Published by Jenny on 03 Jun 2009
Do you have blocked or runny nose? Are your eyes itchy and uncomfortable? If so, you are probably one of 40 million* people in the UK suffering from hayfever and the summer months are the most uncomfortable for sufferers.
* Figure plucked out of the air for purely illustrative purposes
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 18 May 2009
The opportunities and threats of marketing through Twitter
At the Social Media International Search Summit hosted by WebCertain in London on Thursday 14 May, I gave a presentation on the use of Twitter as a marketing tool. Twitter is definitely a “marmite” concept – it divides people. There are some who have embraced it with almost religious zeal and it provokes red-faced rage in others.
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 Janine on 22 Apr 2009
The use of social networking and blogging is growing increasingly popular every day, with more and more people looking to find reviews and true product knowledge on all topics. From finding what a specific holiday destination is truly like from real life experience of a blogger, to using Twitter for recommendations of restaurants and cafes in a certain city. The use of online networking has escalated to new heights, in a positive way; this will continue to rise in the future.
Blogs and forums are used to promote products / services and to inform people about issues which you may need to research about a product, or for example, DIY to give you up-to-date information. Many people use forums to get information they need, not necessarily to join one. News stories from bloggers aren’t always dependable, although many people do find blogs for product reviews.
Social media is also advantageous in real life experiences, i.e. following selected people on Twitter can be beneficial, as Jenny, our online news and PR manager discovered. Also, the news on the Hudson Plane crash posted on Twitter was passed around the world faster than any of the media coverage on satellite or cable TV.
With social networking you tend to build your own portfolio and web presence, creating links to people you know or people who may be of interest to you, generating a network, whether personal or professional.
Blogging is all about giving your opinion on a subject and can be more educational, unless you have your own site you’re not going to be building a web presence. Blogging can go from giving your opinion on a subject matter to reviews of products or services.
Both blogging and social networking are very different, yet can offer the similar routes to problem solving and product knowledge, getting you the information you need.
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 Jenny on 03 Apr 2009
While Twitter membership rapidly grows and endless column inches a day are devoted to the phenomenon, marketers have been scratching their heads about the best way to use this new tool.
The obvious appeal is the ability to immediately reach out and create two-way communication with a wide audience, giving you the opportunity to sell yourself – and to handle customer service / reputation management issues.
The concern so far as Twitter is still largely populated by early adopters and members of the web marketing community – can you communicate with the right people?
Here’s a little anecdote to illustrate the marketing potential of Twitter.
My colleague (@davidsegal) has a friend who works for Sarah Coggles (@coggles_com) – an independent fashion retailer.
We have another colleague in our London office (@ballueder) who maintains a personal blog, posting pertinent and sometimes esoteric content. This content is sometimes included in his Twitter posts.
We noticed that @coggles_com had linked to something @ballueder had posted – probably completely coincidentally, but this led to me tofollow @coggles_com and take a look at some of the clothes on their site.
I found a dress that I love and cheekily asked for a discount as a Twitter follower – which I have been given!
The end result is that I am seriously tempted to ignore the credit crunch and splash out on a new dress – all because of Twitter…
More info to add to my presentation on the opportunities and threats of marketing through Twitter that I’m giving at the International Search Summit later this year.
Published by Jenny on 19 Mar 2009
Getting quite excited here as the plans for the WebCertain International Search Summit on Social Media are really coming together…
There will be speakers from Plaxo, Bebo and LinkedIn.
Also, yours truly will be talking about the threats and opportunities of marketing through Twitter. That’s a huge topic and there’s no shortage of information and opinions out there – the challenge is sifting through it.
Take a look at the full social media search summit programme
