Press Hits

Our core tool is the “Press Hits,” blog, which we create for clients to document, in a blog, the customer’s media mentions. The posts cascade down the page, images popping out, to showcase the customer’s landings in the blogosphere and the media that are relevant to the customer’s marketing and sales efforts. It serves as a report and a sales tool. We recently heard from a client who used the Press Hits blog we developed to land a distribution deal with one of the largest sporting apparel companies in the U.S. market.

Brand Tracking

To create the Press Hits blogs, you need to first discover mentions of the company in the blogosphere, in the news and in print publications as well. We program aggregators that search across the Web for mentions of the customer. Those results come back into an auto-updated page that we mine for links. We then search for language to use with tags and additional research. The optimization process is done through our research, which tunes the network and gives the application long-term benefits for better serving customers.

Update Workflows

Posting to multiple social network accounts is a chore. Update Workflows automates sending images to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Tumbr and multiple other services. We build these services to automate the update workflow that you need when updating social networks with images. It’s designed for executives, athletes and popular personalities but can also be integrated into more complex workflows where updating with images plays a functional role.

The tools we develop leverage the social Web. We continually are developing new ways to use the social Web for our clients.

• Why should I use Twitter?
• Who should I follow?
• What should I tweet about?
• How do I have conversations on Twitter?
• How do I get others to follow me?
• How do I share photography on Twitter?
• How do I make money as a photographer on Twitter?

The white paper bundles the answers to these questions together in one easy to read format that provides a nice Twitter primer for photographers.  The blog also has a great post about how photographers can utilize social media.

Here is a link to the PDF report

What is this new press release format?

Bullet-points. A simple bulleted list of who, what, when, where, why and how (yes- those same techniques we learned in school, now with a twist).

The reason?

She said that each day journalists get so many press releases all they do is scan them and the easiest way to do that is with bullet-points. So often times, PR companies go to great lengths to get quotes and write lavish press releases. In reality, journalists rewrite the story and most newspapers require their journalists to get their own quote for the story.

So, if you insist on using the standard press release format, try writing simple bulleted list of the “5 Ws” before the rest of the release to help the journalist scan and then continue reading if they choose.

Remember, you want to make their life as easy as possible!

If you look at the top 10 issues facing companies looking to enter the social media space, you will see that ‘lack of social media literacy among workers’ (i.e. lack of social skills) is a top concern.  As a company you must answer a number of questions when putting together your social media strategy.  Do not fear though, there is a database of social media policies that other companies have already created.  Have a look and get started on creating your company’s own social media policy!

Once you have your WordPress blog installed, you need to log in to the WordPress administration area from where you can write posts and articles, manage comments, change your theme, etc. To log in the WP admin panel, navigate to the WP login page or directly type the URL in your browser:

http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/

Writing a post in WordPress

Writing posts and pages is the core activity in WP. You can start your editorial experience by clicking the Add New button located in the Posts menu:

You can proceed with entering the desired content. Once you are ready, the new post can be published just by clicking the Publish button.

You are developing a blog network. You’ve taught a group of young, eager professionals how to follow conversations; engaging your blogger of choice. You have provided some tools they can use to follow discussions on Twitter.

The person in charge of the project wants results. You know the network is just off the ground and a series of successes are coming fast. You talked with the boss. He seems to be getting it but there are bands of people in your organization and its extended community who knows little about content management systems and almost zero knowledge about WordPress. They want to understand Twitter and the social networks but even more they want success.

What opportunity you find depends on how much you can look at the situation from their point of view. How basic you need to be is a question mark but you can assume their baseline knowledge is very thin.

Your boss says he wants a breakdown, a “Social Media For Dummies,” exercise that will help people start feeling like they can help with the success of the project.

Now you see a small window for getting people to participate. You know the boss has a lot more influence in the company than you. You can now work together and build the foundation of a community that is working together to do the blog and social network outreach.

Your goal should be really simple. Just help someone catch one fish. It’s that feeling of a nibble that will get some of them really into using social web applications.

Simple truth: You want the boss to help spread the word. You want him to tell people in the community what to do. In the process, your boss will look good, the community will learn a bit more about the social media tools you use and perhaps take a small step toward using the technologies themselves. Even more, it will help get some people to check out all the hard work you have done.

So, here are some basic ways to get started. Remember, keep it simple.

• All you want the boss to do is tell the community to spread the word by sending emails to their friends and colleagues.
• Write a letter for your boss that will go to the community. Tell people exactly how you want them to spread the word
• Include a form email the recipients may send to their friends with all the basic information about how to spread the word
• Provide ways you can see how the campaign did. For instance, shorten the link to your blog using bit.ly. The service will track the link, giving you an idea of how the outreach is working
• Be clear about how you want the boss to tell people about Twitter.  The email should ask people if they have  a Twitter account. Include a link to the Twitter registration page.  The email should state that the recipient’s community should follow Twitter account you provide
• Use a signature when emailing or posting on forums. Most forums and email programs allow you to setup what is called a signature. This is information that is automatically added at the end of every post or message. Here you can add a link to the website you are promoting and maybe a tag line in your signature.
• Follow the same method for your other social networks: YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn and anywhere else where you have a presence

Forget the social media jargon. Just ask people to spread the word.

Key Elements of Online PR:
• Start sentences with keywords,
• Start and end blocks of copy with keywords
• Break quotes into 2 parts. (NOTE: Quotes on PRWeb will become callouts, so make them strong and memorable).
• 350-750 words total.
• Link to different pages within your site.
• Use credible references
• Be factual. No BS. Interesting facts are best.
• Don’t SELL! Share without hype. Hype is the bane of PR.
• Make it engaging, Do it regularly (2-4 times a month).
• Remember images, attachments, references (w/keywords)

All of this information in PDF form:WeClik-Perfect_Online_Press_Release