aimClear Search Marketing Blog » PR

PR, Social, Search, Now & The Next 5 Years

Merry Morud — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:14:24 +0000

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?”

Esteemed moderator Sally Falkow, President of PRESSfeed introduced Cluetrain Manifesto. The book, written ten years ago, phrophesized the changes the internet would bring to marketing and public relations. We are living in those predictions now. Look forward to the next five years with these industry experts: Beth Harte, Community Manager of MarketingProfs; Duncan Alney, President and Social Media Strategist of Firebelly Marketing; Marty Weintraub, President of aimClear, and Andy Beal, CEO of Trackur.

Beth Harte started things off discussing the integration of SEO, marketing and PR.

PR is not just press releases, that’s publicity, and it’s a small sliver of PR. PR is the relationship companies have with their consumers.

Seven Areas of PR:

Media relations (blogger relations, too)
Advertising (Take out ads when the story isn’t told in the right manner)
Press Agentry (ie Tiger Woods’ publicist)
Public Affairs (Government & Organizational)
Issues Management (people using Twitter to monitor brewing situations. Note: one little blip isn’t a crisis)
Lobbying
Investor Relations

In the past, people rallied and used pamphlets, now they use the internet, leveraging social media platforms such as Twitter, Blogs, Facebook etc.

Press releases don’t work anymore. What does work:

Listening
Being found (SEO)
Communicating (constituents buy into your brand for a reason)
Partnering (understand what your market wants)
Telling your story (it’s all in how you do it. How are you spinning it?)
People talking (buzz positive or negative)

Social media tools will change, but people wont stop being social.

Harte was followed by Marty Weintraub, sporting some seriously cool SEO rock-star glasses.

Strategy is essential. SEO is all about attaining data-motivated prominence in organic SERPs. This means all the different channels moving at different speeds. Open your mind to whatever platform users are engaging on.

PR = proactive dissemination of germane information.

Any discussion of SEO is ALSO a discussion of links.

O is for optimization. Optimize for everything. Choose Words and tags strategically.

PRWeb is a great too. “You can buy yourself a ride up and down the SERPs.” Google respects it and it’s trusted. It’s the one way Google will allow you to buy a high ride in the SERPs for a couple days.

If you link build to PRWeb you can affect the sentiment of various SERPs when searched for.

Social Media Profiles Rank! They enjoy the trust of the “mothership” and the more friends you get the higher up it goes in the SERPs! Therefore, it’s important to choose your profile names strategically.

Use interviews with third-party publications:

Optimize responses (you get to write the interview!)
Verbal or written
Thoughtful preparattion in key
Build links to interviews

When Guest Blogging:

Give links to yourself and others
Optimize for indexing
Build links to posts
Incite rebroadcast! Invite people to rebraodcast in a viral environments (Twitter Facebook Chicklets like in PRWeb)

Charity is HOT (ie. “we’ll give to for every RT”)

Giving is Eternal
Broadcast Cool shit (and Optimize!)
Make link acquisition a primary objective
Require the use of web pages
Give Give Give Links. Then give more.
Sponsored events
Philanthropy

Spin Crap into Gold

Re-purpose horrible links with damaging anchor text
Redirect traffic based on real-time analytics
diffuse relevance
Mirror PR with video and universal search
Advise tagging by organic objectives
Build links to video
Transcribe text with the talking heads

What’s next?

The organic universe will expand, it will be EVEYWHERE and Google wont be indexing a lot of it
Rebroadcasting be at people’s fingertips
PR of masses- word of mouth will blend further
Conversations will be even more fragmented

Duncan Alney followed Marty saying “If Marty is Ridley Scott then i”m Darren Aronofsky.” Rather appropriate for the man talking about video PR.

Online video is used more than all the major TV networks (wow) 250 million users on YouTube, Facebook, Myspace in a month.

User generated content is growing exponentially.

Online video is EXPECTED, by everyone, even your grandpa.

Reputation Management & Expunging Bad Results

Marty Weintraub — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:20:09 +0000

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.

