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April 22, 2008
Are you in the social media circle(s)?
There was a time when New York, Boston or San Francisco PR firms had the advantage of claiming they did lunch with key reporters and analysts. Nowadays, traveling in the right circles is just as important, but they're online/mobile circles. The PR pro's job is to connect with the pundits, reporters and citizen journalists by reading and commenting on their blogs, earning your way into their Facebook friends list (and not getting blocked), joining up on the right social networks and groups, taking part in Twitter conversations with the right people, etc. At the least, public relations professionals need to know who the socialites are, what they're saying and with whom they're dialoging. More than ever, social media is earned media.
Posted by Bob Brin at 10:02 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 9, 2008
PR and search marketing
I hate to break it to you, but your Web site is not the center of the universe. Google is. I heard a presentation recently in which a Dell representative said that Google's search results page is your new home page. That's where people begin their search on your organization and what happens there is likely to stay etched in their memory.
PR (and I don't mean just publicity) is one of the most important disciplines for influencing what goes on in the search engine marketing space. PR and search marketing go hand-in-hand because your outreach efforts are vital to getting other web sites pointing to your site, as well as generating great content for your site(s). We think of search marketing as a solar system. At the center of our search engine marketing solar system is Google. How warmly this big star shines on you depends primarily on your site's popularity with other credible & popular sites and the volume and quality of content on your own site.
Your PR folks and search engineers need to work closely together to increase the gravitational pull of your own cold and distant planet (your Web site) and send probes and open up outposts on other planetary bodies.
Go where the life forms are. Create presences on directories, Wikipedia, Facebook, etc. In addition to being where the people are, this creates more links back to your site and increases your popularity. Of course, the popularity of those sites reflects upon your popularity.
Get mentioned by the experts. Media properties are search engine magnets. Because of their vast amount of content and subscribers/visitors, you need a strong presence in the online media.
Send out your keyword probes. Use search-optimized press releases that will land on news sites and content aggregators throughout your universe. Place articles on sites looking for expert-written content. Post real commentary on other blogs.
Set up satellites and moons. Build microsites, blogs and even your own social networks. But remember it's not about tricking people or shallow content. Content has to deliver real value.
Thus the need for real, substantive content and communications efforts. Web 2.0 is the age of authenticity. And your success will depend on how well you explore and colonize the search solar system and how effectively you manage your messages and reputation out there.
Posted by Bob Brin at 5:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
