hope our lack of design doesn’t leave you cold - the melt comes soon!

Seth Godin wrote a post today about “managing urgencies.” In ContentRobot’s world, if a client site goes down, it’s our urgent responsibility to stop whatever we are doing to get their site fixed and back online.

Yesterday, a highly trafficked, highly customized blog-powered website, was hacked. We tracked it down to a malicious script that has been making its way across the Internet and exploiting holes in older WordPress installs.

This talented fellow has made a short career of being able to silently penetrate deeply into the server to leave the site with blank home pages, turn off critical plugins, and not allow posts to be written and/or saved.

Thank you, hacker, for diverting the energies of three companies from being able to do what they had planned for that day.

But one of the things Godin asked was: Do you have a plan? Determined to learn from this frustrating event, ContentRobot has actually developed a plan to combat hacks along. This three-pronged approach encompasses:

1. Keep WordPress updated to the latest software release as feasible.
2. Be aware of what theme customizations / plugins might be affected.
3. Lock down the install.

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Earlier this week, we met Newt Barrett of Succeeding Today, and publisher of Content Marketing Today to discuss the concept of blog-powered websites.

Newt is in the discipline of content marketing. He urges marketers to think like publishers by delivering essential, relevant, and timely information that makes customers smarter and wiser–and much more likely to become buyers. He realized that one of the best ways to do that is to encourage his clients to launch business blogs.
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As some of you may already know, ContentRobot is heading to Las Vegas next in February to speak at Affiliate Summit.

Today we’d like to announce a month-long experiment: the development of our own affiliate-centric blog. But here’s the fun part, we’ll let you in on what we’ve learned along the way, including:

• our approach to creating an affiliate program on a blog that we will be developing
• who we think some of the better affiliate companies to work with
• affiliate success stories and models
• our technical challenges
• the fun during development
• and more …

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This is the final post in our series about building the Timex athlete blog. Today we want to focus on the blog’s design.

Business blogs should strive to have their own look-and-feel, yet they should be obviously branded (with the company logo, colors, etc.) and integrated into the rest of the company’s marketing materials.

For the Timex athlete blog, the goals were this:

• Sport the new company logo.
• To match the corporate web site’s color scheme: red, black, and grey.
• Take cues (for fonts, buttons, and other widgets) from the new marketing online and print campaigns.
• Show off the triathlon lifestyle using lots of pictures.
• Create a texture and splash that exhibits the sport and its particular attitude.

While there are several ready-made templates out there, it will become apparent that your company’s blog design should be created from scratch to ensure that it meets all your goals. Check out more design ideas here.

In this series, ContentRobot revealed the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, blog design, business blogging

Today we step back from the actual blog building and concentrate on developing a Blogging Policy Document for Timex’s athlete blog. ContentRobot discusssed the importance of developing such policies in a previous post. While, we won’t reveal its actual contents here, we’ll share some of the thought behind creating the policies.

Open Communication
Company management must clearly state that they are behind the project and indicate how open they will allow the bloggers to communicate. Companies should get comfortable with people outside the public relations team writing about them. For those companies who are still squeamish, they can consider implementing a moderation plan where posts get approved before getting published live.

Legal Implications
Bloggers should be aware that certain posts can get them (and the company) in hot water. The policies should define what is not acceptable blogging. This can including posting content that could embarrass or otherwise harm the company and its executives, employees, clients, and suppliers.

Going beyond harm, bloggers need to be aware of the the rules and laws that govern defamation and obscenities, copyrights, logos and trademarks, and financial rules, for example.

Blogging Creed
By signing such a document, bloggers should do their utmost to be respectful to the company, its employees, partners, customers, and competitors. Bloggers should think about the consquences while blogging and should be encouraged to not hit that publish button if their is something the least bit offensive.

Writing Rules
This part of the document should encourage great writing. For the Timex bloggers, it offered guidelines so they will write what they know, write often, add value, get their facts straight, and that quality matters.

The Blogging Policy document can be as formal or informal as the company culture dictates. Strike a comfortable balance that appreciates the creative aspect of blogging along with the need for defining the rules that can keep your bloggers out of trouble.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, blogging policies, business blogging

Now that a lot of the technical groundwork has been laid, it’s time to focus on the content. What topics will the Timex blog cover? What will be important to the readers? Since the blog is all about the Timex-sponsored athletes, what kinds of content should be included?

The Taxonomy
The taxonomy is basically a system of classification that describes the site’s contents as a whole. Blog categories help to define the topics, group the contents, and create relationships between the posts on the site. Approach the blog’s taxonomy like you would determine a web site’s site map.

As of today, the initial athlete blog taxonomy is unfolding as such (the main categories are show with one dash and subcategories are shown with two dashes):

- Athletes
- Racing
- - Race Events
- - Race Reports
- Training
- - Diet & Nutrition
- - Injuries
- Watches
- - What the Athletes Wear
- - Reviews

The great thing about blogs (as compared to traditional web sites) is that its taxonomy can be built and/or modified on-the-fly should new topics arise or change in some way.

