Showstoppers Webinar on Social Media, Blogging and Podcasting

Yesterday's ShowStoppers Webinar, "How to Engage Bloggers & Podcasters to Boost Buzz and Generate Coverage" was a success with over 159 signed up, and more than 90 attendees. Maybe some folks got stuck in traffic as it started at 11AM EST, but 8AM on the West coast. Our host was a long time colleague, Steve Leon, cofounder, partner and producer of the fabulous ShowStoppers press events.

There are always lessons learned when woking with new technologies. This was one of my first webinars. I really enjoyed the process, and look forward to even better future sessions. We used GoToMeeting (http://www.citrixonline.com/) and had several dress rehearsals. This was key, because the first time, I learned that the entire webinar needed to be very conversational. We had a PowerPoint as a guideline for the participants, but the goal became not to read from it. This gave us plenty of time in advance to come up with questions for Steve our host, and to set up the function for participants to email in questions. Lena West, one of the speakers, was a great guide as she has set up many shadowblogs and crisis PR blogs for major clients.

Here's another tip ... It's really important to silence all of your telephones prior to doing a webinar. I use Vonage, so I went online and disconnected the call waiting function, and voicemails. I put a do not disturb sign on my door, and closed all windows. Don't use a mobile telephone, or the speaker function on your direct land line. This is important in our case, as the webinar was recorded, thanks Lena West, who is a columnist and blogger for Entrepreneur Magazine and an Infoworld blogger. She is also CEO of XynoMedia, a New York-based social media strategy firm, serving high-growth companies and PR firms.

Let's go back to the basics here and review the inportance of search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing. SEO is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. A site’s ranking in a search is essential for directing more traffic to the site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives. It requires:
•Participation
•Openness, transparency and disclosure
•Conversation
•Community Driven
•Facilitation (facilitating conversations that are already happening online)

That said, our webinar focused on just a couple of the tools that are used in social media marketing -- blogging and podcasting. Lena had some great tips for PR professionals insofar as pitching bloggers -- lessons I too have learned in a recent blog and podcast tour for a diet book. KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. One paragraph, links to the press releases, or website info. Lena made the point, fiercely... if she wants more info, and is interested in covering your pitch, she will contact you. Period. Do not send attachments, long press releases, or long anything, for that matter. Bloggers and podcasters are really busy. And as my associate Mike Keesling said, who used to work at a news station in Hawaii, he got hundreds of pitches per day and only had time to read the headline (subject in email) and a couple of concise sentenses. So if you cannot consolidate your email pitches into a couiple of sentences, then you are hosed.

If you want to read more tips, I strongly suggest that you download Lena's little eBook of invaluable info on pitching bloggers and podcasters without ticking them off. Go to
http://www.xynoMedia.com/showstoppers to download your copy of The Blogosphere Cluebook: How PR Agents & Publicists Can Effectively Engage Blogosphere Influencers Instead of Ticking Them Off by Lena West.

Enjoy.

Sources:
PowerPoint: http://www.showstoppers.com/webinar/bloggersandpodcasters.ppt
The Webinar: http://www.showstoppers.com/webinar/bandp.mp3

The Value of Podcasts

More and more, we are seeing opportunities for online radio, otherwise known as podcasts. Just this evening, my client - author T.S. Wiley - did a podcast on Dr. Fitness and The Fat Guy -- a popular online radio show about fitness and weight loss.

Another client, Acutrack, Inc. based in Livermore, CA, has been doing podcasts successfully for quite awhile. The interesting thing is that in electronic media such as radio or TV, and now podcasts, we hear from people who talk in a comfortable first person one-to-one manner. The podcast is available 24/7 on the Internet, and when someone searches via key words on a specific topic, they will locate podcasts, and can listen and or watch at their own will.

Here are some interesting facts:

• The online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives.
• More than 70% of Americans ages 15-34 actively use online social networks – e.g. Wikipedia, My Space, You Tube, Flickr, Second Life, MiniClip, Digg, Facebook, Match, etc.
• 58% Americans aged 50-64 – fastest growth in the Internet Source: TRU, TNS, Marketing Evolution.

