WebProNews

Tag: pr

  • How to Get Hired as a Community Manager

    How to Get Hired as a Community Manager

    Snagging a job as a community manager isn’t easy. First, realize that competition for these jobs is fierce.  I’ve been doing this since 1996, and there are alot of folks with 10+ years of experience that want the same jobs you do.  Don’t give up though, most of the time people hire community managers based on the interview, and if you can nail that, you’re golden.

    Getting the Lead

    LinkedIn is a great way to get headhunted, so make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date.  I get a few recruiters a month, pinging me about community related jobs.  I don’t think it’s because I’m all that special.  I always ask how they found me, and they usually tell me they found me by searching Linked In.  As someone who is always concerned about SEO, I made sure my profile was well-stocked with popular (and relevant to my experience) keywords that a recruiter looking to fill a community position might use to search.  In addition, I know that people who are connected to the person searching, rise higher in the search, so I take care to connect to people that I have met, especially if they work at a company that might interest me later in my career path.  However, the last two jobs I have had in this area I did not find through LinkedIn, so don’t forget to do the traditional networking as well.

    Landing the Interview

    To get the interview, you want to be honest, but not brutally so.  Save those perks and salary requirements discussions for the face-to-face.  If a recruiter has your resume and maybe a dozen others, he’s not going to call in the bossy candidate unless he has to do so.  And, like any other position, you need to be well prepared for the phone interview.  Dig into the company’s site.  Find out what others are saying about them.  Come up with at least 3 things you would do differently, and remember to communicate those things with a gentle, but firm, style.  ’Here’s what I noticed you could do better’ is received much better than ‘Here’s where you are screwing up’.  You have to show the person that you are not only well qualified, and able to think strategically, but that you won’t be a pain to work with.

    Nailing the Interview

    Dress, dress, dress.  Don’t ever come into an interview in a Tshirt, I don’t care what the rest of the office is wearing.  Even if you snag the job, you’ve set a tone that you are not upper management material (ie not serious about your job), in the first meeting.  I do work in San Francisco though, so in my local you can absolutely wear jeans to an interview, just pair with clothing that would work with slacks.

    Bring a notepad filled with ideas that are specific for that community.  This communicates that you are already working and you’ll hit the ground running.  It also shows them that you are well prepared for this interview.  Ask questions.  Not salary/benefits quite yet, but more like ‘What’s the environment like here?’ or ‘Is this a meeting-heavy company?’ and ‘Are employees encouraged to share ideas and feedback with upper management?’  These types of questions will really give you a better look at what you might be getting yourself into, which is the point of an interview anyway.  Getting the job is not always the end goal.  Landing a job that you hate doesn’t help you, it just ties you up so that you can’t get the job that is perfect for you.  Remember to ask questions that help you understand the personality of a company, so you too can make an informed decision.

    Experience?

    Let’s say you haven’t been a community manager, but you’ve worked in customer service, PR, online marketing, or something similar.  That’s ok.  When you list those jobs on your resume, bullet out the points that are tailored to community.  A person who has done any of these roles is almost always charged with some level of community building, so make those things pop out for a recruiter or HR person who is scanning a dozen resumes.  Note your successes.  Bring those things up in your phone interview, and drive them home in your face-to-face interview.  I’d hire a person with heart and knowledge much faster than a person who has 4 community management jobs, but no success metrics to go along with it.  If you increased membership by x%, or increased engagement across the board, bring it up and drive it home.  Remember, they are looking for someone who can deliver results, work well internally, and not require tons of oversight. Be that person and you’ll find work.

    Money

    The typical community manager makes between $40k-90k per year.  With experience, a 6 figure salary is not uncommon.  If this is your first job in this type of role, be prepared to make less than what you might normally earn, but let them know in the interview what you typically make and that you would like to be on a path to make x number of dollars within x number of years.  If you do have significant experience, remind the interviewer that this is a crucial role and as such, your experience is worth paying for.  Remember, it’s on you to let them know what you want.  No one is going to pay you what you are worth unless you ask for it.

