Online Marketing Juice

How to Reach the New Media Influencers

Media is one of the most powerful groups out there. Whether your a big company or a small company, developing relationships with all kinds of media is crucial for your PR campaign. Knowing how to pitch the media is also crucial. Most of the online media world hate PR flacks. The influencer’s such as review site editorial, niche bloggers, or the online and hard copy magazines all have different ways they would like to be approached. For example. I know of one very influential hi-tech gadget blogger that will not look at a PR email blast or a canned email asking to review product. Instead, this blogger wants people to get involved in his blog community first, then pitch him on his FaceBook wall or Twitter. He doesn’t have time to read canned PR email. He wants a 1-2 line pitch he can read FAST and from a person whom he sees in his blog feedback section that’s active in his blog.

How do you find the names, websites, blogs or email address of the influencer’s within in your industry?

Try these resources:

www.highbeam.com (Enables searching the blog library, RSS feeds, web to research facts, articles, and journalists in your chosen industry).
www.vocus.com (provides a web-based software suite to help find and manage key journalists, analysts, bloggers).
www.cision.com (Cision’s MediaSource software enables professionals to compile a general or TARGETED media lists online).

These resources can also have the value benefit of answering questions on how a journalist or blogger accepts pitches or how they like to be contacted. Bloggers are increasing within the media world everyday and attract millions of eyeballs. Within my company I have created a “Bloggers Relations” group inside the Media Relations department. We concentrate on these blogs and establish working, friendly relationships with them. When its time to actually pitch the product or service, our blogger relations people have an easy time convincing the blog editorial on our newest product or service. mediabistro.com is also a great resource for pitching tips and classes.

Stumbleupon: Dont Call It a Comeback!

Stumbleupon is still driving FIERCE traffic folks. In fact, StumbleUpon is now the biggest traffic driver among social media websites in the US, according to global web analytics service StatCounter. In fact, Its now a bigger traffic driver than Facebook. StumbleUpon is rolling out a new version on Sept. 1st. Watch for killer changes. Stumbleupon unseated Facebook at the top during June 2011, according to the latest StatCounter social media data. StatCounter tracks hits to over 3 million websites, and its social media data is gathered by analyzing every hit referred by a social media site.

PR and Blogging

I woke up this morning thinking about my blog and how important blogs play a role in the new “PR”. I have friends and colleagues at other companies that think blogs are a waste of time and offer little or no value. However, they are mostly in HR and/or engineers. They think that blogs are just rants with random entries people pontificate in their downtime. What they completely underestimate is the fact in this new world PR world order, a blog can become a destination, and aggregate of knowledge and expertise that helps customers (or investors) make decisions while also building relationships with them. Relationships are THE name of the game.

Most companies are paranoid (see legal dept.) that if their employees start blogging, then it can also hurt relationships and even start creating misinformation that could lead to lawsuits. Every company (public) and most private need to have a safeguard in place if it’s to allow employees blog about the company and products on company time. There needs to be a final sign off on all blog posts (preferably PR or legal) before it goes live. This safeguard is a necessity. Now, if the employee has their own personal blog and they do not write on company time, then so be it. They can write anything they want if it’s their own personal blog. Nothing wrong with that.

Everyone within a company is responsible for Public Relations. Media or investor relations are specific responsibilities of communications professionals. Those conversations are going to happen out there with or without them, and if companies aren’t on the radar screen, then they are missing valuable opportunities.

Blogging also helps bring customers and relationships back to your company site. This additional traffic will help brand awareness, sales (duh), and Google rankings.

Need blog traffic? Just write good compelling content. It’s that easy. Other techniques to get your blog up and pumping traffic include: Links to other blogs, Link Building, buy Blog Ads (many sites out there offer this service), submitting to blog directories, sitemaps, or write guest articles for popular websites which allows you to tap their brand equity, user trust, and traffic stream for free. So many ways. This is the new PR world order. Go get your company some exposure. Create relationships that go viral. The traffic and exposure will follow. Blog……….because your competitor is already doing it.

