Experts on PR & Twitter

Can Public Relations 2.0 be summarized in 140 characters or less? Don’t let the character count lull you into complacency. To break through, today’s PR efforts must be powerful, targeted and social. This panel of social media and PR professionals will take you on a journey from mid-level public relations to advanced online PR and social promotions in no time.

Moderator: Krista Neher

Panel: Adam Singer, Account Manager, TopRank® Online Marketing, Sean Jackson, CEO/Creator, Ecordia, Lisa Buyer, President/CEO, The Buyer Group, Ben Fisher, President, TechPad Agency.

#PubCon @adamsinger @seanthinks @lisabuyer @techpadagency (@thesocialdude)

Looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones!

For more PubCon 2009 Las Vegas conference information, be sure to visit the Pubcon web site.

Every once in a while I am going to update this blog with my ups and downs for a given day, it is a good outlet.

Highs:

• Talked to Apple, Linda is a great person.
• Talked to Joshua Sloane about FTC rulings. (working on a piece about the FTC and Web Hosting)
• Talked to Brett at PubCon and secured a speaking spot.
• Had a good talk with my partner Dan about a few key issues.
• Played around with Twitter a bit, some marketing experiments

Lows:

• Got a email from Apple App Review saying they got my email from 2 weeks ago, sheesh been a month already.
• Had a PR meeting that was a bummer, again Apple is to blame lol.

I guess all in all it was a really good day, a few bummers but had some great chats and made some headway on potentially earning more business at PubCon 2009 Las Vegas.

If you are in Vegas for PubCon hit me up. And come see me speak about Experts on PR and Twitter: http://www.bit.ly/PubCon-TPA Tuesday November 10th at 2:55 PST.

If you want to head to PubCon, I highly recommend it if you are into Internet Marketing at all,  here is a coupon that will get you 10% off, “tp-29810″.

Visit www.PubCon.com for more info.

We had a designer create media kits for us that were all originally designed in In Design and then saved to PDF. Really beautiful work, BUT we could not edit them now that our employee is gone.

I ran into InFix today and downloaded the 30 day trial. All I can say is that it is a sweet piece of software. Opens my media kits easily, and I was able to edit my docs with no problem.

Note: For complete transparency, I am writing this review as a true testimonial, however I am applying for a free license here: http://www.iceni.com/infixLinkBack.htm

With the prevalence of social media spaces like Myspace.com, Facebook.com, Linkedin.com, Flickr.com etc, people have begun to realize that they can obtain a web presence and a “sharing space’ online without the need for web hosting.

Case in point, check the Google trends:

http://google.com/trends?q=web+hosting&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://google.com/trends?q=facebook&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://google.com/trends?q=blogger.com&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

You can see from these trends that what the consumer really needs is NOT web hosting in the traditional sense. Rather, they need a place on the internet to share their ideas, photos, business and personal interests. THAT is what they really need.  Users of a service like Facebook may, or may not, even think of their Facebook page as a website! All they know, is they are on the web and can be found on the web. They know they have a way to build this presence easily and to can connect with others.

If you are a consumer who has zero intention of making money with a web page or website, actually paying for a website or webhosting does not make as much sense as it used to. Web hosts would be smart to realize this. On the other hand, those who do have a business or commercial intent are more likely to be motivated to use a web hosting service. Why? Because of the perceived value: the ability to control look/feel/functionality of your site, increased technical features and importantly, the expectation of better support.

A lot of hosts are up against the wall when it comes to attracting non-commercial web hosting clients. Their response to the “social space” trend is to offer cheaper service (with the hope that someday a commercial intent will develop and upgrading will be needed) and more “add-ons” or value added, fee-based services.  These are mostly geared towards the non-techy, non-commercial site owner.  Such “widgetizing” of the web hosting industry will help hosts obtain new clients, but expectations in the consumer’s mind are still being set by their exposure to and experience with other social media services, as well as their experiences with other previous web hosts they have done business with.

So as a reminder to all web hosts…remember no one really NEEDS web hosting these days, and even less so if they do not have a commercial intent. What they DO need, is a way to build a presence and a way connect to the world. What they do need, is a partner, to help them expand their use of the web and to grow their imagination and realization about what is possible when you have a website. They need results. Everthing else is just a means to and end.

Some tips for hosting companies:

First, don’t try to re-invent the wheel! You may think you are the first host to present a feature/product to the world, but chances are you are just playing catch-up. People will know this and see through sugar-coated marketing. That is not to say you you should not offer new features and services. Just be careful how you sell these.

Secondly, look at an integrative approach to offering non-commercial consumers what they would get from free social space services. Let them have their social space (free) experience, but offer them a way to have that, plus more, with your hosting service. If possible faciliate their connections to your other clients. Customers meeting and helping each others will help foster a sence of networking/community that is present in the free social spaces mentioned before. For those consumers who do have a commercial intent or who choose to pay for web hosting, help them to grow their  imaginations/expectation about what is possible when choosing your service. And then strive to exceeed this expectation. Simply beating them over the head with price or feature-overkill marketing will not do as much for you as marketing the BENEFITS of choosing your service.  You want tem to know that you will grow with them, not because of them. Though the latter is certainly true, no one wants to feel like they are just a customer number. Your success as a hosting company is directly related to the success of your hosting customer.