    Passion

    The key to snagging a community job is communicating that you are the best person for the role.  If the company makes TV, let them know how much you enjoy the medium and how knowledgable you are in the industry.  Remind them of your connections, and your influence.  If they make video games, let them know that you’ve been playing games for x number of years, and are already hosting a weekly video podcast that is viewed by industry insiders and is often cited by well-known gaming blogs.  If you’re vying for a shot as a community manager in the fashion industry, show them your fashion blog and your regular column in Variety.  You get the drift…  Let your passion and expertise shine, and you’ll get the offer.  If you know you want a job in a certain industry, and you don’t have impressive credentials like the above, spend some time getting them.  It’s not difficult, but it does involve passion and effort.  If you aren’t willing to go the extra mile, a job in community is really not for you anyway.

    Originally published on Practical Blogging

  • Why Digital Marketing Challenges Everyone

    Why Digital Marketing Challenges Everyone

    Sometimes I can see it in their eyes. During a speaking appearance, I’ll look out at the audience and see fear. Not the "Big F" kind of "Run for your lives, citizens!" terror that you see in a B-movie. No, I am talking about the kind of fear that makes you stop and check things out just one more time before trying something. The fear that causes you to wait for someone else to make the first move. I see it all the time in digital marketing. It’s totally understandable. It’s human nature. I am extremely sympathetic to everyone who experiences it. But, we have to get rid of it.

    A few years ago, I’d see that fear in the eyes of veteran marketing and PR people—the ones who went into marketing as a refuge from math. They would literaly cower when I explained the principles of direct marketing. They no more wanted to calculate a conversion rate than balance their checkbooks. They were "message people." They had "soft skills" and knew how to promote brand image in the minds of consumers. They were truly afraid of being held responsible for whether conversion rates ticked up or down a tenth of a point last month. They knew exactly what they were good at, and this wasn’t it.

    So in came the quants—math geeks who knew how to juice the clickthroughs and didn’t worry about optimizing pages for SEO. They were analytical and they were good. They tuned up Web sites and made them persuasive, but they had their own Achilles’s heel. They had gone into math and technology to avoid ever having to speak or write. When social media came along, they were aghast that marketing was becoming squishy again. I know so many of these new marketers now fearful about their lack of communications skills.

    The truth is that marketing is at once a powerful communications tool and one that must ring the cash register. Digital marketing forces us to analyze and optimize in ways that we never did before, because we can measure the results and adjust what we do. But we can’t only analyze and optimize. At some point, we need to actually say something, to stand for something, and to move people.

    Brand marketers who believe that they can’t succeed because of their sparse analytical skills have something in common with direct marketers who feel they come up shy in creativity: they are both right. Both kinds of marketers need the other and the sooner they realize it, the sooner their companies will use digital marketing at a new level.

    Originally published on Biznology

  • In PR, There’s No Such Thing As A One-Day Story

    In PR, There’s No Such Thing As A One-Day Story

    Yesterday, I wrote about how NBC has handled Keith Olbermann’s departure from his show on MSNBC. Writing that story put me in mind of one of the hoary chestnuts of public relations strategy, which is to let sleeping dogs lie for some situations. Veteran PR folks are fond of refering to a minor flap as a "one-day story," meaning that you read about it in the newspaper today, but it disappears tomorrow. Unfortunately, the Internet has forever ended the technique of letting the storm blow over.

    First, it was Google.

    Stories that broke years ago are still easily found by searchers, whether they are looking for them or not. I have clients (they’d love not to be named here) where you can search on their company name and find (as search result #4 or #5, perhaps) a negative story about them. In some cases the story isn’t even true—the classic situation where PR people counsel the on-day story approach.

    The reasoning always went that some stories are so unfair that it is best "not to dignify them with a comment," the idea being that responding to the spurious charges just "kept the story alive" in the press. If the charges hit on Monday, then your response becomes the story on Tuesday, with even more people hearing about those falsehoods. Not responding, the reasoning goes, ended the negative publicity on day one. People would have to stop by the local library to go back and read about that story after Monday.