Podcasts are simply part of the new world of public relations know as Social Media Marketing, which requires participation, openness, transparency and disclosure, conversation, community, and facilitation (facilitating conversations that are already happening online). These are non-commercial messages (unless there is a compelling reason for you to look at it, read it, listen to it, watch it, like it, interact with it, and ultimately buy it!) This is what bloggers and podcasters excel at…

To learn more, please join us for a Showstoppers® sponsored Webinar on Sept. 18th entitled, "How to Engage Bloggers & Podcasters to Boost Buzz and Generate Coverage." Featured speakers will include me, Kristin Gabriel, and Lena L. West, columnist and blogger for Entrepreneur Magazine and an Infoworld blogger.

Go to http://www.xynoMedia.com/showstoppers to download your copy of 21+ Ways to Get a Blogosphere Clue: How PR Agents & Publicists Can Effectively Engage Blogosphere Influencers Instead of Ticking Them Off.

To sign up for the Showstoppers Webinar:
Time: 11 a.m. to noon ET (8-9 a.m. PT)
Place: Your telephone and web browser
Cost: Free
To register: Click here, https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/677428751

The Art of Article Submissions

I have been doing article submissions for a couple of years now. It all started with writing them for an antivirus company who was looking to push some negative stuff that showed up in Google searches down and off of the first and second pages of searches in MSN, Yahoo or Google. I used our key words, wrote articles, and it worked.

Next I started writing articles for all of our MarCom Broadband clients. I always say that one good topic or article can be written "six ways to Sunday" when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing tactics. Here's an example of that:
1) Press release on PR Newswire - a traditional news release.
2) PR Web optimized press release on PR Web.
3) Articles on articles submission sites like http://www.articlesbase.com/
4) Forum posts in industry forums and chat rooms.
5) Social media site postings on sites like Wikipedia, My Space, etc.
6) Blog content - you really need a blog to regurgitate content.

Plus you have your website content.

You do need to be careful about how commerical articles are in the submission services. Most of them will not take promotional content. But you can add your company's name and website address in the resource box. You just need to be clever about how you talk about a company or client by name. I often mention several comapnies, or provide a quote.

Last, none of these SEO tactics would be of any value without adding your key words. The first thing we do is a key word analysis for clients. Then we all use these key words in every single thing we write up.

Results are fantastic. You usually see results for certain key words within a month or two. And again, it's all about content content content on the web. The more of it you have, the better your rankings in Google.

The Value of Podcasting and Online Radio/TV

I mentioned these numbers in my last blog, but some info is worth repeating. According to Arbitron, 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, or online radio and TV. Early adopters in any category are going to benefit from this.Internet radio has been around for awhile. One of our clients, Big Media USA, Inc. , provides this service. It's not music, it's information.

Just think of them as the Time Warner of the Internet -- with a number of stations that have a number of channels on topics such as business, health, sports, spiritual, etc. In fact, very soon I am going to be hosting a new channel there on social media marketing.

The value here is that Big Media has been around awhile, so their site has allot of content on it, and Google spiders their site daily. This is great, because if you have a radio or podcast show on BMUSA, and your key words are in the copy of your show promo, or in a press release that BMUSA or you put out, you will be spidered too.Podcasts are easy for others to listen to or watch online 24/7.

Plus the content is great to have transcribed for use elsewhere via social media marketing -- in press releases, online articles, and even in forum posts -- all excellent ways to optimize your website for better rankings by the search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN, etc. Then if someone is seeking information open something, they may come to your podcast. That's why it's important to keep them short, and get the key messages about you and your products or services into the first five minutes or less as you can.

Pay-per-Click versus SEO and Social Media Marketing

Pay-per-click (PPC) can be an excellent way to expand your search engine awareness about products or services in an early stage company and before the SEO and social media marketing tactical results kick in. But keep in mind, as the Internet has matured, so has the cost of pay-per-click advertising. The more viewers/listeners/readers, the more it costs to reach them, so it’s important to know when and when not to use pay per click ads.

