I’ve talked a lot before about symbiosis between journalist and PR, and this is precisely where that relationship can come to the fore.

By championing your brand as a resource for expert comment in any given field, you’re opening up a whole new playing field for PR opportunities.

If a journalist knows that he or she can actively approach someone from your brand for comment or information, then by consequence you can benefit from totally organic links and mentions.

Relationships with media outlets have to be built over time. Above all, any approach must be trustworthy and transparent – there can be no smoke and mirrors.

When developing relationships with journalists, it’s important to ask yourself:

• What value can my organisation bring to a news article?
• In which areas can I offer genuine expert opinion?
• Does my organisation conduct research or hold any facts and figures that are unbiased and genuinely representative?
• Will my contribution come across as a sales pitch?
• How can I render my contribution to be as impartial and objective as possible?

It’s often wise to offer comment relating to subject areas that are a step removed from your line of business. This is to avoid putting across facts or figures directly linked to your business objectives, which may be immediately dismissed by a journalist.

What are your top tips for developing a brand as a go-to resource? Tweet your thoughts @amybyard

With this in mind the next step would be to identify those authors and start making relationships. So . . .

Identifying key influences in a desired niche is pretty simple, well you would think. There are so many signals and signs as to who influences what; sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Also, it can be time consuming traipsing through hundreds of Facebook and twitter accounts- looking at their followers, tweets and posts, only to find that the “fashion guru” you’re stalking hasn’t been tweeting about the latest fashions but instead a minute by minute update on their very boring train journey to work.

So what we could really use is . . . a tool that not only crawls through your desired site (could be your own or an online publication in your niche) to find authorship mark-up’s and identify authoritative authors in your niche, tell you what they are talking about, tell you how many followers they have and tell you the other sites they contribute to (hey ho – I spy more linking opportunities!) and even allows you to get this data for your competitors to make comparisons.

Introducing . . . AuthorCrawler – “A tool for mining Author Data for Linkbuilding”

Tom Anthony first introduced this tool at Link Love London, which I was lucky enough to attend and pick up the tool prior to its public release, although it has been released now, what a nifty little tool it is!  You can download it here.

So now, not only do we have the ability to quickly identify authoritative authors in our niche and see which ones are linking to our competitors – but we also have the capability to monitor them all in the same place, with ease!

This leads us to out next step. When we have identified our targets, the next move is to get them to like us – or maybe even just acknowledge us for now. I’d start by making a hit list – I mean wish list – of your desired relationships, much like a top ten of who was hot in your year at school.

Next we need to operate with stealth, don’t go diving in with a link request (like at school, they will see you’re desperate and shut you down), this stage is all about them. Do some background research to get to know what they like and don’t like, who they like and most importantly what they like to talk about and link to.

Operate in silence. Follow them on twitter and start following some of the influential people they follow, read their posts and listen to what they are saying (everyone loves a listener), do your research before you make the first move.

When you think you have a good grasp of their habits, likes and areas of interest, you’re ready to make your first contact. But be cool- we don’t want to scare them off. Start by retweeting things they might find interesting (and that doesn’t mean pushing your latest infographic on them-we aren’t there yet), make sure it’s of an actual benefit to them, be generous and don’t reveal your end intention, we are thinking long term -at the moment it’s about what we can do for them.

Answer their questions- if you actually can answer them, don’t just make things up. In time, try to converse with them about particular areas of their work. We want to find out and start anticipating what we can do for them. We want to be acknowledged but we don’t want to be an annoyance (also getting blocked from twitter by someone is pretty embarrassing).

It will take time, but cultivate the relationship, keep an eye on them and keep providing them with things that will benefit them- comment on their posts if you can. This should particularly tickle their fancy, not only is it nice to receive comment about your work (for a start you know someone has bothered to read it) but it can also drive more traffic and authority to that page.

When they realise you can be an asset to them they might just start following you- acknowledging you, then you’re half way there.

You already know that a link from this person is of great value to you, so know you need to focus now on what we can offer in exchange- which should be simple seen as by now you probably know what they have for breakfast by now.

So when you have engagement, I think it’s safe by now to create an offering – it still has to be something they will benefit from or find interesting and obviously be on subject, but I’d say you’re safe to introduce your client at this point.

Hopefully this will generate a link, but don’t make them feel used. You’re in this for the long run and didn’t do all that ground work to let it fizzle out now! Don’t tell them you’ll call if you’re not going to- continue reading their posts, liking and commenting on their work- don’t forget about all those other online outlets you know they write for!

Also, don’t be afraid to use your relationship when you have it- run ideas past them and see if it’s something they would consider linking to before you go to the effort of providing it. Also monogamy doesn’t have a role to play in this relationship- you know those mates you followed on twitter to impress your first target? Well it might be time to see how you can help them, they have the same interests so it should be easy to keep both going at the same time (just make sure you don’t say the wrong name).

By the time you have worked through your wish list, you should be dead popular and as long as you keep putting in the effort, the benefits should be as long term as your friendships.

We’re all bombarded with messages and advertising, and it’s hard to get your message to stick. It’s well documented that marketers need to use even more sophisticated ways of reaching their target audience. Some commentators explain that tomorrow’s successful marketers are going to be data analysts, finding patterns in terabytes of data to make sure that they’re targeting the right audience with the right messages at the right time.

The whole point of the online world is that people find communities of people who are interested in the same things as them (folding picture of Ross Kemp or zombie crochet). People follow other people who they want to hear from, people that they trust to be entertaining, honest and interesting. So when your favourite celebrity seems to change their personality, and then you find out that someone has paid them to do it, you could be forgiven for feeling lied to. And that’s the trap that social advertisers need to avoid. It’s far too easy to make the same mistakes as marketers have traditionally made in the offline world – bombarding people with irrelevant, annoying, interrupting noise.

