Online Marketing Blog

If you have ever wanted to be a fly on the wall listening to experts talk about the convergence of PR and Social Media, here’s your chance.  PRSA brought together the following people to lend their thoughts about the PR (R)evolution:

Moderator: Kami Watson from My PR Pro and Panelists: Deirdre Breakenridge from PFS Marketwyse, Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity & CyberPR, Joseph Jaffe from Crayon and Brian Solis from FutureWorks PR. Here is the conversation as it unfolded, marked with Twitter handles.

What’s next in the realm of online and how will it impact PR?

@dbreakenridge – Google Wave is next for launching information and collaborating. As discussed in a panel yesterday 2008/2009 was the year of checking off a list of social media tools. Facebook – check. YouTube- check. Next, we need to evolve, connect the networks, improve the experience and understand real-time metrics. In addition, the consumer experience will be upgraded to reflect real-time pricing, etc.

The first day of the 2009 PRSA International Conference in San Diego kicked off general sessions today.

One session I’ve really been looking forward to was the one on social media measurement featuring Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners. She started the audience off with some numbers, that we all might find useful:

• 48% of respondents to a PRWeek study said that they were moving money from advertising to social media – only 18% said they were taking money from PR
• 78% of people trust peer recommendations, 14% trust advertising
• 91% of Inc 500 companies are using social media
• 38% aren’t monitoring their brand, product or reputation in social media

Next, the audience had to grapple with the idea (read truth) that it’s the end of measurement as we know it. Here are ten supporting facts:

When Brian Solis asked me to do a review of Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, the book he and Deidre Breakenridge published earlier this year,  it didn’t take a second to say yes. Putting that decision into action took a little longer and it finally took some time on a plane to get it done.

I’ve known Brian Solis through our common industry involvement with social media and the Public Relations world for several years.  Brian is a thought leader not because he’s popular on the social web or because he’s the cool-guy host of the Tech Set parties, or even because of his successful PR business, board memberships with up and coming companies, keynote presentations or the popular blogs he publishes at briansolis.com and bub.blicio.us.

[Note from Lee:  The PR industry is in a state of flux with changes in the print industry, citizen journalism and the social web. Consumer behaviors with information discovery, consumption and sharing have been significantly affected by the dramatic increase in social platform usage and ease of self publishing.

Companies that rely on reaching and engaging those consumers through PR and marketing vendors and/or internal professionals need to carefully consider what skills and capabilities are needed to succeed. I've asked Adam Singer at TopRank to present his view on the matter and he's come up with the following post.]

Jason Falls recently made a smart comment about the need for Public Relations professions to be “social media ready”.  In that post, he referenced a 2009 “Digital Readiness Report” to assess the specific social media marketing skills companies are looking for in a PR vendor.

Within the realm of Public Relations, there are many types of digital content that get created and often promoted. Content that can be searched on can be optimized, and that spells opportunity for extending the reach of PR and media relations efforts. Journalists and consumers alike are searching, why not make sure the content published to the web as part of PR efforts is easy to find via search?

Examples of PR content that can be optimized include:

• Press releases
• Letters to the editor
• Online newsrooms
• Media kits
• Corporate blogs
• White papers
• Webinars/demos
• Newsletters
• Real world interviews published digitally

Search marketing has been known as recession resistant because so many companies shift or increase internet marketing budgets there in good times and in bad.  When other marketing and advertising channels don’t hold up to ROI scruitiny, tactics like SEO hold up rather well.  Sage advice on how to execute on this insight can be found at “Recession Proof Search Engine Optimization Tips“.

Another channel receiving budget attention even while marketing costs are being cut or shifted is public relations – especially with B2B companies.  A recent story in BtoB Magazine, “Marketers stay in the conversation with PR“ tells the story of a company that relies on case studies as part of their PR efforts. Since many of their customers conduct research as part of the sales process, the case studies promoted via PR efforts are an instrumental part of their ability to attract new customers.

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.

The buzz about SEO in the public relations industry has grown tremendously over the past 2-3 years. Press releases in particular, have been the easy target for promotion as candidates for optimization. With the growing use of Google and Yahoo News, optimizing press releases have been an easy way to gain prominent visibility in the short term and in some cases, long term visibility in standard search engines.

As both a SEO and a PR practitioner for companies ranging from startups for Fortune 20 corporations, our Online Marketing Agency is tasked with educating audiences in both industries. For example, at public relations conferences, I’m the SEO guy talking about optimized PR. At search marketing conferences, I’m the PR guy talking about using PR for SEO. Our Account Managers like Jolina Pettice and Mike Yanke do the same thing with clients.

After 10 plus years in the SEM business, it’s a bit of an understatement to say that the nature of SEO is constantly changing. Those changes involve both the search engines refining the way they sort and display search results as well as consumer search behaviors. A simple example would be a year ago, searching Google would return mostly web pages in the search results. That same search today might include videos, news items, images or blog posts – now commonly known as Universal search.

In addition to web pages, each of these types of information comes from a different database. This presents opportunities for companies to gain search visibility not only with high ranking web pages, but with other digital media as well. Changes with search and ranking criteria are constantly being fine tuned and improved by the search engines.

Many companies narrowly define PR activities online solely as blogger relations when in reality, online public relations is so much more. To me, internet based public and media relations encompasses gaining editorial exposure on the web with sites like blogs of course, but it also leverages web based technologies, networks and platforms for developing and maintaining more efficient communication with the media. And by “media” I mean traditional media with an online presence as well as other influencers – be they bloggers, power social news users or social networkers.

Communication efforts might happen online, but the media exposure outcomes may be in print or the web. The question arises, if the connections are made and maintained online using online PR and social media tools, but the exposure is offline, is it still online PR? I say yes.

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.