The Great Green Hope posted by Christina Williams at Monday, October 27, 2008

Business headlines these days are anxiety- inducing to say the least. And for anyone trying to get the attention of business reporters, it can be an exercise about as troubling as looking at your 401(k) balance.

But there’s a phenomenon in journalism known as the man-bites-dog story. And in this environment, good economic news is the odd yarn that gets attention.

Last week Page One PR helped SolarWorld tell the story of their new manufacturing facility opening just outside Portland, Ore. Here’s a German company placing a hefty bet on U.S. manufacturing and providing hundreds of those high-paying “green” jobs U.S. politicians are so fond of talking about. It was a powerful economic story and it received powerful coverage in outlets from Fortune to Greentech Media; CNN to the Associated Press.

Call it clean tech, renewable energy or the Green New Deal every recession has its recovery driver and my money is on green. As Page One client Clean Edge put it in their recent Carbon-Free Prosperity 2025 report, “We stand at a unique crossroads in history: the transition from polluting, resource-constrained, fossil-based energy systems to those built on sustainable, renewable, resource-efficient systems.”

Eventually the jobs and economic growth propelled by the clean tech sector — which continues to lead in venture capital tallies — might be less remarkable. But I would argue that the increasing noise in the sector will continue to require (ahem) good storytellers.

Public Relations Optimized for SEO posted by Nadja Blagojevic at Wednesday, October 15, 2008

As a PR firm, we are always looking for ways to promote our clients, either through traditional PR activities like press releases or new social media campaigns. A few months ago I began investigating ways to give our clients more bang for their buck by checking out search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to see if our PR activities could help us boost SEO results.


SEO is basically a way to increase your rank on a search engine results page for a certain key word term. If you want your website to be at the top of Google's list, there are a number of techniques to help you get there, like coding the term into your website, including the term on the content of your page, and having other websites link to your site (ideally using that term).


If a PR firm is supposed to be getting a client's news out all over the Internet, getting links to a client's website all over the Internet doesn't seem like a big step. However, it's surprising how few people in PR know how to improve their clients' search engine status (folks in marketing generally seem to be ahead of the curve). Public relations firms are just now starting to "get it." The upcoming Public Relations Society of America conference includes a few sessions on SEO tactics, but they are mostly aimed at beginners.

Over the past six months, we have seen a real desire from our clients to partner more on increasing their web traffic, search standings, and lead generation. With access to Google Analytics information to gain a deeper understanding of how press coverage drives traffic to their sites, we can talk with clients about the keywords and search terms that they want associated with their website.

For me, the most exciting part of integrating SEO and PR practices is the impact that clients can see as their inbound links and web traffic rise. It is cool to know that a link-rich story that ran a month ago is still sending readers to the client's site, or that a certain publication was one of the top sites sending the client traffic.

For example, the links in a June interview in Dr. Dobb's Journal with Jason van Zyl, founder and CTO of Sonatype and creator of Maven, sent readers to the Sonatype website as recently as last week. Folks who came to the site from that story tended to stay longer, and the percentage of those who were visiting the site for the first time was higher than average. In contrast, links on the popular developer website DZone tended to send people over to the Sonatype site more regularly, but most were people who had already been there. Sure this is interesting, but why is it useful?

From a PR perspective, you get a whole new understanding of the publications. Even though they have a very technical audience, Dr. Dobb's Journal is a better place for high-level stories that preach the gospel of Sonatype's Java development infrastructure. Even though they have a large readership, DZone is a better placement for stories that appeal to those familiar with Sonatype and Maven. Looking at search engine and web traffic flow can help PR firms better target story placements to advance the business interests of the client.

The big question is: why don't we see more integration of SEO and PR?

What do you think?

Who Says You Need a Press Release? MokaFive iPhone Sentinel Blog Launch posted by Jenna at Monday, October 13, 2008

Tired of drafting those pesky press releases? Why not use your blog to break news?

That's what we did with MokaFive last month for the company's iPhone Sentinel prototype. The News: Vinod Khosla-backed desktop virtualization vendor launches plug-in for iPhone users to carry a full desktop on the iPhone.

The Challenge: Drive prototype downloads during VMworld – one of the biggest virtualization industry events of the year. With Microsoft's own virtualization event the week prior and only seven days to prepare, we can generate buzz in the middle of this loud press circus, right?

Right! We skipped the formal press release and hit the blogosphere directly via the MokaFive corporate blog. Why? Rather than reach typical press release outlets, MokaFive wanted to target a very specific audience – cream-of-the-crop tech enthusiasts who would download and test the prototype, then offer helpful feedback on the product.

During VMworld, our news hit The New York Times, CNET, TechRepublic, jkOnTheRun, Life Hacker, Mobile Devices Today, DaniWeb, LinuxStreet and more. Many of the blogs were syndicated, too.

MokaFive's web traffic quadrupled on the day of the announcement. Life Hacker alone referred more than 2,800 people to MokaFive's web site. According to Radian6, there were 85 total blogs talking about MokaFive 15-29 Sept; 35 of these were posted the day of our blog announcement. There were also 50 blogs that mentioned "iPhone Sentinel" 15-29 Sept; 30 of which ran the same day as our blog announcement.

MokaFive saw an increase of 273% in visitors to their downloads page. In addition, the MokaFive Player page went from fewer than 50 visits the week before VMworld to more than 8,000 visits during the week of our blog announcement. In addition, downloads from MokaFive's community site increased by 50%.