The background to all of this is a PR stunt in which celebrities including Ian Botham, Amir Khan, Rio Ferdinand, Cher Lloyd and Katie Price were paid to tweet on unfamiliar issues (Ferdinand on knitting and Price on global politics) before eating a Snickers and returning to ‘normal’. The campaign got a reaction from people for many reasons: including commentators saying that the tweets suggested that eating Snickers turns you into an idiot. But the fierce heat might be yet to come, with the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) investigating undeclared celebrity endorsements and Office of Fair Trading (OFT) expressing concern over the matter. Consumer protection regulations launched in 2008 mean that the OFT can seek a court order, potentially leading to a criminal prosecution and an unlimited fine if celebrities aren’t clear to their audience when they are being  paid to promote products in the form of advertising. It might be the first Twitter campaign to be banned by the ASA who are launching an investigation that could set a new benchmark in social advertising.

It’s no surprise that many of these celebrities’ followers took exception to being advertised to on Twitter. As the number of social advertising channels is growing, with G+ bringing social recommendations into search results pages and Facebook launching sponsored stories, marketers need to remind themselves of the mistakes that have been made in offline advertising before launching themselves into people’s social worlds.

What are your thoughts? Do you feel like you are being bombarded by adverts on Twitter? @tominleeds

“Top 20 Pet PR Hates for Journalists”

“Only 10% of Journalists Think PR is of Any Value”

I’ve come across countless articles like these, often written by journalists more or less denigrating PRs for doing their day job.

Don’t get me wrong – we all have our pet peeves in the workplace – but I think it’s important to stick up for the industry of public relations, and argue it’s place in the production line that is news dissemination.

Here is my case, fighting the corner of the humble PR Exec, narrowed down to ten points:

1. Around 80% of what’s written in the papers is the product of PR in one way or another.

2. Just because a story comes from a PR, doesn’t mean it’s not of value or worth your time looking at. We spend hours researching and studying to put together stories with a credible source.

3. Phone calls from PRs are the best way to pitch – we don’t just do it to annoy you!

4. PRs and Journalists should work in symbiosis with one another. Relationships between them are mutually beneficial.

5. Many PR Execs, including myself, have a grounding in journalism. We’re not as alien to the workings of newsrooms as you might think…

6. PRs will phone to ask why you’ve not responded to messages or emails. A quick ‘no thank you’ email will save you a lot of frustration avoiding follow up calls!

7. PRs spend hours researching which media to contact because we think it will be of value to your media outlet.  We do not just call everyone we can find a phone number for.

8. The popularity of services like HARO should be proof enough that journalists have a need for PR professionals.

9. When a deadline is approaching and there are still column inches to fill, PR contacts will be first on a journalist’s list.

10. Finally, I’ve included a quote from John Lloyd at The Financial Times that I think all journalists should be aware of:

“It is a self-regarding conceit of journalism that we are the dogs for whom public relations furnishes the lamp posts. Understanding that relationship, and explaining its claims and its silences, is increasingly indispensable to an understanding of public life.”

What are your views on the relationship between Journalist and PR? Tweet me @amybyard

PR in SEO is about going further and it’s not just about re-invigorating the approach you use to seed your link in once it’s been created. It’s about tailoring your content so it’s of genuine value and use to the website hosting it in the first place. It’s about reversing the whole links process.

Importantly, it’s not just about sending a copied email to a few hundred contacts on your list. It’s about picking up the phone and calling these people – investing time into building great working relationships which are both genuine and mutually rewarding.

Keeping on top of the game and up to date with current affairs is essential for this approach to work. Emphasis has to be placed on making content newsworthy.

Now, we’re not just talking about the conventional ‘sheep in wolf’s clothing’ PR approach. We’re talking about creating innovative work of genuine interest, and compiling brand new statistics and research which sells itself as a quality piece of content. It’s about being contemporary and relevant.

So what is considered ‘newsworthy’? Well, I think to merit the use of this vague description, it’s necessary to meet five different criteria.

• Timing – News needs to be ‘new’.
• Significance – How big is the story? The fact that your local supermarket ran out of cat food isn’t going to make the headlines.
• Location – What places are your target audience going to have an interest in? This is particularly important when considering regional news sites.
• Relevance – Is it a contemporary issue?
• Public Interest – Is there a genuine public interest in what’s being reported? Or are the public merely interested in what you have to say? Noting the difference between the two is critical when considering whether or not a story has news value.

The SEO advantage of this is simple. Google’s algorithm assigns more weight to links from websites with proven authority in their respective niches. These links don’t come with a price tag – they have to be earned – so why not push a bit harder, and go out and earn them by producing content of genuine news value?

We’re moving towards links that are 100% organic; a move that doesn’t just benefit the client, but also benefits the website linking to your content. There’s a move toward a real symbiosis between those that produce, and those that host content.

There’s a whole universe of new ideas waiting to be tapped into in search marketing. And as for the PR/SEO Big Bang; well, it may just be the next big thing…

What are your thoughts on PR and SEO? Where do you think the lines meet?

Twitter: @amybyard

The new project aims to promote ethical clothing and sustainable fashion for teens aged 14 to 19 and is free to join. There will also be an app allowing users to upload pictures and tag photos of outfits.

Projects like this can rapidly improve community engagement with a brand and its users online. It will also help the younger generation save money, shop ‘vintage’ and think more about sustainable clothing.

