What is the distinction between “traditional” public relations (PR) and online / interactive / social PR? Is there really a difference anymore—or is the boundary blurring?

One part of the confusion stems from the fact that in PR, as in many other crafts, the tools change and advance but the fundamental skills required remain the same. PR pros now use tools like Twitter, PitchEngine, PRWeb and Vocus in place of fax machines, media packets, wire services and Bacon’s, but the fundamental skills of storytelling and relationship-building remain crucial.

Another part of the confusion is based on the changing definition of “media.” Every print publication now has an online version. Many “traditional” journalists now write blogs; does that make them bloggers? What really is the distinction between megablogs like TechCrunch or Mashable and an online publication? And some multi-author blogs have morphed into hybrid portal/news/blog sites that are difficult to categorize.

Regardless, while the “art” of PR retains some constants,  the “science” has clearly evolved. What are the best practices for pitching journalists in this new environment? What are the (current) best practices for pitching bloggers? How can PR pros optimize their use of social media tools? How can you make a press release more friendly to blogs, Twitter and search engines?

Find the answers to these questions and more here in a dozen of the best social PR guides of the past year.

Pitching Basics – Rules of Engagement by Blogging PRWeb

Noting that “The perfect pitch is one that involves getting to know your target reporters and showing a genuine interest in helping them, rather than treating them as a means to an end,” the delightful Stacey Acevero of Vocus shares a helpful list of “do’s” (e.g., do your research, do be concise) and “don’ts” (e.g., send generic pitches) for successfully getting others to write about your product / service / news / client etc.

Blogger Outreach Remains Crucial for PR Pros by SocialTimes

Jay Krall of Cision explains why blogger outreach remains important, how to find relevant bloggers within a particular topic area, and how to evaluate–and not evaluate–blogger influence, for example: “take one of the many varied specialties of lawyers who blog on topics like e-discovery or a particular state’s tax code – a blog with fewer than 10,000 readers may in fact serve as the tastemaker for the entire topic space. What makes sense instead is to judge a blog’s performance relative to its peers in the same topic area.”

Top 5 Innovative Ways PR Pros Are Using Social Media by Mashable

Leyl Master Black presents five creative ways for communication professionals to use social media, among them: tapping into breaking news (“social media opens the door to a number of new tactics that can be deployed in a matter of minutes … if you’re quick on your feet”), creating proprietary influencer networks, and connecting with media / bloggers at events.

How to Turn a Blog Post into a Press Release by ProBlogger

Erika Gimbel outlines a six-step process for turning a blog post into a press release (“Both have many of the same elements: strong headlines, top-down format (most important stuff up front), etc.” as she points out), starting with making sure the post is newsworthy (“how-to” guides work well for blog posts, not so well for news releases) and ending with using third-person AP-style writing for the release.

Small Business…Big Coverage! by Blogging PRWeb

Guest blogger Jon Gelberg contends that “you don’t have to be Apple or Google or Sony to get the attention of the press. All you need is an understanding of how the press (and online media) works and how best to get on their radar,” then describes how to find the right journalists and editors in a particular topic area and successfully pitch them on your story idea and expertise.

18 easy-breezy ideas for building a relationship with a journalist by Ragan’s PR Daily

Joan Stewart supplies “a handy list of how to prepare for, and conduct yourself during, a meeting” with a journalist or editor, from becoming familiar with that individual’s stories beforehand so you can discuss them intelligently, and bringing a media kit (or at least some brief background information) to asking how else you can help them and snail-mailing a real, paper thank-you note within 24 hours.

What brand marketers can learn from PR by iMedia Connection

Rebecca Lieb, author of one of the best SEO books ever, observes that “Press releases don’t work (the way they used to) any more. They are no longer a private, one-to-one communications channel (once mailed, later faxed to newsrooms). Now, the second a press release is distributed over a wire service, it’s immediately picked up by all the major news services and web portals.” Today, press releases have to be search-optimized, written for a broader audience of influencers than just journalists, and (ideally) discussed in the right forums.

Pitching to Google’s Fresh New Algorithm via News, Blogs, Events & Google+ by Search Engine Watch

Lisa Buyer reports that optimized news releases are now more important than ever given Google’s recent algorithm changes that promote the freshest content on news-themed web searches, then offers tips pertaining to PR SEO, online newsrooms, utilizing news blogs, capitalizing on events, the impact of Google+, content quality vs. quantity and more.

Six Tips For Making Your Press Release Twitter Friendly by Mediabistro

Pointing to a recent study showing that “Twitter drives more traffic to press releases than Facebook,” Tonya Garcia details half a dozen tips for making news releases Twitter-friendly, such as using numbers (““If you have data within a press release, call it out in the headline”), using hashtags properly, including multimedia, and making quotes tweetable.