    This clearly the thought process of a bygone era, now that we are in the age of Google, but I still sometimes hear well-meaning people provide this advice. I no longer hear this from too many PR professionals—most have figured out what we need to do differently—but I often hear business people parrot this advice because years ago they heard some smart person say it. We all need to accept that this world has changed.

    Google can turn up any story on you, even years later. As they used to tell you in school, "It’s part of your permanent record." Your only safe strategy is to respond so that when people find the story, they also find your response.

    But Google isn’t the only factor in this changed world. Social media has also made a huge difference, because blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube keep stories alive day after day. (I did this yesterday with the Keith Olbermann story.) As each pundit chips in with their opinion, more and more people hear about the original story. And when they do, they Google it even more to learn more details. If all that is out there is the negative charge, then people will make up their minds without your side of the story.

    I know that responding is scary. It feels safer to let the story run its course without your comment. It feels like your comment can only "add fuel to the fire," and the truth is that you do run that risk. If you provide a ham-handed lame answer, expect to be pilloried. But the right answer can nip a crisis in the bud. The right answer can change people’s minds. The right answer can protect your brand image. The right answer can rally your supporters to your defense.

    No answer can’t do any of those things, and leaves your reputation in the hands of your critics. You wouldn’t do that with any other corporate asset, so it’s time to stop talking about the "one-day" story.

    Originally published at Biznology

  • Which Parts of Your Company Should Be Listening to Social Media

    Co-authored by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund

    “Once upon a time, customer contact was centralized around the switchboard, and the phone was the preferred method for communication between companies and customers. When it rang, you answered, because it was likely a customer or a potential customer on the other end of the line. Now, the calls are coming through online, via the social phone.”

    That’s wisdom from Radian6 CEO Marcel Lebrun (disclosure: Amber’s employer) about the changing dynamics of communication via the Web, and the importance businesses need to place on paying attention to discussions online via social media listening. And not just the basics.

    Here are 6 areas of your business that should be listening.

    1. Sales

    Although social media is rarely a direct sales channel, it can be a fine way to uncover prospects and meet them where they are. Listening programs give you the opportunity to find prospects when the timing is perfect and when they’re actually asking for answers you have.

    For example, say you’re the owner of a local home improvement store and you’d like to see a lift in your lawn and garden sales. Monitoring for phrases such as “new lawnmower” or “recommendations for a grill,” can help you, well, be helpful. It’s like consultative selling. But here’s the thing: you’re approaching people when they’re ready for you. You’re focusing solely on hand-raisers who are expressing need through the phrasing of their social communication.

    2. Marketing & PR

    Marketing and public relations professionals spend a lot of time trying to craft and deliver the perfect message.

    Listening helps make sure that the language you’re using as a company is the same language being used by the people you’re hoping to hook. If you’re calling yourself a digital strategy consulting company but your prospective customers know you as an advertising agency, there’s a fundamental disconnect that you can uncover and address. Listening also gives team members ambient awareness about the buzz around their organization and what’s resonating with their community that can not only inform marketing decisions but help anticipate emerging needs.

    3. Customer Service

    When someone’s microwave goes on the fritz, the 1-800 number is no longer the exclusive conduit for their frustration. Increasingly, individual customers are airing their concerns, questions, and grievances over social media channels, especially if traditional channels prove less than helpful. Listening gives you the ability to find those comments when and where they happen; it also helps you respond quickly and in the medium that your customers are choosing to use.

    As listening platforms become more integrated into customer service, keep a lookout for connections with call center systems, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and other information centers that can help track those all-important customer interactions and experiences in social media.

    4. Research and Development

    Product and service development is a constant, iterative process to respond to the competition and market demands. And every company wants to claim innovation, right? You can fuel your idea engine by harnessing the input, thoughts, and creativity of the online audience. They don’t have to be your customers to give you inspiration!

    This is where competitive and industry listening can come into play. Are there unmet needs in your market that a new product or service could help serve? Could you add new features or create an entirely new offering that addresses some of the shortcomings of the competition? Are you customers talking among themselves to suggest improvements or changes you haven’t thought of yet?

