SEO

SEO for PR Content: Ace the Essential Tactics

Next Tuesday PR News is hosting a webinar on a topic some public relations pros know a bit about, but nearly all of us would like to learn more: SEO for PR.

The topic couldn't be timelier as organizations across industries are pouring substantial energy and money into creating sophisticated content strategies because if target audiences can't find that content online, it has limited value. As luck would have it, PR people--who create a lot of the documents, videos, social media posts and graphics that companies intend for widespread consumption--are in a great position to support SEO.

David Cockburn, SEO and online marketing analyst at Texas Instruments, will provide tips on tools and talk about how to make time for SEO and Jolina Pettice, executive director of operations at TopRank Online Marketing, will offer pointers on things like how to identify keywords and optimize social content. I'll chat about how to optimize press releases, make PR support link building strategies and generally keep up with Google when it's not your full-time job.

I hope to see a few Schwartz MSL friends and family members there. 

For more info, check out PR News. 

P.S. If you work in the healthcare industry, you may also want to download Schwartz MSL's ebook on SEO for healthcare organizations. 

Posted by Laura Kempke on May 16, 2013 at 3:58 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

HubSpot Inbound 2012 Day 4- Content, Context and Effort oh my!

Today was the final keynote speech, a few more break out sessions, and a closing ceremony of sorts where we all got kudos for attending and coupons for next year... what a day!

Keynote: Gary Vynerchuck @garyvee

"The only reason I love social media is only because it sells S#$%. I don't give a S$%& about Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook or whatever, I care about where my customers' attention is going so I can sell them S#$%"

Gary Vynerchuck, curseword user extraordinaire, got into business at 13. He made $1,000 a weekend selling baseball cards and was sitting on a pretty pile of cash ($30k) within a year, that's when his Dad made him go to "work" at the family liquor store.  Pretty quickly, Gary realized collecting wine was almost the same thing as baseball cards and by 1997 winelibrary.com was born.

Vynerchuck saw his competitors were sending out catalogues or faxing (yes, sending paper through a machine!) when he figured out e-mail! What started out as a weekly email sales offer turned into bi-weekly email service, then daily email service, then 5 days a week and then daily. At first, it was awesome and everyone opened, read and used the coupons in his emails, but like most things, the more you give the more diminished returns.  

He goes on to say that you have to pay attention to culture shifts and get onboard no matter how much time it takes. Didn't we first think the WEB was a fad? Didn't we first think that Twitter was fad!? So, where do we spend our time next? After realizing that EVERYONE is now on email, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Gary declares retention is the next stage in the game. It's not how many customers you get, it's how many you can keep. It's the lifetime value and % of wallet you get from your clients.

With that, similar to the context discussion yesterdsay, the next step isn't just about finding people, but finding what their interested in. Through all of the social media tools out there we can learn about you and then, we give a F*&^, and we can sell to you better. Effort for the end user is such a valuable thing, if they can sense your effort in learning about them, they want you.

"As our world goes more Jetsons, the marketers and business people that act like the Flinstones are gonna win" This is awesome as I have been described as an old soul and my aesthetic as "grandma chic." Gary talked about how our grandparents way of business (showing potential clients you're interested and showing real clients that you are still interested) works!

You've got to build a brand or else it's a tactic, and the brands that win put in the effort. if you can figure out how to afford the allocation of effort, your long term value will be dramatically higher! If you do anything at all, audit what you and your business do and and take the percentage of dumb stuff and put it towards effort in your customers. Use technology to bring us back together and show you care about people. It matters.

In summary,  Gary says do nice S*%$ while you've got them, not when they're going!

The other two sessions were: Inbound Marketing Success Within An Enterprise- David Donland @ddonlan, Kevin Karner @kkarner23 (Performable, acquired by HubSpot) and Part 2: The View from the Marketer's Eye by Mark Sneider- Owner/President RSW/US & RSW/ AgencySearch. Lessons learned can be found soon in a little something we are working on!  Hope you enjoyed the #Inbound12 play-by-play and that I'll see some of you there next year!    

Posted by Leah Raras on August 30, 2012 at 4:04 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

HubSpot Inbound 2012 Day 3- Content is key, but context is best!

More music, more excitement, more #inbound12! Day 3 and no signs that this team is slowing down. As Darmesh very excitedly shouted, "a few years from now we will say 'remember when Inbound was only 2800 people!'" So to keep it concise- things are moving fast and it's awesome to be on this train.

Keynote- Brian Halligan

1. Inbound marketing over the last 6 years

There's a massive transformation about how we input into the world, now we have an accelerated pace!  In the same note, there's a shift in the pattern of shopping and learning and we have to transform to match human behavior. People are getting better and better at blocking out the traditional marketing format. 

We used to use the phone and marketers could find us… now we have caller id and can screen!  We ignore mail, let it pile up because we know it's nothing important. Email, we can now prioritze our inboxes and send messages to spam and use Ad Blocker to block ads.

We need to create marketing people love! This means we create remarkable content and then use that content to pull people in (stop interrupting people with emails and blasts and let them come to you!)

2. Where's inbound marketing going, what does the next 6 years look like? And how does 1+1=3?

Simply put: We use content to pull them in, and context to pull them through! 

The key to context is making magic and making your tools work together in completely new ways. Based off an Amazon example we can all understand, Darmesh and Brian call this magic making effect the 1+1=3! You know how when you go to Amazon.com it's like your best friend recommending a book. For instance, they suggest books on tennis, dogs, and marketing to me... perfect, my three favorite things! The more presonalized it gets, the more we want to use it... this is the context engine in action and the next generation of marketing!

 3. What HubSpot is doing to power the next phase

HubSpot3, the biggest release in HubSpot history, is revolutionizing the way our contacts, leads, landing pages, blog posts and social media all can work TOGETHER to get us results. And I, for one, am excited to use it!

Closed Loop Social with HootSuite and HubSpot - Craig Ryomoto @craigryomoto Director, Pro User Growth & revenue HootSuite

Now that we have social media, how do you prove ROI from social media? This is called closing the social loop. Without getting into the details too much, the basics include: 

1. Listen to your customers, competitors, and influencers

2. Engage with your audience in their platform of choice

3. Analyze and understand the results and engineer better outcomes

How to create eBooks and Webinars Your Prospects Will Love - Maggie Georgieva, Inbound Marketing Manager, HubSpot

 Maggie is an Inbound Ninja and shared some great tips on creating remarkable content:

 Base your content decisions on DATA

• Look at blog analytics, which posts get the most views?
• Look at page performance, which page is doing the best?
• Landing page analytics, which people are visiting the page and thought it was compelling enough to fill out the form
• Email marketing analytics, look at the names that resonate with people
• Look at which format gets you the most return, if it is eBooks do a ton more!
• What if you don't have much data? Check other sources of data (Google news and enter an industry keyword, see what's recent and newsworthy and being published)

When to publish? The more social media updates, landing pages, web pages etc… the more leads you get

• 31-40 landing pages gets you 7x more than 5-6 pages --> PUBLISH MORE
• Prefect is the enemy of good, Voltaire… just get good content and stop trying to make it perfect--> PUBLISH OFTEN

Publish more and often:

• Repackage the content: Expand a blog and make it longer, reduce an eBook to a blog. Repurposing the content to publish it more.
• Combine 20 how-to blog posts into an eBook or guide
• Curated Content- re-packaging content! Go to LinkedIn and find a conversation or ask people what they think about a specific topic and gather the quotes and information etc.
  
  • 101 awesome marketing quotes, 54 pearls of marketing wisdom, learning LinkedIn from the experts (use numbers and images)

Ask yourself:

• Is your offer compelling enough?
• Did you target the right audience, did you send it to the right people?
• Are you not sending enough traffic to it?
• Key steps for suceeeding with marketing offers
• Don't optimize before you build strong foundations. Use real data to drive your content strategy. Publish often & iterate later do more of what's working

There were three other great discussions today that covered Increasing Facebook ROI, Introverts in Marketing, and an amazing guide to Making Content Work for You in A Sales Pitch! Stay tuned tomorrow for more marketing magic from #Inbound12!