This is a fantastic opportunity for fashion brands to sign up and lend items to show their support to ethical clothing whilst gaining some positive publicity.

So to all the fashion brands out there, go sign up and lend your items!

-@nishajagpal

They are placing a giant ‘Recycling Tevez’ skip (that is half red half blue) outside Old Trafford before Sunday’s game, and asking angry fans of both City and United to get rid of their Tevez shirts.

Image courtesy of the Daily Mail

Kudos to the team that came up with the idea, which is clever on a number of levels:

• Apart from both being in Manchester, the hatred of Carlos Tevez is probably the only other thing United and City fans have in common due to his previous and more recent exploits. Uniting the red and blue halves of the city together is no mean feat!

• It’s very topical – there is a lot of hype and buzz around Sunday’s game. Not only is it one of the most fiercely contested derby games in the world, it is also a top of the table clash.

• There is a charity angle – Betfair says that all Tevez shirts that are donated will be given to charities in Argentina (Tevez’s home nation). They even estimate the number of shirts could be as high as 75,000!

• Betfair has already managed to use this stunt to associate itself very closely with the game. Being a betting company, this will no doubt prove to be very lucrative for them.

The campaign hit the mainstream press mid-afternoon yesterday, almost exactly three days before the match. The specific timing of this will have been very deliberate – probably having carried out detailed research on the ‘life’ of such a PR stunt, they’ll have known when the coverage of it would likely peak. I don’t doubt for a minute that this coincides with the point at which they start to see a significant increase in the number of bets being placed on the derby.

As I write, less than 24 hours has passed since its launch and the buzz it has generated online is pretty impressive. There are already more than 13,000 (and growing) results in Google for “Trash Tevez”:

An amazingly executed PR campaign.

Well, almost.

The first thing I did when I saw the campaign was think to myself LINKS. Of those 13,000 Google results, you’ll see many instantly recognisable news outlets. Getting search engine friendly links out of  these kinds of websites is like the Holy Grail for many a SEOer. Looking at some of the more powerful sites that have covered the story though, we see:

• Sky Sports – No link to Betfair
• Daily Mail – No link to Betfair
• BBC – No link to Betfair
• Fox Sports – No link to Betfair
• Metro – No link to Betfair

And so on…

So why haven’t they linked to Betfair?

Maybe their policies don’t allow linking to gambling sites, but then the BBC has linked to Betfair before. Even The FT has linked to them in the past, so it’s probably not that. What’s more likely is that SEO and link acquisition just wasn’t a consideration as part of this campaign.

Now my point isn’t that PR activity should necessarily be SEO led. But, for relatively little extra effort, why not make link acquisition a consideration of the  campaign? We know from experience that with the right angle, PR campaigns can generate great links from very powerful sources (that’s a whole other blog post though!).

As Google increasingly looks towards big brands to dominate the SERPs, SEO and public relations need to work in harmony rather than independently and with the gaping void between the two that is often present.

As a final note Betfair, if you happen to read this post any time soon you should probably get a PPC ad up for “trash Tevez” and similar keywords – or your competitors might just get there first

-@andyheaps

Of course, anyone involved in search should see right through this. Beautiful People is well known for its elaborate PR / hoax style linkbait, probably the most famous of which was BeautifulPeople.com axes holiday weight gain members. With coverage – and more importantly links – from high quality sources such as the BBC (including priceless quotes such as “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model”) – and many other reputable news sources, this was undoubtedly a massive success! So much so that Dixon of Majestic SEO regularly references this in his conference presentations!

And with this latest PR stunt they have done it again! At the time of writing, bearing in mind there will likely be a lot of coverage to follow, they have 106 significant news publications covering the story, including the BBC, The Telegraph, The Guardian and Fox News.

Hats off to the PR team at BeautifulPeople – another successful piece of controversy linkbait, playing on the recent cyber-hacks that have been so well documented by the nation’s news publications. It’s too soon to analyse just how successful a link acquisition exercise it has been, but from the sites I’ve found linking back to BeautifulPeople because of the story so far, I think it’s safe to say they’ll be getting a nice natural search boost.

I genuinely hope, for the sake of our nations journalistic pride that none of the reports *actually* think this is real… I can’t help but wonder though…

I’ll leave you with a few of the best quotes provided to the nation’s press by Beautiful People:

”We got suspicious when tens of thousands of new members were accepted over a six-week period, many of whom were no oil painting”

‘We responded immediately, repairing the damage from the Shrek virus”

”We have sincere regret for the unfortunate people who were wrongly admitted to the site and who believed, albeit for a short while, that they were beautiful.”

”It must be a bitter pill to swallow, but better to have had a slice of heaven then never to have tasted it at all.”

Brilliant

Zynga and Gaga first teamed up in March collaborating to raise money for the Japan earthquake victims. Rumours had been circling since then that the two would join forces again. It’s difficult to say who benefits more from the deal, and so it’s hard to speculate who paid whom.  Farmville has more than 46million players and Gaga has a huge and weirdly loyal fan group so the potential is huge! The promotional video for GagaVille has already had more than 700,000 views!

The music industry has been struggling for years with the rise of illegal downloads – this is a great example of the industry moving with the times and updating the business model to suit the current market.  This is a great example of companies utilising social media to reach and interact with their target audience, and as this involves Lady Gaga I’m sure we will see plenty of others following suit.

You can use opera singers, an 80 member choir and a symphony orchestra. The plot, music and visualisation are also up to you and the completed opera will be performed in a medieval castle at the Savonlinna Opera Festival 2012 in Finland.

This is a great chance for anyone interested in opera or the theatre to learn more about the process of creating a performance and behind the scenes. The most active members will also win a trip to the festival.

