To drive more traffic to the sites, which helps everyone, we encourage you to put links from your company website to pages on the blog site. We suggest one link to the home page (i.e., www.erpsoftwareblog.com or www.crmsoftwareblog.com or www.erpsoftwareblog.com/cloud ) and a second link to your company profile page. The best pages to link from are the “About Us” page and/or a dedicated ERP/CRM product page on your site. Ideally, put links on 2 separate pages within you

We have the goal to build the most comprehensive Microsoft Dynamics ERP ISV Add-On Directory on the web. We are actively driving traffic to these pages. In addition to your other directory listings (by company) be sure that you also add a directory listing for each of your products. Paid members have a special “Verified” icon next to their products, and will always show at the top of the search/filter results. · ERP Software Blog – Add-on Product Directory for Microsoft Dynam

I trust you. I bet you properly licensed that copyright protected image you have on your website. But the real question is, can you prove it? As some people have found out the hard way, if you can’t prove it, you are in trouble. If you get a letter from a lawyer saying that you have a copyright protected image (or song) on your website it is up to you to prove that you purchased it. And sometimes that is easier said than done. The graphic designer who designed your website, y

Wait, didn’t I already write about this? Once you have been blogging for a while, it all starts to become a blur. It is very difficult to remember what you have written about and when and where, it was published. But there is value in knowing what you have already written about and being able to quickly find the URL. 1) Blog posts can be used as a “knowledge base” for your organization. If the sales guy wants to reply to a prospect on the right way to change their Dynami

If you painted a masterpiece, would you forget to sign it? Adding a byline to your masterpiece of a blog post is just as important. You want everyone to know you wrote it. And how to contact you. It makes me sad that so many of my ERP Software Blog and CRM Software Blog members forget to add their names to their blog posts. This is as simple as adding a line like this: “Written by Stacy Orr, CAL Business Solutions, www.calszone.com” You can also now add an Author Bio Block t

This tip is so simple it’s scary. But I rarely see anyone else do it. First, let me ask you this, as an ERP/CRM partner, why do you put videos on YouTube? It’s not because you hope to be the next YouTube video star. It’s because you want to drive traffic, hopefully prospects, back to your website to learn more about your company and buy your product. So the key is to make it as easy as possible for viewers to get back to your website. My simple tip is.....Put your website URL

Location, Location, Location. They say that location is the key to value, and the same is true with blog posts. Many people ask me where they should post their content - on their own blog or on the group blog site. (I know it is tempting to post the same article on both sites, but we all know that duplicate content is bad unless you do it in a safe way). Here are few ideas that work for other Partners: Post your existing customer content on your own blog and prospect focused

Not sure what to write about? See if any of these generic topic ideas will kick-start your brainstorming process. 10 questions to ask your software VAR before you sign the contract. 5 steps to a smooth software implementation (or upgrade/integration). How ERP/CRM helped (client x) to solve (issue x). Why company x is looking for new accounting/CRM software – specific issues/pain points. Personal thoughts on industry statistic/article/white paper. How to know if you are outgro

Do your product experts run the other way when you ask to interview them for a blog post? You have to remind them what is in it for them. If they answer your question now, they can avoid answering it for prospects and clients over and over again in the future. Your published blog post can serve as a knowledge base resource. Instead of answering the question in an email, they can just send a link to the blog post. This saves them time but also shows the prospect or client that

You know that posting duplicate content online is dangerous, but I bet you do it anyway. You will get the most SEO value for your hard work if you rewrite the post for each blog you intend to use it on. But, I know that when you have worked hard on an article, posting it more than once is just so awfully tempting that it is hard to resist. So here are steps you can follow to use canonical link tags to identify duplicate content and hopefully avoid any Google penalties. A c

You’ve heard of the 80/20 rule, right? I bet you get 80% of your traffic from 20% of your blog posts. All of us struggle with finding time to write new blog posts. So instead, here is a strategy you can use to get more traffic and leads from the blog posts you have already published. First you want to find out which of your blog posts are the most popular. Step 1: Generate a List of Your Most Popular Posts Export a list of your most popular blog posts, by total views, for the

How often do you remember to check the Google Analytics data for your website? Many people can go several months without thinking about it, which means you could be missing out on valuable insights into the success of your online marketing efforts. To stay updated, you can set up custom reports and dashboards in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to monitor key metrics and gain valuable insights. Here are 4 reports we think are valuable for checking your blogging stats: 1) Top 10 Blog

