Authenticity Isn’t Outsourced
Posted on January 5, 2009 | Tags: online pr, online public relations
To create a sticky website, you need content.
To create press releases that generate traffic to your site, there’s got to be news.
To write an article that attracts visitors to your site, it’s got to teach them something.
To effectively use Twitter to get people to your site, it has to compel an idea in a limited number of characters and the link you send them to has to maintain that interest and not betray the interest by bait and switch.
That’s a PR function. It’s why one friend of mine was disappointed with the company he hired to generate online press releases and articles. They’re very good tekkies. But they’re not PRs. They didn’t “get” him and so what they wrote wasn’t authentic. It was churned out copy that made him appear trite.
Like any display of originality, authentic content is hard to outsource.
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What Doesn’t Work Online Won’t Work Offline Either
Posted on December 22, 2008 | Tags: online pr, online public relations
In the world of getting publicity offline, you have to have something to say. Otherwise, the media doesn’t care about you.
The online world takes it a step further: it’s personal. To keep up pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, continue blogging, keep up on Twitter and nurse Squidoo pages, you have to invest the time. Most of these require personal communication that’s hard to outsource – unless your PR knows you so well that he/she can speak for you.
So … what do you do? If you’re doing it yourself, pick one or two that you can actually keep up with and make those great. Skip the rest. If you’re not going to nurture them completely, don’t bother getting involved. Seth Godin recommends this in his post The Sad Truth About Marketing Shortcuts.
Think of it like doing publicity offline. If you just wrote a non fiction book and have a limited budget, do talk radio interviews by phone or concentrate on getting magazine articles, if your subject is appropriate.
When you go online, time is your commodity, unless you’re paying an online PR to represent you. Don’t waste it doing things halfway. Slow and steady wins the race applies here.
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Why Do You Need PR Online? PR is the New SEO
Posted on December 17, 2008 | Tags: online pr, online public relations
Many of my readers are professionals unfamiliar with the online world. So, for their purposes, I’ll define “SEO.”
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” That means what you have to do to make sure your website is found by the people who are searching for your service or product using a search engine. To “optimize” your site means to make it findable by search engines. Since Google is the most used search engine, they’ve set the standard of optimization.
And that is a short answer to a very involved industry.
Ten years ago all you had to do to get found was mainly have lots of your “keywords” all over you site. This practice was called “keyword density” and it placed more importance on writing web copy for the robots to find your site than copy intended to connect with your visitors.
Today all you hear about is “linking.” In the offline PR world, that’s getting people and media to talk about you. In the online PR world, it’s getting other sites to link to yours using words and phrases that reinforce to Google that your site is actually what you say it is.
Like all tricksters looking for a quick way around something, the quest to get lots of incoming links led to “link exchanging” and link spamming by using software to distribute the same article on multiple article directories so there would be lots of incoming links to your site.
As will happen with any trick that doesn’t serve the market, Google catches on. They caught onto this. Now you really need to have income links that are of high quality. That means authentic articles on sites relevant to yours that are themselves legitimate.
So, Google forces quality. Quality content, quality articles, quality information.
If you approach a website editor to post an a quality article and the site is a suitable fit, the editor will post it and give you links. If you find twenty websites that are naturally relevant to yours to accept authentic articles, what are the chances that those webmasters will all select the exact key phrases to link back to your site? That’s right – slim. Google knows that too, according to James Martell.
I haven’t bought any of James Martell’s courses, but he was part of a small group of speakers and panel members at an internet marketing weekend intensive hosted by Ken McCarthy. James has been earning income online since 1999 and is a publisher who thrives on building websites with quality content.
He stressed that, to succeed in the long run, you needed something authentic and valuable to say and let others know about you so they can talk about you too.
I call those the New Rules of SEO. That’s what a good PR does for a client with offline press. Sounds to me like PR has come of age online.
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What Makes an Expert an Expert?
Posted on December 16, 2008 | Tags: online pr, online public relations, pr, public relations
Coaching and “Mastermind Groups” are all the rage.
Marketing gurus tout “build a list by being an expert.”
That’s fine, IF you happen to have some very valuable expertise.
If someone doesn’t really have anything valuable in an industry to contribute, why should I listen to that person? Won’t that person have to be dishonest to some degree to their customers about their expertise?
I commonly see limited experience being packaged and sold in courses, tapes and coaching.
I’ll give you an example. There’s a speaker on PR who appears at some of the marketing events I attend. He’s an incredible speaker and salesman. He sells a course on “do-it-yourself PR.”
What qualifies him to sell a course on the subject? Many years ago he had a huge success getting media coverage for himself.
Having gotten media coverage for over five hundred different types of subjects, experts and corporations, I’m impressed with how he has packaged his expertise and credentials. Truly impressed.
But I know enough to know that getting PR for yourself … even national attention … doesn’t qualify you to write the definitive manual on it that “anyone can use …” yadayadayayda.
Lesson? Examine the actual track record of whoever is selling you something.
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