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When businesses think about search and social media, a great deal of the time, they are thinking about traffic, customer engagement, and brand awareness. While these are all good things to consider, there may be more to that last one that you have spent much time thinking about.

Brand awareness goes beyond just having a random customer find your site in a set of search results or through a link from their Facebook news feed. Have you considered how channels like search and social media are used by media outlets and journalists? The fact of the matter is that journalists and bloggers alike utilize both to a great extent while covering their beats.

Do you take press coverage into consideration? Comment here.

Search and social both play significant roles in PR. This is a topic that WebProNews recently discussed with TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden. Odden calls journalists customers, and in many ways they should be treated as such when it comes to getting your product or site in front of their eyeballs.

Odden says to look at what it is you can do as a marketer to make it easier for the journalist to do their job. Optimize your content for what a journalist is looking for. This is one way you can potentially increase your media coverage, which can obviously increase brand awareness.

Odden makes a great point online journalists often having tighter deadlines, and turning to blogs and social networks for sources and quotes. For example, the real-time nature of a Twitter search might be just what a journalist or blogger need to find someone who’s talking about the subject they’re writing about, at nearly the moment they’re looking for it.

For that matter, Google’s real-time search can help for the same reason, and most journalists and bloggers frequently use Google to search for what they’re looking for. If what they’re looking for happens to be related to a newsy topic, they just might see Google’s real-time results literally before anything else. If that topic happens to be related to something you’re talking about, you just might end up in those results too. Google is also indexing updates from Facebook Pages here now, by the way.

The point is, if you are looking for increased media coverage, there are ways to increase your chances of getting in front of the right people, and it is certainly not limited to real-time search. Sometimes journalists/bloggers will simply tap their contacts within their social networks (or email of course) to find sources. This is as good a reason as any to engage in social media on a regular basis and network with lots of relevant people.

If attracting media attention is what you’re after, consider these five tips I offered in a SmallBusinessNewz article last year:

1. Do something that’s different – Simply do something that makes you stand out: something that gets people talking. If it creates enough buzz, the media coverage will likely follow.

2. Look for niche publications – the more niche the publication, the more likely they probably are to cover you.

3. Personalize your message – When you’re writing an email to a publication to talk about your business, for example, personalize the message for the specific person you’re contacting, so they know it’s not just a manufactured piece that you’re sending all over the web. Journalists like exclusivity.

4. Find multiple contacts – If you can find more than one contact for a particular publication, it may be wise to send your story pitch to them. This will increase the potential visibility among the publication’s staff.

5. Provide plenty of details – When sending such a pitch, it’s a good idea to include as many details about the product/story as possible. The more details available, the less research is required, and time is more valuable than ever, especially for a journalist.

Another piece of advice I would give is to not let your press center hold back your marketing opportunities. I’ve seen a lot of companies fail to keep their own press centers up to date with the latest news, even as big announcements are made, and even if they have issued press releases. Often times, these releases won’t even be available on the site until later. If you want to increase your chances of more media coverage, you should always have your latest news readily available in your press center, or via your blog – wherever you make announcements. And always provide contact info.

Share your tips for increasing press coverage.

You probably have forgotten about Second Life (the virtual world from Linden Labs), right?
 
Remember, that’s that virtual world that got a TON of hype back in 2005/6. It was on the cover of magazines. On CNN and other TV shows. It looked like it was going to be THE new thing of the decade.
 
What happened?
 
Well, a few things.
 
1. Corporations figured out that they’d need to spend a lot of money to build an island in Second Life (Microsoft spent somewhere around $100,000 if I remember right back then) but soon they figured out that each island could only hold 100 people. Not a good ROI.
 
2. It had game dynamics. Games are fun for a while, but eventually people get bored of playing games. That’s what happened. People who were very excited and evangelistic about Second Life eventually moved on.
 
3. It lost its “new and shiny” patina. That’s most of why the press forgot about it. We only pay attention to new and cool stuff. Heck, just look at Techcrunch. Do you read about older technologies there? No.
 
Anyway, one thing happened that I find very interesting: it continued to grow in users, time spent on the site, and dollars spent in it.
 
On Friday I sat down with Mark to find out why.
 
First, the users remained very evangelistic. Second, corporations like IBM found other uses for its islands and kept investing (they now use these islands for training and replacements of expensive conferences). Third, the technology has been steadily improving. Fourth, the company has found new ways to bring new users in and make the experience easier to get into.
 
But he admitted that they had been pretty quiet and avoided doing more PR work until just recently.
 
Why is that changing this week? You’ll see why tomorrow morning at about 11 a.m. on building43.
 
But to tease a bit, I find that their new direction, the first part of which you’ll see tomorrow in the video I did with Mark, is interesting and represents a new life for Second Life and its host Linden Labs.
 
To wrap this up, have you used Second Life lately? Even if you haven’t, see you on building43 tomorrow morning for more.
 
Comments

Press releases are not only great ways to spread the word about any announcements your business might have. They can also drive traffic, particularly from search engines. This is not news, but it’s a commonly overlooked fact.

Have press releases brought you significant search traffic? Discuss here.

"Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic — and potential prospects — to a small business’ Web site," a PRWeb spokesperson once told WebProNews. "However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive."

Back in the summer, PRWeb shared a case study with us, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn’t believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the "shelf life" of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.

"When we included a link to our press releases on Twitter and other social media networks, we saw these both expanded the scope of distribution and the extended the longevity of the announcement," the CEO of the company behind the case study had said.  "With other news releases we saw an initial spike in Web site traffic on the first two days and then it dropped off.  With these features we’ve seen increases in traffic up to five days after the news release was issued."