Posted by Leah Raras on August 29, 2012 at 7:33 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

HubSpot Inbound 2012 Day 2- It's Still About Content... And So Much More!

 Welcome Address- Inbound In Style!

Thunderstruck, ACDC's awesome track, was the background to a video of Boston in it's glory with sunny skies and a fancy helicopter winding through the neighborhoods below. Flash to Darmesh and Brian (HubSpot co-founders) wearing track suits and aviators enjoying the ride. Finally, after lots of lead up- they "landed" at the conference and gave a funny and formal welcome to #Inbound2012.

Keynote David Meerman Scott : You are what you publish! 

1. First up was a discussion about horizontal content. This is content thats broad and thin that people will find when searching broad market category search words. He's a music lover and the example was typing in "indie music concerts" where results span from live music in a particular city to worldwide festivals and bands.

2. After this broad discussion, he explained vertical content that is much more specific and deep. This is content to help drive people into very specific search terms and where you may type in the actual band name in the search like "sts9 tour" bringing you right to the exact content you are looking for. (sound tribe sector 9, yeah, I've seen them!)

3. Last, and most important is Real Time content: discussions and content about whats going on right this moment. This instant. RIGHT NOW! Using a #bostonlivemusic as a search explains what's happening right now.

Lessons learned: Is one of our clients doing something cool today? We CANNOT operate in campaign mode, we have to unlearn this "planning" mode and go live! Discuss current content and keep the conversation relevant!

Did I forget to mention that he brought Cyndi Lauper up and she sang some blues to kick us off? 

 5 Steps to Becoming an inbound Ninja- Everyone Watch Out!

This discussion was led by Mark Kilens, manager of customer training, HubSpot @markkilens

1. Goal setting- setting smart monthly goals for traffic and leads is a great way to get started on your inbound plans.

2. Traffic generation-  Be social. Be fun. And always be creating content! Mark straggly stated, "Live by the 50/50 rule: 50% of your own content 50% other peoples content"

3. Conversion- Create lead generation content (white papers, ebooks, guides, webinars) where the commitment to read that content is a little higher. From there, create a call to action- landing page- and most importantly a thank you page with next steps.

4. Nurturing- nurture leads into becoming customers through both the lead generating content and the social content. Create smart lists: all of the leads that downloaded an ebook and are 4 weeks old and are b2b. Narrow the list and send them a relative blog through EMAIL MARKETING. Build trust by sending relevant info at the right time.  

5. Analyze - Measure the views and make sure calls to action are several pages. From there, look at  Clicks to determine how many people are actually clicking on the call to action. Finally, analyze the submission rate of that call to action

Keynote Rand Fishkin, @SEOMOZ @randfish "Choose Short Men & Tall Women"

To get the talk going, Rand creatively showed us two graphs:

1. Male Messaging & Female Attractiveness Graph (men think all women are attractive and will talk to everyone)

2. Female Messaging & Male Attractiveness Graph (women think nobody is attractive and will talk to only a very few that could possibly be attractive)

Digging deeper, we saw that women say they will only look at men above 5'9 and it's just completely irrational!

Removal of a single, irrational bias may yield remarkable results!

From there, Rand discussed 12 bias's that we marketers have about SEO. For example, the # bias was listed as: Ranking Position is all That Matters. This is simply untrue. The CTR (click through rate) is influenced by more than position. Sometimes, it's the authors photo listed third in the search results or possibly a link with amazon ratings that's fifth on the list that is more important to viewers etc. It can even be the date of publication that is enticing moreso than the first positioned link!

EVENING EDITION: CYNDI ROCKED THE HOUSE!

Posted by Leah Raras on August 28, 2012 at 6:08 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

SocialTech 2012: Practical Fascination

One of the things to love about MarketingProfs is its focus on B2B social media strategies and B2B content marketing. Certainly there is a lot of hype about how various consumer brands are using social media channels to their benefit. Often those stories are the bane of a B2B marketer's daily life. We get to the office in the morning, greeted by a voice mail imploring us to read a [enter business publication here] article about how [enter worldwide consumer brand here] executed a [enter social media tool here] campaign and saw thousands of customers flood in as a result.

Let's face it, B2B marketers, one of the reasons we work with B2B companies is because just adopting social media is not enough. One must carefully consider the end-user audiences that are the result of a given campaign, what tools and platforms realistically are best to reach that audience, and how to measure a given effort's effectiveness. At the same time, we must also put in place processes to make companies truly social companies, alleviating any fears and demonstrating how the long-term benefit will greatly outweigh the short-term pain (without being specific as to how "long-term" we're talking, here).

MarketingProfs agrees with us. Which is why I was thrilled to attend MarketingProfs SocialTech 2012 event last week in Seattle. Without a doubt, the event featured some of the most forward-thinking B2B social media marketers on the planet. The sessions at SocialTech were great. I heard front-line observations from marketers at SAP, Network Solutions, Boeing and Cisco, and I mingled with dozens of other B2B marketing pros who could speak, on and off the record, about their own successes and challenges.

Now that it has been a week since my return to Boston, I have had a chance to take a deep breath, review my notes, and draw up some observations based on my trip. Here goes:

Practicality is not a sin with B2B social media: I have been to a number of events where the "true" social media marketers in the room are aghast if you bring up older B2B marketing techniques that actually might still have an impact today. Many social media zealots think that these older techniques--which they tag under the ignominious "traditional" category--all became juvenile with the advent of the social platform.

It was refreshing at SocialTech 2012 to hear the role that email marketing still plays within a B2B social media effort. (I believe one speaker even said that email marketing is a *vital* part of a B2B social media effort, noting that it is the beginning of the lead generation process.) I also liked how many people talked about incorporating blog content into their social media programs. As an aside, I am often amused at how many marketers don't even consider blogging to be social media. The earliest "social" campaigns I remember tracked a series of influential blogs and made recommendations on how to engage within those blogs' comments sections.

Measurement today still stops with audience reach: At Schwartz MSL, we press our clients more and more to connect our work with lead generation, since for the most part, that's what B2B companies care about. (I should mention I work only with B2B clients at Schwartz MSL.) Most of the measurement discussion at SocialTech centered on how to measure the reach of a given campaign, stopping short of measuring an audience's action. Most campaigns noted website traffic, Facebook likes and other metrics that outline how well a given campaign is noticed. The bleeding edge here, which was also discussed at the event, is creating content marketing programs that connect a given social media campaign to leads--and even sales. At the next SocialTech, I am going to press to see case studies of campaigns where leads were the measured result.

It's entirely possible that my measurement observation at SocialTech is based on an over-fascination with lead generation as a metric. Admittedly, the lead counts provided by various content marketing and marketing automation platforms will under-represent the true impact of a campaign; for one thing, they cannot account for programs or content that greatly impact leads generated at some point in the future.

Further, despite the role content marketing must play in a B2B marketing effort today, it does not mean that other, older, dare I say traditional ways of generating leads are no longer important. Business cards still exist, and people exchange them at physical events. (Here's where I go back and read the description of my first observation again.)

Finally, social media marketers (including myself) just can't seem to stop our love affair with tools. Each and every session at SocialTech devolved for at least a period of time into a discussion about tools. Tools for scheduling content. Social media platforms. Tools for listening. Pinterest. Tools for Twitter (lots of love for Hootsuite---Is it bad I still use TweetDeck?).

Not that discussing tools is bad, but what often gets lost in the discussion about social media tools and social media measurement is the actual juice that drives interest. That's right---the content. One of the best parts of my entire trip came when Ron Ploof, new media strategist at OC New Media, put us through an exercise on how to create "fascinating" content that is still strategic to our businesses. The reality is so much of the content out there within B2B marketing content campaigns, frankly, is just boring.

Always the teacher's pet, I was happy Ploof applauded the "fascinating" content I brainstormed for Schwartz MSL. I focused on a recent popular question from friends about whether my job really is like the setting of "Mad Men" (it's not), and wondered if I could tell a story about a day in the life of a B2B PR pro from the perspective of the scotch bottle that is on every "Mad Men" executive's office table. Don't worry HR, I don't have scotch in my office. As to whether such fascinating content ever does see the light of day, well, I guess you will just have to keep reading this blog.

