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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are two vitally important components to any organization's online strategy, and with the ever-increasing importance of the web, to their marketing strategy as a whole.  Without solid SEO and SEM capabilities (which go way beyond search engine-friendly URLs), an organization with a website isn't a whole lot different than an organization without one. While SEO/SEM remains a mix of art and science, there's one thing to keep in mind: the more organized, clear, and frequently updated your content is, the better your SEO and SEM performance will be. The eCrowds system ensures that your website gets there.

While the stated goal of web accessibility standards is to make content viewable to the greatest number of users on the greatest number of Internet devices, the side effects of making your site compliant are of equal benefit. Aside from simply being the right thing to do, making your site clearly organized, easily navigable, and standards-compliant with eCrowds leads to a greater pool of potential users, and accordingly, better SEO/SEM performance.

While the algorithms that Google uses to crawl the web are a little complex to be fully explained here, eCrowds provides built-in, highly visible Content Types, one of the most basic and effective tools that a website can use to give them the best shot at being found. Content Types provide users with structured data fields, such as title, author, date, summary, content, and tags, that combine to form web pages. Different types of pages (blog posts, wiki entries, event announcements, etc.) are made up of different combinations of the data fields, and structuring them in this manner makes them more relevant and recognizable to crawling search engines.

Once you've refined your site to the point that search engines really start to take notice, you'll want to be able to study what type of content works best, who's looking at it, and where the requests are coming from. eCrowds connects to 3rd party apps like Salesforce.com and Google Analytics to help your organization gather and synthesize crucial information regarding website traffic and prospective and current customer interaction.

So while eCrowds' obvious strengths are its flexible SaaS CMS capabilities and comprehensive suite of community-building tools, its talent as an easy-to-use SEO and SEM maximizer isn't likely to fly below the radar for much longer. Read more about eCrowds SEO and SEM abilities here.

Since the first emergence of the  Software as a Service (SaaS) applications nearly a decade ago, the hosted software market has expanded prolifically. Rarely these days are businesses equipping their own devices with the applications needed to manage their diverse web efforts. Instead, companies are turning to solutions hosted by SaaS vendors, alleviating the need to house and operate their own web servers to manage their site. Additionally, the added flexibility of being able to access a SaaS system from a user's web browser reduces friction in using and getting the most out of organizational software. While historic notions of SaaS applications being functionality-limited versions of their installed counterparts has nearly dissolved, it's often difficult to pinpoint why an organization would opt for a SaaS CMS application over a proprietary solution. And because the SaaS market is still in its relative infancy, organizations and users for whom SaaS solutions may be a better fit, might not even know it. So here we go, time to debunk some common SaaS myths.

In reality, many SaaS solutions vendors offer much more than just a hosted piece of software. At eCrowds, for example, our SaaS CMS and community solution is at the core of what we do. It doesn't stop there, however; working with a SaaS vendor doesn't equate to limited functionality, and depending upon the needs of your organization, can actually limit costs while adding functionality. Contrary to installed CMS systems, SaaS solutions offer no need to worry about time and resource-consuming product upgrades, which can take months due to inherent changes in large and infrequent product roll-outs; this is a stark difference between an installed CMS solution and a SaaS content management application like eCrowds. Because our solution is hosted, every product upgrade or feature addition we make is rolled out live to all of our users at one time, without the need for downloads, or upgrading, or reconfiguring anything. Along these same lines, you can rest assured using eCrowds that you will never experience bugs or glitches unique to your organization. If one user experiences a bug, all users experience that same bug. In other words, all of our users are utilizing the same live "version" of the exact same application at all times, mandating that SaaS solution vendors are proactive in soliciting user feedback and addressing product issues in a timely manner for the benefit of the entire user-base.

In addition to more seamless and fluid roll-outs of product upgrades and bug-fixes, SaaS solutions vendors often provide services to aid in further maximizing the potential of your system. Because SaaS has previously been associated with a more "simplistic" version of software, prospective SaaS system users may not be aware that some vendors of hosted solutions provide much more than a core SaaS product; believe it or not, many of them even provide training and professional services. At eCrowds, for example, while important to keep the product simple and easy to use for end-users, it's also equally as important that users of our product are able to maximize its potential. We're aware that users like marketing staff may be responsible for website content updates and contributions to its community, but not so sure about the best way to set up a new website. We designed eCrowds to be easy to use for even the least technically-savvy. However, a lot of organizations know how they want their site to look and feel, but don't want to set it up themselves. This is where SaaS vendors are able to differentiate themselves, via the value-added services they offer, such as consulting and training. You can look at the eCrowds team as your implementation partners, here to help you get your site completely integrated and up and running in a matter of weeks, if not days.

Lastly, (keeping in mind that we've only debunked a few of the many SaaS myths - tackling them all would take a much longer blog), a common misinterpretation of the SaaS market has left prospective users with the feeling that SaaS solutions are not as tailored to meet the needs of web developers. While eCrowds was designed to allow even the least technically savvy users to take advantage of the system, it's also designed with multiple user types in mind. Our hosted CMS and community application allows for management and creation of web content right from your live site, for end-users who simply want to contribute and change content. However, eCrowds also has a back-end interface for power users and web developers (also accessed via a web browser), that allows for fine-grain customization of site design, layouts and templates, roles and user permissions, and all the other core functionality you expect to see out of a CMS.

