I have only been on a Facebook for a year or so. I mainly use it to keep in touch with personal connections, and rarely use it for professional reasons. I believe that the “casual” aspect of Facebook does make it more difficult for business-to-business companies to leverage the full potential, with early success for consumer related companies.

 With that said, I do see the potential of Facebook from a PR perspective:

Fan Club or Group?: Before setting up a group, you have the option of designating it as a group or fan club. Groups have membership limits while fans clubs don’t. It’s a small distinction but quite important depending on the size of the community you’re seeking to tap into.

Before setting up a fan club/group, consider these two points first:

1) Research what groups/clubs already exist in your area. Does it make sense to set up another page if there are hundreds of similar ones out there?

2) Participate in existing groups/clubs to network with people in your target audience. By “friending” these folks, you’re able to pull in your existing network if you do decide to launch your own group or fan club. 

Share and Share Alike: With Facebook’s “share” function, you can provide a steady stream of company updates and information to your friend network. For example, my company recently received media coverage in Forbes and San Jose Mercury News. I shared this news to my connections.

I recommend sharing information that is relevant to your industry. Since you can add a comment, this helps to position your company as an expert on a specific topic. And is much quicker than drafting a blog post from scratch =)

In the end, you never know what information will catch a reporter/blogger’s eye for a possible article or posting.

Friending Reporters and Bloggers: If a reporter or blogger has agreed to be friends with you, the implication is that you’ve created or have an existing personal relationship. Depending on your level of “friendship,” you can send pitches via Facebook’s internal email system, which may break through the noise of emails. Just confirm that the person prefers to receive pitches this way. He or she may want to keep Facebook on a personal level while want “business” correspondence to be received in another format.

While I have not personally done this yet, I would just recommend being very careful of how and when you do this. As I wrote recently about HARO spam, the purpose of these tools is to create connections, not harvest emails and contact information. By doing so breaks the trust you’ve created.

Promote Events: Facebook enables people to send out event invitations to your friends. Great way to promote attendance for live events or webinars. Be sure not to over promote an event with multiple reminders.

Applications: As an open platform, Facebook offers different types of applications. These applications range from the silly – sending a beer – to useful – free VoIP phone calls or Twitter updates. For me, I’ve added the Twitter app to tie all my external personalities into Facebook. Determine which apps to incorporate based on the types of information your generating and which are appropriate for your company.

Some have even created complimentary applications within Facebook which have become wildly popular. As long as it’s relevant to your Facebook audience, is easy to use and understand and is relevant to your business, apps can be one way to get your business to your target audience.

Face Book Case Study:

I was seeking B2B examples of using Facebook and couldn’t find any Mike Nierengarten of (company?) did forward me this description of how they leveraged Facebook to drive students to an online animation school (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Animation-Mentor-Online-Animation-School/14719464771):

Animation Mentor, an online animation school, is perfect for Facebook because it has tons of great content (video, events, pictures), a strong (current) student presence on the site, and our target customers (potential students) use the site regularly.

For Animation Mentor, we set up a profile to connect with current students. From there, we added a Facebook page and rolled those students into fans. We then created a Prospective Animation Mentor Student group for individuals who were interested in the school to connect and share thoughts. Finally, we promoted the page off of Facebook using an Animation blog.  

Results: Facebook page ranks for targeted keywords on Google (e.g. #23 for “animation school”, #9 for “character animation”), we have over 700 fans with a mix of currents students and interested students interacting online, and we have an area for prospective students to address their concerns and interact directly with someone from the school in their space. We have also seen a near 3% conversion rate (i.e. complete an application) from the Facebook page.

Summary: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

I posted my question on Twitter and LinkedIn. I decided not to ask my Facebook network as my previous questions have received no answers. I overwhelmingly received more responses via LinkedIn. Why?

Twitter seems to elicit a lot of responses depending on the interest of your audience to that question and what other conversations are happening at the time. With the cacophony of voices, it’s very difficult, at least for me, to pose a question that elicits response. I did when I discussed the role of PR agencies but not for this question.