Posted by Ross Levanto on April 6, 2012 at 9:06 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

SxSW Saturday Takeaways: Destroy Labels, Know Yourself

Saturday at SxSW was much more interesting than Friday. I had the pleasure of attending a very wide range of panels. The topics included strategic communications, Dad bloggers, enterprise social media, the future of mobile wallets, a comedian/activist keynote, and a look inside Joss Whedon’s head. The panels were a mix of both aspirational visions and cautionary tales.

The sessions were all great learning experiences, but they present something of a challenge. How do you blend parenting lessons from Leviticus with social analytics and loyalty programs? While many of these sessions merit their own posts (and will likely get them in the future), I wanted to focus on overarching themes that I noticed.

I would say there were two key takeaways from these sessions.

• Destroy the labels
• Know who you are

From the Mmbile wallet to NFC Chips to Dad bloggers, people and companies are too often failing to reach their full potential because they are succumbing to easy labelization. Don’t get me wrong, there is immense power in the study of groups and flocking, but if you too quickly group someone, you may come to the wrong conclusion or miss opportunities. I saw that time and time again today.

This is particularly insidious when it comes to Mom bloggers. Mom bloggers are too often defined by who they are rather than who they write about. Very few “Dad” and “Mom” bloggers blog about parenting. They are parents who blog. A mom blogger who writes about beer or food, should not be lumped in the same category as one who writes about technology or parenting. I personally have seen too many companies make this mistake. The lists created by influencer tools may serve as a good start, but influencers are not Oreos. Each is unique and needs to be understood and communicated with in context.

The same lesson applies to the mobile wallet. First of all, there is a blurring between mobile wallet and P2P payments and this line needs to be clearly understood.  It also applies to enterprise social media when “employees” are lumped together as one audience as companies roll out solutions. Some of the best advice from IBM today was to understand what your corporate culture is like and what tools employees use to work and to communicate, and enhance those existing tools rather than make everyone conform to new tools. If you try to force people to do something they do not want to do, you will end up with an empty wiki, upset employees and wasted budget.

The second point is to know who you are. If you have a niche, carve it out. Just don’t let others put you in that niche.

Isis in the digital wallet space seems to clearly know this. They understand that in order to convince people to move away from contactless cards and Mag Stripe they need to offer more to retailers and merchants. They are betting their success on the premise that bringing loyalty cards and coupons into an integrated whole to provide consumers savings and convenience; and providing retailers a chance to impact consumer purchasing behavior before a transaction will push them over the edge. (That and retailers being penalized by the issuers if they do not adopt NFC by 2015).

I am not sure I agree with them completely, and I know not everyone in the audience did. Consumers have shown amazing willingness to stay with what works. As one panelist pointed out, 10 years ago the cover of Card Transactions was “Mobile Commerce is Ready for Takeoff” and we are still discussing its pending rise today. Additionally, consumers have shown a willingness to have multiple loyalty cards and apps, and there are other alternatives to impact pre-shopping behavior today (such as eGiftcards – technology from a client of mine - and location based deals).

The audience definitely did not all agree about the easy path of NFC. My most popular tweet of the day was “NFC being positioned as the Borg. Do not resist. You will be assimilated.”

Knowing who you are also helped many companies in the first panel I attended of the day. The reaction to Zappos’ data breach was much less negative than most breaches of its type. That was because Zappos quickly communicated in a way that was appropriate for its customers.

This post is getting long, so I want to wrap it up with the five most quotable observations of the day:

• Before you make a critical business decision, ask yourself – what would John Stewart say about it?
• Great ideas are not always great and not always well received.
• Bloggers have more influence over purchasing decisions than traditional celebrity endorsers do
• 48% of B2B CEOs say social media helped generate qualified leads
• Voice of customer research is not for validation, it is for discovery

Posted by Mark McClennan on March 11, 2012 at 12:26 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Only 19.5% of News Release Headlines are Optimized for SEO

For the second year in a row, the Schwartz MSL Research Group worked with Business Wire to determine how many PR professionals are optimizing their news release headlines for SEO. There was slight improvement compared to last year, but there is still a long, long way to go.

The two most important elements for optimizing a news release headline are keyword inclusion and brevity. In terms of brevity, a full release headline must be 65 characters or fewer to be fully displayed in Google.

Many search engine optimization (SEO) experts, including our experts here at Schwartz MSL, advise that companies try to keep the characters in the headline under 70 characters. Anything beyond that will be less effective in supporting a company’s SEO.

This year, the Schwartz MSL Research Group, with invaluable help from Business Wire, analyzed the headlines of more than 16,000 news releases issued over Business Wire in a 31 day period (July 26, 2011 to August 25, 2011). This is the same period we examined last year. Since Schwartz MSL cannot know the keywords that thousands of companies are hoping to use to optimize their content and releases, the Schwartz Research Group focused on headline length as a success factor.

The results?

Most PR professionals are not fully optimizing their headlines. (I am sure Schwartz MSL is guilty of that as well from time to time.) Our analysis showed that only 19.5% of all releases have headlines with 65 characters or fewer, a one percent increase over last year. When we look at 70 characters are less, the total is 23.7%, an increase of less than one percent.

While the majority of releases are under 150 characters, we did see some examples that were much longer than the recommended length. The most egregious cases were the 2% of releases with headlines in excess of 300 characters, with one headline that was over 1,800 characters. The shortest headline we found was 21 characters, which is also probably not ideal for SEO as it’s unlikely that enough of the company’s keywords were included. Overall, the analysis found the average headline length to be 123 characters, unchanged from 2010.

The Schwartz MSL Research Group has written a Research Brief that takes a more in-depth look at this topic. If you would like additional analysis, including buzzword usage, and the geographic headline faceoff, you can download it here

Posted by Mark McClennan on February 13, 2012 at 8:09 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

SEO for PR Pros

Yesterday I participated, along with Tom Lynch of interactive web marketing firm Astek Consulting, in a PR News webinar on SEO best practices. I'm not an SEO expert, but have developed a strong interest in search over the past several years. To me, it goes hand in hand with PR.

We all know that PR is about telling great stories. But to tell those stories, communicators have to create more content, and content of different types, than we did even a few years ago. At Schwartz MSL, our target audiences are generally online, so it makes sense to optimize that content for search to increase the likelihood that people who are looking for information on problems that our clients can solve find them online. I can't imagine running communications programs that don't take SEO into account.

If you're looking ahead to 2012 and planning your content and PR strategies, will you factor in SEO? Or do you feel that great content will be found and shared independent of optimization efforts?

Posted by Laura Kempke on September 28, 2011 at 11:36 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Google+ for Brands: Waiting, but Not Wondering

Mitt Romney, presidential candidate and former governor of my home state of Massachusetts, was mocked a few weeks ago when he said that "corporations are people." It doesn't matter that it's not literally true, of course. It was his way of expressing the thought that every business, no matter how large, is comprised of individuals.

That's precisely the reason that B2B marketers struggle with use of social platforms such as Facebook. It's not devoted to supporting people's business personas, as LinkedIn is, and there's scant indication that anyone goes onto Facebook looking for information on B2B products. However, it's impossible to set aside the knowledge that Facebook is more frequently visited in the U.S. than Google and all those B2B buyers with their complex decision-making processes are, after all, individuals who more likely than not use it. Fortunately for those companies looking to interact with customers and potential customers on this platform, there are Facebook Pages.

Other B2B marketers are on the fence about use of Facebook. Conveniently, they haven't yet had to worry about another major social platform, Google+. Google made the decision about participation for them--it deletes profiles set up by brands--and today's announcement of nine new Google+ features doesn't include support for business profiles.

Such support is expected to be added, though, and I'd argue that business marketers shouldn't delay getting to know Google+'s features. Why? Three main reasons come to mind:

1. Most B2Bs care about search and Google+ profiles seem to top search results. My profile does, at any rate, and so do those of all of my colleagues. Check out the following chart from a 2011 Optify report (The Changing Face of SERPs: Organic Click-Through Rate). It shows how many more clicks the top search result receives than even positions two and three.