To a lot folks, marketing is a seemingly ambiguous vortex of activities aimed at attracting prospects to fill the sales pipeline. In the past, many marketers have identified this 'vortex of activities' primarily as outbound efforts to attract new lead opportunities. By "pushing" content to these prospects via tradeshows and events, product mailings, and email blasts to purchased lists, marketing is often been seen as a never ending string of over-aggressive, jargon-filled, substance-free initiatives. Enter the era of inbound marketing, where marketers help prospects find them, and in turn, help themselves. We're now seeing an influx of systems and processes designed to make the lives of marketers easier and their efforts more well-received. This, of course, isn't to say that all outbound marketing activities are irrelevant, but it's increasingly apparent that when you make yourself and your information visible and relevant, prospects will come to you.

As discussed in Adam Needles' blog "The Inbound Marketing/Marketing Content Management Crowd – A Fourth Camp?," the previously disparate worlds of managing web content, creating marketing materials, SEO optimization, and Web 2.0 communities are converging into what he's dubbed the "fourth camp," an interactive, user inquiry-driven marketing realm where prospects come to YOU. This "fourth camp" is marked by companies focused on offering solutions that are two-fold: creating and managing dynamic site content, and optimizing that content to increase the likelihood of interested and relevant prospects finding it.

Depending on the product or service your company offers, there are thousands, if not millions, of prospects that are currently looking for a solution like yours, so rest assured that they're out there. However, these prospects are currently bombarded with with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions per day.¹ Most assume that the constant voicemails from cold-callers and emails from drip-programs are irrelevant to their search for a solution. They're out searching for sites and companies with content relevant to what they're looking for.

For this reason, it's increasingly important that marketers and site managers are balancing a mix of inbound and outbound activities. For some companies, it makes sense to utilize the occasional purchase of an email lists to blast potential prospects with new product updates and build the sales funnel. For others, however, especially those who rely on their products or services being sought out based on customer referrals or extreme need, constantly publicizing fresh and relevant content that's easily findable via SEO efforts is key. This is where a solution like eCrowds comes in to play.

eCrowds provides several key built-in features that seamlessly aid B2B marketers in creating and managing web content and optimizing that content for search engines. In addition to automatically generated search-engine friendly URLs and optimized site content, eCrowds includes dynamic marketing content management features like connectors to Twitter, marketing automation platforms such as Prospect Insight, and CRM systems like Salesforce.com. Additionally, eCrowds' community and social media tools allow users to rally around your company's offering by contributing content in the form of blog comments, forum posts, and idea exchange discussions, and make eCrowds a one-stop-shop for marketers to manage their web content, keep it fresh, and make it findable.

This functionality isn't aimed at replacing your marketing efforts; the goal is to complement them. A solution like eCrowds takes some of the burden away from your marketing department and crowdsources it to your community and the system you use to manage it. Allow a system like eCrowds to do the thinking when it comes to SEO, creating URLs, and optimizing site content with tags. The combination of your fresh and relevant content and the system's ability to optimize this content for marketing presentation will greatly aid your organization drastically in bringing the right prospect-driven inquiries to your sales team. As the marketplace becomes increasingly complex and saturated, it's not only imperative for companies to differentiate themselves, but to make themselves highly visible to all potential prospects.

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¹HubSpot's Inbound Marketing Blog

So you may have noticed quite a change around here recently -- our new, engaging site design makes it much easier to understand the benefits of eCrowds and how it can work for you.  On that note, we thought we'd take a moment to reacquaint you with another aspect of our product. While you may know it as a highly effective online community building tool, eCrowds is an equally dynamic and robust content management system as well.

With its full slate of built-in Web 2.0 tools, like idea exchanges, wikis, forums, and blogs, eCrowds is indeed a highly capable and customizable community building platform. However, some of its most powerful potential lies in its ability to easily and effectively manage content.  eCrowds is an on-demand system, so it's ideal for small to medium-sized businesses with a need for frequent updates and quick turnaround, and as a fully hosted application, there's no need to fret over local servers taking up space, energy, and cost, or the worry of accommodating scalability issues in the future.

With no need for installed software, eCrowds offers an easy, fast way to build and implement a branded website. And building that site is simple and intuitive, with predefined and styled drag-and-drop content types that make organizing and presenting your organization's online presence a breeze.  Giving your users and site visitors choices as to what they view and how they view it is important as well, and eCrowds features dynamic menus and filter flexibility to sort and view content by date added, popularity, and many other options.

With all of these powerful CMS tools, plus a full suite of community building features, eCrowds allows businesses and other organizations to simply and intuitively create, edit, and manage content, all while providing an effective gathering place for its users to interact, improve upon content depth and relevancy, and ultimately provide them with the insight that they need to succeed.