How to Reach the New Media Influencers

Media is one of the most powerful groups out there. Whether your a big company or a small company, developing relationships with all kinds of media is crucial for your campaign. Knowing how to pitch the media is also crucial. Most online media hate PR flacks. The influencer's such as review site editorial, niche bloggers, or the online and hard copy magazines all have different ways they would like to be approached. For example. I know of one very influential hi-tech gadget blogger that will not look at a PR email blast or a canned email asking to review product. Instead, this blogger wants people to get involved in his blog community first..........then pitch him on his FaceBook wall. He does not have time to read PR email. He wants a 1-2 line pitch he can read FAST and from a person whom he sees in his blog feedback section that's active in his blog.

How do you find the names, websites, blogs or email address of the influencer's within in your industry?

Try these resources:

• www.highbeam.com (Enables searching the blog library, RSS feeds, web to research facts, articles, and journalists in your chosen industry).
• www.vocus.com (provides a web-based software suite to help find and manage key journalists, analysts, bloggers).
• www.cision.com (Cision's MediaSource software enables professionals to compile a general or TARGETED media lists online).

These resources can also have the value benefit of answering questions on how a journalist or blogger accepts pitches or how they like to be contacted. Bloggers are increasing within the media everyday and attract millions of eyeballs. Within my company I have created a "Bloggers Relations" group inside the Media Relations department. We concentrate on these blogs and establish working, friendly relationships with them. When its time to actually pitch the product or service, our blogger relations people have an easy time convincing the blog editorial on our newest product or service.

SEO SEM quick traffic driving tips

A quick guide on how to drive traffic to your website. Traffic = Revenue.

1. Create a site map! should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks.
2. Build inbound, one way links to the page or pages, preferably from topical sites that have a high page rank.
3. Find the "key phrases" that potential customers are using to find your products or services on your and competitors' pages.
4. Build link popularity (backlinks) = which means that other sites contain links to your site!
5. Update the pages on your website often. Content is KING.
6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.
7. Put a blog on your website and update it every day! Then submit the blog to blog directories.
8. Make sure your website (company) is in Wikipedia.
9. Comment on Blogs
10. Submit Press Releases

PR and Blogging

Whew. I’m back. Finally. I’ve been working on some projects (work related) that needed special “detailed” attention. They took up a lot of my bandwidth these last few weeks. I woke up this morning thinking about my blog and how important blogs play a role in the new “PR”. I have friends at other companies think that blogs are a waste of time and offer no value. Of course, they are mostly in HR and engineers. They think that blogs are just rants and random entries people do in their downtime. What they completely underestimate is the fact in this new world PR order, a blog can become a destination, and aggregate of knowledge and expertise that helps customers (or investors) make decisions while also building relationships with them. Relationships are THE name of the game. Also, a lot of companies are paranoid (legal dept.) that if their employees start blogging, then it can also hurt relationships and even start creating misinformation that could lead to lawsuits i.e., public company stock takes a nose dive via a employees blogging that has “gone off the reservation” and starts ranting and railing against the said company. That is why every company (public) and most private need to have a safeguard in place if it’s to allow employees blog about the company and products on company time. There needs to be a final sign off on all blog posts (preferably a PR or legal) before it goes live. This safeguard is a necessity. Now, if the employee has their own personal blog and they do not write on company time, then so be it. They can write anything they want if it’s their own personal blog. Nothing wrong with that.

Everyone within a company is responsible for Public Relations. Media or investor relations are specific responsibilities of communications professionals. Those conversations are going to happen out there with or without them, and if companies aren’t on the radar screen, then they are missing valuable opportunities. Blogging also helps bring these customers and relationships back to your company site. This additional traffic will help brand awareness, sales (duh), and Google rankings. Need blog traffic? Just write good compelling content. It’s that easy. Other techniques to get your blog up and pumping traffic include: Links to other blogs, Link Building, buy Blog Ads (many sites out there offer this service), submitting to blog directories, or write guest articles for popular websites allows you to tap their brand equity, user trust, and traffic stream for free. So many ways. This is the new PR world order. Go get your company some exposure. Create relationships that go viral. The traffic and exposure will follow. Blog……….because your competitor is already doing it!