SEO PR TIPS

The twitter madness is more and more present with millions of new adepts into the social network, including Barack Obama itself with @BarackObama whose surely one of the best examples to quote – he used twitter to boost his election campaign! Following this topic, I’ll add this link from a recent BBC article “Why celebrities love Twittering” – a great deal to boost your e-reputation according his own speech.

According to the current figures of twitterfact, there are about 6 million twitter users in the world, and nowadays in France about 18,500.
Facing this unbelievable phenomenon, a Twestival has been created in the many influent towns of the world and will take place for the very first time in Paris February the 12th 2009.
“We Are Social” is the Web agency under the organization of the event – not to be missed. Indeed, the event has already convinced many of you in Twinterval (winter version of the festival) London last December – the agency wishes to replicate the success in Paris.

To no more about this event just follow @wearesocialfr on Twitter and book your tickets online via Amiando website. You’ve got only 14 days left!!

Tweet sounds naughtily successful!!

The 4th WebCertain International Search Summit will be held on 14th May 2009 and will focus on social media campaign opportunities.

Latest news on the Summit, two fantastic speakers have been confirmed.

Nicole Vanderbilt, VP International at Bebo and a representative for Plaxo.

More speakers to be confirmed in the coming weeks…

We knew already what great tool is WebsiteGrader created by the team at Hubspot, but if you’ re part like me of the Online PR community, you will enjoy even more Press Release Grader – and many of us should already know it actually, so just for reminder…

Press Release Grader is a free tool designed to help PR professionals to maximize a press release so it can be found more easily by media, bloggers, customers and future prospects.
Basically, it is all about checking if your PR is SEO friendly!!

The tool include many good features that helps you to keep an eye on the many things you should do to optimize your release and make sure it will be relevant to the Web.

You just need to cut and paste the content of your release and it assesses it on several points: general statistics, suggestions for content..etc.

For instance:

General Statistics: Provides readability levels which help you understand if the release is easy or difficult to read for the web – and for the reader!!
Link Analysis: Analyzes the links in your release and determines if they will help drive more traffic to your website.
Word Cloud: Visually identifies the words most often used in the release.
Gobbledygook Words: This tells if you if you’re overusing certain words – fairly good as we know how important including good keywords in a release is but not abuse of it too in order to appeal also the readers! The all of concept of SEO PR: attract both humans and robots!

To conclude, Press Release Grader is definitely a great tool to help PR pros avoid getting on journalists’ nerves by making stupid mistakes, and ensure that your document is SEO-friendly, thus relevant to the web; however it should not be an accomplishment and all of us in the online PR community should always remember not writing “Spammy stories” – meaning of interest for users.

If you fancy more info on Press Release Grader go and watch out: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ltnuYu_PeJc

I look forward to seeing how this tool will improve with the feedback from online PR pros – does anyone know if there is any other good PR analytic tools across the web we could use??

One thing that all professional writers are taught when they are starting out is to know your audience – visualise them in your head when you sit down and write and it will make it easier to pick the right words.

This is one of the cornerstones of writing press releases and remains unchanged. You imagine the grumpy sub-editor who has a chip on his shoulder about supposedly overpaid PR types, looking for grammatical mistakes as an excuse to spike your story. You imagine the stressed out young reporter who has a target of x stories per day to write and might just be tempted to overlook the fact that this is a bloody press release, because it won’t need much re-writing and it just about comes across as a kosher news story (not that working in the media has made me cynical. Oh no…)

But now if you work in online PR, you are more than likely writing on social networking sites and imagining your audience is a much more complicated affair (ignore the hecklers shouting, “it’s easy, they’re all geeks!”).

For example:
On Facebook, my boyfriend updated his status with the esoteric statement “…is baking in the boulangerie of the mind”, which was understandable to precisely one person (me, it’s a long story).

Again on Facebook, a friend posted “…thinks 5-0 will do very nicely, thanks.” This is understandable to everyone that knows that he is a Man Utd fan.