    5. Human Resources

    Human resources isn’t typically the first place most companies think of when discussing social media. But even in passive, information-gathering mode, HR can glean an awful lot from simply paying attention to the discussions that happen online.

    The obvious potential here is talent recruiting, in both finding potential employees and examining their online social graphs. HR professionals can search for people in the appropriate sector or with the right titles and responsibilities. They can see how connected and networked those people are online and how they make use of the available social channels. Or they can watch the impact factors that can influence their hiring: talent on the move in the industry, big layoffs, hiring freezes or surges, or key new positions being developed in competing companies.

    6. Executives and Management

    Based on what company leadership learns through listening, they can identify potential adjustments to the strategic plan, or even to the company vision overall. They can understand market trends through the unfettered viewpoint of the online masses and determine whether they’re behind, ahead of, or riding the curve.

    They can even get a sense of the balance between internal culture and external perception and learn whether the two feel like they’re in balance.

    How many listeners do you have in your company?

    Originally published at ConvinceAndConvert.com

  • Social Signals You Should Be Monitoring

    Social Signals You Should Be Monitoring

    Listening is not hard these days.  There are now over 200 tools that can help you gather the conversations.

    The next step is not so simple.  Finding the right content and figuring out exactly what the people talking about you need and want is critical to PR success today. Content analysis is a traditional PR skill, but data mining is not.  Building social graphs has not been part of our PR practice.

    I don’t know about you, but I have not studied math since high school. Most PR people I know are much more right brain than left brain oriented. It’s the nature of our work.

    But as ReadWriteWeb (RWW) said:

    “People need to develop habits of thinking about this stuff. They need someone to explain it to them. They need to develop an easy-to-use vocabulary set for understanding data mining and social graphs and communicating about it. Right now ‘social network analysis’ just doesn’t trip off the average person’s tongue.”

    The online conversations are a constant stream of content – a fire hose of data. What you need are the actionable insights.

    • Who talks about you?
    • Who talks about your competitors?
    • What do they say?
    • Is it positive or negative?
    • Who are they connected to?
    • What communities do they belong to?
    • What does their social graph look like?
    • What kind of content do they share, and with whom?

    95% of new media (social media Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) users expect companies or brands to have a presence on those sites. 89% expect those companies to interact with them in those social spaces. (Cone Research)

    Less than 30% are doing so. (SNCR, UMass 2010 Adoption Surveys)

    Engaging with people online requires that you know who they are, where they gather, who they talk to, how they feel about you and your products, and what kind of information or content they’re looking for and might be motivated to share with others in their social sphere.

    And once you know that you can respond appropriately.

    It might not be simple, but I agree with RWW – this is something we need to think about, talk about and start to include in our PR strategy.

    Originally published at The Proactive Report

  • Check Out These LinkedIn Groups If You’re in PR

    If you work in PR, chances are you have one of three needs:

    * A need to build or grow your network.

    * A need to acquire new skills or hone existing ones.

    * A need to find a new job.

    While you could argue many social networks meet these three needs adequately, I might argue that LinkedIn has the biggest potential to meet these needs best when it comes to professional skill-building, networking and job-seeking.

    But, are folks capitalizing on that opportunity within LinkedIn now? Not so much.

    I started to write this post about the 12 groups all PR people should be a member of, but after some initial research, I couldn’t identify 12 I could really recommend.

    Most groups (some pretty reputable brands even) were chock full of SPAM–job postings and blatant self-promotion in the Discussions pane and overall, just a lack of effective community management within the group.

    I was a bit disappointed. Like I said, a few of these groups were reputable, larger organizations. I was expecting a little more.

    But, there were a few groups doing it right. And, I most certainly would recommend joining the following post-haste if you haven’t already:

    * PRSA-your local chapter (varies). Obviously, this one depends on your local chapter. Ours here in Minnesota is pretty active–and productive. In my view, it all depends on your local community.

    * MarketingProfs (9,782 members). Even though this group doesn’t technically fall within the “PR” bucket, it’s a “must join” for any communicator or strategist. It’s one of the more active LinkedIn groups I’m a part of right now. For example a recent discussion around starting a Marketing 101 class solicited a whopping 204 comments!

