Social Media Marketing Versus Public Relations

I was reading Paul Gillin's newsletter this morning (which if you don't get, you absolutely MUST) and something he said in a prelude to a podcast he did with David Strom (in St. Lewis) triggered this thought. What skills can PR pros still use in the new world of social media marketing? This is actually something that I initially was concerned about some three or four years ago as I became familiar with search engine optimization (SEO). I called it search engine marketing (SEM) back then, and now it's known as social media marketing.

Check out Tech PR War Stories. Their podcast was prompted by Tamar Weinberg's list of the best Internet marketing blog posts of 2007 .

Paul encourages PR folks NOT to focus too much on all the new SEO tech tricks and services, stating, "With so much focus on search engine performance and user recommendations these days, PR pros may be tempted to spend all their time learning how to game the various traffic drivers that are sprouting up all over the Internet. Sure, it’s always nice to get a traffic boost from Digg or StumbleUpon, but the value of that traffic may not be worth the effort."

They talk about what IS important which includes the fundamental skills of PR, mainly creating compelling content, building relationships and delivering a message which are all still really important on the Internet. In the podcast David and Paul try to put the recommendation engine craze in perspective.

This is why MarCom Broadband has continued to focus on an integrated approach, and why we named the firm MarCom in the first place -- as in marketing communications -- which encompasses almost every aspect including advertising copy and design, marketing, journalism or content building, public relations, and now, Internet tactics. The Broadband part of our name just addresses the quantum speed at which the Internet allows us to do it all now. The short of it is that your 2008 Internet marketing strategy should include all of these points.

Strom commented about how new technology changes things all the time, to the point where it can be overwhelming ... because it's not enough to continue to just do the same thing year after year. Download their podcast here. (http://www.gillin.com/Podcasts/tprws-41.mp3)

Gillin also believes headlines that are search engine friendly are very important. We agree, that's one tip that I have used that really works, as evidenced just yesterday when my associate Mike Keesling did a quick review of one of our clients.

One year ago, we started working with T.S. Wiley, who developed a new protocol for bio identical hormone therapy (BHRT) protocol, known as The Wiley Protocol. When we searched for bioidentical hormones a year ago, she and her website came up as number 35. Today it shows up in Google as number five. I have been writing many articles for Wiley, posting them on the article submission sites throughout the Web -- therefore we have many Google Alerts that show up with headlines including her key words which Mike did in his keyword analysis last year - such as hormones, bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, and bioidentical, etc. We have been doing PR Web releases, and some newsletters. This year we are ramping up with a blog.

So it IS important to take a look at using the keywords in headlines, in a company's website, including all the tags such as meta and alt tags on each page (stuff Mike does for our clients). And also keywords can go in photo caption tags and videos for You Tube

It all comes down to content which will serve you best. As David and Paul said, "Content is the king."