Online Marketing Blog

Tomorrow the PRSA is conducting a teleseminar “PR and Social Media - What every practitioner needs to know“.

Take a first-hand look at the phenomena that are redefining the practice of public relations.  Hear from three digital PR pioneers about the array of new tools, strategies and channels available to today’s practitioner from Facebook and Second Life to blogger relations, digital video and search engine reputation management.

As has been the case with a number of public relations industry events, I am tasked with bringing a search marketing perspective to a PR and social media focused panel. A similar session was held at the PRSA International Conference last year, “Social Media for PR Practitioners“, so the seminar tomorrow will be a nice update.

During the PRSA International Conference I had the opportunity to talk with Eric Schwartzman about the interplay of search engine optimization and online public relations. There’s plenty of sage advice for PR professionals interested in leveraging SEO tactics for public and media relations in the interview (Eric interviews Lee), so if you have 25 minutes be sure to click the link above and listen. Otherwise, here is a paraphrased accounting of our talk:

How can SEO can help an organization raise awareness?

Recently I’ve had several discussions with a reporter on how small businesses can effectively use blogger relations and PR to market themselves. Out of that conversation came another topic about Online Reputation Management - not for companies, but for individuals.

There’s a tremendous amount of content and in some cases debate, being generated in the search marketing and public relations communities about the need to measure brands and reputations online. The first step in a ORM program is to start monitoring and there are some pretty incredible and often times costly software tools emerging to do that.

In a recent study by Omnicom Group’s Brodeur and Marketwire about how journalists use blogs, it was found that blogs are are a regular source for journalists for improving the speed of reporting news as well as guiding tone, but not for improving quality:

• Over three quarters of reporters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue
• Nearly 70 percent of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis
• One in four reporters (27.7%) have their own blogs
• About one in five (16.3%) have their own social networking page

What a year 2007 ended up to be for TopRank and 2008 has already started with a bang. We’ve been fortunate to work with small companies like Smart-Kit and Web Awards as well as some of the largest companies in the world including NWA, HP and McKesson. New clients for 2008 already include PRWeb, Radian6 and SPS Commerce.

Along with the tremendous growth we’ve experienced, TopRank has several positions open. Since Online Marketing Blog has such a talented group of readers, we’re curious if some of those readers have the right stuff or perhaps know someone with the right stuff to join our energetic, growing marketing company based in Minnesota. The open positions include:

The last session of the day for me was “Press and Public Relations Campaigns” with Robin Liss of Reviewed.com and Joe Beaulaurier from PRWeb. Moderation duties were scheduled to be handled by Brett Tabke but were switched at the last minute to Melanie Mitchell, VP of SEO/SEM at AOL. Sorry Brett, but I don’t think anyone had a problem with the switch.

Robin presented a case study for a promotion on the iPhone her site wirelessinfo.com did using multiple channels including Digg and a YouTube video that went viral. Joe presented the multiple media format press release options offered by PRWeb.

“Of all our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.” Walt Disney

Jennifer Laycock Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide helped the audience understand the value of images and 3 benefits to submitting photos to image sharing sites, like Flickr.

She made an excellent point by demonstrating what impacts people the most:
Copy OR Images

Let’s try it. What impacts you more, the description of how I dressed my dog up for Halloween OR the picture of it?

Description: For Halloween, I dressed my pup up as an angel.

The Bulldog Reporter Advanced PR Technology in Practice in San Francisco wrapped up and here are a few photos. One thing is for sure, I need to buy a new camera. Another thing is that the event started out with lots of conversation about using SEO to drive “pull” PR efforts and ended heavy on the social media. It was a great match for TopRank: SEO and social media for public relations.

A modest sized audience, but engaged and plenty of questions.

Jim Sinkinson, Publisher of Bulldog Reporter

One of my presentations: “Optimizing Press Releases for Search Engines (SEO) and Using RSS to Distribute Releases”.

Many search marketing tactics come and go, but one channel of promotion that has steadily evolved is the practice of optimizing press releases for search engines. While it’s true that the future of the traditional press release has been up for debate over the past few years, wire services and the web sites they syndicate content to continue to produce results for the clients of savvy public relations professionals and online marketers.

Yahoo News is still more popular that MSNBC, AOL News or CNN. Being able to rank well on the most popular online news web site as well as Google News simply by optimizing and distributing a press release offers attractive benefits at a nominal cost.

At ad:tech last week, fellow PR/new media marketing practitioner and blogger, Rohit Bhargava and I were talking about his new book, “Personality Not Included - Why Brands Lose Their Authenticity and How Great Companies Get it Back”, and he mentioned that I should send him a list of recommended reading for a new bookstore feature he’s adding to his blog.

I thought that was a great idea and with so many smart marketers reading Online Marketing Blog, I’d like to invite you to share a few of your favorite books on the subjects of marketing online, social media and new media public relations.

On the heels of the PRSA conference last week, the topic of how search plays a part in online PR effectiveness has continued to enter into the increasing numbers of discussions we’ve been having with companies working on figuring out where to best leverage their 2008 marketing/PR dollars. It’s that time of year again.

Now more than ever, PR and media relations efforts can benefit from attention to how search engine visibility influences consumer perceptions and the way both consumers and the media find information online. With an increasing variety of search types to choose from including standard search like Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask as well as platform or content type specific search such as news, blog, image, video and options within social media web sites, brings new opportunities to optimize content.

I just returned from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) International conference being held in Philadelphia where I participated on a panel, “Social Media, What Every PR Practitioner Needs to Know” with Rob Key of Converseon, Nicco Mele of echoditto and Peter Himler of Flatiron Communications who handled moderation duties.

Fifteen minutes before the session, the room was packed with people eventually standing against the back wall and it was clear that both the room and the topic of social media were going to be hot.