Simply put, in order to expunge any result from Google, content of equal or greater “relevance & value” must be created and/or built. Google’s index mirrors real-world authority and informational structures in physical life. It takes a seriously powerful SEO event and/or incremental link building to usurp extremely high authority sites.

The reason FDA.gov content remains permanently prominent in Google’s index, speaks to the realities of physical life. Have an objective look at at what news transients have affected search results permanently. In most brands, it’s plain to see that the Google’s unpersonalized page 1 simply houses some of the top PR/social/news events all time for that brand.

We like to say that the events were either created “in-house” or “out-house.”

For instance, you can see that Dunkin’ Donuts has done an good job brand building to blow ugly content far enough out of Google SERPs for the crucial keyword “Dunkin’ Donuts.” As with many major food brands, there are a lot of nasty results out there. It’s cool that they’ve been able to generate more authoritative goodness buzz than all the icky chatter out there. They win.

The first questionable result, which is worse than neutral in terms of sentiment, Shows on page 2. Otherwise page 1 is all about bakeoffs and selling franchises.

Kesso Foods on the other hand has not generated enough positive buzz in real life, to counter the results stemming from a recent FDA recall of ingredients in the SERPs. The same powdered milk FDA recall Dunkin’ Donuts had to deal with. Heck, they don’t even seem to have their own website. Check out position 6.

In fact there are 3 damaging results on page 1. That’s not what Kesso Foods wants their customers to see. Page 2 is really a bummer, with recall results totally obscuring good.

The bottom line is that all SERPs defense plans should be about creating indexable permanent PR/news/social events and hybrids thereof of good things.

Here are a few tips and tricks for doing so:

Tweak content for the existing subdomains already in use and optimize them for ranking on the brand term. We see subdomains indexed alongside the mother domain for keywords. It only makes sense to optimize them.
If there is a reasonable purpose for a new subdomain, don’t rule it out. They’re loosely associated with main domains according to latest correlation data. They receive and confirm some authority to/from the mother ship. Channel some power right out of the gate in the SERPs
Be open to additional domains, using brand terms. Just make sure there is a legitimate purpose for the domain’s existence. Be very careful not to set up link farms.
Work to an appropriate feed accepted to Google news. Though news rises and falls in cycle over the course of days and often does not remain, the transient wave impacts users’ daily perception of brand in the SERPs. Also some authority news does linger and/or last permanently as representative artifacts of incidents and events.
In order to counter high authority results, a brand’s high authority results must exist. In order to create those, links from high authority content must be built.
In order to achieve this, significant public relations (or content followed by holistic link building) must be generated and synchronized with search.
Integrate video creative and strategies with search objectives. Engage in YouTube and build external links to YouTube assets for indexing in Google’s organic SERPs by way of Universal Search. Surround the video with multi channel public relations when possible. Video buzz can garner major links to both YouTube and feed assets. Either way it’s all good.
Make PRs objective to build reasons for extremely high authority sites like NYTimes, WP, etc…to cite either events, methods, ANYTHING unique about the brand. Typical ideas include “value intersecting with quality in a recession,” “brand’s approach in social media, the 7 classic nodes of public relations, etc…”
Those efforts are can be rooted in the brick world currently with PR firm. Always encourage 3-way dialog between search objectives, brick PR players the community manager. Each needs to reflect to others’ to total benefit.
While social media program can be glossy, engage customers to an extent and very pro looking, there is not always a systematic approach to engaging mid and big time writers who would write about the brand and link. Even in some established programs, PR benefits of social media programs remain to be mined.
Take what Google and other mainstream engines freely give. Use social media profiles for their raw ranking power. Much has been written on this topic.
Use a professional search-marketing agency to provide training in these types of strategies. Objectively (and respectfully), pros are the most equipped to provide these types of services and/or training.
We recommend the community manager take training in using the feeds to bait writers, on and off line, who are included in Google News along with other feed marketing techniques.

PR Triage, 32 Million PPC Impressions, Less Than 4K

Marty Weintraub — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:22:01 +0000

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.

We helped our client stave off predatory attorneys and the tactic delivered with laser-beam-like precision at an extremely low cost, using “negative calls to action” and David’s industry leading Content Network targeting techniques.