8 ways to get people to discuss your new product in social media by WebInkNow

David Meerman Scott passes along tips learned while promoting his most recent book, Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Among his recommendations: don’t reveal too much too soon (“I never used the word “newsjacking” anywhere on the web prior to November 14, which was launch day. I find that people have short attention spans. If I say ‘a book is coming’ but people cannot actually read it, few will act. So I chose to keep quiet.”), inject some controversy, and respond to people in real time.

5 excruciatingly dumb things PR pros do with social media by ragan.com

Suggesting “look around and you will see a huge gap between those who get it and those who only think they get it,” Priya Ramesh warns communications professionals not to do “dumb” things in social media like using a formal, business-like tone on social networks (nerdy); using social media as a broadcast medium rather than a conversational forum; and—my favorite—”joining the shiny-object bandwagon without a strategy.”

8 Steps to Leveraging PR for SEO by gShift Labs
***** 5 STARS

Krista LaRiviere of gShift Labs notes that PR has taken on added importance in web presence due to Google’s recent Panda algorithm changes, which reduce the value of directory links, increase the influence of social signals on ranking, and reward content in certain topic areas for freshness, and provides and eight-step process for getting SEO value from every news release—beginning with keyword research and working through optimization, backlinks, and online distribution through an SEO-friendly PR distribution service.

I took several creating writing courses back in junior high and high school. For a while, as a teen, I even considered pursuing a career as a novelist—until I did some research and realized that the probability of becoming a best-selling fiction author is on par with the odds of winning the lottery. While being attacked by a shark. And struck by lightning. Simultaneously. Twice.

So I went into engineering instead. But my love of writing and storytelling eventually drew me into marketing and PR, where I could bring true customer stories to life and help people understand the transformative potential of technology.

As it turns out, many of the elements of storytelling apply to writing customer stories, new releases, blog posts and other marketing content as well. A customer story or news release shouldn’t read exactly like a novel or movie script of course, but keeping in mind the elements of proper storytelling can help add life and draw readers in to your PR and social media marketing “stories.”

Setting: creating the context or setting the scene is the essential first step in storytelling. Almost everyone of a certain age can identify, verbatim, the setting for Star Wars (“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”). A fictional story can be set in any place or time. A social business story, however, is always set in the present, the very recent past, or just slightly in the future, and always in your customers’ world—though the setting changes slightly for the different buyers of your product or service (e.g., the C-level, finance, technology or business buyer).

Protagonist: the hero of the story; in fiction, this can be a person, a group, an animal or even a thing. In a social business story, the hero is always your buyer, or in the case of a customer story, an existing customer whom you buyers can relate to.

Antagonist: the villain, the enemy, the bad guy; again, in fiction, the antagonist can take a wide variety of forms, from a person or group to an apparition, an object, the weather, or a monster.  In a social business story, the antagonist is often a business problem (excessive costs, low or declining sales, inefficient processes, unhappy customers) but can, effectively, also be more personal (low compensation or recognition, long/late hours at the office, excessive travel, lack of advancement).

Conflict: a key element of plot, conflict is what draws us into a story, makes us wonder what will happen next, the source of suspense or uncertainty; it’s what creates the dramatic tension that makes a story interesting. Suppose someone were to write a story along the lines of: “Fred woke up one morning, then a bunch of good things happened to him, then he went to bed and thought about what a good day it had been.” That’s all fine and good for Fred, but it’s not much of a story. There’s no suspense, no mystery, no wonder, nothing to interest us. Too often, marketing materials are written that way: “blah, blah, our product, blah, features, blah, benefits…” As with Fred, that’s nice for the product or service in question, but not terribly interesting. When writing a news release, blog post or other content, ask yourself—what’s the “hook” that will draw readers in and make them care?

Plot twists: an unexpected turn of events, a surprisingly revelation about a key character, an unforeseen obstacle—these are often what set a good story apart from a great one. Business stories often have plot twists too: a budget cut, the loss of a key customer, an unexpected move by a supplier or competitor, a change in the market landscape, or other events that the alter the course of, complicate, or add urgency to a story.

Resolution: the hero triumphs, the smoke clears, the alien flies off back into space, the bad guy gets what he had coming, the boy gets the girl (or vice versa)—basically, the conflict is resolved and the dramatic tension is eased. How does your product or service help the hero (your customer) to emerge victorious, in a believable manner?

Denouement: the wind-down, the epilogue, the final resolution, the hero riding off into the sunset, the happy ending. In social business writing, this is where you explain how your customer/hero’s life ends up better than before, how their situation is improved, how their world is changed by what you provide.

Obviously, that’s not to say you should literally write a business story like a novel—that would be cheesy—but rather that business writing can be enlivened and inspired by considering the story elements of great fiction.