I don't think the need to understand Google+ and to potentially benefit from its favorable placement in search results can get much clearer, unless Google will force companies' Google+ profiles down in search results in a way that it's not currently doing with those of individuals. (For more on how Google+ is bringing search and social media together, check out this Brafton post.)

2. Google+ seems to be pushing other social platforms to adjust their own feature sets. I'd suggest that knowing what's up with Google+ may help marketers better understand how they can use Facebook, for example. Or, more importantly, understand how their "fans" may expect them to use Facebook.

3. Google+ circles, which allow users to present content to friends that's different from what they share with relatives, for instance, may eventually be of use to B2B marketers looking to create a different experience for customers using different product mixes, or individuals at different stages of the buying process.

Do you think Google+ is worth keeping an eye on? Or is it not worth the time if marketers are already reaching people on other social platforms?

Posted by Laura Kempke on September 20, 2011 at 2:43 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Social Media and B2B Buying Behavior

A new survey from Base One, Report 2011: The annual survey of changing B2B buyer behaviour, takes a look at "the extent to which B2B decision-makers are using social media tools and channels to help them in the process of refining their needs and identifying suitable suppliers for major business purchases."

Base One surveyed more than 1,000 people in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium and Italy in spring 2011. If your assignment includes European communications, the report is worth a look. It examines buyers' sources of information and, importantly, which of these have the most influence.

Here's a look at information sources used by UK decision-makers and changes between 2010 and 2011. In each year, the most relied upon sources are corporate websites, searches and industry media.

The report goes on to tease out opinions on social media and whether it's trustworthy or worth the time. It doesn't end with recommendations, but leaves it to the reader to determine what to take and apply to their own marketing strategy.

I read the report because a post on Forbes.com caught my eye, "Social is Intriguing, but Search is Proven." It displays a similar bar chart to the one above and concludes, "Don't let social media detract from the focus of optimizing your corporate website and search, both organic (SEO) and paid (PPC). Social media might pay off in the future, but search is a sure bet today."

Here's what I wish the report or the Forbes.com write-up had done: point out that if search matters to your business, so does social media. The number and quality of links to a website seem to be of great importance to search engines, as do pages on a site devoted to topics that people are searching on (as opposed to just promoting a brand). Blogs are a terrific way to add those pages and keep the content fresh over time and when it comes to links, about nine months ago, Google and Bing both said that they now look at links from social sites and consider the social authority of people who do the linking.

For more info on how social media may be increasing in importance to companies that care about search results, take a look at the SEOmoz report on Search Engine Ranking Factors. SEO experts polled by SEOmoz view "social signals at page level" and "social signals at domain level" as likely growing in importance.

If social media is becoming more important to search engines and search engines and corporate websites matter more to European B2B buyers, then I'd suggest that the role of social media may be obscured or underappreciated to some degree by the report on buyer behavior. B2B decision-makers may not be turning to Facebook and blogs for information as frequently as they do webinars, for example, but all those fresh blog posts and links from social sites and consequent improvements in search rankings may be an important reason that buyers are finding companies' sites in the first place.

Posted by Laura Kempke on September 12, 2011 at 4:49 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Twitterverse's Response to President Obama's Speech

Today there is a lot of discussion going on about President Obama's speech and issues around it. Here on the Crossroads blog we tend to not discuss politics, so I will leave the political analysis to others. But I wanted to compare and contrast what President Obama said last night to the Twitterverse's reaction to what he said - so we as professional communicators could see if his message was championed by the people who watched and engaged via social media.

The results were surprising.

The word cloud shows that President Obama clearly focused on jobs, economy, people, business, tax, and companies.

The Twitterverse called out something different:

It is interesting to note that of the words President Obama said, only economy was used frequently. Surprisingly, job/jobs was barely discussed, users on Twitter preferred the term "work."

Also of note, there were more than 20,000 "spam" tweets using the term Obama in the past 24 hours. (Unless I missed something and Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Beyonce really have something to do with the political discourse.)

Posted by Mark McClennan on September 9, 2011 at 8:43 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

PR Pros: Get Into the SEO Mindset

A couple of days ago, I spent some time with colleagues learning about a tool to help identify online "influencers" -- the people many of our clients would like to reach, naturally. Those influencers are mostly not reporters, although it's interesting to see as we start using the tool that reporters are at the top of many of the search results.

It used to be that PR was largely about media relations, but now we of course know we need to look far beyond reporters. Journalists matter, but so do people who blog or tweet or otherwise share info about the topics they're passionate and knowledgeable about.

Anyway, so there we sit, talking about the new tool, which seems mercifully easy to use. Everything is rolling along until the person conducting the training comes to keywords -- you need to lose the SEO mindset, she says. To find the conversations you care about, don't use your SEO keywords.

Sacrilege! How about if you tell me next that down is up and the world is flat. I had to think it through for more than a couple of seconds (which I probably shouldn't admit) and now that I've started using the software, I'm still not sure that "leave SEO aside" is the most accurate description of what's required. I'm now thinking of it as keep what you know about SEO, but add phrases that people use when writing. For example, "buy for your SMB" might accompany "database security software."

I'm glad I worked through that potentially emotional issue. I really didn't want to think that the terms people use to find information that they care about should ever be anywhere other than the very front of my brain when I'm creating any sort of content.

By now you've probably seen The Content Grid v2 from Eloqua and JESS3. If you have not, it's lovely, so cast your gaze upon it:

It seems to me that to get to the content in the middle of that grid -- white papers, demos, case studies, press releases, analyst reports -- you'll often use a search engine. If the content lives on your website, on Twitter, on YouTube, it should be optimized, right? But, you say, that will naturally happen if you're creating content that speaks to problems and interests that people really have. Are fancy techniques necessary when you have fabulous content that speaks to your audience's issues?

Personally, I agree that some marketers are so in touch with their target audiences and so able to deal with both volume and quality that they can't help but create content that appeals to search engines. That's a fantastic thing. I'm guessing that many marketers, however, could use a few pointers. The ebooks, customer profiles, demos and graphics aren't flowing so freely that all the search stuff is going to work itself out.

In a month, I'll participate in a PR News discussion of "day-to-day SEO tactics" that should give people who don't have technical backgrounds some guidelines on creating content that can readily be found online. I'm looking forward to it because I know it'll make me even more focused on the subject. I don't want to "lose the SEO mindset."

How do you work info about search into your day? If the answer is "I don't," here are a few things you might check. They'll inform you without overwhelming you:

• Google Webmaster Central Blog
• B2Bbloggers
• TopRank Online Marketing
• SEOmoz -- some of the software requires a subscription, but there's a lot of free info, too. 

Posted by Laura Kempke on August 25, 2011 at 7:37 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The power of simplicity

Take a look at the billboard below. Do you think this is effective communications or not?

I took a photo of this billboard as I was driving through Connecticut. I was convinced this was one of the worst billboards I had seen in my life.

Yes, the message was simple. If you are injured, you should get Carter.

I love simplicity, and frequently point out that a simple message delivered with a 10 lbs. sledgehammer can be very effective.

But sometimes simplicity goes a bit too far.

• Carter who?
• Most importantly, how do I “Get Carter?”

There is no phone, no email, no twitter, no address, no Website. The full name is in tiny print that is tough to see as you are speeding by.

I knew who to get (but not why), but had no way of getting him.

I was pretty set on writing a fairly critical post about the billboard. But then I did what millions of people do. I Googled it. The search was simple – Injury Carter.

The results are below:
 

What do you think?

Posted by Mark McClennan on June 16, 2011 at 10:28 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Talking Content Marketing and Content Rules with Ann Handley

Schwartz friends and family might recall our December 2010 content marketing event with MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer Ann Handley and HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan. We received great feedback on the talk and were happy to see the room packed, but guess it's to be expected--content is very much on marketers' minds, particularly as they consider social media and lead generation.

Yesterday my colleagues John Moran, Matt Duffy, Ross Levanto and I got to meet up with Ann again to chat about topics ranging from the importance of setting content marketing goals (and why "we want a Twitter strategy" is absolutely not an appropriate goal), to how content marketing and PR can work together, to the relative importance of optimizing all that content.