Why You Should Be on Facebook

Because its a great business networking platform for self-promotion, branding, advertising, sales, and multimedia interaction. Why? Why spend the money and time? Below are a few basic reasons (stats):

1. 93% of adult US Internet users are on Facebook. (source: BlogHer, April 2011)

2. Facebook is overtaking Google and Yahoo in total time spent online. (source: ComScore, August 2011)

3. More than half of B2B marketers agree that Facebook is an effective marketing tool. (source: Outsell, December 2009)

4. More than half of small businesses agree that Facebook is beneficial to their business. (source: Ad-ology, November 2010)

5. 67% of B2C and 41% of B2B companies that use Facebook for marketing have acquired a customer through this channel. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011)

6. One out of every eight minutes online is spent on Facebook. (source: ComScore, February 2011)

The demographics are almost limitless for all different products and services. Just a simple Facebook fan page will work. A fan page is an official page for a brand on Facebook. A Facebook page is created and other users can become fans of the page. Put a linkback to your website and its yet another way to increase traffic.

Getting Links To Your Site

Reciprocal links. These links are obtained by contacting other website owners and trading links with them. Google and other search engines give very little value to these types of links anymore, particularly if your links are to and from an unrelated site. Weak spammy links from ad sites or content farms may decrease search engine value with the recent Google Panda update.
Directory submissions. There are thousands of niche and general interest directories on the internet that will allow you to submit a link to your website. Some are free and some are not. As with reciprocal links, the closer the directory is related to your site’s topic, the better.
Article submissions are another fairly simple way of obtaining non-reciprocal links to your site. Simply write (or hire someone to write) a good article and submit it for free to one of the top QUALITY article directories on the web.
Write valuable quality content that other site owners will want to link to on their own.
Competitive Intelligence – Analyze the back links of your competitors. Try to get links from the same sites.
Submit to Verticals/Topical Guides (local libraries, local chamber of commerce, etc.)
Use Blogs and RSS – Google loves blogs
Create Podcasts or just put up plain old Screenshots – Bloggers love posting them

Easy Website Traffic Tip

Submit your website or blog to quality general directories. One such quality director is DMOZ:

http://www.dmoz.org

This “Open Directory Project” is syndicated by many other sites. Including your website or blog in DMOZ will provide you with inbound links. Other directories to include:

Yahoo Search Directory
http://dir.yahoo.com

Business.com Directory
http://www.business.com

There are many more you can include. Listing in directories is always an ongoing effort. New directories pop up everyday. Spend an hour a week listing your business or service in online directories. The payoff can be increased traffic but MAKE SURE the directories you are submitting to are not defined as “spam” or junk directories. If your a local business, its crucial to submit your listing to a local directory as well. Google, Yahoo, and Bing all have local search listings.

Facebook’s No. 1 Ad Revenue

Social Network’s $2.19 Billion Puts It at Top of the Digital Heap, Leaping Google, Yahoo. Google will make $1.15 billion in display ads for 2011, down 10% from an earlier estimate, while Yahoo is expected to bring in $1.62 billion from banner ads, down less than 2% from an earlier analysis. Source: eMarketer research.

Safeguarding The Celebrity Brand Online

I’m sure everyone agrees that there are way too many “Celebrity” gossip websites out there. What I can’t believe (in this day and age of a web 3.0 world) is that the individual celebrity publicist, or their agency’s do not really know how to protect their celebrity clients “brand” online. Online gossip websites are notorious for spreading rumors and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). FUD is a marketing and PR tactic used in the technology world to influence public perception by disseminating negative (and vague) information. Whether it’s a rumor, or FUD, the main reason for this tactic is increase website traffic and “clicks”. Traffic and clicks generate advertising revenue for these gossip websites and they will do anything or say anything to get their fair share of this revenue. Whether it’s true of not, this type of business model will ruin a celebrity brand. From what I can concur, Celebrities fight these gossip sites with lawsuits or threatening email. Both are a waste of time and money. So you drag a gossip website to court, and spend large amounts on legal fee’s just to get the site to tear down the blog or picture when they will do it again in a few months? Threatening emails or phone calls only will create negative media relations that may never be repaired between the celebrity and the website owner. In fact, it may encourage them to write more rumors and negative content. Old school tactics do not work anymore as there are thousands of these sites to litigate.

