This is the fifth article in our online course series on the theory, practice, trends and secrets of New Age Public Relations. Other topics that we cover are:
Don Middleberg coined the term “online PR” in 2001. He pointed out that PR is about a brilliant idea communicated through various forms of media and online was the next form.
This ongoing reinvention of PR has been dubbed PR 2.0 or New PR.
Online Public Relations – PR 2.0 – New PR
If you are trying to learn new information about a product or person, you probably search Google. If the top results are comprised of consumer complaints, you are less likely to look much further. The immediate sense of danger quells any curiosity or desire to take a risk on something new.
That is why companies need weapons like blogs and press releases to combat the “evil hordes”. It is a battle to reach the people. You must do whatever you can to reach them first. Someone will shape their opinions. It is only a question of “whom”.
The Internet has become a mega promotional resource and online publicity is one of the most sought after media sources. Using online public relation methods you can establish as a global identity. Internet Public Relations is also an excellent way of promoting since it targets the mainstream news media more precisely.
Blogging – A New PR Tool
We all know that blogs have taken the Internet by storm (if you don’t know what a blog is, skip this manual and move on to the one announcing the wheel). Millions of people are posting their thoughts, ideas, dreams, gossip, advertisements, and complaints on the web through personal weblogs.
Although their dynamics are not as fast as instant messaging or chat, which are almost synchronous. Weblogs offer a better network and therefore information spreads more easily.
These are the main benefits that make weblogs so powerful for public relations communication:
- Promote You as the Expert in Your Field
Position yourself and your company as the thought leader of your business.
- Customer Relationships
Blogs are a fast way to join the customers’ discussions, provide tips and insights or receive feedback.
- Media Relations
It’s every PR-consultants dream to create a channel where media regularly check what you have to say, instead of media just being passive – sometimes indifferent – recipients of press releases.
- Internal Collaboration
Use blogs as a workspace where project members keep each other updated without wasting time writing reports or searching the Outlook inbox.
- Test Ideas or Products
Publish an idea and see if it generates interest. Does anyone link to you? What do they say?
- Rank High in Search Engines
Google and other search engines rewards sites that are updated often, that link to other sites and most importantly, that has many inbound links. More exposure to your blog makes your PR message more effective.
- Blogging the Competition
This method often entails scanning offline stories on to the blog that can effectively be used for blog fodder (moved around the Internet and linked to for discussion). The information provided there, could deliver your competitors’ customer base to you.
You should add your own (Company/Product/Service) blog to all of these Blog Search Engines:
Through blogs any online PR efforts resulting in content generation has the potential to be moved around the Internet, reacted to, conversed with and linked to thousands of times…building company brand. If the material is positive for a company, it’s a PR manager’s dream.
Bloggers – Solution to Reach Mass Audiences
A new PR practice is to pitch stories to Bloggers as well as traditional journalist. However, the same as with all media relations to address Bloggers you will still need a strategic plan and approach. If the process is done correctly the returns can be phenomenal. So here are some tips how to Pitch PR Stories to Bloggers:
- Research Target Blog
The most important thing a publicist can do before pitching a blogger is to read his or her blog. Many bloggers still consider their sites to be personal conversation for their views and perspectives, and are wary of corporate or PR pitches. But many do have open ears to PR people. In order to begin a conversation, it is important that you are familiar with the interests of the blogger.
- Understand Cultural
Seasoned professionals like to be addressed by their names and almost despise PR pitches submitted in their comments area. Moreover, a lot like reporters they are short on time and you have a small window to pitch your PR story. Remember there is no same protocol so review each website to see how they prefer to be contacted. Email is always a most common practice.
- Research Match
Many blogs concentrate on a specific topic. Thus, have your agency make sure your PR Machine is targeting and influencing the correct blogs. Because the nature of the blogging medium allows bloggers to avoid traditional editors and publishers, you must directly target the most influential bloggers and blog posting sites with an interest in your area and integrate your message into those venues.
- Build Relationships
These relationships will need to be developed over time and naturally. Once you become successful at pitching PR stories to Bloggers that they can actually use most will view you as a reliable source.
Keep in mind that it is possible that well-tailored pitches to bloggers might not only generate traffic on their blogs, but develop into placements in other media outlets as well, online and off.
PR, Google and Search Engine Optimization
“Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) is a process of fine tuning your blog/website to get higher rankings on Internet Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.