For LinkedIn, people are leveraging it as a business networking tool. The Q&A section is a great way to demonstrate your expertise in a specific topic, as I outlined in my previous post.

I think Lewis Green of BizSolutionsPlus said it best in his response: “I think LinkedIn and Plaxo Pulse are better social networking sites for non-invasive marketing and PR, which is the only way we should be promoting our brands within the social networking and social media worlds. We should be giving, not making an effort to get. That’s why providing free information, such as this Q&A offers us a chance to do so.”

Initial Conclusions

1) LinkedIn great for professional networking and developing expertise with LinkedIn Answers

2) Twitter great for quick updates and breaking information to your company

3) Facebook is like a mini-site that has a social networking component. You need a wealth of relevant information to feed into the pages, while actively working to develop and maintain a community.

Other posts in the “Brave New World of Media Pitching” series:

- Brave New World of Media Pitching: LinkedIn
- Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter
- Read LinkedIn responses to “How do you use Facebook for PR?”

UPDATE: Forgot to thank everyone who responded: Mike Nierengarten, Lewis Green, G. Niki Foust, Andrew Miller, Thomas Ahonen, Joyce Schwarz, Jocelyn Brandeis, Alysha Cryer, Dylan Conroy

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

The Weekly Article summary was missing everyone so I decided to let him come back to roost at PR Meets Marketing =) Instead of trying to do a weekly digest, I’m morphing this into links that catch my attention.

You can still click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed to receive my irregular insights on articles that may be of interest to you. If you feel that you have a post that would interest me or people who read this blog (the poor souls =), leave a comment and I’ll check it out.

So here are recent links for your reading pleasure:

Getting Back at Stalkers: This article caught my eye for how a community took on a harasser by using Plurk. I haven’t used Plurk yet, but seems interesting. Leigh did raise an issue about what could happen with a mob mentality before all the facts are gathered.

Hot or Not Viral Videos: B.L Ochman highlighted what is takes to make a true viral video campaign work by showing what didn’t and did.

Bloggers Who Like Journalists Who Like Bloggers: Toby of Diva Marketing Blog did an interesting, albeit unscientific, “pulse check” about bloggers and if they are journalists.

And oddly enough, I’ve seen hits to my post, “Off Topic: Beijing Olympics Torch Relay,” jump as we near the Olympics. Seems like it’s showing up for searches on Beijing Olympics and Olympics.

technorati tags: Beijing Olympics Viral Videos Plurk Bloggers Public relations Social Media Weekly Articles
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All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

Help A Reporter Out

Help A Report Out (or Haro).com is a free version of Profnet. Started by Peter Shankman, this great service is growing greatly based on word of mouth. Frankly, if it’s free and a way to pitch stories to journalists, us PR folks are on it faster than flies on shit.

So it saddened me when I saw this in a recent Haro newsletter:

This morning, I got a pitch (as did MANY of my key journalists on HARO) about the rumor that Matthew Broderick cheated on Sarah Jessica Parker, and offering me a celebrity life coach to talk about it. Within five minutes, I got emails from about 10 journalists, all asking why got the same email, as well. See, most journalists on HARO use specific HARO addresses. So they know where the pitch was coming from. Totally off-topic, totally inappropriate, totally unacceptable.

Alas, Nancy Mure, Chris Burres, and the rest of WOW Media will no longer be allowed on the HARO list. I won’t sit here and let reporters get totally off topic pitches from publicists who simply don’t get it, or worse, don’t care. I don’t care that other lists don’t care that you spam journalists. This is MY list. Don’t like it? See ya.

Please folks, let’s not kill a good thing by using this fabulous service to harvest emails. Granted, there are too many people who consider them “public relations professionals” because all it requires is an email address and the ability to type.  I’m glad that Peter swiftly took them off his list.  Hopefully this deters other folks from doing it, but why do I think this won’t be the first or last instance of this.

Sigh, maybe I can wish?

Related post:

PR Spam: Ten Points for Thought

Front of the House

My husband and I just moved and are seeking to rent out our Alameda house. UPDATE: We’ve rented the house. Thanks everyone!

