TAG | PR
23
Online PR is The Way Forward
0 Comments | Posted by andy in PR, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Marketing Resources
With the country still struggling through the recession, companies are still after more PR in magazines and newspapers, but are they overlooking the power of the online network?
Having an article published in a newspaper or magazine is what a lot of companies see as the goal when they are trying to get a message out to the public, even though more often than not this process can be costly and not the most effective way of reaching the target audience.
With the online world ever growing there should be more of a buzz around getting an article published on the Internet or having the company name mentioned in someone’s blog or tweet. The online market has much more longevity than print. If an article is printed in a daily newspaper everyone in the target audience would have to read the newspaper on that day and that particular page for it to have any effect.
If, however, it was published online there would be a much wider audience likely to see it; articles are archived on websites so people will still be able to refer to it and it may even show up in search results months after it was released.
Online media usage is currently outstripping traditional media; more people get their news updates from social network sites than by reading the newspaper.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
YouTube: The Mother of All PR Platforms
0 Comments | Posted by andy in PR, Video Marketing, Viral Marketing and Games
YouTube is the second most visited site in the world and as social media dominates the communications airwaves, PR people are turning to sites like YouTube to promote their companies.
As an online platform, YouTube provides a continuous presence 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it’s completely free. It also offers the notion of a brand channel, which provides an appropriate structure and context for a company’s video.
There are many great online PR ideas that can take place on YouTube, but it has more credibility if it takes place in the perspective of a brand channel.
With a much wider demographic now choosing to gain their news/ information online, and with a large number of those people not having a long enough attention span to read an article or press release, YouTube is perfect as company’s can upload a short video with key messages about the company and all the audience has to do is watch it for a couple of minutes.
The types of videos uploaded by a company might include a video of a company president speaking about an important issue or an event that the company is involved in or perhaps a mini documentary of an ongoing project that involves the company.
When using YouTube as a public platform it is important to remember to tag and title the video appropriately in order for it to reach its intended audience and achieve the proposed purpose. It is a waste of time if a specified company video is floating randomly without a suitable venue.
YouTube videos are now even more accessible, even without looking directly on the site it is still possible to see videos linking to the search that has been typed into the Google search engine. The integration of YouTube clips alongside Google means there is another form of potential traffic heading towards the company website.
It is easy to link a YouTube brand channel to a company website and other social media sites that the company appears on; brand channels also have a bulletin section to accommodate company news. It is an incredibly successful PR communication tool that reaches worldwide.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Using PR to Compliment your Website’s SEO
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Articles, Copywriting, Link Building, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Twitter
If you’ve got a website, or indeed have a client who has a website to be proud of then you want to show it off. SEO is the best way of getting the attention of the search engines, and those who use them, but there’s much more you can be doing besides.
Any PR specialist will tell you that anything can be promoted; it’s just about knowing where and how to do it. With PR fundamentally centred on generating buzz, the Internet is the perfect forum for getting the message out there loud and clear.
Online PR is by no means a detached process from your general search engine marketing processes. It can incorporate elements of SEO and link building, whilst of course spreading the word about your latest innovation, newest products or achievements. Any successful PR strategy just needs an angle; something that will make you stand out and unique from the competition.
Creating Buzz through a Unique Perspective
Finding that angle isn’t always straightforward though; how can you persuade someone who may only have a passing interest in what you’re offering to visit your site? Well, that’s the skill of PR.
Search engines are still the most consistent sources of traffic. There are very few sites that have succeeded in spite of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft; we use them to search for almost everything, which is why SEO still has to come first. But if you’re in a position to diversify and want to explore new channels, PR is the way forward.
Modern PR isn’t simply about creating press releases and sending them off to the local paper or releasing it through the newswire. Today, that same press release can be submitted to a site like PRWeb and within hours showing on journalists’ screens as well as search engine results pages across the world. It’s a far more dynamic system that provides opportunities for distribution that would not have been possible even in the last decade.
Of course, the modern digital press release has another major bonus, HTML coding. That’s right, most sites will allow you to include embedded links within the copy before distribution. Therefore, once it’s out there on the Internet your site is gaining SEO strength as well as providing an interesting news story that could well get picked up.
Promoting a site can take on many forms though. For example, once you’ve created a press release that links to your website, you can then go and promote the release itself. This can be done in many ways, but the most popular currently is social media. Sites like Twitter allow quickfire messages with short links, providing the perfect opportunity to talk up your own press release. Social bookmarking is another fantastic way to increase exposure; just get on Digg or your own site of choice and flag it up, you’d be surprised how many extra reads your press release can achieve.
It might sound a little complicated, promoting a promotional press release, but the truth is it can get results. PR today is about finding ways to utilise the resources available to their optimum. If you’ve spent a few hours writing a release, you want to make sure that it’s read, so why not spend the same amount of time promoting it? The same of course is true of most things, including blog posts and news stories within a site; by channelling visitors through intermediary content, you can get better results than providing a direct link.
An example of how to market a press release
Online users seek authority in the information that they read. For most, spam is still a major turn-off, so avoiding this online PR disaster – i.e. using inappropriate hashtags in Twitter promotions – is just as key to success. Provide people with something interesting, informative, eye-catching, captivating, intriguing – however you wish to term it – is a fantastic way of helping boost site traffic and profile.
Don’t let your hard on-site work go to waste. If you’ve got it, flaunt it; show the world what you’re all about through the search engines and innovative online PR.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