Join the Opera by You online community on http://www.wreckamovie.com/operabyyou. There are also Twitter and Facebook accounts. The Wreck a Movie community group allows you to track the remaining tasks and to chat with other members. There is also a blog to provide additional information and tips on composing, visualisation, etc.

It will be interesting to see the results of such a huge online collaborative composing project.

View the project on http://www.oopperajuhlat.fi/operabyyou/english.iw3?i=4d935778450b7

Who Are Mumsnet you ask?

According to their site, “Mumsnet was conceived in early 2000 by Justine Roberts, a sports journalist, after a disastrous ‘family-friendly’ holiday with her one-year-old twins.

Justine found herself wishing, along with all the other disgruntled poolside parents, that she’d known about how un-child friendly this resort was prior to shelling out any dosh. She thought the internet would be a perfect place to swap this kind of info and roped in Carrie Longton, a TV producer and friend from antenatal class, to help set up a website where parents and parents-to-be could share their know-how on the net.”

I’ll be honest with you…as a 24-year-old, single, male (yes ladies!), I’m not exactly the Mumsnet target demographic, and I hadn’t heard of Mumsnet before I came across them while using our social media monitoring for a client.

Mumsnet is a parenting advice website by mums for mums, with an on-site community of more than 600,000 registered users and attracts 25,000 posts per day. Mumsnet also has more than 11,000 Twitter Followers and 6,000 Facebook Fans. Whilst these are impressive numbers in their own right, it could be said that Mumsnet haven’t fully grasped social media just yet but when they do, they will develop a huge community.

Campaigns

Apart from having a highly developed and engaged on-site community, Mumsnet has become well known for their campaigns which create awareness of issues they are passionate about. A quick look at the campaign section of the forum shows the wide range of issues raised and how passionate the ‘Mumsnetters’ are about these issues.

Let Girls Be Girls

In early 2010, Mumsnet began running a ‘Let Girls Be Girls’ campaign, which aimed to get retailers to stop selling products aimed at young girls which ‘play upon, emphasise or exploit their sexuality.’ Basically, Mumsnet want retailers to stop selling products to children which aren’t befitting of their age and let children grow up naturally.

This campaign has been a big success with many large retailers including Tesco, M&S, John Lewis and Next backing the campaign. However, the campaign is ongoing as many retailers are still to sign up and provocative products are still being added to stores all the time.

Lad’s Mags Campaign

On the back of the success of the Child’s Play campaign, Mumsnet decided to extend the ‘Let Girls Be Girls’ campaign to target lad’s mags and how they are displayed in shops. Mumsnet asked retailers to remove lad’s mags and their sexual imagery out of the sight of children, such as onto the top shelf, which when I was younger had been reserved for ‘adult’ magazines or to place these magazines behind ‘modesty covers.’ Mumsnet wrote to all major news retailers, including supermarkets, asking for them to sign up to the campaign.

Whilst not being a parent, I fully agree with the stance of Mumsnet. I always remember those awkward moments when my mam saw me reading my older brother’s copies of FHM, and I quickly put them down and did something else whilst nothing was said. I’m sure she felt the same.

Mumsnet has had great support from the retailers with this campaign. Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose, BP, ASDA, Co-op and Tesco have also agreed to the request of Mumsnet. I’m sure if you haven’t already noticed, you will the next time you visit the news stand when you do your next weekly shop.

Whilst the campaign was targeted at lad’s mags and their sexual imagery of women, should the campaign be extended to include fitness magazines which show images of topless men?

I’d love to hear your views on Mumsnet and their campaigns.

Are there any other campaigns that you’d like to see Mumsnet take up or is there anyone else doing something similar to this?

Any suggestions on how Mumsnet could improve how they campaigning? Better use of social media?

Within marketing we have a tendency to consider TV as a bit of a dying medium and the general public in me rarely pays any attention to adverts that aren’t a movie trailer or have attractive ladies in them (Nicole? Papa?). If you had asked me three weeks ago to name my favourite and most memorable advert I would have gone with the Carling Black Label advert from the 1980’s which spans three adverts. You know, the one with the cowboys? Oh you were two years old in the 80’s! Let’s move on…

The 2011 Super Bowl took place in February and although I didn’t personally watch it, more than 111,000,000 Americans did. Bar the upcoming royal wedding this will no doubt be the most watched event on TV during 2011, and because of this, the advertisement slots were very sought after (if a little expensive). The usual suspects were in there such as movie teasers for the new X-men movie, Super 8, Thor and many others. Big consumer brands were also present such as Doritos and Pepsi. While watching the various movie trailers, I came across an interesting looking advert by Volkswagen containing a mini Darth Vader and I discovered my new favourite advert ever.

What makes this advert so great?

There are several adverts out at the moment that are snigger worthy but nothing more. My colleague Tom wrote an interesting post about the Yell Day V Lately ad which you can read here. I was around when J R Hartley hit the screens and until then I probably didn’t know what the Yellow Pages was. I now know Yell has an App but to be honest I don’t care as we have Google.

The Volkswagen advert on the other hand ticks a lot of boxes for me and other Thirty-Something males. I like Star Wars, I used to drive around in Golf GTI’s and the likes, and I now have a family (no more Golf GTI’s). All of these traits are directly represented in the VW advert. It’s got a small boy (it must be a boy) in a Darth Vader costume, it features a pretty middle of the road family, the young boy displays nearly identical traits to every 4-year-old I have ever met, and in true car advert style the featured VW Passat is top spec. So for me it ticks all the right boxes as an advert but…

When I talk about this advert I say things like “Have you seen the advert with the mini Darth Vader?” or similar. I rarely consider the brand. Indeed when you watch the advert the whole brand side of things is minimal. You see the car at the end for a few seconds and it is a main part of the crescendo, but until the VW logo appears at the very end you have no idea it has anything to do with Volkswagen. This lack of brand focus is both a plus and a massive negative. From a plus point we are not getting VW thrust down our necks like most car adverts and are left alone to marvel at the content. However, on a negative side…

Where does this advert fail?