And don’t be formulaic; stories that are formulaic (Halloween) can degenerate into ironic, self-aware imitations (Scream) and then into parodic farce (Scary Movie). Don’t let your business stories turn into Scary Movie. Be original! But consider incorporating the elements of classic fiction to add life to your PR and social business stories.

Vocus and Cision are both powerful and popular PR monitoring and management systems. Both provide PR and social media professionals with extensive capabilities for tracking and growing media coverage of their organizations or clients. Among their features:

• • An extensive database of professional journalists and social media influencers, with biographical information.
• • Ability to monitor media coverage and brand mentions across a very wide range of sources.
• • Capability to set up monitoring profiles for multiple keywords, topics, companies and products.
• • Competitive and share-of-voice analysis and reporting.
• • Optional social media monitoring and management.
• • Online news release distribution.

So which is best? Well, “best” is obviously a subjective term, a matter of opinion. And people can reasonably hold different opinions. The fact is, both tools can do the job pretty well (hence their popularity). But there are clear differences between them. If your company or agency is weighing a decision on selecting a PR and social media monitoring and management tool (or perhaps making a change), here are five areas of comparison you may find helpful.

Media Database

Cision: A
Vocus: B+

Both tools offer extensive databases of publications, media professionals and bloggers. In the judgment of the PR professionals I work with, Cision’s database is just a bit more comprehensive.

User Interface

Cision: C-
Vocus: D

User experience, unfortunately, isn’t a strength of either system. Both tools have complex, cumbersome user interfaces and are unnecessarily difficult to use. Both could benefit from a major UX/UI upgrade. The Cision interface is slightly better, but it’s like saying the Windows 95 interface is better than Windows 3.1. True, but neither meet modern standards for clarity and usability.

Customer Service

Vocus: B+
Cision: D

Overall, the Vocus team was outstanding to work with during our trial. They were friendly, knowledgeable, and training was customized to our needs and around our schedules. The company doesn’t quite merit an “A” only because there were some inconsistencies between individuals. But overall, Vocus customer service was excellent. Cision’s service on the other hand was dreadful. Training was regimented, and waiting 48 hours for a non-helpful response to an email is unimpressive. The company could clearly use some improvement in this area.

Online News Release Distribution

Vocus: A-
Cision: D

Vocus owns and utilizes PRWeb for its online distribution; Cision uses GlobeNewswire. According to an analysis from Comscore and Experian, as well as evaluations from other sources, PRWeb ranks among the best services for both media reach and SEO. GlobeNewswire takes up the rear.

Social Media Monitoring

Cision: B+
Vocus: B+

This is a tough criteria to grade because while both tools offer this option and perform social media monitoring and management quite well, the two vendors take completely different approaches. Vocus built its own tool, which is fully integrated into its PR monitoring system; Cision white-labels the Radian6 social media monitoring tool.

The advantages to the Vocus approach are that integration means one database, one system, and unified results and reporting. Also, since they own the tool, Vocus has the flexibility to negotiate on price with prospective buyers, who may thus get a better deal. Integration means there is only one user interface to learn. The downside: it’s the Vocus interface.

The benefit of Cision’s best-of-breed approach, on the other hand, is that the system combines the extensive Cision media database with the power of the highly-regard Radian6 tool for social media monitoring. The disadvantages are in pricing and the need to learn two separate systems. Also, the freshness and elegance of the Radian6 UI makes the clunkiness of the Cision interface even more obvious. It’s like parking a Ferrari next to an old Buick station wagon.

Other areas on which the decision is pretty much a wash include the amount of historical data available (both are limited to a few months, and could use improvement in this area) and search speed: Google can return a search on its index of the entire web in milliseconds, while it takes both of these tools several seconds to provide results from a much smaller database. Cision may be just slightly faster, but it’s not a big difference.

In the end, it’s a tough decision. Either tool will provide robust PR and social media monitoring management capabilities; it’s a matter of which strengths you need and which disadvantages you can live with.

So, you may ask, what decision did the b2b technology marketing and PR agency I work with make? A mix. We went with Cision for PR monitoring and management (a consensus decision, though not a unanimous one), but use PRWeb for online news release distribution. We use a mix of tools for social media monitoring, not having settled on one tool that can “do it all” tool yet.

Got an opinion on which tool is best? Leave a comment.

FTC Disclosure: I have no financial interest in either product—no dog in this fight. Both vendors provided free trials of their software systems for evaluation purposes. Other than those trials, there was no compensation offered or provided for this review.

Web presence optimization (WPO) is the art and science of being found online. As indicated in the masthead of my blog, it has both an explanational definition (The fusion of SEO, search marketing, social media, reputation management, content marketing and social PR) and a reasonal one (Being omnipresent on the web for the search phrase that uniquely describes you or your organization.) It’s the evolution of search engine optimization (SEO), or alternatively,  SEO on steroids. It is a structured approach to getting your name, company, product or service found online when people are searching for what it is you have to offer. And getting found is the necessary first step to winning that business.