Lastly, sell consumers on your relationship with them and listen to what they tell you they want.  Let them know you really do identify with them and can help them meet their true needs (which again, is not always just a website or web host). Your web hosting clients will tolerate minor inconveniences, which are always possible when technology is involved, much better if they view your company as a their “partner” and if you have built in them a sense of loyalty. The most important thing your customer can give you is not their money, it is their TRUST. If the consumer truly trusts you, the money will come as a natural by-product. You won’t have to beg them for it, or beat them over the head for it, they will gladly give it to you. Web hosts may think they are selling a product or service, but what they would do well to remember is they are really selling a relationship. The better the actual relationship with the consumer, the more a host will grow their revenues and customer base.

What tools do you use?

• WordPress FAQ on cleaning up hacked site;
• Theme Authenticity Checker plugin;
• WP Security Scan plugin;
• Unmask Parasites online service;

• Hardening WordPress with htaccess;
• Password Protection and Authentication Locking down Apache with .htaccess;
• AskApache Password Protect plugin;
• Stealth Login plugin;
• Chap Secure Login plugin;
• Limit Login Attempts plugin;
• Hardening WordPress.

After a day of Dan’s fighting with the mass emailing problems, password changes and stress of a server being compromised, there was little hope, the hackers could have hidden hundreds of trojans and gained backdoor access. So our boys over at Layered Tech (formerly FastServers.Net) were busy trying to hunt down all the offending files.

The damage done by the hackers was all too apparent, relaying mass emails in our servers name. Thankfully my partner noticed that the only real harm done so far was that the files that the hackers had place were being labled as malicious, not the whole domain. *Bullet Dodged*

Like a ray of hope we all of a sudden realized we had managed backup service with Layered Tech. After browsing through the backups we were able to locate a clean copy of the entire file structure of the server.

The story continues..

If you are setting up a server and have the option of buying a remote backup service, do it. The investment can be realized when the unthinkable happens. Think of it like car insurance or more appropriately a life preserver. You will be happy you have it when you desperately need it.

What about you? Do you have managed backups on your website?

When it comes to building trust in Social Media circles, transparency is important as well.
The dude reccomends that you check out your WhoIs data at least once a year and compare it with you Privacy Policy and your Contact Us page. You want to make sure that the data matches.

How often do you check your WhoIs? Do you think it matters with SEO and Social Media?

The editor at Boston 24 zeroed in on William’s Tweets about the event and then asked him if he would mind if he could use his tweets to write a story about the event.  This is certainly a interesting approach to leveraging someone elses content to write about a news event. Traditionally, an event will be covered by a blogger or reporter who is onsite, with press credentials. One more recent live blogging event that sticks out in my mind is the one by Engadget for Apples , It’s only rock and Roll event.

To see how this journalist used the tweets visit the post on Boston24.Com

What this brought to mind for me was, what about Twitters new term of service?

If you note in the new Terms, one of the criteria that is listed is :

“If you re-post other user’s content without attribution.”

Now this editor was kind enough to contact William before just posting “his content” and give attribution. But, how many people are using others Twitter posts to write articles?

According to Twitter “Accounts engaging in any of these behaviors may be investigated for abuse.  Accounts under investigation may be removed from Search for quality.  Twitter reserves the right to immediately terminate your account without further notice in the event that, in its judgment, you violate these Rules or the Terms of Service.”

Have you used Twitter posts as a source for your content? If so what do you think about attributing the content to the twitter user?

The funny part was that the client asked us to SEO the press releases and when asked what Keywords to use, they said, oh just ask the Dude he will know.

Now one note, this is a new project that we had not talked about previously.

So I told them how I will come up with the keywords to use:

“I have this special SEO Hat that I have on all day, it pipes in keyword usage from wordtracker, google trends and many other tools and automatically lets me know what keywords to use”

I should probably do up a guide on how to mine the best keywords.

Theres GOLD in dem dere hills!

Years ago, it was near impossible to sift through your existing links and find the hidden nuggets. These days, with a few good link discovery tools, a solid link building strategy, a little bit of invested time and some common sense you can super charge your SEO plans right out the door for you or your clients.

Guaranteed if you use a decent tool you will find at least 20% (if not more) of the links you have coming inbound have a relatively decent authority.

The beauty of the data that can be discovered is that almost everytime you run these types of reports you will find links that are not using any SEO terms. A majority of people will link to you using your company name, an image, URL only or worse the words “Read More”.

Yup, I do not know about you but I have been wanting to rank for the words Home and Read More forever j/k.

Imagine if you could get all those links to point to you using your key term or even your seeding phrases. Now granted, some of those natural links will never change, but a few kind words in an email and I bet you could convert at least 3 out of 10 into a keyword rich link.

Among the large list of tools I use I highly reccomend SEOMoz LinkScape  and ShoeMoney BackLink Analyzer.

*note: I am an affiliate of both of these tools, but I happen to use them on a daily basis.

I will go into much greater detail on both of these tools soon as they deserve an in depth review.

Have you looked at your backlinks lately? How many nuggets have you discovered? What tools do you use?