“Search Engine Optimized Press Releases” or SEO PR means that a press release is written strictly as search engine “spider food.” In other words, the press release is developed using a slew of keywords and phrases in hopes that the search engines will crawl the document and then rank it higher because it “appears” to be relevant to specific keywords and phrases.
If you need help determining the best keywords for your business, here are some resources:
Because SEO is a constantly changing industry, moreso than PR or direct marketing, and because it’s so easy to publish content online, there can be issues with SEO misinformation. For example, a person reading an article six months ago about a public relations topic can be pretty confident that topic is still relevant and accurate today. In another situation, a person reading an article about search engine optimization from six months ago might have a great degree of uncertainty as to whether that information is still current and accurate.
However some major principles of SEO are standard template; Broadly speaking there are two types of optimization, “on-page” and “off-page”.
- Off-page optimization
Deals with external factors like the number of people linking to your page. This measure of incoming links is often called “Link Popularity”. So to improve your standing on the search engine you need a higher link popularity.Another very important factor in off-page optimization is the text used to link to your site. This is called the anchor text. Great example of this technique is the list of links to other articles in this series at the introduction of this post. You will noticed that each link is anchored with the actual keyword phrase which is highly SEO optimized. You should try to make these kind of “optimized” links pointing to your referring pages from other relevant “on topic” sites.
- On-page optimization
Deals with the layout and format of a web page to make it attractive to a search engine. There are several factors in on-page optimization.
- The title of the page – This is almost the first thing the search engine reads when it visits a page. It is usually displayed on the title line of your browser. This is summery of the page content explained in a short sentence.
- Page Headline
Like the title of the page, your headline will become the first heading on the page. Again you should optimize your headline.
- Keywords
When drafting the release, ensure that your top keywords are included towards the front of the release, especially in the headline and subhead, as well as the boilerplate. It’s also extremely helpful to use those keywords as anchor text to link back to strategic landing pages on your Website.
In the foreseeable future it is very likely that SEO replaces PR, at least in the online arena. Why? Because SEOs understand how to measure success online, and clients demand measurement and proof of ROI. Add to that the fact that most of the larger SEO agencies in the world have set up online PR divisions. By contrast, how many PRs do you know who focus on SEO? And that exactly may be your main advantage in planing the future PR campaigns.
Online News Room
In the “old days”, the press kit reigned. Big bulky folders loaded with press releases, glossy photos and slides were standard. They were expensive to design, costly to reproduce and required lots of manpower and postage to assemble and distribute.
Today, you can simply direct a reporter to a web URL, where all your press materials and high definition artwork awaits, ready to be used. It’s a huge time and money saver.
Putting your News Room as part of your main site allows a journalist to “poke around” your site, absorbing more of the feel and culture of your company and its products. It also makes it easier if the reporter wants more information about a particular product than can be found in your media materials.
Creating a separate site allows you to tailor everything to suit the needs of the reporter and prevents the possibility of confusion for potential customers visiting your main site.
Whatever option you choose, here is what your should include in your online news room:
- Personal Contact Info
The name, address, e-mail, phone number, fax number and cell phone number of your primary media contacts must be front and center. If you have an Instant Messaging ID, put it in there, too.
- Press Releases
Place press releases in chronological order (most recent at the top). Keep traditional press release formatting and use easy-to-read fonts.
- Graphics
Executive photos, product photos, charts, graphs, and other appropriate artwork. Provide multiple versions — 72 dpi (lower resolution) for online publications and websites, and 300 dpi (higher resolution) for offline publications. Put instructions for download next to the graphics.
- Media Kit
Backgrounders, executive bios, white papers, investor relations info (if applicable), fact sheets, speeches, awards, streaming
- Media Of
press conferences, product demonstrations, president’s speeches, etc.
- Search Tool
Make it easy for journalists to find just what they want, by making all your press materials fully searchable.
Online News Rooms to Study:
The best way to learn how to put together an online news room is to see how some very smart folks have done it:
Social Media Public Relations
Even if you put a lot of effort in Public Relations or Press Releases, it will never be as effective as one social media success. One lucky or unexpected shot from social media can change the future of a company significantly.
Whatever Press Release or information you spread through well determined or known channels, social media can spread faster, better having a wider reach. Reaching the influencers at the right spot at the right time within hours instead of days or weeks.