    * Solo PR Pros (726 members). Selfishly, one of my favorite groups. Regular updates (sometimes, multiple discussion threads each week) and numerous people weigh in. Within this group, solo PRs discuss new tools, budgeting and books to read. Kellye Crane does a fabulous job managing and directing this community.

    * PR News Group (5,336 members). Fairly engaged group with relevant discussions to anyone who works in PR. Most recent–and popular discussions–include: “How to conduct PR without an agency”, “Wikileaks is the Facebook of whistle-blowing” and “Have you ever tried the press release distribution services?”

    * HAPPO (1,099 members). Jobs are the focus, but this group is about much more than just the search. And, with another HAPPO event coming up early next year, this group may be on the rise. Recent conversations have focused on: salary requirements, what employers want to see in an entry-level portfolio and the best free software to create an online portfolio. (Disclaimer: I am the co-founder of HAPPO and one of the community managers of the site).

    Any other groups you’d recommend?

    Originally published on Arik Hanson’s Communications Conversations.

  • Learning PR From The NFL

    I’m a Vikings fan. Have been my entire life. And I’ll tell you, it’s a curse. The ’97 season. 41-0. The NFC championship game in New Orleans last year (Tom Martin, not a WORD!). I can only compare it to what it must be like to be a Cleveland Indians fan (sorry Chuck Hemann). Heartache. Year, after year, after year.

    And this year is no different. I’ve been glued to each game. And, despite the Vikes 2-5 start, I continue to hope there’s a chance they could run the table or go 7-2 and close out the year 9-7, secure a play-off berth and make a run to the Super Bowl in Big D.

    And then came the drama that has been the last week in Minnesota.

    (more…)

  • Is Social Media Part of Your Corporate Culture?

    WebProNews recently spoke with C.C. Chapman, founder of Digital Dads, Co-author of Content Rules, and self-described Boston Media Maven. He says, "Social media has to be ingrained in you culture. All the tools in the world aren’t going to save you."

    "It doesn’t matter what the platform is that it’s being pushed out on. You want good content, and you push it out in as many places as you can, whether it’s written or video," he adds. "Social media ain’t new. It’s been around for a long, long time. The concepts aren’t new, the tools just get newer every day."

    Businesses struggle every day to find good social media strategies. There’s no one right way to do it. There are so many variables involved that it really has to come down to personal decisions on the part of management. Here are some tips to get you started. 

    When it comes to finding the right employees to put on your social media strategy, Chapman says, "So many companies are like, ‘oh, he’s a social media guy’ or ‘she’s a social media girl’, and at the end of the day, everybody in your company…doesn’t need to necessarily understand these tools and be responsible for it, but every time somebody goes out from your company, they’re probably socializing, whether it’s having a beer or hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, you want them to understand these tools…to understand that everything they say can be shared and whatnot. And you know, teach them these tools, so they can figure out and get it in your culture so you’re not scared of this stuff."

    "PR and marketing should not be separate departments anymore (I know the purists will yell about it)," he says. "Get ’em together, and…depending on the company, get legal involved…I mean, it depends on what you are…"

    "There’s definitely training companies…there’s nothing wrong with having blogging guidelines or social media guidelines," Chapman adds. "There’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t try to clamp it down. You know, if Bob’s angry, he’s going to go out there and start yelling about it, and you need to take care of it, but guess what: if you don’t have a listening strategy, and if it’s not part of your culture, you’re never gonna hear it either, so that’s the other side of the equation."

    You never know, you might be able to solve some internal problems by listening. 

    As far as finding a starting point, "Start playing," Chapman suggests. "Start small. I always tell people (I work with a lot of executives), I say, play on your own. You know, set up your own Facebook account for you, just so you can figure out the tools, and maybe you’ll start going, ‘Oh, I see how this could benefit, and how this could be used", because otherwise…until you start playing with it, you’re never gonna understand it."

  • Using Social Media As A PR Tool For Your Business

    If  you want to promote your product, brand or business you need to branch out from just using traditional public realtions tools such as press releases.