PPC just might be one of the world’s most efficient public relations tools in times of serious reputation crises. Tune in to learn about the “Negative call to action” as a secret to incredibly inexpensive Google advertising.

Disclaimer: data is approximate, so as to respect our client’s confidentiality.

Budgeting For SEO & PR? Don’t Forget Social Media

Marty Weintraub — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:55:17 +0000

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.

There are plenty of compelling PR and SEO motivations to start immediately and justify budget right out of the gate. The conundrum at money time, especially in this rotten economy, is convincing your team that social media not only matters, but is a crucial component of both reputation management and search engine optimization.

Truth be told, many businesses simply can’t afford not to begin a social media program because it’s so easy to get trashed (or miss cool treats) if asleep at the switch. Here’s food for thought to pitch your CFO’s direction at budget time:

Social Media Is Vital For SEO
Universal search means search engine results replete with video, news, travel, cars and other specialized indexes called “verticals.” Search engine result pages (SERPs) driving media sharing sites like YouTube & Flicker are terrific verticals for claiming valuable SERP real estate.

Most SEOs would prefer to control every position on the “average” Google first page results with friendly (or at least neutral) content. With appropriate understanding of tagging schemas, it’s fairly easy to rank video and pictures for slightly contested keywords quickly.

With some networking, the power gets greater. The Zen of sharing sites is that in well crafted communities, participation is rewarded with internal link energy to make the sharing media rank even higher. Google wants to present the user with all trusted and topically relevant citations of your site. Google obviously trusts YouTube. It’s a no-brainer.

Anyone could register pubic social media profiles on the name of your business or, worse yet, your personal name and city. Imagine the damage to Google results that could occur if some malfeasant jerk registered the Twitter profile “Last Name-City,” “Business Name-City” or even “Business Name.”

Now the good news: All of this works in the positive opposite direction . Participating in public social channels like Twitter, StumbleUpon and Sphinn can bolster users perception of your brand.

Since it’s not uncommon for social media profiles to rank well, harness the sometimes-prodigal internal link energy of mainstream social sites. It’s low hanging fruit that Google just offers up.

Once a Twitter account owner gets busy with tons of followers, the powerful internal linking community does it’s magic. The name of your profile (and stuff you twit) ranks and propagates virally among the sweaty user-masses.

A word of warning. *evil laugh* The scenario of hijacked Twitter accounts is real. Protect yourself and loved ones. Sure, you might be able to enforce your service/trade mark(s) to ultimately get social media nightmares removed, however do you really want that angst and expense?

Register profiles for all mainstream social channels, mothball them if not appropriate marketing channels and define participation models for those where customers may be.

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You Bad
Some communities (or parts thereof) are walled gardens, meaning that search engines don’t index them. Any portion of any site requiring login to access content won’t be indexed by Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other crawler.

The end result is one can’t easily know someone said something nasty, positive or outright false. This walled garden visibility gap can mean missed damage control measures or lost opportunities for engaging customers.

Google alerts, and other reputation monitoring tools, don’t work for walled gardens. Monitoring needs to be done by hand by an account holder-avatar. [Techno-geek moment: unless your technical crew feels like hacking the community's login script for automated scrape-searches.

Obviously faked logins and scraping could violate sites' terms of service (TOS)] To monitor walled chatter patterns and one-off events, someone needs to sign up to log in weekly, lurk and report.

To our mind, nearly every business should identify and monitor any relevant walled garden communities (private blogs, forums, etc…) where customers or potential customers might be. It’s even possible that competitors are already polluting your reputation in these spaces, talking trash or setting off bombs about your products.

When our clients see conversations, previously invisible, they’re usually somewhere between amazed, freaked or flummoxed. It’s not uncommon to find long standing threads, which have been doing damage for years. On multiple occasions, cease and desist letters, removal requests to forum owners and even litigation ensued after our first walled garden reports.