Key takeaways:
1) Consider strategies to build up your blog readership so your first blog-only launch is sure to reach your target audience.

2) Messaging and important talking points can easily get lost in the fast-paced start-up environment. While the exercise of writing a press release often helps distill key takeaways you want to communicate, it's not the only tool for grooming spokespeople. Make sure you always carefully prep spokespeople – with or without a press release – or they may look sloppy in interviews.

3) Don't expect your blog to do all the work. Consider ways to market your blog to make it visible within the communities you want to reach. Then, get your PR team to pitch like crazy. For example, our top blog hits (NYT, CNET) came from personal relationships and hardcore pitching.

4) Make sure the "news" is worthy. Although Microsoft, Sun, VMware, Citrix, HP, Dell, Red Hat and a variety of startups were making desktop virtualization product and customer announcements last month, MokaFive is the first to move virtual desktops to mobile phones.

If you're considering using your corporate blog as a platform for breaking news, go for it! If you're a seasoned PR pro with the right relationships in place, what's to lose?

What's Your APE Score? Social Media Tools Vs Productivity posted by Bryan Schell at Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Working in PR, we are in the midst of the social media craze. Tweet that press release. Start that Facebook group about that issue, comment on that YouTube video/blog-post/profile. It makes sense. Our industry, just like many others, is trying to take advantage of the most popular thing on the internet: social media tools, online networks and other types of user generated content in Web 2.0. We were fighting over the last drumstick until just now, when Mom brought out a second whole new Thanksgiving turkey from the oven. With all of the perceived benefits of this new type of communication, I'd like to ask the pundits and experts one question:

How in the heck am I supposed to get anything done?



It is a growing trend for companies to let their employees use social media tools (read: screw around) at work as companies begin to see the advantages and uses of having a connected workforce.

Yeah, social networking sites like Facebook (and LinkedIn, which is growing on me) are a great way to network and extend business contacts, but after I poke/nudge that influential reporter, I'll spend the next 20 minutes looking at pictures from Marie and Tom's trip to Hawaii. Twitter, which started out as a way for me to be able to read the current climate and see what the buzz was about at all times has turned into a platform where I can share the latest funny YouTube video with every other member of the 80 million member community who is also procrastinating at work. And Wikipedia? Don't get me started on Wikipedia... it’s an invaluable resource for someone working in the tech industry, or anyone, but at what price?

When I worked at Goldman, we had personal email and Facebook blocked (for reasons other than productivity), something that can easily be done by any company. It seemed to work pretty well (although maybe if the i-bankers were on MySpace instead of investing in risky loan markets, we'd be doing a little better...). Does the added benefit of the interconnectedness of Web 2.0, where everyone gets to create content (and learn more in the process), outweigh the costs of millions of man-hours lost in procrastination?

Let's use math to find out. An Arbitrary Procrastination Equation (APE):

x = abs[ b + (p + d/p)/w - (w - 2p)^(d/p) - a] + 100

where...
b = amount of time it took you to read this post (assuming you read 200 words/min)
x = you have to figure that out for yourself! This is mathematics!
p = amount of time you spent following the links in this post
d/p = distraction quotient, your propensity to keep following more links off the main linked page
w = hours you are expected to work today
a = age of your boss

I invite the procrastination experts out there on the Interweb to post their APE scores here on the blog. If x is greater than 100, you are not being productive right now.

What's your APE score?

The Top 3 Reasons Lists Are Great PR Tools posted by Lindsay Mecca at Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Lists litter the Internet and newstands anywhere you go in the world. You can credit the magazine publishing genius Clay Felker and the rise of city and service magazines 30 years ago for giving us PR peeps this great tool. Why do we love lists? Let me list the ways.

1) Lists are inherently appealing.
They organize information in a way that highlights the importance of each individual idea but ties them together under one umbrella. Plus, they are easy to follow and concise, which is ideal for the short attention span of the average reader.

2) Lists are the perfect way to establish thought leadership.
You consider your client’s knowledge base, find a sexy issue that they can discuss as an expert and build a few points (five is a good number — long enough to be substantive but short enough to hold interest) that offer the reader a unique perspective. Top 5 Cell Phone No-Nos. Which Five Things Drive Linux Users Nuts? And so on.

3) One list can pique interest in a variety of topics.
If you’ve got an interesting list that encompasses different topics examined from different angles, you automatically have a pool of story options just waiting to be tapped. Let me tell you about how we developed one client list idea into a series of stories for Inc Magazine.

One of our clients, the folks over at Untangle, are experts in small business IT. Their business revolves around the understanding that tens of millions of small businesses face the same IT challenges as global enterprises but with a fraction of the budget, manpower and expertise Knowing which IT issues are most pressing — and how best to allocate limited resources to manage these issues — are complicated questions for a small business

In a brainstorming session with Untangle’s CTO, we came up with the “Top 5 SMB IT Myths” — a benchmark by which small businesses can judge how best to invest their limited resources to effectively deal with complex technology issues.

The payoff? We pitched this list to Inc. Magazine, and the reporter wanted to take each myth and explore it in more depth in an article. Not one, not two, but three stories have run so far, with the possibility for a few more.

Just goes to show you that a well-crafted list can result in a PR goldmine.