So what’s a celebrity to do? Well…………..first off, tell your publicist to stop sending nasty emails or handing it over to your legal team. It will only create more negative content and wasted energy. In addition to the old fashion publicists, celebrities, sports figures, or any famous person that wants to keep his or hers reputation & brand intact needs to hire a person specifically (or agency) to devote their time to defend and even develop strong working relationships with these websites or bloggers. In the corporate world we are seeing the standard media relations departments create groups under them specifically for “blogger relations”. A blogger relations team will initiate contact with all website or bloggers that write about the company. By establishing these relationships, a company, or in this case a Celebrity can get advance “heads-up” on possible rumors or FUD and head them off (create an appropriate response) before they are posted on the web.

Why keep a celebrity brand intact? Because a “rumor” or “bad press” can take off and go viral on all sorts of social media sites. When that happens, sponsorships, scripts, movies, endorsement deals may reduce to a trickle or may even end. The entertainment world needs to start hiring “online publicists” to guard their celebrity investments! The online publicist’s job (only job) is to monitor the internet for ALL information posted about their client. They need to reply to negative (or positive) articles and blogs via the comments section. Develop personal working relationships with these bloggers so that they will double check their facts with the celebrity before posting any rumor or undesirable pictures. Other duties would be to establish official pages on social media websites (like a fan page on FaceBook) where you can communicate with the public on a regular basis to squelch any negative gossip. Again, the internet has matured and a celebrity publicist must also establish new tools in the web arena to successfully create or maintain their clients brand and image.

Online Advertising: Are You Leaving Money On The Table With Your International Traffic?

It was reported in the Wall Street Journal, Internet companies from blogs to large Amazon.com types are now drawing more of their web traffic from overseas. I know from personal experience that this blog’s traffic is more than 50% international. I’ve seen this trend rising the last couple of years (research data).

What exactly does this mean for companies that charge advertising? It means that when a foreign overseas visitor clicks on your site and your running banner ads that get you a monetary % of click thru’s, you are leaving money on the table. How? For example: European visitors clicks on your landing page and you (or the ad network platform you use) serve them a Verizon ad special that is only available in the United States. Is that ad compelling to the visitor? Do you think this International visitor is interested in clicking thru the US centric ad? No way!

Thousands upon thousands of ad revenue is lost and sitting right there on the table. The problem is that if your running a global media company and your serving up U.S. ads, your potential revenue is in danger. Most of the US ad network platforms that websites run, only serve up U.S. ads. What can you do to solve this issue? If your ad network is “in house” …..make sure you serve your international clients visitor a country specific ad. it’s real easy to identify these visitors thru international domains, first-party cookies, and IP addresses. If it’s a U.S. visitor, serve up a U.S. ad. If you outsource to an online ad network that doesn’t have these capabilities, try hiring an international advertising platform company. There are a lot of them that are London based. Need an ad network platform on the Pacific Rim or India where Internet usage is sky rocketing with the arrival of DSL? Try ad companies such as Komli Media (India). Selling internet ads to local international markets is a tough issue right now. Larger companies with resources have sales teams set up outside the U.S. Companies such as MySpace and Facebook (that now get over 50% of traffic from overseas) are trying to ramp up their sales teams internationally. The majority of Facebook’s growth is international. Of the 75 million uniques it added in the last year, just 13 million (17%) were in the U.S., where MySpace is still twice Facebook’s size. Internet usage overseas is anywhere from a few years behind to ground zero. As they gain access to telephone lines (DSL) and cable, this customer base will grow exponentially. You have to prepare to exploit your platform to serve these international visitors. Get to them now before your competitor does.

Twitter musings

Traditional carpet bombing advertising does not work well in social media networks. Heavy PR (one on one) conversational marketing is too costly. Your spending too much money, time and resources to get to the influencers. Brands who want to be effective with their scarce resources (budgets & marketing department personal), NEED to find out who is the top 5-10 influencer in their market and focus their one on one (conversational) marketing primarily on them.

A few examples of brands & Influencers taking advantage of Twitter: Shaq (THE_REAL_SHAQ), Lance Armstrong (lancearmstrong), MC Hammer (MCHammer), Walt Mossberg (waltmossberg). Get to these guys be it product reviews or endorsements, the larger the social media ROI. Have you seen how many “followers” these guys have on Twitter? It’s ridiculous. Not that the quantity of followers makes all the difference, focus on the “quality” of the followers as well.