Navigation & Static Pages
Besides the blog posts, there are static pages that every blog needs. The athlete blog’s main navigation will look something like this: About | Athletes | Race Events | News | Contact Us. The secondary navigation includes Privacy Policy and Terms of Service pages.

Writing the Content
All the Timex athletes will be encouraged to author the blog and contribute as much of their experience as they can while on the tour. All the posts will be written in their own words and they are looking forward to communicating with their fans.

Be sure to develop a strategic, but flexible content strategy. This can include: defining your topics, deciding who your authors will be, and determining your short- and long-term blog post goals.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, taxonomy, business blogging

Next decision: what other software will Timex need to effectively manage its new blog?

Images
ContentRobot recommended that Timex take advantage of Flickr professional account. At $24.95 a year, it is a steal to store and manage a bunch of athlete and event photos. By storing them in a common place, bloggers will be able to easily add any of these these images into their posts.

RSS Feed Tracking and Management
One of the metrics that Timex needs to track is the blog’s RSS feeds. Feedburner will allow them to track the main RSS feed, athlete feeds, and event feeds. The statistics will let Timex stay on top of blog traffic, publicize, and distribute the blog’s contents as they wish.

Blog Metrics
Performancing offers a comprehensive realtime blog metrics tool that breaks down and analyzes the traffic, down to the posts and comment level, for a holistic view of blog performance. This great, online tool is free and their team is always improving it.

Newsletter
While we think everyone knows all about RSS and reads feeds daily, the reality is that a lot of people don’t even realize they are viewing a blog. Feedblitz will allow Timex Blog visitors to subscribe to a newsletter. Subscribers can keep-up-to-date with the blog with a daily email that includes all the new posts in a nicely designed format.

As you can see, blog add-ons (particularly the ones that help you track metrics) are an absolute must for business blogging. ContentRobot will continue to be on the lookout for great ways to manage blogs and recommend the best-in-class tools available.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, blog software, business blogging

Next decision: what blogging platform would be best?

Recently, ContentRobot performed a head-to-head test of 2 popular software options - WordPress and Drupal. Since Timex has its own servers, hosting either of these platforms is a viable choice (among others out there). In any case, these platforms are both open source and free - we love that!

Option #1: WordPress
WordPress has many fans - with good reason. It is simple to implement and you can enhance your blogging experience with a variety of plug-ins and design templates.

Option #2: Drupal
Drupal is also great - ContentRobot’s blog-powered web site uses version 4.7. This option is a robust (perhaps complex) and scaleable content management software that has provides much more than just blogging tools.

Timex Blog Requirements

• Great design that is aligned with the web site and appropriately branded
• Multiple authors (there are 45 athletes) from all over the world
• Each athlete would author their own blog
• The ease for writing blog posts
• Simple image upload and manipulation
• Ability to moderate posts and comments (and establish a workable writing workflow)

The Platform Solution
The blog template design was not a factor, as we would be developing a unique template for Timex no matter the platform. So, the major factor was ease for blogging and moderation.

Using that as the tipping point, we chose to implement WordPress. (For all your Drupal fans out there, we are implementing some very Drupal-like “modules” for both the design and back-end management.)

As such, it was a snap to install the WordPress sofware, but we continue to configure it with any necessary plugins to round out the blog’s full experience.

So, while you may have a favorite platform, it might be necessary to evaluate your short- and long-term goals for your blogging project to come to a solution that fits.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, blog platform, WordPress, Drupal, blog-powered web sites

One of the first considerations for our Timex Athlete blog was: what domain name would we use?

The Current Domain Situation
Timex already has its own servers and domain at www.timex.com. This is a good start because it is always preferable to have your own domain name for your business blog. Not only does it assist in branding, it looks more professional than using a domain like timex.blogger.com (Don’t misunderstand, blogger is great for many blogging projects, but is probably not a good idea for enterprise blogs.)

Idea #1: Use a Subdomain or Subdirectory for the Blog
Should the blog reside as part of the main corporate web site? In this case, it might sit at blog.timex.com or timex.com/blog. Good thought - but what happens if Timex expands its blogging effort to have more than just the current athlete blog? What domain would the next one use?

Idea #2: Create its Own Domain
What about the blog having its own domain name? There are some inherent advantages to this approach. Specifically, it allows Timex to create more than one blog and create a bigger online presence at the same time.

The Solution
We determined that the Timex blogs would best be served with their own domain, www.timexblogs.com. Any and all Timex blogs will reside here with its own unique subdomain name. The solution provides Timex with the ability to develop multiple blogs as its blog strategy unfolds, and (maybe best of all) no domain reconfiguring down the line.

So, think beyond your immediate needs before jumping into your blogging project. What does your future blogging landscape look like. Will you (ever) have more than one blog? Answer these questions and your domain names dilemma will disappear.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, business blog, corporate blog, blog domain