Graphically, it looks something like this:

Why Does It Matter?

As Vanessa Fox puts it in the subtitle of her book Marketing in the Age of Google, “Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy.” Consider the following points:

• • More than 80% of considered consumer purchases (e.g. for high-value, high-involvement products) now start with search, and more than 90% of B2B purchase cycles begin online.
• • Search is no longer just Google and Bing; the second- and third-largest “search engines” by volume of searches are YouTube and Facebook. The internal search functions of social networks LinkedIn and Twitter also have higher volume than most second-tier search engines.
• • Your web presence is no longer limited to your website and blog (as important as those remain). Prospective customers may first find you on a social network, in a blog post written by a key influencer in your market space, on a content network like YouTube or SlideShare, in an online business directory, in an online news release, or in any number of other web venues.

For many businesses, particularly on the B2B side, if your buyers can’t find you online—you don’t exist. Web presence optimization provides a structured approach for maximizing your “findability” online.

There’s no question PR (and online distribution of news releases in particular) is beneficial to search engine rankings. Links are SEO fuel and well-crafted and placed news releases can provide text-specific links from high-authority news sites.  While there is some debate about how recent changes to search engine algorithms may have affected the value of these links, there is no question that they remain important. So which online press release distribution sites are best for SEO purposes?

Before answering that, a quick review of a few PR+SEO best practices:

• • Write high-quality, “newsworthy” news releases. Never write news releases only for SEO purposes. High-quality releases are more likely to catch the attention of your market, get picked up by high-authority news outlets, enhance your brand image and provide valuable backlinks than keyword-stuffed fluff.
• • Include text links within releases. In this press release for example, notice how the phrase records management software points back to a highly relevant web page for that term. This may seem obvious, but never use a press release distribution service that strips out these links. There are plenty of alternatives that will leave your links intact.
• • Use at least one paid service. While it doesn’t hurt to use free services as well, journalists tend to pay more attention to news releases from trusted, paid sources than to the free ones and paid services generally provide better placement.

Okay, so which sites are best? Answers vary depending on who you ask.

In How to Select the Best Wire Service to Distribute Your News Release, Robert Beadle places PRWeb and PR Newswire (following upgrades to its website) at the top of his list for most organizations. He notes that Business Wire is also very strong, but is the most expensive of the “big four,” is most suitable for large, publicly-traded companies and the PR firms who serve them. He places MarketWire at the bottom of his list, though it is reasonably priced and has strong distribution for more localized and IT-related news releases.

Ted Weismann, in What Do You Know About Your Wire Service’s SEO Practices?, notes that PR Newswire initially took a search traffic hit from Google’s Panda update, but has since made changes to its site to regain lost ground. Business Wire has also addressed Panda. It’s not clear what other PR distribution sites have done to respond.

Search guru Lee Odden, in the SlideShare presention SEO + PR Tactics and Measurement (which also contains some excellent general guidance on optimizing news releases for SEO benefit), favors PR Newswire, though he notes that all of the big four provide SEO value. UPDATE: Lee actually endorses PRWeb for SEO. See the comments below.

This Press Release Wire Service Comparison from Clarity Quest ranks PR Web on top, and echoes Robert Beadle’s conclusion that MarketWire is a viable alternative for budget-conscious local firms. Unlike Beadle, however, the team at Clarity Quest doesn’t view Business Wire as an expensive, big-company-only alternative, stating that “Through their partnership with PR Web, you can get one of the best deals on the Web…For smaller B2B companies and startups, we use the BusinessWire package with PR Web.” The post goes hard on PR Newswire, but it’s not clear if this opinion reflects the recent changes PR Newswire has made to address SEO issues.

Based on traffic trends from both ComScore and Experian, PR Newswire leads all of the service in search engine referral traffic, followed closely by PRWeb, then in order Business Wire and MarketWire. Globe Newswire comes in the bottom of both graphs.

So much for the experts. What do actual PR practitioners think? According to this LinkedIn discussion on What is the best Press Release Service for results? Free or Paid, PRWeb (owned by PR monitoring firm Vocus) is the clear winner, followed by PR Newswire. Business Wire and MarketWire get honorable mentions, as do a few other lesser-known fee-based and some free PR distribution sites.

The bottom line? All of the big four do a pretty good job at helping with news release links for SEO. Which is the “best” service depends on your particular situation. PRWeb seems worth checking out for almost any company, and is a no-brainer for those already using Vocus. PR Newswire is another strong service, though slightly more expensive. Business Wire is likely the best choice for large firms with correspondingly large PR budgets, though its package with PRWeb is worth investigating for smaller B2B vendors as well. MarketWire appears best for budget-conscious companies and those primarily concerned with local news release distribution (and is also effective at reaching targeted industry publications).