As a tool for driving awareness for the new VW Passat, the advert kind of fails. I am left knowing nothing about the car other than it has remote central locking and comes in grey. On top of this, has anyone ever seen the advert airing on UK TV other than those select few who watched the Super Bowl?

The team at Hitwise did some analysis on traffic trends after the Super Bowl. The research is here, but the main point is that the advert did more for Darth Vader than it did for Volkswagen. This is further confirmed by Google Insights.

Here we can see that there was a spike in Volkswagen related searches, but man alive Darth Vader.com must have made a mint (followed by darth-vader.com, darthvader.net, freedarthvader.biz… you get the thread. Rant over).

When we look at the UK nothing really happened.

Let’s face it nobody saw it. On TV anyway.

What if it wasn’t about Passat awareness?

As an experiment for social media and viral marketing this has been a major success, at marketing the Youtube video… hmmm…

Even though nobody I know watched the Super Bowl (maybe Nicole did but she is American), everybody I know has seen this advert. As of the 16th of February, in the knowledge the commercial was uploaded to Youtube on the 2nd and aired on the 8th, the Youtube video has had more than 30,000,000 views and generated over 23,000 comments. Yahoo Site Explorer (not dead yet) has recorded more than 43,000 links to the Youtube video. Facebook walls all over the world are riddled with the video as are Twitter feeds.

Again Youtube must be loving it but Volkswagen….

To conclude

While I don’t want Volkswagen to fall into the typical car advert rut of going fast down a windy road blah blah blah, lessons need to be learnt. You can have a happy balance between product placement and cool ideas that drives product interest, social engagement and ultimately sales. Take Blendtec. There sales have gone through the roof off of the “Will it blend?” marketing. You’re having fun while all the time learning just how awesome a Blendtec blender is. Whether this winning formula can be used for larger products such as cars, well smarter people than me can work that out, but in the case of generating Volkswagen awareness, it didn’t.

I have added the blooper / making of real that Volkwagen added on the 8th below. More absolute awesomeness. I close with a salute to Volkwagen for making such an amazing advert.

However whilst more companies are putting a large tick in the online visibility check box,  far fewer companies are accurately measuring the profitability of their online campaigns.

Both regular and accurate measurement are crucial as this allows companies to plan and react to opportunities. However, according to a recent Trade Intelligence report, only 18% of companies are measuring on a daily or weekly basis, and just 4% of respondents are able to look at fully allocated spend when assessing the profitability of marketing activity.  Other statistics reveal that 25% measure return on advertising spend, 40% review cost per customer acquisition (CPA) and 19% measure cost per order. Most alarming is that 8% don’t analyse these metrics at all.

Therefore whilst optimising your online visibility is one piece of the two-piece Visibility/Profitability online marketing puzzle, being able to effectively measure, track and make the best strategic decisions and improvements from the data is the essential second piece. Many companies recognise the need for this, but have an internal resource and/or specific skill -set challenge, and this is why they’re outsourcing this area of their business to companies that have recognised industry accreditations such as Google’s’ Analytics Qualification.

Ultimately the best return on investment from your online marketing activities will always be derived from both optimised Visibility and optimised Profitability.

More information can be found at: http://www.epiphanysearch.co.uk/services/google-analytics/

We’ve taken a look to see who the big players are when it comes to product brands and their fan pages.

10 – iPod

Followers: 6,208,636

Starting in at number 10 is the iPod. Every other person seems to have either an iPod or iPhone with an app for everything these days so the number of followers isn’t surprising.

The fan page is a simple one with updates on the most recent / popular apps released within iTunes.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/iPod/22592560949

9 – Victoria’s Secret Pink

Followers: 6,371,586

The sexy chic fashion of pyjamas and underwear designer keeps users involved though latest launches of clothes lines. Victoria’s Secret Pink also provide occasional competitions as well as the “Send Happy” messages which allows you to send bright happy messages to Facebook friends to make them feel… happy!

One for the girls I think.

http://www.facebook.com/vspink

8 – Pringles

Followers: 6,388,402

Pringles offer a range of engaging features. During the world cup they provided plenty of coverage plus football related YouTube videos. And remember the Pringoooals competition? Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba, Cesc Fabrigas, Steven Gerrard – all backed by big name sporting brands. Peter Crouch decides to break the mould and back the “once you pop, you can’t stop” brand.

More recent initiatives include “Pringles Conga” allowing you add your face to a pringle, give it a dancing move and add it to a conga line. Also the “Overshare” button another new feature telling your friends they are posting too many dull or over-detailed posts on Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/Pringles

7 – Windows Live Messenger

Followers: 7,370,285

MSN Messenger is still going strong it seems and with this fan page users can gain plenty of insight into the software.

There isn’t anything special about this fan page yet the Facebook integration within MSN messenger as well as useful tips, videos and expression packs on the fan page itself draw in the crowds.

http://www.facebook.com/WindowsLiveMessenger

6 – iTunes

Followers: 7,603,121

Aaah, iTunes. The revolutionary software product that revolutionised the revolution of downloadable music.

