Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Once you’ve created a blog for yourself or your company, how can you ensure your content is interesting and valuable to readers? Here are a few simple tips to create a great blog:
1. Create compelling content. Don’t just rephrase articles or blog posts you read elsewhere. Write about your area of expertise or personal experiences. Your writing will come alive and engage readers when you are passionate about the topic.
2. Title – Think about the keywords people might use to find your blog, and include them in your blog title. For example, if your blog post is about how to train for a marathon, make sure your title includes the keywords train and marathon. Also consider how your title will appear in tweets and whether it can easily be retweeted. Titles should be less than 140 characters so there is room for hyperlinks and “RT @username.”
3. Use images and videos – Use images and videos in your blog posts to make them more interesting and enjoyable to read. Images draw in readers and can reinforce your post in a creative way. A post about the Amazon Kindle just wouldn’t be the same without a picture.
4. Comment – Make sure to comment on other blogs you find interesting. Chances are good that both the blog author and other readers will click through to your site after reading your comment. Always be transparent and identify yourself and your company when commenting.
5. Post often – Readers will come back to blogs that regularly post interesting content. If you know you have a busy week coming up, write a few posts ahead of time and schedule them to automatically post on your blog the following week.
6. Link your blog to e-mail, Twitter and Facebook. Whenever we post a new entry on the Communiqué PR blog, an update automatically goes out over e-mail to our subscribers, and via Twitter and Facebook. We have clear, bold icons on our blog so readers can easily follow us via e-mail or Twitter.
Have other questions about optimizing your blog? Leave a comment or send us a note at [email protected] and we’ll get back to you.
With more than 25 million users worldwide Twitter has become a powerful medium for both businesses and consumers to connect. Similarly, Facebook, with more than 200 million users, has redefined the way we communicate. Communiqué PR recognizes the major potential these two social mediums possess and has decided to launch its first campaign centered around raising $230,000 – through both Facebook and Twitter – for Seattle Children’s PlayGarden.
The PlayGarden is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing a place for both mentally and/or physically disabled children and their normally developing peers to share a safe, stimulating and fun playground environment. Located at the south end of Colman Playfield in Seattle, the PlayGarden needs this money to complete the construction of various projects such as Mount Jordan, a volcano-themed climber that is even accessible to children in wheelchairs. With the goal of getting a large number of people to donate money to complete these projects, PlayGarden Executive Liz Bullard approached Communiqué PR.
After our discussions with Liz, we felt strongly that the use of Twitter and Facebook to garner funds would be both time and cost effective. At the same time, by leveraging Twitter and Facebook we have the opportunity to create broad awareness of the PlayGarden with new audiences who may not be aware of the park and what a valuable resource it will be to our community.
Bullard adds “Communique’s idea of using Facebook and Twitter to attract donations is simply a great way to keep our fundraising costs to a minimum. We are also impressed with the team’s work getting the local media to write about our campaign.”
To date, the following articles were published about the campaign:
Puget Sound Business Journal
Nonetheless, the real question remains as to whether or not people trust these social networking sites enough to click through to the PlayGarden’s Web site to donate and support its cause. We are excited to see what will happen with this campaign.
To donate, please click here.
As PR professionals, we are always interested in learning about new search tools that will impact the ever-changing digital media landscape. Virtually everyone utilizes search engines for research including journalists and PR professionals. WolframAlpha, which made its debut on May 15, could change how we find information through search engines.
WolframAlpha is a powerful search service that computes answers to questions using data amassed by approximately 100 employees at Wolfram Research. Creator Stephen Wolfram tells The New York Times, that despite online conversations comparing this service to Google, WolframAlpha is “not intended to dethrone the king of search engines.”
Unlike traditional search engines like Google and Yahoo!, WolframAlpha does not search through Web pages to answer queries. It is “knowledge based” and can provide answers to questions like “what is the average body mass index of a 40-year-old male?” or “Is the Eiffel Tower taller than Seattle’s Space Needle?” It will not provide information about upcoming movie times or help with computer or camera shopping. Clearly, there will be a unique opportunity for companies and journalists to leverage this tool to find complex data as well as science and technology based information.
