Online Marketing Blog

The official Optimize Minneapolis book launch is finally upon us.  Tomorrow from 5:30pm-7:30pm over 200 of the Twin Cities top Marketers and PR professionals will gather at Aria in Minneapolis to mix, mingle, and learn a little bit about optimization from Lee Odden.

With the SEO is dead stories coming from traditional media, Google making major changes and consumer shifts towards social media consumption and sharing, the notion of what optimization is has really changed. The good news is that Optimize gives readers a roadmap and specific tactics on how to integrate the best of search, social and content into an “optimized state of mind”.  The Optimize Minneapolis book launch will give our friends in the Minneapple a taste of why some of the top marketers in the world are saying such great things about Optimize.

[Note from Lee: TopRank Marketing has been working with PRWeb for nearly 5 years and their Director of Public Relations, Frank Strong (Now serving in Egypt  - stay safe!), couldn't say enough good things when they hired a new Social Media Community Manager, Stacey Acevero: Smart, passionate about the industry, highly motivated, sense of humor and a true fan of the brand, Stacey has embraced her role as the social media voice of PRWeb in many ways, from blogging to running #PRWebChat.

Many businesses are investing in their social media expertise by adding Social Media Strategist and Community Manager positions. To get an idea of what skills companies should look for,  I asked Stacey to share her first-hand insights with our readers.]

The One Job Your Company Really Needs

David McInnis of PRWeb dropped me a quick note this a.m. about a new strategic partnership between PRWeb parent, Vocus Communications and Business Wire that includes the licensing of a private label version of PRWeb for use by Business Wire clients.

“Vocus will create and host for Business Wire a co-branded version of the PRWeb direct-to-consumer and SEO service. Business Wire members may disseminate press releases so they will be indexed by major search engines, distributed to thousands of news sites, including Google News and Yahoo News, and delivered through more than 20,000 RSS feeds that collectively reach tens of millions of consumers and thousands of journalists daily.”

PRWeb is best known for being in the news distribution business. With the acquisition by public relations software firm Vocus last week, PRWeb has bumped up it’s own presence in the news. During the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose last week, I had the opportunity to talk to PRWeb CEO, David McInnis about the Vocus acquisition and what lies ahead for PRWeb.
What prompted the acquisition?

Lee, I will probably blog about this more in depth this week on the PRWeb blog. We have been talking with Vocus for well over a year now. The timing was not right until recently for a few reasons. First, I felt that I had a lot left to accomplish (read try) with PRWeb before I handed the reigns over to someone else. I wanted to do these things on my own to see if I could execute a few new enhancements on my own dime and vision. In the last year alone we have really changed the practice of PR.

A big day for PRWeb! It’s been difficult keeping this under wraps, but Vocus, a public relations software company, has acquired press release distribution service, PRWeb in a deal worth $28 million.

“The internet has led to a dramatic increase in the number and types of media outlets and other website destinations from which consumers and journalists get their news,” said Rick Rudman, President and CEO of Vocus, Inc. “PRWeb has fully developed the technologies, features and pricing model to enable organizations of all sizes to maximize their online visibility and to exploit the potential of this new communication channel.”

Here are more details and a letter from Vocus President and CEO Rick Rudman.

I will be interviewing David McInnis and possibly Rick Rudman and will post when complete.