    Coverage of SES Chicago will continue.  Stay with WebProNews for more notes from the event this week.

    In the session “Search, PR, and the Social Butterfly” the focus  was how to use social media along with traditional PR tools.

    Lisa Buyer, President & CEO of The Buyer Group, said social media is creating more opportunities for PR people and marketers, “it’s not killing PR.”

    Customers are search and socially savvy. “Facebook is becoming a search engine,” said Buyer. With the Facebook and Bing integration, search is becoming more social.
    The media is also search and socially savvy. More news outlets are using Facebook and Twitter.

    Social media is influencing stories and news. 89% of reporters arre turning to blogs. 65% of journalists use social media. Google is used by 100% of journalists. Get  your content in Google.

    “Social media provides a wealth of information for journalists,” Buyer said.

    Optimize
    Press releases
    Blogs
    Videoss
    Images
    Posts
    Tweets

    Use keywords in your tweet and titles.

    Publicize via distribution and social media. PR strategy should be social via tweets, posts, status updates, blogs, and foursquare.

    Have a content strategy and then break it down to daily, weekly and monthly updates.

    Comments matter for all social media and your business. Comments can drive traffic to your blog. Integrate all your social tools…Facebook…Twitter…Foursquare, video. Add social media links to all press releases. Press releases need to be in HTML format.

    Have sharing tools for company news, Twitter, Facebook etc.

    SEO, PR and social media need to be BFFs.

    Peter Liefer, President, Primeview, talked about a case study for a client where they took pictures of a product before launch and sent them to select bloggers to get a pre-buzz.

    Target bloggers in your industry. Do a press release about an upcoming product to get exposure and credibility.

    Hire influential bloggers to write about a press release. It builds a buzz and use social media. People can write comments about a product via social media. More comments more buzz.

    Use all the social bookmarking sites to bookmark blog posts and press releases about the product.

    Use a variety of Twitter accounts, Google indexes tweets immediately. Good way to get exposure for a product or brand. Distribute press releases via all social media.

     

  • NewsBasis Aims to Be Basis for News-Maker, News-Breaker Relationships

    In a nutshell, NewsBasis is a site where journalists and bloggers can find sources, while experts and companies can find journalists and bloggers to write about them in their articles.

    WebProNews had a conversation with NewsBasis Founder and CEO Darryl Siry (who also happens to be a contributor to Wired, and was formerly CMO of Tesla Motors) about how the site has performed since launching at the beginning of the month.

    "Initial participation was well beyond what I had been planning for, which is a good thing, but keep in mind I am not fully satisfied until we are used by all folks in the media industry on both sides of the table," Siry tells us.

    We asked about participation from both journalists and experts. "The participation on the company rep side is a good mix of companies, PR agencies, independent professionals, academic institutions and non-profits," he says. "On the journalist side you also see a broad range of participation, from bloggers to regional newspapers to major news organizations."

    Perusing article topic requests on NewsBasis, one can find various familiar names and publications. That’s got to be encouraging for the company.

    Darry Siry, CEO and Founder of NewsBasis"Of course, there are more experts/companies using the service than journalists, but that’s what I would expect as that reflects the industry," he continues. "There are many more people seeking attention of reporters than there are reporters, and it is important to have deep inventory of experts and sources."

    I don’t think he’ll get many arguments from reporters there.

    Siry certainly knows how the game is played, as he has written not only for Wired, but for other publications like VentureBeat and Business Insider. Combine that with marketing gigs he has held in the past. He’s clearly played on both sides of the ball.

    As user experience plays greatly into the success of any product, we also asked for plans about upcoming features.

    "We are balancing customer acquisition activities with our pace of product development," Siry tells us. "There are lots of great features and tweaks that we have been working through and as the product gets better I expect that we will see more users come on to the system. We have features already built in to the system that we haven’t really promoted because you can only say so much in a marketing message, so part of my challenge is to educate existing customers about how full featured we are."

    "For example, we have built in real time news alerts that work quite well and we also have a robust annotation and sharing system that can be used by journalists for online research," he explains.