While it’s a beautiful home, it was too good of a time to purchase another one! Here are the details.

2 bedroom + Bonus room, 1 bathroom Bungalow style home, $2200 per month.

Open house will be held on Saturday, June 26, 2008 from 11 am - 1 pm. Other viewings available via appointment. Available immediately. Address is 1713 9th Street, Alameda, CA 94501. Please do not disturb neighbors.

 Here are the details:

1. 2 bedrooms upstairs with 1 bonus room downstairs
2. 1 car garage with driveway that can hold up to 2 more cars tandem
3. Wood burning fireplace.
4. New landscaping, exterior painting, Central Heating, and Windows.
5. Plenty of storage space with half basement
6. Close to O and W Transbay bus lines (about 20 minute ride to San Francisco), 51 bus to Oakland for BART connection, 880 Freeways and Ferry building (about 10 minutes by car)
7. Washington Elementary School is a few blocks away with beach and park nearby (less than 5 minutes away by car)
8. More photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11740228@N05/.
9. Email for application (each person over 18 years old must complete an application) or call 415-608-0302 for more information.
10. No Section 8.
11. 1 year lease then month to month. $5000 to move in ($2200 1st month’s rent and $2800 security) with no fees.
    

View of the backyard with lemon tree

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

I was tagged by Larissa Fair of Livingston Buzz for a meme on how to beat the summer blogging slump.  It’s been crazy busy at work but here’s my responses to Larissa:

4 things you like about summer

• Warm, sunny days now that I live up in  North Bay. If you’ve ever been to San Francisco in the summer, you know what I mean.
• Lounging around on the deck with a drink in hand
• Being lazy with more sunlight to waste
• Napping, well, because it’s my hobby =)

4 of your favorite vacation destinations

• Hawaii, especially Maui where I got married
• Paris when it’s just rained and it smells so fresh outside
• Kaoshiung, Taiwan - it’s the southern most part of the island that is gorgeous
• Wine country - it’s so close to the Bay Area, you can take a quick 1 or 2 day trip to get away

4 of your favorite summer foods

• Corn on the cob, especially when it sticks in your teeth
• Frest watermelon on a warm summer’s night
• Margaritas. Need I say more?
• BBQs - anything on a grill just reminds me of summer

4 concerts not to miss (note, I’m not a big music person, so this list is incomplete)

• Stern Grove concert series - every Sunday, a new musical act comes into town for a concert
• KFOG Kaboom - thought not technically held in the summer, the annual May event says that summer is around the corner

4 things to avoid during the summer

• Working outside in the hot sun
• Bugs bits - they just love my blood
• Staying at work too long - need to balance work/life balance, right?
• Getting wrapped up in everything that needs to be done (prob with Type A’s =)

As I haven’t been able to see who’s been tagged for this meme, I apologize in advance if you’ve already participated. Julius Solaris, Chris Brogan, Cam Beck, and Teena Touch.

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

In late April, I wanted to start exploring different ways that we can now pitch media. Besides my page about how to pitch bloggers, I looked into the new way of pitching via Twitter in my post titled,”Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter.”  

Social networking is a new avenue for public relations professionals. From my perspective, LinkedIn has some interesting opportunities. Here’s my look at LinkedIn in the brave new world of media pitching:

Make Connections: LinkedIn’s core purpose is to make connections - either with people you know or people you want to know. If you’re seeking to connect with a journalist, you can request a “linkedin” connection to make an introduction. Rather than send a blind pitch to a reporter, what’s better than a friend making the pitch on your behalf?

Research Media: I was recently searching for a reporter to create a briefing sheet and found the reporter’s LinkedIn page. Doh! I can’t believe I didn’t consider this in the past. LinkedIn is rich with information about a person’s background. Leverage LinkedIn to research reporters - where did they work in the past, titles, and other pertinent information. This provides incredible insight before you pitch the reporter as well as to prep your spokespeople.

