B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Interview: Amanda Watlington on Second Life and Blogs

Spotlight on Search – Interview with Amanda G. Watlington, Ph.D., APR of Searching for Profit

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Photo by Jeremy Zawodny

I first bumped into Amanda Watlington via AIM, (Association for Interactive Marketing) and then in person at a WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference several years ago. Further collaboration occurred through involvement with the next iteration of AIM, the Direct Marketing Association’s Search Engine Marketing Council, of which Amanda was a past chair.

Amanda is famous for her in-depth knowledge of blogs, RSS and podcasting and she has one of the first popular books on the subject. However, this long time marketer’s roots are in public relations and she also has an extensive background with search marketing.


Interview: Amanda Watlington on Second Life and Blogs

PRWeb Podcast Rocks!

Our influencer relations firm consistently uses the PRWeb Podcast service for our clients, but I’ve not taken advantage of the service very often for our own PR efforts with TopRank.

Yesterday for the second time ever, I personally used PRWeb’s Podcast service that’s available when you select a $200 or higher option for press release distribution. As with the first time, I was totally impressed.

The process is pretty simple. You order a press release to be distributed and pick the $200 level. As you go through the process of enabling or activating the various options for the release, you’ll have the option of scheduling a PRWeb Podcast. Pick a date and time that works for you and you’ll get an email with the phone number and access code.


PRWeb Podcast Rocks!

Online Public Relations and Blogs

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Later today I’ll be presenting here at DMA-06 on a panel called, Blogs, RSS and Podcasting with Amanda Watlington from Searching for Profit and Stephan Spencer from Netconcepts. Basically, my presentation will cover how blogs can be used as public relations tools in the context of “Push and Pull PR”. The presentation is broken up into:

  • Opportunity
  • Push and Pull PR
  • Blog Optimization & PR
  • Blogger Relations
  • Case Study

The “opportunity” section explains how many journalists are ignoring the noise of getting pitched by so many PR firms and company PR staff. Whether it’s a pitch by phone or email, many members of the media go online (98%) to find news sources (76%), story ideas (92%), experts and to research press releases (73%). The percentages come from a study done by Middleburg/Ross.


Online Public Relations and Blogs

Blogs and Podcasts for Lead Generation

Marketing Sherpa released findings of a Technology Marketing survey that include blogs and podcasts as two of the top 5 lead generation tactics for technology, hardware and software firms. Overall, the top 5 lead generation tactics were:

  1. Free Trials
  2. Webcast
  3. White paper
  4. Blog
  5. Podcast

Of course, if you’re a really good marketer, you would be able to tie in four or five of the above into one campaign, especially when integrated with a blog. Not that you need to offer all five to have a successful campaign, but providing options for how to interact or make contact with your company allows you to reach more of your target audience. A podcast may work for some people, a free trial or a white paper for others. One of the new features of this report is the 13 prospect personas of prospects such as CIOs, IT professionals and business owners.


Blogs and Podcasts for Lead Generation

ad:tech Chicago – Big Brands and Podcasting

Here is the next installment of Online Marketing Blog coverage of ad:tech Chicago 2006:

With a slight delay, this standing room only session started off with Moderator Henry Copeland of blogads.com introducing the speakers which included: Michael Moore of Nestle Purina Pet Care, Robert Claypoole “Consumer and Professional Relationship Marketing” for Johnson and Johnson Vision Care division, Heather Sefcik of Henkel Consumer Adhesives (Duck Tape) and Brian Bloom of Ligget Stashower, a marketing PR firm that works with the Duck Tape brand.

Heather and Brian Bloom did a tag team presentation with Heather starting things off by offering a quick Duck Tape 101 history. Starting in WWII, Duck Tape today is a household name with a cult like following. Duck Tape has “become cool”.


ad:tech Chicago – Big Brands and Podcasting

Interview with Daron Babin of WebmasterRadio.FM

Spotlight on Search – Interview with Daron Babin of WebmasterRadio.FM

Daron Babin
Photo courtesy Strikepoint Blog
There are many success stories on the web and one of the most interesting is WebmasterRadio.FM. The brainchild of Old, Old School SEO Daron Babin and his partner Brandy Shapiro, WebmasterRadio.FM has become the “go to” resource for live streaming radio and podcasts on all things related to search and interactive marketing.

After threatening Daron with sex, fame and a nice hangover, he succumbed to answering a few questions about how he got into the SEO game, what’s up with New Gen Media and his evil plan for a multi media search engine and delivery platform.

Tell us about your background, how did you get involved with search marketing?


Interview with Daron Babin of WebmasterRadio.FM

Interview with CEO of PRWeb David McInnis

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.

While I’ve used PRWeb in one way or another since 1999, it wasn’t until 2003 that my company implemented press release optimization for both our SEO and public relations clients. In the past 2 years PRWeb has grown immensely and has led the way as a Web 2.0 wire service. Many new online wire service companies have sprung up trying to emulate the services of PRWeb and a good number of “old school” wire services have added the kinds of services to their mix that were originally pioneered by PRWeb.


Interview with CEO of PRWeb David McInnis

Pubcon Boston Day 2

Lots of great sessions on Wednesday here at WebmasterWorld Boston Pubcon. Unfortunatley, I was only able to attend two of them (one as a speaker) due to a teleconference I did with Bulldog Reporter.

I thought the Public Relations panel in the morning went well. Robin, Lawrence and David all made strong presentations. What I liked best about the session and this is corroborated by feedback I received from attendees, was the diversity of perspectives offered.

Lawrence Coburn offered a small company’s inside perspective of what he called “dumb luck PR” and how to take advantage of that and snowball it. Very cool story actually. Television personality and CNN maven 🙂 Robin Liss shared her perspective on getting TV coverage. David McInnis gave a rundown on press release optimization and some of the new features available at PRWeb. My presentation covered the notion of applying search engine optimization principles to blog and press release optimization.


Pubcon Boston Day 2

Blogs RSS, Podcasts – Pubcon Boston

This session covered Blogs, RSS and Podcasts with moderation duties performed by Anne Kennedy of Beyond Ink.
First up is Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit. “The Art of the Feed”.

The “elegance” in RSS is in the distribution possibilities: Desktop reader, email addon, web browser and mobile devices.

The art of RSS is evident in blogs, sites, pdc, vblogs, rss search engines and web 2.0 applications. (press releases via PRWeb)

Build your RSS feeds right the first time. Considerations:
– What do you want to feed? (content sources)
– How many feeds?
– How much content is needed to keep the feed fresh?
– How much content should you include in each feed entry?
– What kind of content will the feed include? test, audio or video?
– How will you ping the feeds at first and then on each update?
– How to measure performance?


Blogs RSS, Podcasts – Pubcon Boston