Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr was born in 1968 in Bridgeport, Connecticut and lived in Newtown, Connecticut until age 10. His family relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia where Douglas completed High School. Douglas then returned to the United States to Arizona where he enlisted in the United States Navy in 1986. Douglas spent six years in the Navy, serving in Hurricane Hugo rescue operations in Puerto Rico, as well as serving in Desert Storm and Desert Shield. He was decorated as a Surface Warfare specialist and was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal as well as other service commendations.

Douglas left the Navy and worked for Landmark Communications as a Production Maintenance Engineer and Analyst. This was in the early days of the Internet and Landmark invested heavily in automation and integration, Douglas' first taste of online technologies in the early 90's. Douglas continued to go to night school for his Business degree and moved to Denver, Colorado with his two children to pursue a career with an elite database marketing company, working as a product manager to develop online marketing technologies utilizing complex geographic information systems and large databases.

As the dot-com bubble burst, Douglas decided to move his children to the Midwest so they could be closer to their Mom and Douglas landed in Indianapolis as a Database Marketing Manager, nominated for the 40 under 40. Douglas continued developing tools for the industry and wrote several articles on customer retention and acquisition strategies. As the Newspaper industry continued to ignore the opportunities online, Douglas became more dissatisfied with the industry and left.

Douglas went on to work as a consultant for several businesses, including the Indianapolis Colts, and founded Smaller Indiana with Pat Coyle - Indiana's online network for business professionals and creatives. He worked for ExactTarget and assisted clients like Home Depot, Hotels.com, United Airlines, Goodyear, Icelandair and many other clients integrate, automate and measure their online marketing strategies.

Douglas developed the central premise behind Compendium's blogging platform but didn't join the company until a year later as an evangelist and to help develop the education programs, train the account management teams, and develop best practices and sales strategies. He worked closely with Chantelle Flannery and they've had a great working partnership ever since.

Douglas left Compendium to launch his own agency, DK New Media in 2009 to assist large corporations in developing successful, measurable inbound marketing strategies concentrated on search, social media and online marketing. His clients include Webtrends, ChaCha, Compendium and a number of other startups and technology companies. They've done additional consulting on technology mergers and acquisitions in the United States and in Europe.

Douglas wrote Corporate Blogging for Dummies with co-author Chantelle Flannery. They continue to speak nationally on blogging, search engine, and social media strategies throughout the United States and Canada. Visit http://www.corporatebloggingtips.com for additional information.

Douglas lives in Greenwood and has an office in downtown Indianapolis. He lives with his two children, William and Katherine, and their Jack Russell, Cooper, who doesn't like anyone else to enter the home.