Have a different opinion, experience or perspective? Comments are welcome.

Amid all of the hype, conferences, and rapid adoption of social media marketing by organizations from sole proprietors to the Fortune 100, there remains an undercurrent of skepticism. This surfaces in posts like Social Media Skepticism, 5 reasons why social media skeptics maybe right and Business social networking: where’s the ROI?. It’s why posts like 20 Ways to Generate ROI from a Corporate Blog have to be written to help people who are “doing everything right” but still not seeing business results from social media make adjustments to their efforts. It’s why a search for “social media sucks” on Google yields almost 12 million results (so much for my SEO on this post, oh well).

Image credit: Spin Sucks

It’s true that social media remains in many ways a sort of wild west. Many of the participants are shady, self-proclaimed experts are sometimes snake oil salesmen, and paths are still being created. Yet there are also an increasing number of social media success stories and the picture of what social media success looks like is becoming clearer. And there’s no turning back; social media has changed buyer expectations and behavior. Despite the dangers and potential pitfalls of social media, businesses will continue to expand and refine their social networking efforts.

Here are six reasons why social media skeptics have a point, and six reasons businesses must and will continue to embrace social media marketing anyway.

6 Reasons Social Media Sucks

1. It’s full of self-promoters. No question. Certain aspects of social media (such as the ease of building a large following on Twitter—if you’re not picky about things like quality or relevance) are like helium for those with already overinflated egos. Facebook can be a wonderful platform for sharing information, but also a playground for narcissists. These people aren’t shy about telling you how wonderful they are (it’s amazing how many Twitter handles and profiles, for example, include terms like “guru,” “expert” or even “god”), or treating social media as a direct sales channel rather than a mechanism for sharing valuable insights and information. The great thing about social media, however, is: you don’t have to follow, friend, “like” or in any way encourage such folks if you don’t want to.

2. It’s more of a place to interact with peers than to engage prospects. Again, no argument, most of the activity across social networks is of the birds-of-a-feather variety. Marketers follow other marketers, PR pros hang with other PR pros, engineers interact with other engineers. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (see below) and it’s the biggest part of what makes social media activity enjoyable. Problem is, few CEOs or general managers are excited about the notion of paying employees to essentially spend their time engaged in online water cooler chats with cohorts at other firms. Ultimately, both sides need to come to an understanding, with management conceding that not all of that peer interaction is a waste of time and employees focusing primarily on achieving business goals through social media activity during work hours.

3. It’s an easy way to waste a lot of time. It can be. The more active a person is in social media, the more time it naturally takes up (e.g. because there are more blog comments to respond to, more Twitter followers to check out, etc.). Then again, almost any activity, improperly management, can be a time sink. The key is to prioritize between networks and spend the time on each wisely.

4. It means giving up one’s privacy. Not an unreasonable concern. Facebook in particular is notorious for privacy issues. Google settled a lawsuit last fall relating to its Google Buzz service. I’ve always found Foursquare a bit creepy; turns out there’s actually an app named Creepy that aggregates “GPS coordinates for any user (of geolocation services like Foursquare, Twitter and Flickr), pointing out their most frequented hangouts on a map…Essentially, it’s a stalker’s dream app.” The solution? Be careful and thoughtful about what you post online. Always assume the entire world can see anything you do on line. If you wouldn’t do it in front of your mom, your pastor and your boss, don’t do it online. That award you just won for your last brilliant email marketing campaign? An excellent thing to add to your online profiles or post a status update about. Last night’s extracurricular activities? Probably better shared over a beer with your buddies than with the world on Facebook or Twitter.

5. It’s just another avenue for spam. Sadly, yes. Twitter was riddled with tweet spam early in its ramp up phase, though the service has added tools and made other significant strides since then to combat spam and p*rn on its network.  Google “Facebook spam” and you’ll get 246 million results. LinkedIn has had problems with LinkedIn group spammers, though the business social network has responded by creating new group management tools to fight spam. Yes, like email, social media sites and social networks can be sources of spam. Having learned from email, however, most networks (as a matter of survival) have taken spam-fighting into consideration from the start and make their tools more sophisticated as spammers have developed new techniques.

6. It’s hard to measure the ROI. Maybe or maybe not, the social media ROI debate continues. But in general, measuring the ROI of social media with any precision is problematic because social media far more often influences a sale than leads directly to one. Still, as Jennifer Kane noted at the recent OMS Minneapolis event, correlations between social media activities and sales can be measured—and correlations are good data.

6 Reasons Social Media is Essential Anyway

1. Social media has become a vital element of SEO. Links from authoritative websites are still of course an important signal of authority to the search engines, but social media links now play an increasing and essential role in these calculations as well. So much so that Rand Fishkin now places page-level and domain-level social signals among its top three search engine ranking factors. Michael Gray has written about which social signals the search engines use and Lee Odden has put together an outstanding presentation on how to use social media for SEO. With more than 80% of consumer purchases and 90% of b2b buying cycles now starting with search, this may be reason enough to embrace social media.