PPC is good when you need to supplement key words that are harder to optimize. As an example, the word “antivirus,” which is a popular and hard to optimize key word, could be part of a PPC campaign. The goal however, in many cases, is to raise the bar on the traditional SEO results, and eventually reduce the amount of money spent on PPC. Because if you quit paying for PPC, the visibility goes away completely, whereas if you stop doing traditional SEO, it’ll take awhile for the page results -- where you are on the first pages of the search engines -- to diminish.

PPC is also good when doing targeted regional market rollouts. I recently did an online media plan for one of MarCom Broadband's clients known as Dogtor Paco, with new mortgage payment calculator technology. I like the fact that online newspaper classified advertising in large regional markets, such as the Los Angeles Times online real estate advertising, seems to be cost effective, but the one I really like is CitiSearch because it offers a no risk pay-per-performance (PPP) model - and the fact that it offers a national scope - with ads that run on its partner channels as well.

Companies definitely need a budget for PPC. It’s a day to day tracking experience requiring a lot of time, and in our experience, measurement for results is an essential key component. Often times campaigns require “tweaking” and adjustments before they work. Measurement for results is an essential key component.

On the other hand, an excellent way to expand awareness about your products and services, and to provide link backs to your website is via article submissions, PRWeb, PR Newswire, and a number of free online wire services.

According to Arbitron, 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, or online radio and TV which has become very popular. Early adopters in any category are going to benefit from this. I recently did a podcast tour for my healthcare client and she’s already done three interviews. The beauty is that they provide links right back to the most popular pages on their website. In fact, check out our client http://www.bigmediausa.com/ provides this service.

In the end, the more content you have on the Internet with your key words, the better chance you will have to attract communities of people searching for your topic.

Link Building and the Value of Global Social Networking Sites

We have two new student interns thanks to my lectures at Cal State Northridge. Sho is an exchange student from Japan, and Nora is a recent graduate who is helping me with social media marketing and PR for the hispanic community. We gave Sho a laundry list of websites to open accounts so that he can help us with social network link building. A few of them are Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Jaiku, Del.icio.us and Wikipedia. He can even go into some of his native social networking sites in Japan and build links for our clients.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media marketing include the dredges of link building -- something we all hate doing -- but fundamentally one of the most important account maintenance aspects. Link building could be compared to media relations.

My associate Mike Keesling calls honest link building, “White Hat” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) link building strategies, as this relates to rankings in the organic listings of Google. These kind of links are really, really important. As of late, the number and quality of inbound links to a website are what is under scrutiny by Google. Also known as link popularity, the search engines look at this as how other sites consider your site. Would it be important enough to link to?

The search engines don’t want useless artificially created links. There are "Black Hat" link building techniques such as link farms, or link exchanges, which could easily get your site bounced out of the search engines altogether. There are no easy ways to build link popularity these days because the search engines want to see links from authoritative websites that share the same focus as your site, or opinions and reviews – which can easily be done on social networking sites.

Link building will provide additional visibility for your website, so, when you start to work on building links, don't forget those two basic reasons for requesting links. There’s also an art to link building. The secret is to build one of your key words into the link. If I am writing about “social media marketing,” which is one of my key words – then that is also my link, which will be hyperlinked back to a matching phrase on my client’s website. Because of the way that search engines read dontent, you can use links well when they are in headlines, subheadlines, the first sentence and the middle and the last sentence of an article or release.

Article Submissions for Social MEdia Marketing

Lately it seems pretty clear that the media don't really need PR folks pitching to them. We still do, however, most media are Internet savy enough to research their topics online and find articles about companies out there on the Web. And so that means that we, as marketers, need to make sure that our clients are also out there - accessable even by the media. What does this mean?

You start with a good press room on your website with press releases that include your key words embedded in each release. You add a press kit with documents that describe what your company is all about - that means press releases, company backgrounders or profiles, frequently asked questions (FAQ), product or services profiles, and customer testimonials, etc. Each of these documents too must be key worded.

Next you post your press releases by the wire service companies, and write articles and post them throughout the web in article submission sites. Its important that you not "copy" any documents that are posted. The rule of thumb is to change the content of each artcle on the web about 30 percent because Google will not "count" duplicates.

Just like in the old days, people said retail was all about location, location, location -- well, search engine optimization and social media marketing is all about content, content, content on the Internet.