LinkedIn Answers: LinkedIn Answers provides an opportunty for PR to participate in or start a conversation on relevant topics. Certain topics can also show up high on a Google search, which helps if a reporter is searching on a specific topic. In the end, you never know how a reporter gets her inspiration for a story and if she needs sources.

What other ways are you using LinkedIn for media outreach?

UPDATE: Just saw this post by Lewis Green of BizSolutionsPlus regarding value of LinkedIn.

Other posts in the “Brave New World of Media Pitching” series:

Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter

technorati tags: LinkedIn Media Pitching PR Public Relations marketing media relations
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Disclosure: My company, ON24, just introduced a new solution today - ON24 Virtual Show.  I decided to take this occasion to write a larger post about the virtual events/tradeshows market. Please note, the opinions expressed in this post are my own and not a reflection of my company’s.

With that disclosure out of the way =) , virtual trade show/event is something that is just starting to be used by organizations. Just think about it, you don’t have to travel across the country to attend a show, set up the booth at the show, and stand for hours waiting for people to come by your booth. And hopefully, at the end of the show, you have quality sales leads, connected with possible business partners, or even run into key media in your industry.

With an online version, the thought is that organizations will minimize tangible (i.e. travel, hotel, food, materials) and intangible costs (i.e. environmental and productivity), while providing all the benefits - if not more. You can still connect with people through online chats or emails, get the materials you want, and attend keynotes and presentations. From a marketer’s perspective, hopefully you spend less money with better results. And you don’t have to break down the booth either! 

I recently read some stats in a report by FactPoint Group that stated that virtual events/shows can attract an average of of 1500+ people, who spend about 2+ hours in the show. In my company’s webcast research last year, we found that one webinar/webcast attracts an average of over 300 attendees per webcast, who spent about 45 minutes watching the content.

When you look at these two pieces of information, this provides a compelling reason for organizations to consider online conferences.

Click the image to play video:

What do you think? Would a virtual event appeal to you as a marketer or participant? Why or why not?

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

OK - I had to put up this quick post. I’m so happy! Check out the article titled, “Kill the Business Trip” by Sramana Mitra. As I told one friend, it’s like birthing a baby!

Let me know what you think!

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

I’ve been in public relations for over 10 years. But it wasn’t until I went in-house in late 2005 that I even heard these three letters: S – E – O. Huh? Search engine optimization, what’s that?

Little did I know how important this was. Without the magic of SEO, people wouldn’t be able to find you on the ever-powerful Google and other search engines. And PR’s role is more important than we realize.

When executed well, public relations can positively impact the SEO of your company. I previously wrote a posting about how to “SEO Your Press Release.” In this post, I want to expand on my original post to discuss how PR can play a more conscious role in SEO, whether a press release, blog posting, case study, white paper and more.

Before going into my seven six tips, I think it’s important to highlight the concept of Page Rank. Simply put, it’s a measurement that seeks to determine the value of that page based on content and the number of inbound links to that page. Google PageRank uses a scale of 1-10 to rank pages. The higher the number, the better you page “ranks” according to Google. Typically, a 5-7 ranking is good.

Now here are my top tips for optimizing your PR efforts.

Keywords: I’ve been guilty of this. I’m more enamored with the eloquence of my writing versus the practicality of selecting the right words that 1) people search on and 2) will increase my company’s visibility in search engines.  I’ve now started using tools like Wordtracker,Google Adwords Keyword Tool and more to determine what key phrases/keywords are more strategic for what I’m writing.

When I’ve identified my key words, I strategically use the words in the headers and first paragraph of what you’re writing. Also provide the web master with these keywords. He/she can create meta tags for the page, which further helps the search engine spiders to read the content on the web page. Try to keep the list to about 10-15 max.

Newswire Capabilities: Consider what features your current newswire support. Since inbound links from external sources are important, can you embed links into your release? If so, how many?

Typically, you don’t want too many links as this can be viewed negatively. Also, hyperlink your key phrases or words that you’ve researched. This will associate the link with those words, helping from an organic search perspective. Since news wire distributes the press release to various online publications, the affect is that multiple websites are linking back to your site.