The real question, however, was whether it's acceptable to order and eat two entrees at a business lunch. (Answer: It's absolutely fine, and is best accompanied by your story about the time you vacuumed up 14 Krispy Kremes without getting sick.)

Fortunately, we left time to talk about Ann's new book with co-author C.C. Chapman, Content Rules. The book has become required reading for Schwartzers, not only because we offer content marketing alongside our public relations, social media and public affairs programs, but because its suggestions are valuable across industry segments, I'd argue, and for companies of all sizes.

Most authors and speakers assume that all marketers and communicators find value in hearing about big-budget case studies from major brands, but honestly, I check email when someone starts talking about what car and candy companies accomplished with high six-figure budgets. Content Rules shows you how to work with the story, money and time that you've got.

Check it out if you haven't already to see how content and content marketing might work for your business. I know we'll be pulling the book's recommendations into many of our own programs.

Posted by Laura Kempke on April 20, 2011 at 10:24 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

How effective was the Volkswagen Darth Vader Ad?

For many people, the Super Bowl is as much about the ads as it is the game. USA Today has its ad meter, the Boston Globe was highlighting Brand Bowl and numerous pundits and bloggers rank the ads.

My favorite commercial of the night was the Volkswagen Passat Darth Vader commercial, which my six year old son had us watch three times (and led to a bedtime wish for that Darth Vader outfit). Volkswagen broke conventional wisdom with the ad - they put it on YouTube days before the game.

I was also monitoring Super Bowl ad discussions, and one chart the Schwartz Research Group created really jumped out at me.

Posted by Mark McClennan on February 7, 2011 at 8:06 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

PR Victory: Most Headlines Are Free of Overused Buzzwords

News release headlines are meant to convey information, draw a reader in, and aid SEO. But have public relations pros fallen victim to buzzword abuse in news release headlines?

Thankfully, the answer is no.

Earlier this month the Schwartz Communications’ Research Group released a brief that examined news release headlines and SEO. After analyzing more than 16,000 news release headlines from Business Wire, we found that more than 86% of news release headlines do not contain any of the top 20 buzzwords. Of course, that also means that 14% (or about 2200 releases/month) do contain a top 20 buzzword in the headline.

"Top" was the most overused buzzword, and it was used in only 1.9% of releases. This was followed by "solution" (1.83%). Following is the full chart.

The point here isn’t to say that you must avoid using these buzzwords at all costs, but it’s much more important to use the keywords being used in searches by your company’s target audience.

If you are interested in more information on this or other news release SEO topics, such as

•    Are release headlines too long?
•    PR pros in which cities write the best headlines?

You can download the full research brief here

Posted by Mark McClennan on October 19, 2010 at 8:21 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Can you feel the excitement?

Good writing should convey excitement, without the help of punctuation. A number of editors with whom we have spoken have a simple rule: you are allowed to use no more than three exclamation points in your writing your entire adult life.

While the Schwartz Research Group brief released this week looked at serious issues such as:

• Are release headlines too long?
• PR pros in which cities write the best headlines?
• What are the most overused words in release headlines?

We also examined a few lighter issues. For example. The Schwartz Research Group analyzed the more than 16,000 releases issued over Business Wire in a 30 day period, and the good news is, only 0.5% of all releases contain “!”s in the headline. (Note, Schwartz excluded Yahoo! from the analysis, for that would skew the data).

Only 10 release headlines contained multiple exclamation points. For those who are curious, the Schwartz Research Group also found that only 0.4% of releases contained a question mark.

If you would like the full whitepaper, you can request it here.

Posted by Mark McClennan on October 14, 2010 at 10:32 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Marketing Automation Obstacles Overcome By Schwartz PR

The biggest trend words in B2B marketing today are: content marketing, lead nurturing and marketing automation. At Schwartz, we believe that a PR firm has the answers for making those concepts a permanent part of any communications program.

Respected journalist and marketer Bob Scheier agrees with us. While not calling out Schwartz by name, he notes how "forward-looking" PR agencies are using marketing automation software solutions such as Marketo, Eloqua and HubSpot. Schwartz recently announced a partnership with HubSpot.

Schwartz sees our services as having an ever-expanding role in marketing, and we are defining new services that connect visibility and influence to lead generation in a way that is measurable. An article in DemandGen Report that Bob Scheier refers to in his recent post quotes a director at Bulldog Solutions: “Marketers need to be able to identify new prospects, engage them effectively and hand them off seamlessly to sales. And they need to be able to prove that they did it." I could not agree more.

Beyond new services, which Schwartz will be rolling out and marketing more aggressively in the coming weeks, we are investing in skills that align directly to marketing automation roadblocks.

The same DemandGen Report article includes an infographic on the roadblocks themselves. According to an Executive Benchmark Assessment from Frost & Sullivan and Bulldog Solutions, 52-percent of respondents say that a lack of resources is the reason marketing automation has not been maximized. Forty-two percent say they don't have the right processes, and 32-percent claim they lack sufficient content.

Schwartz is investing in programs and processes that will address all three challenges. We understand fully the value of content to a marketing program. As Bob Scheier notes, a PR firm is closer to the strategic content of a given company than most audiences. We advocate for closed-loop programs that take an idea from strategy through impact, with methods for measuring effectiveness, repeating what works.

And our relationship with HubSpot (as well as Schwartz's own use of HubSpot) teaches our teams the tools available today that incorporate science and a measurement framework into the innovative and strategic marketing ideas we surmise; ideas that make full use of the multiple channels (traditional media, bloggers, search engine marketing and social media) available today.

Posted by Ross Levanto on October 13, 2010 at 9:15 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Making Money with Social Media and Subscriptions

CNN released the results of an "inaugural global research study into the power of news and recommendation." They conducted it by surveying 2,300 people around the world between June and August of this year to help advertisers understand the value of news stories that are shared via social media.

A CNN executive, Didier Mormesse, said in a statement that "the commerciality of the social media space is fast becoming apparent and this study means that for the first time, we are able to substantiate the value of shared news from an advertising perspective."

The results indicate, CNN says, that people who receive news from those they know through social networks are "19% more likely to recommend the brand that advertised around that story to others and 27% more likely to favor that brand themselves."

I bear in mind that CNN was looking at ads that accompany stories, not brands or companies mentioned in the stories themselves. As a PR person, I'd care more about the latter. But the study was still informative because it gives some insight into the most popular shared content (not to mention that it shows how CNN's been able to quantify the value of social media to their business). "Ongoing stories" about international or national news make up 65% of shared material, breaking news is 19% and 16% is stuff people are sharing to kill time or to provide a distraction. "Visually spectacular" stories are most likely to be shared via social media, as are pieces on science or technology.

CNN also notes that "the 80/20 rule applies to the findings. 27% of all sharers account for 87% of all news stories shared."

Adapting these survey results for PR, I think that if I can offer a compelling video or interesting photo to a journalist, it may make the resulting story more likely to be shared. In fact, you could back up a step and make what I think is the reasonable assumption that if you have images or video to offer, you may up your chances of being included in a story in the first place.

Another thing I think PR people can learn from CNN's survey results is that once the story appears, I'd want to make sure to get it to the 20% of people who push out 80% of news that travels via social media. Naturally I'd already need to know who in my industry is a prolific sharer or news and have worked to get them following me. If I can find the news just as soon as it appears and share it with them while it's still fresh and not hours old, I'd think it would up the appeal of my news to the 20%.

The Boston Globe is taking a different tack. On September 30, the Globe announced that they'll create a paid version of the site next year and make much of their content available only to subscribers. The paid approach has worked for WSJ.com, certainly. I'll be curious to see how things pan out for the Globe, although I suspect they won't if they don't offer some pretty differentiated content. (Paul Gillin takes a deeper look at what's up with the Globe with "Milking the Circulation Cow.")

I'd think the Globe will still make that content attractive to people who want to pass it around by allowing shared links to work for a short time.

To my eye, CNN's approach of showing the people who really pay the bills--advertisers--the value of sharing content via social networks, putting some specificity behind the kinds of stories that get shared and the resulting impressions that readers have of those advertisers seems more promising than sequestering content on a paid site.

That's just me, though. Which approach do you think is likely to succeed? Or are both strategies to making money smart given the companies' individual situations?

