Online Marketing Blog

There’s a growing amount of buzz about social media lately, but specifically of interest is social media press releases. As we fold the new media press release, press room and media relations tactics into our PR strategy, I’ve been monitoring a number of resources on the topic of new media PR and the hRelease or social media news release and offer some of those links here.

New Media Release Group - A Google group started to discuss the new media release format with participants ranging from independent PR consultants to PR Newswire and Market Wire.

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Todd Defren posts a nice rundown on using del.icio.us for an online PR initiative for bzzagent. Deli.cio.us is used to create content of value to journalists covering WOMM - the word of mouth marketing industry of which bzzagent is the focus.

What are we doing here? Providing any writer who is interested in WOMM with a customized research page containing the top news in the space, including first-hand reaction — on a daily basis — by a WOMM industry pioneer. For media types, et al., who subscribe to the RSS feed of that del.icio.us page, that’s a daily dose of Thought Leadership!

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PR Newswire recently tipped me off to a test press release service that promises SEO benefit:

“Off-peak press release with SEO via PR Newswire Reach news sites, portals, search engines, media”.

Apparently it is to be a 5 day listing on the home page of PR Newswire. There are 10 releases to start and they are being auctioned off over at eBay. If my bid wins, I’ll post about the process:

“Winner of this auction may distribute one news release of 400 words or less via PR Newswire’s US1 Newsline. Distribution timing will be at PR Newswire’s discretion, Friday through Sunday.”

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PRWeb has announced today the launch of their SEO Wizard toolset to help users create and distribute optimized press releases.

“The SEO Wizard will guide members in structuring their press releases in a way that will give them optimal results within news and search engines. The idea of search engine optimization, or increasing a company’s value in search engines by using specific keywords, has gained popularity in recent years. PRWeb’s SEO Wizard quantifies keyword traffic, so users can focus on the keywords that are popular search terms and valuable to their PR and marketing campaigns.”

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DM News has announced the next edition of their Essentials Guide to Search Engine Marketing (pdf). Editor in Chief Mickey Alam Khan says:

“Packed within these pages are articles from executives at the nation‚Äôs leading search engine marketing firms, agencies and consultancies. Also inside is commentary from two of the top three search engines, Yahoo and Microsoft. These experts offer tips, best practices, case studies and research on almost every topic under the search sun.”

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Last week I had two interviews on SEO, blogs and press release optimization. One was a podcast and the other published in a newsletter. You can find the podcast interview over at the Novita Issue Communications Blog where Ernie Landante keeps me honest and runs through questions on the synergy of search engine optimization and public relations as well as some of the mechanics of the press release optimization process. At least until I started making death threats.

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Spotlight on Search - Interview with David McInnis of PRWeb.

Undoubtedly one of the companies that has had a major impact on the convergence of public relations and search engine optimization is PRWeb. David McInnis and his talented team have created more innovations surrounding press release distribution than any other wire service.

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My co-worker and public relations goddess Karen Sams has posted a nice list of press release optimization tactics over at Media Relations Blog. She covers:

• Keywords
• Headlines
• Text links
• Landing pages
• RSS feeds

A question that often comes up when I talk to public and media relations professionals about optimizing press releases, is whether or not an “optimized” release can actually perform double duty as an effective communicication tool with journalists as well as search engines.

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I did an interview recently and thought some of the Q/A would be useful for Online Marketing Blog readers:

What’s the difference between online PR and offline PR?

Basically, online PR invlolves activities geared towards influencing media, communities and audiences that exist solely on the Internet using online channles. That includes search engines, blogs, news search, forums, discussion threads, social networks and other online communication tools. Brand reputation monitoring and management is also a focus area for online PR.

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Measuring success of your online marketing efforts is a critical, but often underutilized in many web marketing initiatives. Recently I took a survey for Jupiter Research and one of the questions got me thinking about the different metrics that companies use:

• Brand impact (i.e., increased brand awareness, intent or favorability)
• Number of impressions
• Position of paid listing
• Number of clicks
• Ratio of new to returning visitors
• Amount of increased website traffic
• Duration of website visits
• Amount of increased traffic to physical store
• Amount of increased volume to call center

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Today PRWeb officially announced the launch of their support of trackback functionality with press releases. While press releases have traditionally been used to announce news to the media, PRWeb has pioneered a direct to consumer model that allows companies to announce news to a broad audience using PRWeb’s distribution channels.

The addition of trackback functionality creates a link between bloggers and press releases in a way that is not found elsewhere. Now when a blog comments and cites a press release distributed via PRWeb, it can send a trackback to the release, which will in turn create a link back to the blog.

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I just got off a conference call with David McInnis, founder of PRWeb, where he announced several recent and brand new services.

PRWeb has been diligent in creating the leading direct to consumer press release distribution model to-date. Currently, around 1000 press releases are sent out a day.

PRWeb has positioned themselves as the first Web 2.0 press release distribution platform and has hired a new Web 2.0 content manager.

New PRWeb Services:

301url.com launched Dec 2005. Different than other url shortening services because it permanently redirects. Helps to avoid breaking urls. Good for bookmarking by making easy to recall urls. Also, free.

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