The page provides the latest chart toppers of songs, apps, movies and TV shows. There is plenty to do as well with frequent polls (obviously tied in with their promotions), pick your playlist (and share it with friends), Celebrity Podcasts as well as the latest promotional offers on the wall.

http://www.facebook.com/iTunes

5 – Converse All Star

Followers: 8,362,729

Yes a shoe brand has made it into the top 5 of the Facebook Fan pages for brand products. Personally I would have thought Adidas would be here with all their celebrity endorsements and funky features but hey, there you are.

The Converse All Star fan page has an very active user “Discussion” section along with the opportunity to upload photos of your very own Converse All Stars (Do I call them sneakers, trainers? I’m obviously not that fashionable).

http://www.facebook.com/ConverseAllStar

4 – Red Bull

Followers: 10,839,264

So does the Red Bull fan page give you wings? Well the first thing that stands out is their cheeky attempt to get users to instantly “Like” them with their in-your-face image.

Red Bull do a good job of their fan page actually with plenty of events and competitions. They also offer a games section which also includes a number where users can call and leave messages for other users to hear.

Red Bull also endorse a fair few sports and with that they have plenty of athletes. The athletes Twitter feeds have been directly imported to Facebook which you can filter by typical sporting categories.

Finally, Red Bull TV is streamed directly from the fan page allowing you to take a closer look at the Red Bull Athletes in all their sporting glory.

http://www.facebook.com/redbull

3 – Skittles

Followers: 12,080,857

Skittles are fully aware of the amount of fans they have (they even call them a legion!) and they were one of the first in the social media game. Anyone remember when they made the Skittles.com homepage a Twitter search for the term Skittles?

The main focus of this fan page is the “Mob the Rainbow” campaign. Every so often an event is set up. The most recent being the gate crash of an 85 year old woman’s party with photos, comments and videos. Another, way back on Valentine’s day, flooded a Parking Attendant with thousands of Valentine Cards. Random I know and it’s quirky enough to drag in the followers.

http://www.facebook.com/skittles

2 – Oreo

Followers: 12,805,065

The runner up is Oreo – you know, that biscuits you twist, lick and then dunk in milk? Sounds a bit Marmite to me.

The first thing that stands out is the “World’s Fan of the Week” giving a member of the public – ANYWHERE in the world – the opportunity to slap the mug in front of 12million facebook fans via a simple photo upload and weekly selection process.

The company are also successful at asking their fans engaging question and posts such as “Describe the taste of an Oreo in only one word…” as well as providing messages from athletes and giving out free Oreo related recipe tips.

http://www.facebook.com/oreo

1 – Coca Cola

Followers: 16,182,394

The leading product Brand is the world’s favourite drink, Coca Cola. The fan page is growing at an increasing rate and breaking away from the pack.

The fan page is easily the most active of the all the previous brands. Fronted by Dusty and Michael – the ‘creators’ of the fan page – through the power of YouTube, there are plenty of snappy and humorous videos to watch.

I’m not going to go into depth about all the features yet worth a mention is the way they present their custom pages. Each one is heavily branded yet well presented and feels as if it gives something to the all types of viewers, whether they want to upload photos and videos, send Coca Cola based messages to each other via the Polar Bear or check out the events and apps Coca Cola also offer.

http://www.facebook.com/coca-cola

*All follower data correct as of 4^th November 2010

The main goal of a press release is to promote your business to your potential customers and influencers in your industry. By influencers we mean bloggers, journalists and industry experts. Your potential customers and influencers are always on the lookout for breaking news and the latest information in their areas of interest. By producing topical, newsworthy content in the form of press releases and distributing them appropriately, you are providing what they want and achieving your goal of getting your brand in front of them.

The success of press releases depends on 2 key areas and a bit of luck. The first of these is the content of your press releases. Although people like to read news about their favourite subjects they hate to be misled, aren’t interested in blatant advertising and don’t have the time for content that has no substance.

Press releases can be about anything as long as it is newsworthy. Information about your company such as the appointment of a new employee, addition of a new product line, event, an award you have received, can make for viable press releases and have the potential to create interest around your brand.

However, the best performing press releases are those that create interest in a subject or topic through research, opinion or a new angle. This kind of press release can create a real buzz around your brand leading to citations and links from valuable sources such as peers and industry journalists. By writing this kind of press releases you are going beyond simply getting your brand out there and moving towards becoming known as an authority in your area – something every brand should aspire towards.

The second key area is distribution. For maximum success you need to do everything you can to get your press release in front of your target audience use. Sure, some people may read the press release buried within your website, but most will have other methods of accessing and filtering the large amount of information presented to them on a continual basis.

While direct approaches such as emails to key journalists still have merit, online channels offer additional benefits in terms of exposure and SEO. Some of these are;

• The major online distribution channels have a good chance of getting your press release into Google or Yahoo news, which can be a great source of additional exposure both to people directly reading the news channels and to people viewing search results pages that contain news listings.

• Online versions of your press release are also likely to trigger Google Alerts making them more likely to be seen by journalists, bloggers or anyone monitoring terms used in your release.

• Many of the online distribution services allow hyperlinks to be placed within press releases. This can be a great way of gaining links from sites that republish your press release.

• Even in situations where your press release is republished without your links, you are still gaining key online brand citations which are building your brand awareness.

There are of course, considerations to take into account regarding ensuring maximum SEO benefit, maximum readability and creating a press release that journalists want to use. While I’m not going to detail these within this post as this isn’t a post about how to write press releases. I will point you towards a resource I often refer to which is sourced from actual journalists (the people you ideally want to get your press release read by) – How to: write the perfect press release for journalists. There are some great tips in here and things to consider when writing your press releases.