Meanwhile on Twitter, Laure is wondering where John is (and appropriately enough in this mixed up, muddled up world, this is a reference to said John’s unexplained disappearance from Facebook). Meanwhile I’m confusing people with an oblique reply to Oscar about the mayor of London (“who’s Boris?” I’m asked by a third party).

My point is that on social networking sites you are often addressing different overlapping audiences, with different interests, and with different levels of knowledge about your subject matter. Confusing things even further is the presence of friends-of-friends who don’t actually know you at all.

It’s obvious that if your boss or clients might be reading, this isn’t the place for letting off steam at the end of a bad day at work. Correction, it should be obvious.

If you are planning on using social networks for marketing or online PR, you need to go back to basics and define who you are and who you want your audience to be.

You have the choice to be an online mate, a handy bite-sized news source, the straightforward corporate face of your company, or the knowledgeable (but human! I am human, look what I had for my lunch while I was finding you that link to the latest data on web usage in Uzbekistan!) SEO-expert networker – the latter accounting for approximately 50% of people on Twitter by my reckoning.

NB – Imagining my audience for this blog is super-easy – it’s the most intelligent and beautiful group of humans known to man – aren’t you! Do leave a comment if you have any thoughts on this.

Online and Email Marketing is an instant way of keeping in touch with clients and contacts, it’s why it’s so popular with many industry sectors.

Recently the tour operator Activities Abroad sent out an email to all its clients and contacts apparently as a “tongue-in-cheek” marketing strategy! I haven’t been working in online PR and marketing for very long however, I do know that offering ‘Chav Free’ holidays wasn’t the best angle to go at, the offence that its contacts have taken especially over typecasting people’s names is understandable when you work damn hard for a living etc, you can check out the story on The BBC website

Mr McLean, Director of Activities Abroad claimed he was sticking up for ‘Middle Class’, I don’t believe there are class systems in this country anymore, or am I mistaken? Surely there are better and more inventive ways to market holidays, especially through email marketing and online, its the fastest growing segment way to market, is it not?

Yes, another post about Twitter!

Hitwise report that Twitter has caught up with Digg, helped in no small part to the wide publicity about the first pictures of the Miracle of the Hudson being posted on the micro-blogging, social networking site ahead of the newswires.

Full report from Heather Dougherty / Hitwise

Following the article wrote by Jenny on social networks “You sure you want your whole social network to read that?!”, I am just going to relate on the story that created a big buzz all over France about this French journalist who revealed the all about the life of a random French Facebook user thanks to the information he got through the different social networks this person was on and so…to conclude, in exposing his daily life in public.

His holidays, his friends, his job…The newspaper “Le Tigre” has published all the possible information that he published himself online.

The very first concept was really simple – create the newspaper portrait of a random internet user thanks to the information that he found on the online social media platforms (Copains d’avant, Facebook, Flickr…)

And this is how the journalist Raphael Meltz starts his article, straight to the point: “You are the unlucky one to be the first Google portrait from “the Tigre” experience”.

In this long article (that you can find on the Le Tigre website – only in French unfortunately but will probably think of translating it), one learns that “Marc L” (this is how he is called on all his networks) is an architect, where he has been on holiday (Bombay, Montreal..), who are his last lovers (Laura, Sandy) and his passions.  There are even some notes about the place where he works (the big boss is not going to be happy!).  In short, we know almost everything about his private life – or shall I just say public life.

Marc L detailed how devastated he was by the article. He claimed:  “I can’t sleep anymore. I am really annoyed with the journalists. All the information that I published online was for the people who surround me. I’m really feeling bad and have a lot of troubles sleeping. Besides being myself concerned by the story, I feel also really annoyed for all the people who are part of my contacts and whose the identities have also been revealed – mostly with regards to my personal love life…”

Pretty natural, as we learnt from the article that Marc loves women with “small boobs, short hair and nice long legs”…

Nevertheless, Marc L recognised himself the mistake of having created his own Big Brother space through the web and will surely keep an eye now on what personal information he will be sharing on the web.  Probably the most positive side of the story is that more people are informed now of the danger of exposing too much their lives.

He added however having this big regret: “I would rather not have been the one picked.” …Obviously!!! Who would like this happening to them?