From a social media perspective, can you tag keywords to your release or submit it to popular ranking sites, such as digg, delicious, reddit and others?

I would recommend reading these articles that dig deeper into the various newswires and their social media street cred:

PR Web Takes The ‘Social’ Out of Social Media

Untangling Claims About Wires Services & Social Media

Social Media Release in Action

Creating URLs: When you’re done writing the press release, case study or other writing assignment, don’t ignore making suggestions on the URL where that content will live. Using my company’s experience, our press releases used to be a generic system to help our webmaster find the documents. Since URLs can contribute to SEO, we were wasting valuable real estate. Now, I provide my webmaster with a specific URL that leverages a keyword and our company name, while providing a structure to easily find this page in the future.

Title Page: Like the URL, naming the web page is prime real estate. Provide a 7-8 word descriptive title that also leverages your keywords (see image for this post).

Bookmarking: Since search engines look at the number of inbound links, submitting links to your press releases and other content to third party websites may benefit your company. I define bookmarking as any place where you can proactively submit or add a link to content on your website. This would include Facebook, Twitter, digg, delicious, reddit and other social tagging sites.

This is probably on the edge of PR vs. marketing, but I believe that PR should be aware of this as part of their arsenal. Furthermore, Tom Pick of WebMarketCentral did a great series looking at the different social tagging sites out there. For me, I consistently submit content to 4-5 sites when I have new content.

WebMarketCentral Series:

Part 1: Alexa Rankings

Part 2: The Worst

Part 3: Specal-Purpose Sites

Part 4: B2B Traffic Building

Part 5: Tier 3 Sites

Part 6: Tier 2 Sites

Blog Posting/Commenting: Some PR agencies post and comment on behalf of clients. Though I am personally uncomfortable with this tactic, I realize that this happens. Whether you’re in-house or in an agency, the key is including links to pages that need increased visibility.

As I mentioned above, this means linking key phrases or words to create an association to your company. Another consideration is to include the page in the URL field when submitting a comment.

For example, my friend’s website works with expectant and new mothers. The home page has a good rank of 5, but the breast feeding page only has a rank of 1. My friend is active in the right newsgroups for her industry. I recommended that when she commented about breastfeeding, she should start linking back to the specific breastfeeding page vs. the home page.

Final Thoughts

It’s an exciting time to be in PR. The lines between PR and marketing continue to blur. PR is playing a larger role beyond brand awareness and visibility. PR now has the opportunity to demonstrate real value through increased SEO and web traffice, which in turn, increases potential sales leads.

Will you be ready?

Previous Articles Related to SEO

Search and Find – SEO Your Press Release

Seed Words Make Your PR Flower

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All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

HubSpot just announced the availability of PressRelease Grader. Based on the company’s Website Grader, the idea is to help companies optimize their releases for SEO purposes.  I think PressRelease Grader will be a good tool for marketers and public relations professionals seeking to optimize releases for SEO purposes.

You just cut and paste the content of your release and it evaluates it on several points: general statistics, suggestions for content, and link analysis. There’s also a word cloud highlighting which words are used most in the release.

Things I like about the application:

- Education level of the release: Depending on the audience for the release, you have to write the release accordingly. Looks like my releases are graduate level. Thankfully I’m not a consumer facing company otherwise, this would be an issue.

- Gobbledygook Words: Based on David Meerman Scott’s book, this tells if you if you’re overusing certain words. Unfortunately scalable and robust are words that I constantly use in press releases!

- Link Analysis: This portion analyzes the words and links in your release. It provides recommendations to make the links stronger for SEO.

Recommendations for the release grade:

- Glossary of terms: I recommend hyperlinking industry terms and pointing to a glossary or definition. Though I’m not new to SEO per se, there are some terms that I may not use on a daily basis.

 - URL to press release: I recognize that the tool is great for unpublished press releases. I would be interested in seeing an ability to put in an URL for a published release. This way, you can analyze additional points for the release, such as are the keywords, title and description consistent with the release.

I look forward to seeing how the Press Release Grader improves with feedback from fellow PR folks out there.

All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.