When was the last time you updated your profile? I am not talking about your online dating profile or even your LinkedIn profile. I am talking about your company’s profile pages on various directories and websites. This includes the group blog sites. Based on this exercise here are 4 suggestions to make your life easier: 1) Keep a master list of profiles. Anytime you sign up for something and add a company description online add the URL and login information into a maste

Do you find it easier to talk about something you know or write about something you know? When a client asks how to use a feature in your product or a prospective customer asks why you are better than the competition, it’s likely that you can easily answer their questions. Conversely, if you are faced with a blank computer screen and asked to write a blog post on the very same topic, the ideas may not flow quite so easily. Writing can feel like an overwhelming, time-consuming

Have you recently won an award, reached a milestone or just done something pretty incredible? Of course, you want everyone to know. Here is a list of creative yet realistic ways an ERP/CRM partner can promote an important news announcement. 1) Post blog articles about the big news. (You knew this had to be #1 on my list.) 2) Share the news on social media – Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Don’t forget the hashtags. 3) Update your website. 4) Have your CEO do a vid

Learning how to write faster will make you happier. There is nothing worse than agonizing for hours and hours over one blog article, then realizing you have 4 more to write this week. I got some great tips from the fabulous Marie Forleo in the article How To Write Fast: 8 Secrets To Better, Quicker Content Creation . Here are a few of her tips and a few of my own to help you overcome the complaint that you don’t have time to write: 1) Keep a Topic List: Don’t waste time

It is all about being found. If you are a Dynamics ISV partner you want your brand to be found, and known, by prospects and by partners. That has gotten harder in recent times. So, you need to make sure that you are taking advantage of all the opportunities you do have to be known within the Dynamics channel and market. Here are 8 ways the ERP and CRM Software Blog sites help you do that: 1) Blog Posts – by posting your content on the group blog site you get more eyebal

Do you like cold calls? ISV partners often need to form new relationships with VAR partners in the Microsoft Dynamics community and many of them still rely on cold calls - either a phone call or an email blast out to a list of Dynamics partners with a “do you want to do business with us” type of appeal. As a VAR partner I can tell you that I get far too many of these “cold calls” and I tune them out. But I can also tell you that there is a better way. If I already know your n

When I started using Twitter, many people gave me advice on WHAT to do, but they didn’t actually tell me HOW to do it, or what TOOLS I could use to actually get it done. So I want to make it easy for you. Here are some specific Twitter tips and the tools I use to actually get them done. Tip #1: Don’t Clog My Twitter feed You want to drip content out to your audience, not overwhelm them with a tidal wave and then a drought. Since nobody should spend 24/7 on Twitter, you need t

I have a three step formula I use so that I never run out of blog content.   Step 1) Record Step 2) Transcribe Step 3) Polish Let me explain how this works Many of us who are charged with writing blog posts are marketers, not the Dynamics ERP/CRM software or industry experts.   Unless you are very lucky, those experts would never consider writing a blog post; they are too busy being billable. This is not a problem; you just need to follow this formula. First, identify the

What is the goal of this first sentence? To get you to read the second sentence. That’s all. And I see that it worked. You are already at the fifth sentence. The single most helpful writing tip I ever received was in an email from Henneke Duistermaat at Enchanting Marketing . She said that you need to keep your first sentence short. Ultra-short. Such as: Imagine. I admit it. It’s an easy mistake. Or start with a question. A question will pull the reader into the story. And on

“Can you imagine if we actually got one member in every state?” I clearly remember sitting in our kitchen and asking my husband that question just before the ERP Software Blog launched in June 2009. In 2021 we have 120 members across several sites that are the most popular ERP and CRM group blogs, not just in our channel, but on the web. But let’s go back to when it all began. I started working the Dynamics channel in 1999 and have been the Director of Marketing at CAL Busine

There is an easy way to find out if someone else is plagiarizing your content (or if you have copied theirs!) I use the site www.copyscape.com . Copy and paste the text in question into the Copyscape page and do a premium search. You will see results of any matching text that has already been published on the web by you or someone else. Click on the title or “compare text” and Copyscape will tell you the percentage of copied text. Or you can check your entire site. In Copysc

What if you plan a party and nobody shows up? Or worse, just one or two show up and you stare awkwardly at each other while they wonder where all the cool people went instead? The same is true if you present a session at an event. Don’t just rely on the event coordinators to promote your session, do your part to get people into the room to listen to you. Attendees usually have several sessions to choose from during a single time slot, and plenty of people to distract them in