Published by Janine on 08 Oct 2009
We all know Ryanair are famous for their Irish charm, cheap flights and lets say, ‘cheap stunts’ to get media attention. Well the latest news from camp Ryanair is that they are going to let passengers smoke on their flights.
Published by Janine on 29 Sep 2009
A quick shout out to our colleague, Ana Valezzi Leckenby who is taking part in a Social Media workshop at the Search Congress in Valencia.
Published by Janine on 29 Sep 2009
As social media is playing a more active part in many organisations, WebCertain MD, Andy Atkins-Kruger decided to hold a Twitter Training session, the idea being to maximise website traffic and to enhance company engagement with their audience. After all, social media is a cost-effective marketing solution with real time search benefits.
Published by Janine on 10 Aug 2009
When I read this article http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/traveltips/08/06/travel.social.media/index.html from cnn.com I was thinking about how popular Twitter and Facebook are, how they have developed over the years and how we all use them to micro-blog about what is happening around us.
Published by Jenny on 19 May 2009
Just look at that tag cloud…
When my then-colleague, Mademoiselle Mondon and I started this blog last year, Twitter was just one of the crowd of social networking sites that we paid cursory attention to.
Published by Jenny on 14 May 2009
The fourth International Search Summit hosted by WebCertain is taking place at the moment. This conference is focussed on Social Media. Whether you weren’t able to attend, or just want a reminder of what was said – here’s an overview…
Also follow #isslon on Twitter for live updates.
Published by Jenny on 01 May 2009
These tips are all about making sure a news release has the most impact on the search engines.
The general PR principles of having a strong, original and appealing story still apply and should never be discarded, but there are some tricks you can use to get great SERPs for your news stories.
1. Research the keywords that you want the press release to rank for and use those repeatedly (not repeating yourself too much though!) throughout the press release.
A starting point here is using either the plural or the singular of your key search terms and using the company name in full whenever appropriate.
For example “Spain holidays” v “Spain holiday”. An online press release is typically around 400 words long, so there are lots of options! Realistically, you will probably have the opportunity to place approximately 5 key search terms prominently in your release.
2. Write your press release in the format that most online wire services use and prepare all the information you will need – this will save you a lot of time when publishing.
This format is: Headline, introduction / summary, main body content, About the company, company contact details (including postal address), keywords / tags.
Don’t forget to include the full url for the site you are publicising…
3. We find it helps to produce text and html versions of the press releases we distribute in advance. Having the code already prepared saves a great deal of time when publishing. A neatly presented word document with hi-res images is the format we use when sending to individual editors.
4. Bear in mind that your headline is the most important part of the press release, as sometimes it will be picked up on newsfeeds and can be the only part of your release that is indexed by search engines. It will also appear in the all-important h1 and h2 tags…
Therefore try to get your most important information in the headline – including the name of the company you are promoting.
5. Where to publish your press release? There are 100s of excellent press wires around the world allowing publishing for free, quite cheaply, or very expensively. We constantly review our resources and their value to us goes up and down all the time.
The ideal press wire –
a. Gets indexed in Google News
b. Allows hyperlinks
c. Has a good reputation
d. Has press contacts / high visitor volume / good RSS feed set-up
6. We recommend producing different versions of the release (or at least, the important early sections of the story) as this allows more prominence for results when mass-distributing.
7. It is recommended that you make your usual approaches to journalists well before commencing on your online PR campaign. Approaching a journalist with a story that has already been published will not go down very well.
8. Include images, research shows that our eyes are drawn to images that appear in search listings. Don’t forget to put links on your images where you can and include optimised alt-tags.
9. If you regularly distribute press releases for the same company, try using different images each time you publish a release. Instead of always using the company logo, use a stock image that reflects what you are talking about. For example, people using computers.
10. Use social networking sites to spread your story further, especially if your content is strong enough to have a viral appeal.
WebCertain has its very own unique international press release publishing service, currently operating in 25 countries – www.newscertainnetwork.com .
Our Arabic and Hebrew news sites are currently under development, along with a number of other international news sites.
Contact us to find out how you can make the most of our search engine friendly, multilingual news publishing service.
Published by Jenny on 21 Apr 2009
Although this blog is dedicated to sharing positive, cheery advice on how to get on in the online PR field, the first thing that anyone in communications needs to learn is think about what you’ve written before you press ’send’!