In a study from Arketi Group, also back in the summer, journalists were found to use the web in the following ways:

- 95% search
- 92% reading news
- 92% emailing
- 89% finding story ideas
- 87% finding news sources
- 75% reading blogs
- 64% watching webinars
- 61% watching YouTube
- 59% social networks

You’ve got to wonder if that social networks number has gone up by now. My guess is that it has, and social media has since become all the more important to search, particularly with the inclusion of real-time search results in Google and Google’s social search experiment (which may eventually move beyond experiment status).

Marty Weintraub, the President of aimClear shared some great tips and insight into the use of press releases for search in a recent interview with WebProNews. Among other things, he noted that when you do a press release, you’re "hitching a ride" in the search engine results and news results. You can use outbound links in press releases, and perhaps more importantly, you’re out there where the journalists are looking.

Here are some press release distribution sites (some are paid and some are free): 

- Business Wire
- PR Newswire
- PRWeb
- 24-7 Press Release
- PR Zoom
- PR Leap
- I-Newswire
- Webwire
- ClickPress
- PR.com
- PR Log
- eReleases
- MarketWire

Beyond the distribution sites, don’t forget to include your releases on your own site. Journalists like being able to find the most up to date information from the source itself.  Earlier this year I discussed how some companies’ own press centers are holding back some marketing opportunities for them. Your site should have a section for press releases, and that should be up to date with the latest release when it goes out. You’d be surprised at how often these go without being updated even when a press release has been spotted elsewhere. It is also a good idea to link to any company blogs, Twitter accounts, or any other place where company announcements are made.

Do you use press releases for marketing? Do they work? Comment here.

Related Articles:

> Search Engine and Social Traffic from Press Releases

> Press Releases New SEO Back Door to Top Rankings

> Getting the Media to Cover Your Business

As a follow up to a recent article we ran on how press releases can be great for search, a representative for PRWeb, a press release distribution company, contacted us with another interesting example. This one looks at the shelf-life press releases can have, with regards to search traffic.

"A small business called Leatherup.com, which sells peripheral gear for motorcycle riders issued a news release on November 6, 2008, titled, ‘LeatherUp.com 2008 Sales Explode to over $20 Million,’" the representative tells WebProNews. "This year alone, this release has received more than 11,000 unique page views excluding advertising (I can see that Leatherup.com used this release as a landing page for some Doubleclick ads which boosted the total unique views to more than 20,000, so have excluded them)."

"Once I had the 11,000 number, with the exclusion, I looked at the entrance sources," he says. Among the top ten, these include (all numbers are unique views):

Google:  2,832
Direct:  1,551
AOL: 696
search.rr.com 247

"Moreover, peak views included December 11, 2009 – more than a year after the release was published," he continues. "The flat periods before April 7, 2009 are due to the fact that we had not yet implemented Google Analytics at that time, and the flat period in June 2009, is when PRWeb.com migrated over to a new Web site – the point being these search results could well be higher."

There are a number of reasons that press releases can be great for search. They’re great for spreading word to the media (journalists/bloggers), they can contain links, when used with credible news wire services, they are often looked upon with some authority, and as discussed above, their shelf-life can be significant.

Related Articles:

> Search Engine and Social Traffic from Press Releases

> Press Releases New SEO Back Door to Top Rankings

> Getting the Media to Cover Your Business

In the olden days, PR professionals might have gotten an hour or more of face time in which to sweet talk someone over a meal.  Now, they occasionally make pitches in 140 characters.  So you can imagine how the information shared during a conference session titled "Online PR: Where to Next?" could prove quite useful to a lot of people.

(Coverage of SES Chicago continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Beth Harte, who wears a number of hats (including that of Community Manager) for MarketingProfs, started by stating that press releases and visibility are just part of the game.  Advertising, issues management, public affairs, lobbying, and investor relations all count, as well, and she stressed, "Real public relations is relationships."

Harte also said, "Social media tools will change.  People being social won’t."  She recommended listening, communicating, partnering, telling your story, and getting people to talk as a result.

Next, Marty Weintraub, President of aimClear, talked about the intersection of PR and SEO.  Stay interested in links, and write SEO-savvy press releases.  Get social media profiles ranked, and do guest blogging stints if possible.  Finally, provide people a reason to rebroadcast your name (and do a little good) by helping charities.  Weintraub suggested, "Give and give and give some more."

Then came Duncan Alney, President and Social Media Strategist of Firebelly Marketing.  He discussed the visual component of PR, stating, "Online video is used more than all major TV networks," and indicated that continued growth is likely.  Video is very shareable, Alney pointed out, so PR professionals should start refining their strategy and execution and accumulating experience now.

At last, Andy Beal, the CEO of Trackur, wrapped up the session.  He pointed out that there is advanced technology for monitoring industry trends, competitors’ buzzwords, your own reach, and potential allies.  Take advantage of it.  And as for the future, Beal predicted that there will be dynamic content in press releases, link tracking across platforms, performance-based press release pricing, and RFID for your content.

WebProNews Reporter/Anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

Related Articles:

> How Marketers Can Find Success Via Search

> Optimizing For Mixed Media Search Results

> Yahoo Lets Users See How They’re Being Tracked For Ads

Being a full-time SEM (Search Engine Marketer) I have been conditioned like Pavlov’s dog (not a pretty picture) to jump every time Google twitches. Lately Google has been doing a lot of twitching.
Specifically, the rather startling news from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa that Google has ditched PageRank from Webmaster Tools.
“We’ve been telling people [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Does Google PageRank Count Anymore?