Posted by Laura Kempke on October 12, 2010 at 8:53 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Only 18% of News Release Headlines are Optimized for SEO

The two most important elements for optimizing a news release headline are keyword inclusion and brevity. A company’s top keywords should be included in the headline when possible and should be placed early in the headline. In terms of brevity, a full release headline must be 65 characters or fewer to be fully displayed in Google.

Many search engine optimization (SEO) experts, including our experts here at Schwartz, advise that companies try to keep the characters in the headline under 70 characters. Anything beyond that will be less effective in supporting a company’s SEO.

The Schwartz Communications Research Group, with invaluable help from Business Wire, analyzed the headlines of more than 16,000 news releases issued over Business Wire in a 31 day period (July 26, 2010 to August 25, 2010). Since Schwartz cannot know the keywords that thousands of companies are hoping to use to optimize their content and releases, the Schwartz Research Group focused on headline length as a success factor
.
The findings of this analysis were that the vast majority of PR practitioners are still not fully optimizing their headlines. (I am sure Schwartz is guilty of that as well from time to time.) Our analysis showed that only 18.4% of all releases have headlines with 65 characters or fewer.

While the majority of releases are under 150 characters, we did see some examples that were much longer than the recommended length. The most egregious cases were the 2% of releases with headlines in excess of 300 characters, with one headline that was over 1,000 characters. The shortest headline we found was 18 characters, which is also probably not ideal for SEO as it’s unlikely that enough of the company’s keywords were included. Overall, the analysis found the average headline length to be 123 characters.

This shows that many companies still have room to improve their press releases (even the social media releases).

The Schwartz Communications Research Group has written a Research Brief that takes a more in-depth look at this topic. If you would like additional analysis, including buzzword usage, a geographic analysis of effective headline writing and other headline analysis, you can download it here

Posted by Mark McClennan on at 8:27 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Press Release Buzzword Bingo

My post last week that highlighted the most overused words in a press releases was very well received. Since so many of you liked it, I decided to take it a step further and turn the top 25 buzzwords into Buzzword Bingo cards. I didn’t want to slight anyone, so I created one card based on Sherk’s recent post, and the other card based on David Meerman Scott’s post from last year.

Here they are for your viewing and reading pleasure. May you never complete a bingo!

Or download them as PDFs here:

Feel free to download, share and use as you want. Give copies to all the PR people with whom you work. Remember, only by acting together can we stop buzzword abuse.

For those that don’t know what Buzzword Bingo is, Wikipedia has a pretty good description.

Posted by Mark McClennan on August 25, 2010 at 8:54 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

HubSpot Prepares For Content Marketing and PR

Schwartz recently announced a partnership with HubSpot, an inbound marketing software vendor based in Cambridge, Mass. Even ahead of the partnership, many of Schwartz's clients used HubSpot to measure the effectiveness of their websites. HubSpot provides very valuable data, especially for companies that wish to increase traffic to their websites.

Schwartz teams are conducting regular HubSpot evaluations for many of our clients. Among the variety of data points HubSpot can provide, a few are especially important and have a direct impact on SEO. They are outlined below.

- Website Grade
HubSpot has created a proprietary method to measure if a website is effective as a marketing instrument. The website grade places a given site in a percentile relative to all other sites on the web. A grade of 73, for example, means that of all the sites HubSpot has graded, the site in question is more effective from a marketing perspective than 73 percent of them.
 
- Traffic Rank
This is a ranking of the amount of traffic to the website versus all other sites on the web. The ranking is provided by Alexa, an online service that measures and monitors website traffic.
 
- Inbound Links
This is how many other pages on the web link to content contained on the evaluated website.

- Google Indexed Pages
This is the number of pages within the evaluated website that Google can see.

For marketers who care about SEO, inbound links and Google indexed pages are significant, since they are used by the search engine to determine the authority of a given page and website (Translation: if those metrics improve, a company's ranking within Google improves).

Schwartz has been including these sorts of metrics in the ongoing tracking we perform for our clients. Our programs directly and significantly impact the number of inbound links (based on media relations) and the number of Google indexed pages (as a result of our content marketing programs, which include blog management). 

Posted by Ross Levanto on June 25, 2010 at 1:18 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Schwartz's Clients Take Home The Gold

Earlier this week, the Publicity Club of New England recognized the best public relations and social media campaigns and tactics of the past year. The Bell Ringer judges were senior practitioners from Chicago and Boston.

Schwartz is proud that we have continued the tradition of being recognized with more Bell Ringer Awards for work we have done with our clients than any other PR Agency in New England.

Most gratifying to us this year is that we won 10 Gold Bells for our clients, and that Schwartz was recognized for having the two best campaigns of the year, winning both Gold and Silver Bells, for its work in the business-to-business, healthcare and high-tech public relations categories.

When asked by many, how do we continue to win so many awards, we believe it is based on two key elements:

1)    As a strategic communications firm, we understand that we don’t succeed by ourselves. Schwartz works closely with our clients to make sure our communications, content and public relations activities help them realize their business objectives. It is this close relationship, senior level involvement and comprehensive approach - including social media, content marketing and inbound marketing services -  that help our programs succeed.

2)    We don’t expect our clients (or Bell Ringer  judges) to measure our work based on the “thud factor”, or in social media Thud 2.0. Our work, and our award entries, are judged on how we helped public relations close the loop with sales, patient recruitment or other business objectives.

For the 2010 Bell Ringer Awards, this ranged from driving qualified leads from trade articles to creating enough demand to crash one client’s servers. It included driving hundreds of patient inquiries to cutting consumer misperceptions in half. It is based on helping drive hundreds of thousands in product sales to opening new channels with key prospects.

We are proud of the work of our employees and our clients. If you have any questions about how we can help your company, let us know.

Posted by Mark McClennan on June 9, 2010 at 10:22 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

When Story Met Sales

The classic 80s movie “When Harry Met Sally” follows two people through the years, originally stuck together for a Chicago-to-New York drive, then by chance bumping into each other and finally into love and a long relationship.

This is not unlike what we've seen happen with marketing and sales. Anyone with tenure in the business world knows that these two organizations need to be brilliantly in love and joined at the hip, moving together or else stumbling separately.

There was a time where a great “story” got ink and everyone was happy. Pump up the volume. But now, every good business is looking to connect the sales impact of initiatives, in marketing, public relations, everywhere. Many chief marketing officers are now experts in inbound lead generation, in addition to the traditional staple of brand, awareness and visibility. And the real magic is where they intersect, with one driving the other.

Today’s announcement of Schwartz's partnership with HubSpot is another great example of the transformational work we’ve been doing for years: tying storytelling to sales at all turns, and even rejecting stories that may seem to have cool headlines, but don’t move a needle on any measurable front.

Some of the most interesting work Schwartz is doing for its clients today is what we’ve dubbed “closed loop communications” --- being able to execute a strategy that loops directly into inbound marketing efforts. We’re creating content of interest, optimizing and pushing it out with professional and social media relations, search marketing and other services. That in turn is driving awareness, measured in web traffic and leads. Then we're reporting back on exactly what’s working, who’s looking and what’s prompting action in a client’s communities.

At Schwartz, we’ve nailed an outstanding strategy and process for doing this through many different types of approaches, tactics and tools, including inbound web marketing (leveraging HubSpot), digital video content (including some brilliant video marketing solutions from Visible Gains) and other strands. Whether you're in healthcare, technology, cleantech or consumer, we understand your business and the right mix of levers to pull, buttons to push, and people to influence to deliver tremendous impact.

The best meal on the menu is closed loop public relations. Order it.

Posted by Bryan Scanlon on May 19, 2010 at 9:04 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Journalism by the Numbers

Late last week I attended a panel discussion in San Francisco entitled, “Can Fairness and Accuracy Survive in a Page-View World.” Participants included Ina Fried from CNET, Eric Knorr from InfoWorld, Owen Thomas, the new executive editor at VentureBeat, and David Patton, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who is now with Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. The panel was moderated by media analyst and former journalist Sam Whitmore.