Social media PR is the powerful combination of public relations and social media. While the term “social media” is still a relatively new one, there’s no doubting its strength as a medium for promoting both your personal and business brand.
Social websites exit in several forms for different markets:
In both people can post remarks, impressions or pose questions, whereas others can respond and comment with their visions and experiences.
As the Internet matures into the standard communications tool today, social media continues to evolve and find its place. By using social media and PR together, you can find your place as well.
Social Media Releases
“New press release era”, the “Virtual press release revolution” or simply the Social media press release is a rather new concept, but worth the attention of even the most conservative PR experts and firms.
Almost every press release issued today is done so without video or audio, and many still do not include links to additional information or supporting content. SMR represents a new socially-rooted format that complements traditional and SEO press releases by combining news facts and social assets in one, easy to digest, and repurpose, tool. SMRs help bloggers and online journalists more effectively write a rich media post using one resource that provides them with everything they need.
Picture an everyday blog post, with a headline, intro paragraph, news facts, genuine quotes, and supporting market data (with links) combined with embedded socializable content, such as video from Viddler, pictures from flickr, screencasts hosted at YouTube, supporting documents piped from Docstoc, the use of social tools to bookmark, relevant tags for indexing and discoverability, subscriptions via RSS, friending company contacts via LinkedIn or Facebook, and most importantly, the ability to take compartmentalized components of the SMR to use as building blocks for a new story (embed codes).
You certainly don’t need to include everything that this template includes to be more effective. The inclusion of a single video clip or an MP3 audio file may be exactly what you need to be seen and heard within the social media community.
The SMPR is not a trend. It’s a tool. It is not there to replace or kill the traditional press release, it is there to improve upon it. It’s not an appendage to a traditional press release layout, but includes parts of the traditional press release formatted in a more comprehensible, simpler and ready to use manner.
SMPR Distribution
Several wire services reach traditional media, but integrate social media optimization (SMO) and search engine optimization (SEO) elements as well to appeal to bloggers (because the releases can provide the information in a format that they can appreciate).
These services include:
- PRWeb (traditional, SMO, SEO)
- PRNewswire (traditional, SEO, multimedia)
- Businesswire (traditional) and the new, pseudo SMO
- Weblogwire (traditional – but only tech bloggers subscribe to this service)
- Marketwire (traditional, SEO – working on SMO)
- PRXbuilder – (SMO specific, aligned with PRNewswire)
What is Micro PR
Micro PR use microbloging services like Twitter for establishing B to B communication channels.
It is all about forcing PR firms to approach to all their external functions in the open, on open social flow apps like Twitter, and in the small, where they have to jettison all the claptrap of the old press release model.
In the open, that can’t lie easily, or they will be caught on it. In the small, they have to junk the meaningless superlatives, the bogus quotes that no CEO ever mouthed, the run-on phrases, the disembodied third party mumbo jumbo, as if the press release were edited by God.
Using MicroPR
PR people, subscribe to the @MicroPR feed and definitely follow it on Twitter. You can also run active searches or feeds on Summize or TweetScan.
Bloggers, journalists, analysts, send a public message @MicroPR when they want to reach PR professionals. MicroPR will help channel information, starting as a service for media to source stories, share their preferences for receiving information, announce change of beats, call for speakers or awards submissions, or anything that needs to hit a very focused list of savvy and connected PR professionals.
If you’re asking why you would need to use the service if you already have followers on Twitter, MicroPR will connect you to a broader, more effective network of resources for stories today and in the future.
What makes good microcontent?
Make your microcontent:
- Short (That’s why they call it microcontent!)
Readers need to understand microcontent at a glance. Make it as tight as you can without sacrificing clarity.
- Explanatory
If you’re writing about conferences, phones and jobs, those words should appear in the microcontent
- Scannable
Online, readers don’t read; they scan. Microcontent should make it easy for readers to get the gist of the kay message by scanning.
- Context-rich
If your headline says “On the move,” readers might not be able to figure out whether this is a page about employee promotions, a piece on your company’s relocation benefits or an article about the new headquarters building.
Internet Public Relations – The Bottom Line
PR has to be where business is happening. That place is the Internet. Some public relations people have awakened to the power of Internet marketing, but many have not yet taken the plunge. Internet public relations requires an individual who understands and responds to the opportunities, dangers and challenges of a landscape where everything is changed. Utterly.
