Online Marketing Blog

[Editor's Note: This guest post coverage of a recent Marketingsherpa webinar comes from TopRank's SEO Designer Thomas McMahon and Account Coordinator Kristen Hebert.]

Are companies engaging in social media? Are they monitoring their brand? What’s a social media press release? These were a few of the topics covered in Marketingsherpa’s recent “Engaging Bloggers, Journalists and Customers” webinar featuring Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications and Marketingsherpa’s Sergio Balegno discussing new ways journalists are using social media.

MarketingSherpa surveyed 1800 people from both small and large, B2B and B2C companies. In their findings, three out of four companies surveyed feel that social media is changing the way companies communicate. Details of this research can be found in the new Social Media Marketing and PR: Benchmarks and Best Practices report.

At TopRank Online Marketing, we’re keen on matching content and therefore optimization efforts with the right audiences. News is a perfect candidate for optimizing by intent. Below is a presentation I did recently as part of a PR News webinar on the topic of writing for the web, optimizing online PR communications.

As part of the presentation, I included insights from a recent poll of journalists and editors from a mix of print and online publications we conducted. The poll was designed to get a better understanding about their use of search to find sources, conduct research and any other search function that helps them do their job.

Today I did a webinar with PRWeb on how to improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) results by using online public relations tactics. With 15 minutes to present, there wasn’t a lot of tactical detail. At TopRank we’ve done a pretty good job at identifying trends in a way small and large business marketers can understand. Concepts like “push and pull PR”, “digital asset optimization” and “press release optimization” have helped many marketers realize the benefits of SEO from different perspectives. The embedded slides below touch on several of these concepts:

Of course, feedback and questions are always welcome. The webinar had about 350 participants online and there were well over 70 questions posed.

(Rob Key, Peter Himler, David Bradfield, Lee Odden)

Prior to being engaged to someone with far more social tact and less complete obliviousness towards social etiquette than myself, it would have never once occurred to me to bring a “host gift” to a party or get together.

As I mature and meet more and more people, however, I’m glad to have someone around who actually realizes that most social groups will adhere to often unwritten social rules (including “host gifts”), and will be unlikely to truly welcome someone into their group unless they follow them.

When looking at the changing PR landscape, particularly the presence of new forms of social media, what can PR professionals learn from this example?

Organic search (SEO) success is based fundamentally on keywords and links. You can also make a pretty easy correlation between that and the combination of messaging and media pickups important in public relations efforts.

Search engines like Google advise webmasters to create great content and let important web sites in your industry know (to attract links).  Some of the best link sources are the hardest to achieve, such as a link in a story published at a major publication or even a industry niche publication.

This is where PR and SEO savvy can combine like Yin and Yang to create competitive advantages and extend the value and reach of your online marketing/media relations efforts. Some of the public realtions tactics that can affect search engine optimization results include:

We’ve made the case for integrating media relations, SEO and social media into a digital PR program as well as covering some of the basics. Now we can drill a bit deeper into blogger relations and social media monitoring.

Practical Examples of Involving SEO Expertise with Media & Blogger Relations, Social Media Monitoring

The advent of digital PR and the technology tools that serve as compliments means changes in the way agencies provide client consulting and practice management. In the case of TopRank, we’re running both a internet marketing agency and a public relations practice, so we’ve always counseled our clients on the use of targeted keywords during interviews and in communications with the media as well as with content published to the web. In a push and pull PR strategy, keywords are used to optimize content and digital assets to enable the media to pull themselves to a client’s news.

Yesterday we talked about the opportunity for combining search engine optimization, social media and digital public relations. Today’s entry will discuss how to start going about it.

Leveraging Low and High Tech for Social Media Relations

“Fuzzy”. That’s how I would describe most companies’ thinking on social media, SEO and PR. How can marketers and companies start incorporating the new rules of the social web into a digital PR effort?

The answer to that question starts with understanding the social web and the technology that connects audiences. Forrester often refers to this social connectivity as “social computing”. The socialized web provides media relations practitioners and search marketers with an array of tools to make it easier for journalists and the media to cover their clients’ news, promote content and attract links. They key is knowing which tools are most appropriate and effective and which are simply “shiny new objects”.

What exactly, does Web 2.0, social media and even SEO have to do with public relations? Everything!

You’d be hard pressed to find any modern public relations agency practice that isn’t researching or already implementing a digital PR strategy including search engine optimization, blogging/blogger relations and social media. The winds of change are here and many Public Relations practitioners are scrambling to adjust to the opportunities presented by shifts in both consumer and journalist behavior online.

Look no further than popular Public and Media Relations conferences like PRSA International or some of the Bulldog Reporter events to see exactly how the PR industry is making a concerted effort to educate itself on how to adjust to new opportunities with Web 2.0., SEO and social media.