That is just leading me to think twice again about the phenomenon of social networks, for which we are all the specimens in the laboratory…

Millions of people around the globe use these tools everyday without realising that someone is probably following your every move and could actually – and as this article proves – destroy your life!

Don’t smile – you could be the next victim!

Risks of confusion between public and private life on the web?  Le Tigre has underlined the seriousness of this issue.

However, while writing the article in the form of a friendly letter (“Hey Marc, you’re all right? You don’t know me it is true, but me I know you really well!”), the journalist exposes in a provocative way how any user can be the target of cyber-criminals that can easy find out where you leave, with who you go out…etc. and use that information to commit crimes.

I will end with a simple question: When will the internet be controlled and measures will be taken to protect the privacy of individuals?

I’ve known about Twitter for a couple of months now, but just decided to sign up a few days ago now to understand the all madness around this new social network… I do think the tool can be amazing – to “twitt “about things of interest to me and to engage with people who are saying and doing things that I do and enjoy -  and so create proper relationship and network with it. However, when I went to play around more closely and come across the such examples (see below) I can’t stop thinking what all those people are on about?

·         “My unplugged printer just came to life..spooky”

·         “Love spring. Hate allergies. This sucks”

·         “I have a ghost in my database”

·         “I think the IT guy might kill someone, this is great. His job really isn’t that stressful”

·         “Might cry. Or kill someone”

·         “What’s this smell”

What are the benefits to know that some stranger will probably kill someone by the end of the day or someone is going to the toilets in a minute or…

Well, I should probably let you watch this video on Youtube untitled “Twitter Madness” that sums up really nicely and artistically the whole addiction around it…

Twitter Madness Video

Well well, so far, I keep thinking positively and try to consider twitter as the new way to let off steam in everyone’s daily routine or as Jason Lee Miller describes it incredibly well “as a weird Twitter nirvana” where the crowd’s thoughts are simply indefinable!

Please share your thoughts about the twitter Madness!

Shameless plug…

WebCertain hosted two very successful International Search Summits in London last year and March will see the first event being held in Norway.

More details of the event can be found on our international news site NewsCertain, or go directly to http://www.internationalsearchsummit.no/ (site is in English).

It should be a really good conference, especially with the presence of one of the most entertaining speakers on the circuit; Kristjan Mar Hauksson of Nordic eMarketing.

The SEO-PR-Tips team regret that they won’t be attending this one (although we will have our spies there) – we’re saving ourselves for the next London International Search Summt in May – that event will focus on Social Media.

The final line-ups are yet to be announced, but (strictly on the hush hush you understand) we have heard some interesting names.  One thing that is very likely to be discussed is a follow up on the international Facebook research that WebCertain has been carrying out with Ann Kennedy.  We’ll let you know more when we know more…

For quite some time now we’ve been running multilingual PR campaigns and that has meant working with people from all around the world – we’ve been on a pretty steep learning curve.

I’m in the process of putting together some training documents for the multilingual WebCertain taskforce – it isn’t easy…

Although press wire services exist with a pretty standard format in most countries, I’ve come across lots of little, unexpected differences. For example, in Germany the fashion is for press releases with a short headline followed by a short strapline and in China and Korea, personal blogs are used quite differently.

Also, at some point in a PR campaign, you are going to have to communicate with a human being…

Now in the UK, we are happy to send an email with a simple “Hi” to the addressee. Not so in France. that would be insultingly bald. French business-speak is incredibly polite and it reminds me of when Laure was preparing to start at the company. I’d sent her a welcome email (“Hi Laure”) thinking I was being nice and friendly, but unwittingly caused great consternation to her as she debated back and forth how to address her reply to me. Was I a Madame or a Mademoiselle? She didn’t want to offend her new “chief”.

So, such a very simple issue can make the difference between making a new friend or enemy (or a story hitting the front page, or being spiked). What’s our advice?

• Always (always) use a native speaker with experience of the local market – and listen to their advice
• Never think you can cut corners by following an English / UK pro forma of communication
• Get a name for your contact (that is very old advice)
• Good luck!