One hapless PR (not that she deserves any sympathy) has discovered the troubles that can be caused by a thoughtless pun – especially when bloggers and tweeters can make a mistake big news in minutes.
The excellent Lost in Showbiz blog (not connected to the Guardian blog as far as I know) keeps us all our toes, correctly highlighting the pretentiousness, deceit and general, unconvincing uselessness of many press releases.
They’ve got a humdinger today. Once of the most thoughtless headlines imaginable has destroyed a harmless release about a supposed poll on the best war films of all time.
Here’s the intro, can you spot the obvious error?
From: libby@swns.com [mailto:libby@swns.com]
Sent: 21 April 2009 10:51
To: NationalNews
Subject: SCHINDLER’S LIST IS GREATEST WAR MOVIEWOULD JEW BELIEVE IT
NEWS COPY
Schindler’s List was yesterday (Tue) named the greatest war movie of all time.
Read more at Lost in Showbiz
Thanks to Twitter and other social networking sites, this story is flying around quicker than you can say “viral marketing”.
Do share more howlers here, or at our Global Social forums - and chat about it on Twitter…
Published by Janine on 17 Apr 2009
Internet PR and Marketing investment continually rises, while offline spend is in decline, marketers are continually looking for new methods and approaches to suit business needs. The current climate of the economy has forced many companies to re-strategise in many areas, where spend is minimalistic and productivity potentially maximised.
With virtual social networking taking the world by storm it’s no wonder marketers have already jumped on the band wagon promoting their businesses and colleagues, for example, the use of Twitter has totally entranced our colleagues here @ WebCertain, follow: @globalppc @starbuck8 @jennysimpson @davidsegal @davidecorradi @ballueder @WebCertain @J__9 @YorkSEO @globalseo @andyatkinskruge @seoprtips @newscertain @WebCertain_DE @AnaVLeckenby @oscarcarreras, for updated information on specialised areas of multilingual search!
Promoting the latest international search summit, general information about PR, SEO, link building, PPC etc… has developed a wider knowledge on each subject, by sharing and re-tweeting relevant data to enhance the specialised knowledge arena WebCertain hold.
Many businesses and organisations are using online facilities and companies such as WebCertain not only for English articles, as we are multilingual; multiple languages from across the globe play a large part in how they operate, especially for clients. Online PR is a great way of getting your company, news / press releases / data, relayed around the world, especially using press release sites with an overseas domain, rather than the traditional offline methods. This however, does vary upon client needs; everyone wants something different and to be unique, so be adaptable and knowledgeable on your subject arena to create the best possible service for your company and your clients!
Published by Janine on 18 Mar 2009
Social media is a concept 2 years ago I wasn’t really interested in, I knew it existed, yet I didn’t really know anything about it and I didn’t really want to. I reluctantly joined Facebook to view my friends photo’s from her travels around the globe, and then got hooked! Over those 2 years in which I have been interested in social media, I think it has been catapulted into the limelight (from my perspective anyway, you may disagree), and now there is no escaping it!
The development of design, content, links, networking and media coverage of social media has improved enormously, it’s well documented and new innovations are continually being introduced. Social networking is a phenomenon I never thought I would get into, never mind checking my profile and searching for friends regularly, this was more so when I first signed up.
Online profiling on such networking sites as, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter or any type of blogging sites will enhance and develop your profile across the web, depending of course on your privacy settings. Content quality and use of keywords all effects how you rank in search engines, such as Google.
The following selection of tips may enhance your visibility and optimization…
1. Include good quality content
2. Utilise any links to other sites you blog on etc
3. Update your blog / social networking site regularly
4. Use keywords to enhance ranking capabilities.
Over the past few months my colleagues have been talking about Twitter, I didn’t really want to join another social network, (having one I thought was enough work for me), and a couple of months ago I decided I had had enough and finally gave in.
I cannot begin to tell you how much I have benefited from joining Twitter – from a work/industry perspective anyway. As I mentioned in an earlier entry I am fairly new to the world of PR and SEO, following people on Twitter who have much experience and sharing links / articles on related topics has helped me immensely.
I often find with social networking some can people become obsessed over it, depending on whether it’s used for social or business purposes…. Is it ok to be obsessed with it? What do you think? Am I alone with this perspective? And have you tried typing your name in Google to see where / if you rank?