2. Your buyers are there, and they expect you to be there as well. According to recent research, one-fourth of all online time is spent with social media. Nearly 60% of American spend time on a social network at least once per month. YouTube reaches 36% of all business decision makers (more than 10 times the figure for Forbes.com). And 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a social media presence.

3. Social media produces high-quality leads. Based on research from MarketingSherpa, my own experience and that of clients I work with, while social media activities don’t usually produce a high quantity of leads, they do result in quality leads–the kind that convert, and buy, at a higher rate. It makes sense; while social media is more about branding and PR than lead generation, those who follow your brand in social media are much more likely to look favorably on your company and its offerings, understand the value, and to have engaged with your company previously than leads generated through most other sources.

4. It’s a critical and cost-effective tool for gathering market and competitive intelligence. Gone are the days of conducting expensive surveys and focus groups to find out what your prospects are thinking. It’s no longer necessary (or at least not as necessary as it once was) to spend thousands of dollars on analyst research reports to find out what your competitors are up to. The buyers in your market are telling you all of this now, through social media. They are talking about their challenges and looking for answers on LinkedIn, in blog posts and comments, on Twitter, Facebook, and dozens of industry-specific social media forums. It just takes listening.

5. It’s an excellent way to find business partners. Remember all of those peers mentioned in point #2 near the top of this post? Turns out all of that cohort networking isn’t such a waste of time. Increasingly, business gets done by networks. Both individual consultants and companies generate opportunities where they provide only a partial solution to a customer’s needs themselves; they need to bring in one or partners who have complementary skills in order to win the deal. Those partners are very likely to come from their social media network, where a level of trust and familiarity has already been built up. It’s a bit like the much-maligned “old boy networks” of years gone by, but much more open and effective.

6. Social media is the new PR. Journalists increasingly rely less on wire services and more on social media (more than 75% say they use social media to research stories) and online newsrooms for story ideas, sources and research. Effective PR has always been about building relationships with reporters and editors, and social media is now how these relationships get built. A PR program that relies exclusively on traditional phone, online wire service and mail tactics is no longer effective.

So, every negative thing you’ve heard, read, or even said yourself about social media is probably true. But that doesn’t matter. The benefits are too compelling. The key is to listen, plan, and monitor activities to maximize the value of business social networking while avoiding the trolls and pitfalls as much as possible.

by TomPick and guest blogger Maria Verven

Almost every PR pro over a certain age remembers press kits–actual physical folders stuffed with a company’s recent press releases, management bios,  a corporate fact sheet, a few case studies, and maybe an article reprint or two.

They were expensive to print and ship and awkward to lug around—for both PR people who produced them and the journalists who ended up with them. They were bulky, killed lots of trees, and of course weren’t searchable.

And there was the constant balancing act: include too much information, and nothing will get read (it will seem overwhelming). Too little , and the writer won’t understand how cool and unique your company really is. Yeah, no one today mourns the press kit, but they were the best technology available at the time.

As the web took off and corporate sites proliferated,press kits (or at least elements of them) were moved online. Searchability improved, trees were saved and shipping costs plummeted. Online newsrooms are a dramatic improvement, but even today many are sub-optimized; it’s not at all uncommon to see websites where the “news room” or “media page” is little more than a list of press release links, with perhaps a PDF of some media coverage and some sketchy management bios.

The best online newsrooms go well beyond that and really take advantage of the web medium. Combining rich content with careful organization and search capabilities,  they enable PR pros to provide the media, analysts and bloggers with a vast amount of information without seeming overwhelming.

The ultimate online newsroom should house everything media are looking for in one convenient, easy to navigate spot. It ideally should include:

• • The primary media contact’s name and contact information (including social network profile links). This is preferably one single individual, but can be multiple names (e.g. based on division, product line, purpose etc.) if absolutely necessary.
• • Links to news releases (current year and archive of past years). If your company produces a lot of news releases, also provide the ability to view by topic (e.g. product line, financial releases, personnel announcements, etc.).
• • Links to media coverage and bylined articles.
• • A company backgrounder or fact sheet (see below for detail).
• • FAQs (real ones, that real media people would care about).
• • Management team bios and photos (downloadable JPGs in high-res and low-res versions for print and web). Bios should specify each executive’s area of expertise and best topics for quotes or interviews.
• • Story ideas (again, thoughtful ones).
• • Upcoming events / sponsorships / speaking engagements (with speaker bios included).
• • Links to white papers, PowerPoints, videos, ebooks, infographics, and other company-generated content and thought-leadership assets.
• • Links to analyst (industry and/or financial) research and coverage.
• • A link to the company blog(s).
• • RSS feeds for press releases and blog posts.
• • Downloadable JPG images in hi-res and low-res formats. These include the company logo and other important images such as the company headquarters building, product photos, software screenshots, photos of executives at industry events, etc.
• • Links to all of the company’s social media profiles (LinkedIn company page, Facebook, YouTube channel, Twitter etc.).
• • A search-friendly URL structure with “news” included, e.g. news.company.com/section/pagename or company.com/news/section/pagename (where “section” is the content type: news releases, bios, images etc.). See the 2011 Online Newsroom Survey (PDF) from TekGroup for more guidance here.

