Guest post by Neel

The mainline for hype in the PR industry for some time now has been “social media”. Whether or not this is actually achieving the sort of results which would qualify for the glowing endorsements of social sites as the “future of media” is another matter. The PR industry has in fact been pretty slow to pick up on the social sites, and actually it was market research, not PR, which really opened up the subject to debate. Like SEO, the PR industry was pretty lethargic about seeing the potential for development of social sites, and it’s only recently that social sites have been getting serious attention.

PR, issues and social media

Slothful or not, PR has now latched on to Twitter as a meaningful source of information. The fact that client interests can literally be tracked second by second, and any feedback, controversy or other issues properly monitored has been the main factor. A belated revelation, perhaps, but it’s becoming clear that PR is getting value out of the Twitterings of the world. Continue reading

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A five-part series on online branding for businesses by Ryan Chaffin

1. What’s in a Name? Everything
2. SEO: Marketing in the New Millennium
3. PPC as a Model of Smart Advertising
4. Social Media: Highly Accessible Advertising
5. Freshening Up: Maintaining Your Brand Image

The proliferation of the internet has completely changed how our society exchanges information. What was once the realm of letters and paper is now the realm of e-mail and electronic documents. Just as the way of relaying information has evolved, so has the world of advertising. Billboards are now sidebar ads and the Yellow Pages are now Google Maps.

For many small businesses the internet has become a boon to their services, bringing them a whole host of new customers that they never would have seen in the years before the web. But, herein lays a problem. It is one thing to recognize the changing landscape of marketing and advertising, but a completely different thing to understand how this new mechanism works. Simply putting together a novice website and then letting is fester in cyber-anonymity is simply not enough. This is where a properly placed SEO campaign can assist your company in emerging from internet obscurity. Continue reading

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Guest post by Derek Vaughan

Having been involved with PR since the days before new media, I have made numerous adjustments to my PR strategies to maximize the impact of my news releases in the digital era. Unfortunately, I have also seen many ”old school” agencies and PR experts who have overlooked these critical elements of the modern digital news release. Here’s a bit of what I believe they may be missing.

1. Using keywords in the headline

To anyone who’s ever used Google news or a blog post to gain website traffic, the need to have well targeted keywords in your titles is obvious. Search engines (including specialty search like Google News) automatically look through online content and begin with the headline or title of a piece to determine the overall category for the content and the search terms that may trigger that content to appear. Continue reading

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I love reading SEOBook and from the SEO perspective, I think Aaron Wall is quite the guru. I also think he’s got very cool marketing and business development insights to share. But it seems Twitter is where our opinions start to differ. According to his post about Twitter, this microblogging platform is a big page rank waster, mostly because of the no follow links. True. He also seems to think there’s little to gain from using Twitter. Aaron also quotes Seth Godin on the fact that, just like the phone, Twitter is only a connecting medium, not a marketing medium.

My question to you is: if you could (legally ) listen to people’s conversations on the phone, hear them when they mention your product or service, if you could start your own conversation with them, wouldn’t you be all over the phone? I know I would!

Twitter might be nothing more than a connection between many dots, but it’s an extremely transparent one. You can literally watch thoughts spread through word of mouth. Tweets and retweets and the circle keeps growing. Continue reading

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What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

The first week of spring is officially here and we have some chirpy blog posts for you to read. How you find them as inspiring and energizing as a sunny spring day.

Drew McLellan shared some amazing marketing insight after learnign a few tricks from a dog whisperer. Now that I’ve read the lessons, Drew, could you be so kind as to teleport the dog whisperer here, I think I need some help with my lab!

The newest, coolest thing when going to a conference is to live tweet it. So how exactly do you effectively present to a room full of tweeting birds? The answer comes from Tamar Weinberg on Pistachio.

Do you want a custom design for your blog? I know I did and my dream came true. But before you imlement this project of yours, please stop to consider a few issues explained by Alex Cristache of Blogsessive.

Stuart Bruce discussed PR, SEO and the fact that public relations, while employing quite a lot of search engine optimization, is not really about SEO, it’s about reputation.

We’re all obsessing about elevator pitches. While doing so, Frances Cole Jones, guest writer at Women on Business, point out that we overlook the importance of the FAQ page and the great results such a page can deliver.

What do you do when you want to launch a new product or service and have no idea what customers would think of it? Daniel Secareanu suggest the simplest and best solution: ask your customers.

You’ve all seen your share of teasers before something new hits the market. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger shows us how to get an audience drooling for a blog that doesn’t exist yet. His approach seems a lot more effective than a criptic add!

Google rankings involve a lot of things. It’s a secret recipe everyone’s after. And one of the reason no one has discovered it yet is that it’s learning and adapting to new tricks. Aaron Wall noticed a new trend: Google started placing heavy emphasis on branding.

When organizing an event, keeping the audience interested and excited about it is critical. Barbara Rozgonyi shares 9 ways to keep events alive with social media.

And we’re closing this week’s edition with a business puzzle from Corina Saceanu. Where’s the money?

What great posts have you run across last week? Please share them in the comment box!

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