    Of course, users can always keep abreast of the latest NewsBasis happenings on the company blog, which has provided numerous updates since the early August launch of NewsBasis.

    Journalists, bloggers, and brands all potentially have a lot to gain from a system like NewsBasis. At this point, it’s just a matter of attracting the users, and getting them to stick with it. This appears to be the main area of focus for the company at the moment. In fact, Siry emailed me personally to let me know that I hadn’t activated my account after initially signing up, weeks ago. It worked. I logged in that day. 

  • BusinessWire to Give Businesses More Ways to Increase Press Coverage

    BusinessWire, the popular newswire service, is set to launch some new services for businesses and organizations next month. These are the NewsHQ online newsroom and the InvestorHQ investor center.

    BusinessWire says these microsites were developed specifically to help corporate communicators and investor relations officers house and maintain information for journalists, bloggers, investors, consumers, analysts, key influencers, etc.

    BusinessWire - Giving organizations new resources"There are many benefits to employing these content management solutions," explains BusinessWire VP of Web Communications, Ibrey Woodall. "One of the main reasons the online newsroom came into existence was because public relations representatives were having a hard time getting cooperation from their technical, or IT department, when they needed a press release posted quickly. Investor relations officers also needed a means by which they could get the most recent financial news and data to their company’s investors and analysts."

    "So, control was an initiating factor for this technological evolution," she adds. "Communicators needed to be able to post and organize content in a timely manner. They needed to be able to get their message on their website, and delivered directly to those who were interested in their organization."

    Getting press coverage can mean a great deal of gaining traffic and overall exposure for your business. Providing the givers of press (journalists, bloggers, and even everyday consumers via social media) with as many resources for finding information as possible, will only increase the likelihood of coverage. Businesses may find  these new services from Business Wire quite helpful.

    It also helps that the services come with some basic SEO features, which should further increase visibility.

  • SES Keynote: New Rules Of Marketing

    David Meerman Scott, author, of "World Wide Rave," gave a keynote on the new rules of marketing and PR.
     

    Coverage of SES New York continues at WebProNews Videos and at Live.WebProNews.com. Stay with WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.

    He says the goal is to get the attention of others and "we are all about attention." He says people are fearful about embracing new ideas such as social media. If you worry people will say bad things about you, they already are, and by avoiding it you only make it worse. Says Toyota was not slammed for their car recall but for their lack of communication.

    David-Meerman-Scott New rule: Earn attention by creating great information via blogs and social media. Get customers/ others to create content for you. "On the web, you are what you publish," Scott said.

    "If you have crappy content and you take it and search engine optimize it, you have slightly less crappy content."

    How can you encourage people to share content?

    Word of mouth

    Nobody cares about your products, they care about themselves and what works for them.

    Speak in a buyer persona language to your customers instead of marketing language. He says too many companies speak is like some kind of cult. Calls the language gobbledygook.

     Talks about the key highlights from his ebook "New Rules of Viral Marketing."

    *Put down roots
    *Create trigger that encourages people to read
    *Point world to virtual doorstep (that allows them to create content)

    WebProNews anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

  • SEO and Social Media Matter for Press Coverage

    When businesses think about search and social media, a great deal of the time, they are thinking about traffic, customer engagement, and brand awareness. While these are all good things to consider, there may be more to that last one that you have spent much time thinking about.

    Brand awareness goes beyond just having a random customer find your site in a set of search results or through a link from their Facebook news feed. Have you considered how channels like search and social media are used by media outlets and journalists? The fact of the matter is that journalists and bloggers alike utilize both to a great extent while covering their beats.

    Do you take press coverage into consideration? Comment here.

    Search and social both play significant roles in PR. This is a topic that WebProNews recently discussed with TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden. Odden calls journalists customers, and in many ways they should be treated as such when it comes to getting your product or site in front of their eyeballs.

    Odden says to look at what it is you can do as a marketer to make it easier for the journalist to do their job. Optimize your content for what a journalist is looking for. This is one way you can potentially increase your media coverage, which can obviously increase brand awareness.