News releases should always be in HTML format for searchability. If PDF or printer-friendly versions are offered, these should be stored in a separate subdirectory that is excluded from search in order to avoid duplicate content issues. Releases should be presented in reverse date order and links should include the headline, date and one-line summary (preferably Twitter-friendly 115 characters or less). Again, current releases should be displayed on the newsroom main page with a link to archives, and the media contact name should be easy to find on every release. Also consider creating social media releases (which can include videos, images, links and other items) using a tool like PitchEngine.

One thing that’s often overlooked: updating the media contact name on older releases if that name changes. You don’t want to direct media to contact former employees or your old PR firm (!).

The media coverage page should highlight the two-three most recent articles, with an archive section for the rest (assuming the company gets that much coverage).

The company backgrounder needs to be factual, objective (non salesy) and written in the third person. It’s best to provide both a short version (often just the news release boilerplate) and a longer version that includes more company history, competitive differentiation, and how the company’s products and/or services help customers solve problems (backed up with facts).

Management bios should include information on how long that person has been with the company, key responsibilities, any outside leadership roles held, and social media profile links.

To develop story ideas, start by looking at looking at editorial calendars from “A tier” publications in the industry and look for recurring themes. Make it clear which executives are the best sources for each topic.

Upcoming events and speaking engagements should include the date, name of the conference or event, a description of the company’s participation in the event, and links to the conference website and the speaker’s bio (if applicable).

All content should (of course) be search optimized, with the ability to limit the search to just information within the newsroom section of the site.

It almost goes without saying, but important news should be shared via the company’s Twitter feed, Facebook page and other important social media outlets. All newsroom content should be easily sharable using social media buttons for the most popular sites and networks (tools like AddThis, ShareThis and Meebo make it easy to add these buttons to any site or page). Use and link to social content sharing sites for your media assets as well, including YouTube and Vimeo for company videos, SlideShare for presentations, Podcast Alley and iTunes for audio, Flickr for photos, plus Scribd and Docstoc for PDF files.

The days of the press kit are far behind us, and there’s no need to simply replicate that old format online. The ultimate online newsroom can simultaneously provide far more information and yet give each reporter exactly what he or she is looking for.

Maria Verven is a PR and content marketing executive with KC Associates, a Minneapolis-based b2b technology PR and marketing agency. She’s well-versed in the “new rules” of doing PR, with expertise in social media, SEO (search engine optimization), content marketing, social media and blogging.

Social media marketing has clearly been embraced by consumer brands. Pepsi famously dropped its Super Bowl advertising a year ago in favor of a social media campaign. Coke, Starbucks and Disney are among the top brands on Facebook, with millions of fans. SMR has developed a sophisticated methodology for continuously tracking the top brands on social media based on reach, satisfaction and other metrics.

B2B marketing executives, however, tend to be a bit more skeptical. Though adoption is increasing, many b2b marketers still question the true effectiveness of social media for reaching business buyers. After all, four out of ten companies still ban access to social media sites from the workplace, and many more sharply limit its use. B2B products and services don’t generally make the same kind of emotional connection with buyers that consumer brands do, and tactics that work for b2c marketers (e.g. social media games and contests, “checking in” at retail locations, coupons and discounts) are inappropriate or flat-out inapplicable in the business world. There is, so far, no b2b version of Yelp, and its unlikely there will be anytime soon, as many companies worry about the legal liability entailed in either endorsing or disparaging a specific vendor.

Still, social media is rapidly becoming an essential component of the b2b marketing mix. B2b buyers use social media tools throughout their buying processes, from problem-solving and how-to content in the initial research phase through product/vendor comparisons and customer experience validation. Bloggers provide much of this information, supplementing the reporting and commentary of trade publications and industry analysts. Buyers thwarted from using these tools at work (e.g., part of the four-in-ten companies above) find ways around corporate roadblocks, access social media sites via mobile devices, from home or the local coffee shop, or while traveling. They rely on search and social media through the bulk of their buying process,  and expect b2b vendors to be there.

For b2b marketers still trying to quantify the potential benefits of social media marketing, here are a dozen helpful stats. You can find the original sources for most of these findings in Best Social Media Stats, Facts and Marketing Research of 2010.