All in all, press releases are an invaluable part of an SEO campaign. They generate back-links from sources otherwise out of reach, get your brand in front of your target audience and if your press release hits the spot, can create a real buzz around your brand as well as some powerful back-links and mentions, which can have a dramatic effect on your search rankings!

As the web’s entire link profile has been changed (and manipulated) by search marketers certain ‘natural links’ have gained more importance in the eyes of Google; links embedded deep within the belly of a blog post, for example, carry more weight that those placed in a blog roll.

Whether you’re looking to grow your website ‘organically’ or simply improve your current linking profile, you need to understand how you can attract more natural links. As time goes by, attracting natural links will become increasingly important as Google continues to weed out as many ‘un-natural’ links as it can.

When we say ‘we wish to attract natural links’ what we are really attempting to attract are the people who create these links. The hardcore geeky nucleus of the web who create the vast majority of worthy content, actively use social media and, most importantly, create outbound links – the ‘Linkerati’.

So the concept is simple – create content that these ‘web influencers’ want to link to. Actually tying down what it is you can do to manipulate these influencers and get them to link to your webpage is a little more difficult to explain.

Looking Non-commercial
The ‘Linkerati’ love content that appears to be non-commercial in nature. These people love the web and don’t view it as a commercial platform upon which companies make contacts with consumers. To them the web is, in many ways, still the altruistic project based on the sharing of information for ‘the good of all’. It was their baby and they want to keep it as ‘clean’ as possible. Google themselves were originally very much members of this group.

This is one of the reasons why Wikipedia has become the defacto reference site to link to; why would you choose to refer someone to a blog post, complete with ads, if this was your outlook?!

Once you’ve made this realisation you can take steps to attempt to appear as ‘non-commercial’ as possible to this crowd. Domain name choice (.org is always respectable), graphic design and advertisement placement can all be manipulated to best serve this group of people in terms of the key signals they want to see (or don’t want to see) before they’ll link to your webpage.

Showing your ‘good’ intentions
As awareness of SEO grows amongst web users and web developers alike so does the amount of attention people pay to micro sites, viral campaigns and link bait. The scrutiny these types of creations have to pass before web users will ratify them as ‘legit’ increases by the day. The Linkerati have, in the past, been wholesale manipulated to best serve the needs of Search Marketers and generate links – and they’ve had enough of it!

If you have an image you want to communicate, don’t post on it on a key word stuffed, over optimised HTML page complete with garish ‘link to this’ buttons, and copy and paste keyword stuffed HTML link code – it’s just not going to pass muster with the elite of the Linkerati. Use credible and ‘cool’ sites like Flickr to share your image and watch the link-love and social media traffic flow.

Using design to your SEO advantage
A huge part of expressing your non-commercial credentials and good intentions is down to your design; this is where the psychology of so called ‘bad’ or ‘dated’ web design comes into play and can be used to your advantage to portray your desired impression.

On the other side of the coin stunning, modern, clean web design will also always help attract links simply through looking more professional and credible.

Make yourself easily linkable
So, if you’ve put the effort in to make your content as link worthy as you can, then it makes sense to make it easy for people to link and reference that content. Let’s face it, people are lazy and we all lead busy lives. Include short URLs for your articles, provide HTML non-technical users can copy and paste, include social media buttons (and target them to your niche). Make it as easy as possible for people to share and spread the word about your content.

The BBC website is a prime example of this. Before the BBC introduced its social media buttons to BBC news articles it’s stories were quickly being re-spun and spat out on various other websites and getting voted up to the top of Digg and other social media websites. Why? Because those sites made themselves easily linked and shared whilst the BBC did not.

Using emotion to trigger a response
Why do people choose to link to a news story on one website over another? They both, in essence, carry the same information and facts, but something from the first story means that people choose to link and discuss it and not the second. That something is an emotional response.

In many ways this touches on traditional journalist tactics, evoking a response in the reader through the manner in which the content is constructed; anger, excitement, envy, confusion, disappointment, shame, pride are all emotions that can be used to entice someone to link to and discuss your content.

Many could argue that whilst attempting to evoke emotions, one must be careful not to leave potential customers alienated. However, in a world made up of sterile web servers and pixels on a screen emotion, passion and personality can be a huge driving force.

Finding a non-competitive market within your niche
Imagine you’re an estate agent and you write fantastic content about properties available in your city. Surely every other estate agent in the area would want to share that content with their visitors? Of course not, they’re not about to link to a direct competitor and help your rankings. Once you’ve made this realisation you can start targeting your content towards individuals and groups that won’t feel threatened to link to your work – identify your own local ‘linkerati’.

Is your estate agent based in a student city? Great, create a guide to student living in the various areas and tell all the student websites about it!

Are there local charity and government organisations concerned with housing issues? There is, great! Create a genuinely useful and helpful resource based around local housing issues and tell them about it!

Creating Credibility
Data, resources, white papers and even pure opinions that originate from a trustworthy, reliable source which are well researched are much more likely to be linked to than other content.

Most UK users for example generally feel perfectly safe to link to or cite a webpage from the BBC, knowing that, in all likeliness, the information will be correct; these academic Linkerati types are a stickler for accurateness.

Whilst it may be virtually impossible to gain the same amount of credibility the BBC possess, the same kind of trust can be established relatively easily within your own niche… with a little work.

On the surface many of these ideas may seem obvious or even simplistic, but when implemented and promoted correctly can have a huge positive effect on incoming links and ergo rankings, especially over the long term.