    Odden makes a great point online journalists often having tighter deadlines, and turning to blogs and social networks for sources and quotes. For example, the real-time nature of a Twitter search might be just what a journalist or blogger need to find someone who’s talking about the subject they’re writing about, at nearly the moment they’re looking for it.

    For that matter, Google’s real-time search can help for the same reason, and most journalists and bloggers frequently use Google to search for what they’re looking for. If what they’re looking for happens to be related to a newsy topic, they just might see Google’s real-time results literally before anything else. If that topic happens to be related to something you’re talking about, you just might end up in those results too. Google is also indexing updates from Facebook Pages here now, by the way.

    The point is, if you are looking for increased media coverage, there are ways to increase your chances of getting in front of the right people, and it is certainly not limited to real-time search. Sometimes journalists/bloggers will simply tap their contacts within their social networks (or email of course) to find sources. This is as good a reason as any to engage in social media on a regular basis and network with lots of relevant people.

    If attracting media attention is what you’re after, consider these five tips I offered in a SmallBusinessNewz article last year:

    1. Do something that’s different – Simply do something that makes you stand out: something that gets people talking. If it creates enough buzz, the media coverage will likely follow.

    2. Look for niche publications – the more niche the publication, the more likely they probably are to cover you.

    3. Personalize your message – When you’re writing an email to a publication to talk about your business, for example, personalize the message for the specific person you’re contacting, so they know it’s not just a manufactured piece that you’re sending all over the web. Journalists like exclusivity.

    4. Find multiple contacts – If you can find more than one contact for a particular publication, it may be wise to send your story pitch to them. This will increase the potential visibility among the publication’s staff.

    5. Provide plenty of details – When sending such a pitch, it’s a good idea to include as many details about the product/story as possible. The more details available, the less research is required, and time is more valuable than ever, especially for a journalist.

    Another piece of advice I would give is to not let your press center hold back your marketing opportunities. I’ve seen a lot of companies fail to keep their own press centers up to date with the latest news, even as big announcements are made, and even if they have issued press releases. Often times, these releases won’t even be available on the site until later. If you want to increase your chances of more media coverage, you should always have your latest news readily available in your press center, or via your blog – wherever you make announcements. And always provide contact info.

    Share your tips for increasing press coverage.

  • Second Life Attempts To Make Rebound

    You probably have forgotten about Second Life (the virtual world from Linden Labs), right?

     

    Remember, that’s that virtual world that got a TON of hype back in 2005/6. It was on the cover of magazines. On CNN and other TV shows. It looked like it was going to be THE new thing of the decade.

     

    What happened?

     

    Well, a few things.

     

    1. Corporations figured out that they’d need to spend a lot of money to build an island in Second Life (Microsoft spent somewhere around $100,000 if I remember right back then) but soon they figured out that each island could only hold 100 people. Not a good ROI.

     

    2. It had game dynamics. Games are fun for a while, but eventually people get bored of playing games. That’s what happened. People who were very excited and evangelistic about Second Life eventually moved on.

     

    3. It lost its “new and shiny” patina. That’s most of why the press forgot about it. We only pay attention to new and cool stuff. Heck, just look at Techcrunch. Do you read about older technologies there? No.

     

    Anyway, one thing happened that I find very interesting: it continued to grow in users, time spent on the site, and dollars spent in it.

     

    On Friday I sat down with Mark to find out why.

     

    First, the users remained very evangelistic. Second, corporations like IBM found other uses for its islands and kept investing (they now use these islands for training and replacements of expensive conferences). Third, the technology has been steadily improving. Fourth, the company has found new ways to bring new users in and make the experience easier to get into.

     

    But he admitted that they had been pretty quiet and avoided doing more PR work until just recently.

     

    Why is that changing this week? You’ll see why tomorrow morning at about 11 a.m. on building43.

     

    But to tease a bit, I find that their new direction, the first part of which you’ll see tomorrow in the video I did with Mark, is interesting and represents a new life for Second Life and its host Linden Labs.

     

    To wrap this up, have you used Second Life lately? Even if you haven’t, see you on building43 tomorrow morning for more.

     

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