On Thursday I’ll be presenting on a panel, “Beyond Linkbat: Getting Authoritative Mentions Online” with Chris Boggs and Sally Falkow. Sage Lewis will be moderating. I think this type of session is very timely as search engines begin to put more and more emphasis on higher quality and editorial link sources and less on sources that are easier to manipulate. Increasing competition online also means online branding and influence increase in their importance.
Online PR is a perfect solution for a topic that shines less light on tactics du jour, althought linkbaiting still works well, and more on leveraging the media and centers of influence online. I’ve written about how SEO and Online PR can work together in the past, but in this presentation I’ll be focusing on the Do’s and Don’ts of media relations and blogger relations.
Here’s a highlight to give you a taste of what I’ll be talking about and may be helpful as an outline for any bloggers that might be covering the session.
When working with online public relations programs, we typically distinguish PR activities into “push” tactics, which are methods of reaching out such as by sending out press released through a wire service, pitching journalists and bloggers via email and phone, distributing news information through RSS and a few clever uses of PPC. Alternatively, “pull” tactics are centered around optimizing content so it is easy for journalists and bloggers doing research to find.
The fundamentals that make blogger relations and media relations efforts successful center on relevance and relationships. One of the biggest complaints both journalists and bloggers have in regard to news stories that are pitched to them is that the stories are simply not relevant. More on how to fix that in a bit.
The other fundamental, relationships, is very key because credible, trustworthy and sound-bite savvy expers and resources are good/difficult to come by. Too many SEOs trying to pitch blogs or even mainstream media approach it like typical link building – a one time event. The reality is, that publication or blog would love to find a great resource they can cite and link to over and over again. While the SEO value of links from the same domain name diminishes with frequency, they are still traffic driving opportunities.
Here is a summary of the DO’s:
- Do your homework
- Be relevant
- Understand the difference: journalists vs bloggers
- Make it easy
- Publicize your publicity
And here are the DON’Ts:
- Don’t be sloppy or spammy
- Don’t be a one trick pony
- Don’t be arrogant
- Don’t ignore multiple promotion channels
- Don’t forget to say thank you
There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity for companies to develop win-win-win relationships with the media and bloggers. The readership of those web sites get useful content. Bloggers and journalists develop a relationship with a credible source that will help them write better stories and blog posts. The company wins by being mentioned authoritatively on a regular basis.
Key points: Do your homework, be personal and relevant in your pitching. Make it easy for the journalist or blogger to use you as an expert or content source and by all means, develop a relationship that results in a win for everyone involved.
The “Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Mentions Online” session is this Thursday 3/20 at the NY Hilton, Sutton South room at 11:15 am. The panel and I hope to see you there!
Hi, I’d like to see sometihng from you on LSI
and it’s future relevancy with SEO, just an FYI.
To me linkbait has been a tough notion to wrap my brain around, like RSS feeds used to be, but once I see it working, then I’ll be OK.
But looking forward to some LSI info from you, if your knowledgeable in that area.
Thanks,
Dan
Thanks with providing us so many informative blogs and updates on SES NY. For those of us who couldn’t make it, these articles are perfect.
great post, but you gotta stop the cheesy stock-art 😉
Thanks for the comment Dan, but please tell me, what does latent semantic indexing have to do with media relations? I see no connection. Cheers.
You know what I like about you Lee. You say what you mean and how you see it.
Now I don’t SEO, Linkbait or whatever, ’cause I don’t understand it and it seems to me that everyone is doing “it” and a few maybe making some money. Our site is for our punters information and I feel that ads and the like would detract from our objectives.
But every now and then I “stumble” across your work and I always read it. Maybe I recognise the syntax and attitude.
Thanks for the great reads. If you have a chance tell me what I should be doing with my site.