Doug Lenat, an artificial intelligence expert, comments WolframAlpha “may become a massive player alongside Google,” and says it could eventually turn into a favorite destination on the Web.
With the advent of new search tools like WolframAlpha, we wonder how SEO techniques will change. Currently, SEO is important to ensure a Web site is one of the top search engine results to increase Web site traffic.
Companies can optimize articles, press releases, investor information, white papers and third-party content. Companies that optimize relevant content will achieve the following:
Higher rankings in search engine results
Reach target audiences and articulate your key messages more efficiently to these audiences
Increased Web traffic
There has been a lot of discussion on Twitter about Wolfram Alpha. A few themes include:
Five things WolframAlpha does better than Google: complex queries, localization, precision, calculation and comparison.
WoolframAlpha is too complex for simple inquires and data.
It is a revolutionary way to get answers to computational (math, etc) questions.
How do you think WolframAlpha will impact SEO techniques and the way journalists gather information? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
To learn more about SEO, visit our past blog by clicking here.
Speaking engagements at industry tradeshows or events are a terrific way to build thought leadership amongst peers and potential customers. But for many, the thought of presenting in front of a large group can be a scary one – to say the least.
Preparation is essential to giving a good presentation and with a little work, a speaking engagement need not be a terrifying ordeal. Here are a few tips that have helped us and our clients deliver great presentations over the years:
Know your audience – Will you be presenting to professionals in your field? What is the size of the audience? Will they be managers or C-level executives? Knowing your audience will help you deliver a message they find relevant and useful.
Understand the format – How much time will you have? Are you the only person presenting or will you be on a panel? If you’re participating on a panel, who else will is on it? How will the panel discussion be moderated? Does the moderator understand what each panelist brings to the discussion? Are there a set of questions that the moderator has in mind for the panelists to discuss?
Stay focused – Make sure your presentation has a clear, focused theme. Ideally, you should have three main messages. You will probably lose your audience if you wander off into tangents and try to explain every supporting detail of your story. Instead, deliver a simple message and allow your audience to ask questions at the end.
Provide supporting materials – For many business presentations, a good PowerPoint will do the trick. But resist the urge to fill your slides with lots of text. We find it best to use compelling images with speaking notes to capture important statistics or reinforce an important point. The bottom line is that you should do the talking – not your PowerPoint.
Practice, practice, practice – Mark Twain once said, “It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” He has a point: by spending time practicing alone and in front of a friend or colleague, you can ease your nerves and find any weaknesses in your presentation. But take note: even if you’ve memorized every word, you should deliver your presentation in a conversational tone on the big day to keep your audience engaged and the discussion lively.
Consider a coach – If you’re still feeling jittery about your presentation consider hiring a coach to help you prepare. A good coach can help you with your subject, supporting materials and speech delivery. Communiqué PR often provides this type of support as we help executives develop their speeches and prepare for their presentations.
Gather Feedback – After your presentation, you can distribute comment cards to your audience or ask the conference producers and moderators for feedback. This information will help you improve your public speaking skills and prepare a more compelling presentation next time.
We hope you find these tips helpful and would love to hear any ideas that have helped you prepare and deliver a stellar presentation.
Twitter has an important role in business. Professionals are connecting over Twitter, building relationships and sharing information. But Twitter is a complex web to navigate and finding others can be difficult, especially because many people use screen names.
As is often the case online, a simple problem breeds hundreds of solutions in the form of Internet start-ups – and the confusing Twitter web is no different. A new crop of Web sites have sprung up to aggregate similar people on Twitter. One such site, JournalistTweets.com, sorts journalists’ Twitter content to provide “a real-time snapshot of what thousands of reporters, editors, bloggers and broadcasters are discussing.” By collecting all journalists on Twitter in one place, JournalistTweets.com helps PR pros find journalists, build relationships and cut through the noise.
