SEO PR Efforts DO Get Results!

The use of Internet search engines has become so pervasive, so matter-of-fact, that top public relations and communications professionals are blending Search Engine Optimization strategies and tactics with PR efforts.

Successfully deployed, these SEO PR tactics help create greater relevance for a product, service and/or company within the proprietary algorithms used by search engines (Google and Yahoo! being the most prominent) and produce a higher “organic” ranking for the particular words, terms and/topics. (In this context, organic ranking refers to a non-paid ranking or listing that occurs naturally.)

Hence, the savvy PR pro will sprinkle critical SEO terms and words within news releases and other PR materials. And just to be clear about this, this concept is just one SEO PR tactic that will help increase one’s results/rankings on the Internet.

Does it work? You bet.

How do I know?

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Borrowed Thoughts from Small Agency Diary

In catching up on other industry-related blogs, I’ve neglected to update The Betty Factor. My sincerest apologies; a real update is coming soon!

So! In the meantime, I want to highlight a blog post I recently read written by Jennifer Patterson over at Small Agency Diary that really taps into small agency culture through a story about — of all things — a squishy carpet.  It’s a testament to the career path many  us have chosen and I just wanted to share! I’ll check back in soon.

There was a time at the agency when the floor squished as you walked from reception into the kitchen. The squish eventually migrated from reception to one of the offices and soon became a sort of character in the office. People would come in and ask “What’s the squish-factor today?”

When the squish was vacuumed out, we lost more than a water-logged floor. We lost a part of our culture.

This sounds absurd, but anyone who works at a small agency will know this to be true. At a small agency, we’re used to communing with the elements. Those little inconveniences are part of day-to-day work life. At a large agency, these inconveniences are efficiently handled — there are plans, there is a person whose job it is to deal with the squish. At a small agency, you just keep squishing along.

We never really mentioned the squish to outsiders. After all, no client wants to hire a (literally or figuratively) sinking agency.

But I am here to say the squish is worth something.

Small-agency culture is all about creativity and spontaneity. On a given day you deal with the highest altitude issues of client’s brand and business and the lowest altitude issues like what kind of coffee to buy. But getting your hands dirty with the in’s and out’s of your own business is a great reminder that your client’s business is also about the elements.

Perserverance, Laser-sharp Focus and a Good Idea = A Winning Combination for Jason Alba, Creator of JibberJobber.com

I love a good story, and to me a good story can become great when it

*  Involves a real person,

*  Who overcomes adversity and/or long odds, and

*  Achieves success.

Jason Alba fits into the great story category.

Without going into all the details, Jason’s a tech guy with an MBA under his belt who found himself out of work in January 2006. After several months of unsuccessfully looking for ajob to meet his skill-sets and needs, he decided to branch out onto his own by launching JibberJobber.com — a Web-based solution to help others out of work manage their job-seeking efforts.

Picking up on repeated questions he heard about the benefits (if any) of LinkedIn, the social networking site, Jason wrote a book entitled simply enough, I’m on LinkedIn. Now What? Recently he published a second book: I’m On Facebook. Now What?

By themselves, these are positive steps in what sounds like a decent personal turnaround story. But Jason’s taken his entrepreneurial efforts beyond the basic “woe is me” story to the “I’m doing pretty okay now” with his fairly tireless self-promotional efforts.

His most recent hit? A very nice 3-25-08 write-up in U.S. News & World Report entitled: “Boosting Your Sales with Social Networking.”

As proven by the USNWR story (as well as by inclusion in stories from The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and others), Jason has now transformed himself into a sought-after expert — in essence, a brand unto himself.

Congrats, Jason. That’s good news for you, and for those seeking your advice/assistance as well.

China & the IOC Utilize Spin in an Attempt to Minimize Athletes’ Health Concerns for 2008 Games

The International Olympic Committee and the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) are doing all they can to minimize the fact that world-class athletes are beginning to pull out of the 2008 Summer Games for health concerns.

The story began nearly two weeks ago when Haile Gebreselassie, the current marathon world-record holder, announced that he would not compete in Beijing this August due to his concerns that air pollution in Beijing would permanently harm his lungs. (Gebreselassie suffers from asthma.)

Previously, gold medal tennis winner and four-time French Open winner, Justine Henin, had proclaimed that she would not defend her gold medal in China since the pollution would aggravate her asthma as well.

The decisions of these athletes notwithstanding (and the threat of other world-class athletes withdrawing from the Games due to health concerns), the IOC distributed on Monday, March 17 with the headline “IOC ANALYSES BEIJING AIR QUALITY DATA.”

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Better Media Coverage Requires an Ongoing PR Effort

In a relatively short item posted a few days ago on the Wall Street Journal’s Independent Street blog, Kelly Spors outlines five insights from a small business entrepreneur on “How to Get Killer PR” (see http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/03/13/how-to-get-killer-pr/.)

Specifically, Spors relates how she had “encountered” Sarah Endline several times during a period of a few months, which led Spors to wonder if such encounters were merely the result of a shrinking world or perhaps the workings of “killer PR?”

Although curiosity may have killed the cat, it led Spors to track down Endline, the founder and CEO of Sweetriot (a five-person, NYC-based company) for the story behind Endline’s PR success.

Of the five PR tips that Spors gleans from Endline, I particularly appreciated Tip No. 5:

Devote time. If you think PR will help your company, make time for it. It can’t be just something you try to squeeze into your free time between sales meetings. It takes time, persistence and strategy. 

To me, this is a great insight for any executive, business owner, entrepreneur or marketing type to take to heart.

Politis Pointer: 

I have found that it is VERY RARE INDEED when an organization or individual can come up with that one killer PR, marketing, advertising, promotional, direct response or interactive execution that launches a service, product, person, company or idea into eternal orbit.

Successful marketing communications campaigns are (in my opinion) successful because

• They are campaigns, and
• The people pulling the marcom levers recognize that consistent marketing communications success requires consistent effort.

= = = = = = = = = =

One more thing. Having a topnotch PR agency on Sweetriot’s side doesn’t hurt either, as it’s apparently currently using (or has worked with) NYC-based fashion/celebrity PR  shop Think Public Relations. 

Don’t Pick a Fight with Someone Who Buys Ink by the Barrel, Normally

Normally we stick by the old adage: Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. But after some strange events last week, it seems you can as long as you have a room full of industry types, bloggers and other reporters in the room to back you up.

That’s what seemed to happen during a live interview between Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and Business Week reporter and author, Sarah Lacy, at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference held last week in Austin, Texas. From the reports and videos I’ve seen it appeared that Lacy tried to make herself the the focus of the interview.

True, she did ask some probing questions. Some that were good to shed light on Facebook and its recent activities. However, with her anecdotal stories, and constant references back to herself detracted from the bigger story in the room, Zuckerberg.

But none of this is the point of this post. The interview has been well documented (for fun, type in Zuckerberg, Lacy in Google news and you’ll see what I mean), so I want to focus on the PR lessons to take away from it. (more…)

Six Tips on How to Improve Your Trade Show Success, Courtesy of Skyline Exhibits

I just read the latest edition of the e-newsletter from Skyline Exhibits (Skyline Trade Show Tips), and I liked what I read so much, that I felt it was appropriate to share some of their ideas here.

So . . . with the permission of Skyline Exhibits, here are six tips on how to get more bang for your buck the next time you exhibit at a trade show, conference or event.

Six Tips for Better Trade Show Success

Skyline Exhibits recently surveyed its customers about tradeshows, and these are a few of the top ideas they selected to share with readers of their e-newsletter, Skyline Trade Show Tips.
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