Posted by Jill Reed on May 4, 2010 at 12:43 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Press Release's Evolution at PR Companies

Google rarely issues press releases; the company that defines the current tech economy to many releases news on its blog. Earlier this month, Google distributed a very short statement directing people to its website to see its most recent earnings news.

The statement by Google is significant. Press releases are a main method public companies use to inform audiences about material events, as companies must simultaneously disclose material news. Press release distribution services, such as Business Wire and PR Newswire, exist to satisfy these requirements. In the case of Google, they decided to merely post their earnings release on a blog and use the distribution service to note that the content is there for all to see.

I am not a lawyer, and decisions about simultaneous disclosure and the material nature of news are to be made by lawyers, but there has been some discussion as to whether blog posts satisfy simultaneous disclosure. The SEC decided a couple years ago that they do satisfy disclosure, but the guidance issued at the time left a lot of gray areas, and many companies, based on my observation, are still relying on press release distribution as a primary means of disclosure. Even Google straddled the line; while their earnings release was online, they used a standard distribution service to tell everyone it was there.

Interpretations of the SEC rules are vital to the future of the press release, one would argue. If lawyers think blog posts satisfy disclosure, it would eliminate one of the primary reasons for press release distribution.

For a long time, PR companies have talked about the end of the press release. The ubiquity of the Internet as a distribution platform puts the spotlight on the good old-fashioned press release, which has had a place in PR since the industry's beginnings. Almost all technology PR and healthcare PR pros will agree the press release is "old school," yet press releases are still requested by every professional journalist we talk to.

While press releases are still a fundamental PR tactic, their role in what we do is changing. Not to mention the fact that press releases themselves are changing.

My industry brethren over at Shift Communications came up with the infamous "social media press release," which they originally defined as a press release that is formatted so as to be easily digestible by the media. More recently, the definition of a social media press released has morphed and forked, with some saying it's a release that can be easily shared or interacted with. Others describe it as a release that incorporates multimedia.

Now, obviously, press releases are read by a far larger number of audiences than just the press. (Even though they are still called press releases.) Anybody with a web browser can read a release on a company's website. Schwartz's teams talk all the time about writing the press releases differently so as to appeal to the strategic audiences of a given piece of news.

Since press releases are published on the web, they are vital for search engine optimization. News distribution services, such as Business Wire or PR Newswire, assist SEO by placing press release content all over the web. Creating a well-written, optimized release and then distributing it with these services can affect your SEO rankings.

The ongoing discussions about the demise of the press release are driven by the ubiquity of the Internet and the fact that a blog post to a company website can reach anyone. Which brings us back to Google, their propensity to issue news via blog posts, and the increasing number of examples of other entities that are following suit.

Take the White House. White House officials post often to the White House's own blog. The New York Times regularly references White House blog postings in its coverage. White House officials often refer reporters to the blog for additional commentary or more information.

We have been actively incorporating blog content into our clients' programs---and we even manage and write blog content for a number of them. Our client ESET has a very active and well-read blog (content by ESET employees) and a very popular podcast series that is produced by the Schwartz team. Across our clients, we tell reporters, analysts and other influencers to read our clients blogs on an ongoing basis. We often brainstorm material that can augment announcements. The supplemental material makes for good blog content; and we use other promotion channels to refer audiences to it.

Are press releases dead or dying? People like to say so, because press releases have been around for ever. In reality, a press release is just one of the many types of content that are a part of a PR program; likewise, standard press release distribution is just one of the many channels a PR program can use to reach a target audience.

A well-run, organized technology PR or healthcare PR program recognizes the value of press releases, blog content and other content, as well as the various channels that reach target audiences. Such a firm is not overly reliant on press releases, nor overly dismissive of them, but rather understands how PR today involves a variety of methods to connect strategic messaging with strategic audiences.

Posted by Ross Levanto on April 30, 2010 at 11:34 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Press Release Titles Matter, Part Two

The intersection of PR and SEO for B2B tech and healthcare companies is My Current Obsession. Naturally, then, I'm fascinated by how Google works. We all know it's a Google world, right, but I care in particular about Google's treatment of news releases and content generated by the media.

I was interested, then, in last week's BusinessWire post on "Why Your Release Might Not Make it Into Google News." Not often, but every now and again a client doesn't find their release on Google News and they wonder what happened. Sometimes they ask us to "call Google and fix it." Tragically, we can't do that, so it's going to be easier to write the release in the first place to maximize its chances of getting picked up by Google News.

In the BusinessWire blog entry, Joseph Miller lists four reasons that releases may not be indexed by Google News: the release is too short (fewer than 125 words), too large (e.g., an earnings release with huge associated tables), appears to be fragmented into unrelated bullet points and, most important, the title is too long. Specifically, Mr. Miller says, a news release headline shouldn't exceed 22 words.

Really long press release titles should be avoided because they're clumsy, of course. Beyond that basic guideline, we've understood for some time the importance of prominently including keywords in press release headlines to improve SEO--they should appear toward the beginning of titles. It's useful to also know now that verbose headlines not only don't help SEO, they likely hurt it by causing releases to be tossed out by Google News altogether.

Posted by Laura Kempke on March 30, 2010 at 12:20 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

SxSW - Day 1: It's the Human Network

SxSW

It’s a good thing I am a morning person and registered early, as this line demonstrates. Many of the folks in the line missed the first sessions. (This is the line to get into the exhibit hall to register)

The first session at SxSW dealt with social media marketing, and while it covered many thing I already knew, there were a number of interesting insights to take from it. One of the points the speakers (Chris Winfield and Tony Adam) made is one I have been making for years – Web 1.0 (forums) still matter. The power of niche social media sites and networks can trump the power of Digg, Facebook and others. You eliminate much of the chaff and keep just the wheat.

Two key things I was reminded of in the session that I thought might be of interest to technology public relations pros:

1. When trying to find the most popular niche boards, http://rankings.big-boards.com/ is a good place to start.
2. Being engaged (without spamming) on Yahoo! Answers can also advance thought leadership campaigns.

The second session, with Brian Solis talking about the themes in his new book, Engage, was a great session packed with good advice. A lot of it was a positive reaffirmation of what many companies engaging in social media are already doing, but there were some new ways of thinking about things that he drove home. He seems to have taken the Tipping Point categories and expanded on them to identify the types of people that you tend to interact with on social networks, and how you can impact their hearts and minds. This has some intriguing implications and is with thinking about much more than most people do.

He also reinforced a point from the first session. The networks don’t matter, the channels will change, it’s the human network that we are all a part of that is truly driving and advancing the social media change and the impact it is having on business. Companies that enter the network in the right way can have a significant impact. Those that do not, may do OK, but will never excel.

He also drove home a point Schwartz’s president, Bryan Scanlon, has been making quite a bit recently  - listening and talking aren’t enough. You need content to drive the discussion. Every company is now its own CNN, and they need to promote what they do, listen, and interact. They can’t rely on the media to give them pre-made programs (articles) anymore. There is much more to the channel than their ever was and technology, consumer, green, and healthcare PR pros need to pay attention.

Some other elements on which I will expound in more detail in later posts include:

1. Most social networks are matriarchies
2. The social compass is a good guide to developing a coherent and effective social media strategy
3. Social media engagement fails if there is not a human in some way associated with the brand
4. B2B Tech companies were the first to adopt social media with developer forums. There are benefits many B2B tech companies are overlooking.
5. Banks and other location based venues should look at foursquare. Now 1500 venues are giving rewards to their mayors and driving traffic and deeper relationships.

Check back tomorrow for more highlights from SxSW.

If you are reading this and at the conference, what were some of the best lessons you learned today?
 

Posted by Mark McClennan on March 13, 2010 at 12:41 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Fortune 500 Fail SEO. Opportunity for Market Challengers?

A report today from Conductor, a company that provides SEO technology and services, concludes that "the Fortune 500 fail natural search." Specifically, the report looks at big companies' visibility in natural search results for terms that those companies have elected to purchase for ad campaigns.

The idea is that if an advertiser is paying a lot (and they probably are--the report says that the Fortune 500 pay $3.4 million a day on nearly 100,000 keywords), the word may be important enough to also be supported with a natural search campaign.

Sears, a company that I personally like, received a poor grade. That caught my eye and I asked myself what a business such as Sears, which sells thousands of unrelated things, could do to make its products appear on the first page of natural search results.