Another example is SFGate.com, the Web site for the San Francisco Chronicle. During the beginning of the swine influenza outbreak, the site gathered all swine flu experts on Twitter – including Communiqué PR client Veratect – into one place so readers could easily see updates in real time.
Is this the beginning of a new trend? From my research the answer seems to be a resounding yes. Here are a few sites you may find useful – or at least entertaining:
ExecTweets.com – This site allows people to “find and follow top business execs on Twitter.” The first Tweet I noticed when visiting the site was from Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric.
AthleteTweets.com – This site aggregates tweets from professional athletes ranging from Lance Armstrong and Andy Roddick (who’s Twitter bio simply states “I play tennis”) to Gary Payton and Indy 500 racer Sarah Fisher.
TweetFreak – This site is maintained by AdWeek and follows the marketing, media and ad world on Twitter.
CelebrityTweet.com – This site is a live stream of tweets from celebrities including Rob Thomas and Demi Moore (who is fast approaching her husband’s much-hyped million followers). Watch the magic unfold as Miley Cyrus and Perez Hilton carry on a conversation via Twitter.
These sites are likely to keep popping up because, as Bnet.com‘s Catharine P. Taylor writes, “it’s so easy to set one up that it’s a no-brainer of an idea, particularly if you can just attach your new tweet site to a media network and bring in another source of traffic – and ad dollars.”
Have you found any useful sites that help you navigate Twitter?
Heidrick & Struggles, an Atlanta-based recruiting firm, recently conducted a survey to evaluate the success of digital strategies in marketing activities, such as social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and business intelligence. They surveyed 111 senior marketing executives at firms with $1 billion or more in annual revenues and found that while many marketing executives acknowledge the wealth of information about their customers online, many expressed that they’re “not getting what they want out of it.”
Lynn Seid, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles, reports marketing executives are frustrated over the fact that “so much information exists online about consumers – like their search and social media behavior – and yet marketers felt they were accessing it poorly.” Given the current economy, many organizations are focusing on cross-selling and up-selling to existing customers and gaining market share from competitors in order to stay afloat.
A few highlights from the survey include:
Respondents were dissatisfied with their current ability to access information about ROI and metrics on their digital marketing strategies.
Although one of the positive features of digital media is the ability to let marketers respond quickly to new opportunities, only 16 percent of the marketing executives polled rated themselves “very satisfied” with their ability to do this.
The most important features of the digital marketing mix were ROI analysis, Web behavioral analyses and CRM. However, only 18 percent of those surveyed said they were “very satisfied” with their ROI analysis, 13 percent said the same about their CRM program and 19 percent were happy with their search engine optimization (SEO).
A majority of marketing departments would like their IT departments to take the lead on handling analytics including Web traffic and usage reports.
As they look for new ways to market their companies via social networks, SEO and mobile advertising, a majority of marketing executives agree there’s a lot of room for improvement. And while there are a number of digital agencies and suppliers that specialize in social media and search, there aren’t many agencies that manage, integrate and establish best practices in these areas.
In order to implement a successful digital media campaign, you must have a clear understanding of how technology and marketing can effectively work together. A few tips to evaluate your digital media strategies include:
Look at your current digital activity
Have a clear understanding of what your business, communications, and marketing objectives are
Identify how traditional media efforts align with or support your digital media strategies
Understand what your resources and capabilities are
Look at what your key competitors’ digital media efforts are
Outline areas where you can digitally differentiate your business from your competitors
Build a digital media strategy based on your objectives strengths, and capabilities
Frequently review and update your digital media efforts
Understanding and getting the most out of digital strategies such as SEO and social media are also becoming an increasingly important part of PR. We have found that the best way to make sure our clients get the most out of their digital strategies is by clearly understanding their objectives and making sure our outreach aligns with these goals.
How do you rate your digital marketing strategies? Do you agree with the marketing executives polled or have you had a more pleasant experience? We’d love to hear your thoughts!