aimClear Search Marketing Blog

Public Relations (PR) has been a foundational premise of the marketing universe since cave dwellers. The internet became a massive PR tool with Blogs, dedicated press release sites, news publications, etc… eclipsing the little-black-paper-book-pitch-em’ mentality. This SES Chicago ‘09 session asked the question, “What’s hot now and where will the internet take Public Relations over the next five years?” Read the rest of this entry »

The old reputation management adage is “want to know how to get 2 FDA.gov, 2 WashingtonPost.com, 1 CNN.com & 2389 blog links this week?” The answer (of course) is to accidentally injure people with your product.  Trust us, getting the ensuing horrible results pushed off search engine results pages (SERPs) will be much tougher than placing them in the first place.

Clients come to us wondering why they are unable to easily squeeze down negative search engine results for brand names, after PR debacles or other difficult incidents. In other words after the news results clear the SERPs, why do negative .gov, news or some prominent blog pages STILL rank above corporate controlled or “friendly-sentiment” content for direct brand searches ( i.e. “Brand Name”)? Such questions torture CEOs and CMOs alike. Read the rest of this entry »

Tune in to Webmasterradio.fm and hear yesterday’s interview. David Szetela and I described a reputation management crises we handled for a client together, that tallied 32 million targeted “emergency PR” Google pay per click impressions for less than 4K.

We had a client with a bad “problem-word.” The nasty verbiage also existed in annoying permutations like “problem-word” + DirectBrandName. Mission one was to serve the public with timely information. There were thousands of news articles in the SERPs, ranging from major sources to po-dung radio station sites. Read the rest of this entry »

Social media marketing is on the minds of many this year, while proposing ‘09 budgets for in-house or SEM agency clients. We’re repeatedly being asked to help with proposals and business plans. If you think selling starter social to your boss could be hard because fledgling participation doesn’t always yield immediate benifit, look again.

Critical reputation management and SEO basics intersect with social, to make first step-social media budget requests no-brainers. Prudent social “campaigns” are not just about generating short term cash. Read the rest of this entry »

Ask an experienced public relations guru to explain his or her profession’s fundamental aim and you’ll likely receive some variation of the following lecture: “PR is media relations, investor relations, community relations, customer relations, internal relations, human interest, and crises management.”

PR Has Been Important Since the Dawn of Time.
No doubt cave people intentionally spun messages to achieve goals and solve problems. Could anyone argue that Jesus’ disciples were not public relations stars in their authenticity and holistic intent? Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, John Adams, and the Federalists seemed keenly aware of the effect their words might have on the American population. These folks knew what they were doing.

Throughout recorded history humans have “published” with the tools of the day. Be the venue shouting from treetops, distributing parchment manuscripts by horseback, World War 2 propaganda trailers before Clark Gable movies, faxed press releases sharing professional accomplishments, political billboards, annual corporate reports, or Nixon feigning righteous indignation from the Oval Office, humans forever spin. Read the rest of this entry »