Social Media Marketing, Reputation Management & SEO
Augmenting public relations and SEO coverage makes for easy conversation at budget time. Social media channels are now classic tools to accomplish both. Consider whether you’re truly monitoring your brand or capitalizing on social media sharing opportunities.

When it comes to budgeting, it’s OK to start small. Lots can be accomplished, even in 15 minutes per day. Consider taking a long term approach and first strive to serve and socialize, until a favorable pattern emerges. Designate resources to bolster SEO using sharing sites and monitor your reputation where the sun doesn’t shine.

PR Power Blogging Zen, the 7 Classic Nodes

Marty Weintraub — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:04:55 +0000

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.

Blogs are the New PR.
Business blog masters uniformly preach the importance of focus and purpose. Bloggers who remain cognizant of the 7 classic public relations nodes, within the implicit purpose of their blog’s content, exercise greater mastery of intent and results.

1 Media Relations
Developing and maintaining relationships with important writers, publications (online & brick), and traditional channels like television and paper publications is more important than ever. Ironically, nearly every channel is folding into the Internet at lighting speeds. Does anyone doubt that clickbaiting authority journalists in all medias is critical to the PR success of any endeavor?

Not only are blogs an important weapon in the sphere of media relations but many journalists have blogs themselves- both personally and officially. In addition blogs themselves are often the most important media channel in an industry’s space. Check out Anderson Cooper’s 360 Blog, the New York Times family of blogs, and Search Engine Land.

2 Investor Relations
Though not laid out in classic blog structure, the HP Investor Relations website is a beautiful example of the web being used to disseminate content traditionally purveyed in corporate reports. These days savvy businesspeople seek out web based information to validate potential investments. It’s reasonable to assume that folks look for that information straight from the horse’s mouth whenever possible. Contrast HP’s approach to the unfriendly web 1.0 approach Minnesota Power, a multi-billion dollar corporation still takes.

3 Community Relations
Every business is a citizen of the city in which they live. Employees’ children play soccer there, go to church, attend school, and run into each other at the mall. Business blogs can be used to connect in tasteful ways with friends and family in the community.

This post from a Duluth Hotel-sponsored business blog highlighted the accomplishments of a U14 competitive soccer team, drove thousands of visitors from StumbleUpon, and rippled through mySpace for days. When Outside Magazine named Duluth a Best Town in America aimClear blogged and again engaged folks from all over the world who have an affinity for Duluth, Minnesota. Taking time to touch fellow citizens is always good business.

4 Customer Relations
Business blogging is all about customer relations. Use your blog to engage, enchant, enlighten, and enrich existing and potential customers. Highlight new products, provide technical solutions, software update downloads. One caveat: bloggers don’t respond well to hard-selling so concentrate on creating content to serve, demystify, and add perspective to your customers’ experience with and perception of your products. If your content is truly valuable sales will take care of themselves.

5 Internal Relations
At least 5 of our clients have private blogs that are dedicated to internal communications. Blog posts can be a great way for valuable rank and file employees to feel close to executives and vice versa. Comment threads can be a terrific and unfettered conduit for exchanging ideas, providing feedback, and keeping staff close. Use the Intranet blog to make important announcements, take surveys, and give awards to your staff.

6 Human Interest
People are curious creatures, voyeurs, and exhibitionists. Looking around any businesses day to day bustle it’s hard to miss marriages, wild world tours, those recovering from illnesses, and incredible personal accomplishments. While staying within your blogs focus is important, there is sometimes room to highlight the human experience which is often interesting and provocative.

7 Crises Management
Sometimes everything goes to hell in a hand basket. Factories blow up, people get killed, products are recalled, employees say stupid things and…well you get the picture. Having a well-read business blog can be a highly effective channel to gather in interested parties, provide the essential information, and organized your company’s response to a bad situation

PR is PR No Matter Where It is Published.
Social communities and blogs are essentially new public relations channels which, in addition to traditional media outlets, can’t be ignored. Use of blogs for PR is becoming the norm more and more. The practice of orchestrating “social media releases” means intentionally coordinating optimized content blasts to an ever growing array of channels. Keep in mind the 7 classic PR nodes which traditionally are used codify corporate relationships.