Quite simply, if your competitors are undergoing an active SEO campaign with a good agency (like you are) how are you going to differentiate yourself:

•    What’s your competitive advantage?
•    Is your incoming link profile diverse enough to be deemed risk adverse?
•    Have you got a strategy in place to attract more natural links over time than they do to ensure long term success (even after you’ve finished working with an agency)?

If you’re struggling to answer any of these questions with confidence, then perhaps it’s time you too paid attention to the Linkerati and how you can leverage them for your own commercial benefit.

This leaves us with a big question, “Who should handle online brand reputation management, crisis management and press release distribution – SEO professionals or PR consultants?”

The two worlds are certainly separate but they are treading increasingly common ground. The catalyst for this seems to be link building. In order for any site to rank in a competitive market it needs to have a large amount of external one-way links pointing to it. This is becoming harder and more expensive to do each day as site owners realise the power and value their site holds and start charging to place links to other companies. Search marketing agencies are constantly trying to invent new ways of building links, such as online press release distribution.

This was probably the first area that SEO agencies stumbled into PR territory. An ambitious and well informed PR agency should be managing this kind of event, but from my experience 90% of PR consultants are technology phobic. There is also a kind of arrogance that surrounds most PR agencies: they know what they know, its been working for centuries, why would they change now! Well thats the fast track to ruin in my opinion, as the dinosaurs found out!

Numerous times, I’ve opened dialogue with PR agencies to build a joint service offering that could put us both firmly ahead of our competition – they all paid it lip service but when it came to the crunch they felt safer doing what they do and the talks fizzled out.

Thats where SEO’ers are different; we constantly have to re-invent ourselves, its the nature of the online game, it excites us rather than repelling us and that is why it is so frustrating trying to work with most PR agencies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not attacking PR companies, I want them to listen to this and react. We need to work with a high profile agency and put together a killer service that eats competitors but I need them to listen and listen hard!

The reason press releases are so great for SEO is that, with the right influence from a good SEO agency, they can be incredibly powerful tools that not only influence opinion of a product or brand but also drive traffic to a site and boost search engine rankings.

Since the advent of the online press release, there are many other areas that have mushroomed in popularity like blogging, social networks and online crisis management.

Blogs are here, they’re big and more often than not their content is read as gospel. Its a strange phenomenon, but the average blog reader will value a frank posting or comment much higher than a professional piece of spin. Blog marketing sits alongside SEO quite nicely – they share a lot of the principles for getting blogs to rank highly in search results, but there is also another element to blogging and that is the social side. Blogs are about content, readers and community. If you can write compelling content and understand how to get your blog noticed, you can build a community.

This leads to huge amounts of traffic around your articles and clearly this has benefits in the PR world. In terms of content writing and opinion shifting, I would hold my hands up and say that PR consultants are better placed to handle things but without SEO influence, the content they are pushing will not get read and will therefore be worthless. This is an area where the two industries need to combine resources and offer joint services.

Social networks are another area that PR needs to get heavily involved with. Sure we hear a lot in the press about MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook but what is it that makes them so popular? Its the same thing that makes them so valuable to an SEO firm and that is content and community.

Google loves content, and the hardest thing to do when trying to get high search rankings is to build content quickly without spending a small fortune. Original content created by users free of charge that is constantly building and reflecting the latest trends or news is absolutely invaluable for two reasons. Firstly, search engines love it, people love it, and they both keep coming back to get more. Secondly, the more readily you’re creating content, the more often readers and Google will visit your site, increasing your chances of exposing your views and opinions to a wider audience.

So who is better placed to manage and promote these communities – PR or SEO firms? The PR consultant should be better equipped to understand how the written word can influence opinion and which section of people need to be fed which message, but is that so important when the content is open, honest and user generated? Sure, commenting upon what is published is key and from a corporate point of view, a measure of a company’s values, but if the community is not there in the first place, its all wasted effort.

That’s where the SEO professional is better equipped to manage the process – building the community, readership and search rankings and then engaging with PR consultancies to promote the corporate view.

Crisis management is another interesting area where SEO agencies are being increasingly consulted. In the online world, 80% of all websites are found through search engines and the Internet is the most consumed medium in the work place. So very often, breaking news will be found or researched within the likes of Google. So when crisis breaks, its not enough to publish a statement in an online press area because everybody is forming opinions way before they ever reach a corporate site or press area.

If you search for a company name in Google, you will see (in Google’s eyes) the most important 10 search listings for that company. If 5 out of the 10 are bad press, what can be done? Well a traditional PR answer would probably be, post comment in the press area or make a statement of your site, but that does not solve the problem.

A well informed SEO agency can launch articles, blogs, comments and forum postings in key areas that could push those rankings onto the second or third page of Google, minimising exposure to this bad press. A PR agency alone could not do this; in fact 80% of SEO agencies could not do this. So the key is to find Search Marketers with great rankings i.e. they can get results and then to get them to work with PR functions to ensure the right message is read first.

To sum up, the whole question of SEO vs PR is about maximising online visibilty. With the right message and no visibility, there is no value. The key is getting the right message in front of as much of the online world as possible.

So, you want my opinion on who wins the battle? Well, the advantages SEO companies have over PR companies are results and return on investment. We can easily demonstrate how much we charge and the return we give and we are also well suited to adapt to a rapidly changing market place, but I won’t even presume that I can learn the PR trade overnight. We need to join forces with like-minded PR agencies but I think the SEO company is better equipped to lead the online side of the campaign. SEO is so technically complex that most SEO agencies can’t do it well! So its not even practical to expect PR consultants to add it to their repertoire, you have to live and breathe it.

Interesting Online PR resources:

• PR 2.0
• Future Works
• Social Media Club
• PR Squared
• Richard Bailey