I suppose the real answer is that optimizing on all of the most competitive (i.e., expensive) search terms is entirely impractical and so they have to pick their battles carefully by focusing on the company's biggest money-makers, which may not be the same thing as the most competitive keywords.

What does any of this mean for companies that are taking on the industry behemoths?

The most obvious conclusion is that market challengers should be optimistic that they can outmaneuver or at least pull alongside big competitors when it comes to organic search. The simple fact that their product lines tend to be more focused should make it easier for them to build momentum in a way that a company with more offerings may find difficult.

Since great placement in organic search rankings may realistically be within medium and smaller companies' reach, it would stand to reason that they'd want to be attentive to good SEO practices. (Search Marketing Sage; Search Engine Guide, which focuses on search marketing for small businesses; and Search Engine Watch's "search marketing topics" section are good resources for thoughtful SEO advice.)

Most of the companies that Schwartz works with--they tend to be innovators in markets like technology, healthcare, cleantech, materials and professional services--fully appreciate that website design matters. Many have overhauled their websites with things like better navigation, URLs and page titles in mind.

That's good, but they shouldn't lose sight of Google's advice (Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide; Version 1.1; November 13, 2008) that "[c]reating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here," (i.e., more than website mechanics).

So, good website content matters, but so also do things like inbound links from reputable websites to the innovator's website. Securing these links, not via cheesy requests, but through on-message media and blog coverage that points back to the company's website, is part of PR's job these days. As is being aware of the company's keywords and using them intelligently in content like news releases, which can have nice SEO value when syndicated.

Freshness of content and consistency over time also impact SEO. Smaller companies sometimes think they can turn PR on and off. This works in a limited set of cases, but is normally ineffective for an array of reasons.

Reflecting on the conclusions of today's report and considering what we know about the importance of good content in supporting SEO, as a PR person, my conclusion is that market innovators and challengers--those who haven't yet made the Fortune 500--are well served by communications strategies that are created with SEO/lead generation in mind and that are pursued steadily over time rather than in fits and starts.

Posted by Laura Kempke on February 17, 2010 at 5:58 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Should the Company Blog Be Part of the Company Website?

Technology companies that don't blog but know they should often ask where, exactly, they should blog. Should it be a part of the corporate website or kept separate on a platform like TypePad or Blogger? 

Here are the basic factors that I take into account when I get this query:

- Most blogs, and hopefully all of those run by companies, have clear themes. If the general topics that the blog explores are in line with the messages that the business is trying to disseminate, it makes a lot of sense to have the blog on the company website and not hosted somewhere else. Readers will be able to easily jump from your blog to other resources that live on your website and vice versa.

- Plus, if you know you've got great stuff to say and think others might even want to link to your blog, having those inbound links pointing to your website and not to a site like TypePad should, over time, help elevate your site in the eyes of search engines. That's not likely to be the case immediately, but if you go with a blogging platform now--maybe you think it'll be more convenient--and figure you'll move your posts over to your company's website later, don't expect hard-earned links to follow you.

On the other hand, there are perfectly good reasons for separating the company website and blog:

- If your blog will focus on a brand that you're marketing to a different audience than the group of people who typically visit your website, you may do well to have the blog separate from the website and just link to one from the other. In this case, you may benefit (from branding and SEO standpoints) from being able to choose a different domain name and from being able to promote two distinct information resources. This arrangement makes sense if a company is trying to raise awareness of a medical condition, for example, but not promote its own products. It may also be the best course if an open source project has a large and active community apart from the project's corporate sponsor.

- Perhaps people from outside of your company regularly contribute to your blog and need to make clear that they're not too closely affiliated with the business. A situation such as this, where the blog may be viewed as a community resource--albeit one funded and largely driven by one vendor--may also be a good candidate for being hosted separately from the corporate site.

- If the blog isn't a company resource per se, but is really the CEO's or CTO's latest thoughts on a range of topics, it's likely best to host the blog elsewhere and just link to it from the company website.

In sum, I think the blog is best housed in the corporate website for the convenience of readers and to support SEO and branding unless the company intends the blog for a slice of its normal audience, has a specific need to separate brands or wants to underscore that an exec's musings are purely his or her own.

For some detailed discussions on how to run an effective corporate blog, check out the Online Marketing Blog. For example, see the "Impact of Blogging on Search Engine Optimization."

And just because I think it's got some great recommendations on finding new topics to blog about, "100+ SMB Blogging Ideas to Kick Start 2010" from Small Business Trends.

Posted by Laura Kempke on February 9, 2010 at 3:15 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Measuring Social Media ROI

Here at Schwartz, we've been talking quite a bit lately about measuring results of social media programs. Not just programs we've designed for clients, but those of people who we meet at conferences or with whom we're just chatting.

Without a doubt, many companies are thrilled with their involvement in social media. They love the outlet that participating in blogs or forums gives them, they're able to talk with people on Twitter whom they'd likely otherwise miss and they're connecting with patient communities on Facebook. (One client, Digium, gives us a tour of their use of social networking technologies here to gain "customer feedback, suggestions, highly qualified sales leads" and to talk with people in their industry.)

Some, though, are a little disappointed in social media. When I hear that, my first question is always "what did you hope to gain that you're not seeing?" I often wonder whether they're measuring success based on number of Twitter followers or Facebook fans--today's corporate version of a teenage popularity contest. This would be unfortunate because such metrics are nearly irrelevant for many B2B companies.

PR people need to keep in mind the Cheshire Cat's words of wisdom to Alice: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." It's our job to help clients think through exactly what they're trying to achieve and to recommend use of social platforms because they make sense, not because they exist and are free.

Last week I attended a Mass Technology Leadership Council discussion on social media and lead generation. Mark Roberge, HubSpot's VP of sales, led the talk. Toward the end, he turned the group's attention to measuring social media ROI--certainly a topic of interest to a number of people today. (Some great reads are here, here and here.)  

Mr. Roberge talked about website visitors and sales leads--reasonably straightforward things to quantify and important metrics for any B2B company. He also talked about "SEO assets" such as inbound links and improved performance in organic search results. Those things take time to build--perhaps a problem is that some companies look for an immediate impact in this department when it may be more reasonable to expect a change in six months' time. 

Just guessing, but I bet some of the letdown that a few companies feel stems from their desire to get something for next to nothing--a measurable impact from use of free technology. Certainly using social technologies is free, but so is calling up The Wall Street Journal or "Good Morning America." Anyone can do it--the question in every case is whether you've got anything interesting to say and can articulate it in something like a compelling manner. In any case, it's your PR person's job to figure it out.

Altogether, these things are a great reminder to me that B2B companies using social media--and their PR people--need to be clear in setting objectives and in understanding the likely timeframe for success.

Posted by Laura Kempke on September 14, 2009 at 4:35 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Press Release Titles Matter for SEO

We've all heard that Google likes short press release titles. Write short, we're commanded--I'd heard that we should use a maximum of seven words. So I'd try to restrain my verbose self and write short. I got more detail on this subject from Malcolm Atherton of BusinessWire's Phoenix bureau and thought it was useful, so wanted to share it.

Here's the deal: Google will truncate press release titles--it will stop reading them--after 61 to 64 characters. Depends on the day and how Google is feeling--some days you get 61 and others you get lucky and get 62. So the "seven words or fewer" rule doesn't really hold--what matters is characters.

This matters because the two biggest factors, by far, that Google takes into account when looking at your press release are the title and the optimized presentation in the body of the release of key words or phrases. When considering the body, the first 200 characters matter more than those that follow, but the body of the release taken in its entirety and the title are The Big Things to Pay Attention To.

So if the title matters, you want to write them so that key words or phrases that your company really wants to optimize on appear in the first 61 characters.

This means that you may, if you can't keep your title to 61 characters, have to put those words first and your company's name later in the title. This is the reverse of how many of our clients want releases written--they like to see their name first. But if they're into SEO, we want them to understand that if the title can't be short, it at least needs to be worded in a way to get that key word or phrase into the first 60 or so characters.

Posted by Laura Kempke on June 23, 2009 at 11:18 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)