• • Companies active in social media report a 59% higher lead conversion rate for organic search traffic
• • 85% of B2B buyers say they want B2B vendors to engage and interact with them online
• • 93% of B2B buyers believe that all companies should have a social media presence
• • 9 out of 10 start a purchase process with search (and social media increasingly affects search results)
• • Three-quarters of B2B technology buyers say they use social media at some point during a buying cycle to gather information or communicate with colleagues about a purchase; 58% use LinkedIn for this purpose
• • YouTube reaches 36% of all business decision-makers—more than 10X the figure for Forbes.com
• • 43% of employees in Fortune 1000 companies say they use LinkedIn for professional purposes
• • 100% of the Fortune 500 have at least some of their executives listed on LinkedIn. 50% of LinkedIn users are business decision makers.
• • 65% of journalists use social media to conduct research for stories
• • 59% of C-level executives report using social media for business purposes at least weekly
• • 90% of B2B technology decision makers watch online videos
• • 80% of B2B technology decision makers read blogs; 69% are active on social networks

In short, b2b marketers need to embrace social media marketing because the buyers are using it. They expect vendors to use it as well. And you can’t win the game if you’re not even on the field.

Social media marketing, online PR and SEO are three tactics that are all powerful on their own, but have far more impact when used in a coordinated, synergistic manner.

How can you amplify and extend new releases through social media? Optimize company news for SEO benefit? Effectively connect with bloggers and other key online influencers in your industry? Which online tools are most helpful for PR pros? What does the future hold for online / interactive / social PR?

Get the answers to all of these questions and more here in some of the best social PR guides, tips and tools of the past year.

Interactive PR Guides, Tips and Tools

Twitter Pitching Etiquette: What works, what doesn’t… by COMMS Corner

Noting that “Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, if used effectively, can help build relationships, identify new trends and help facilitate networking with like-minds throughout the industry,” Lacey Haines and Adam Vincenzini share a few best practices for pitching journalists through social media, such as keeping pitches short and using a DM rather than a public message when pitching on Twitter.

The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases by Adam Sherk

We’ve seen these before—meaningless, over-used goobledygook buzzwords in press releases—but here Adam Sherk provides an updated list for 2010, topped by “leading,” “unique,” “solution” and “innovator” and proceeding through “customer-centric,” “outside the box” and “peak performance.” So, if you’re stumped for an opening line the next time you’re drafting a press release, try something like “XYZ Company, the leading innovator of unique, customer-centric solutions, today announced an outside the box product which supports peak performance.” Go ahead, works for anything.

6 free online PR tactics that deliver by iMedia Connection

Rachel Hunt supplies valuable guidance on how to use social networking, award submissions, guest blogging, speaking opportunities and original research to maximize the impact of PR efforts.

Public Relations: The best press release is no press release by MarketingSherpa

The headline may be a bit harsh—drafted and used properly (which they too frequently aren’t), press releases can still serve a valuable role—but Daniel Burstein does make some excellent points here. One of the best: “Talk to me (the media) like I’m your older brother, not your mother…When you talk to your mother, she’s likely excited and proud about almost anything you have done…However, try the same pitch with your older brother and see how well that turns out. ‘Loser. You’re only in advertising because you couldn’t hack it in medicine.’ To grab the attention of your older brother, you need something really newsworthy.”

5 successful marketers reveal their favorite public relations tools by Matt About Business

Matt Mansfield interviews five PR pros including Joe Chernov of Eloqua and Lisa Ann Pinkerton of Technica to get the scoop on their favorite tools for PR management, social media and other functions. The tools, briefly reviewed, range from the obvious (e.g., Vocus and Cision) to the obscure (Butterfly Publisher).

Pitching on Twitter? Try these 8 tactics to entice the media by Ragan.com

Maya Wasserman offers expert guidance to successfully connecting with reporters and editors on Twitter, from focusing on individual journalists rather than publications and building a relationship before pitching to using PitchEngine and being brief (which is pretty much enforced by Twitter anyway).

Social Media Press Releases and Blogger Outreach

The Art of Creating a Social Media Press Release by Socialfish

After a quick trip through the history of social media press releases, Maddie Grant muses that the essential elements of a social media release remind her of nothing more than…a blog. She then makes the heretical (!) contention that “You don’t need a PR agency.” While that may be taking a good idea a bit too far, she does make an interesting argument that “If your ‘news’ is cool or important enough that when you post it on your blog, your community shares it, and tweets it, and talks about it, then the trade journalists who cover your industry will notice…Do this right and the news will find you.” Good advice even if you do use a PR agency.

The 5 Cs of Blogger Relations by prTini
***** 5 Stars
Noting (very accurately I might add) that “The top bloggers receive hundreds of pitches a day. Even bloggers with less traffic to their site are still being pitched on a regular basis. Working against us, some PR people aren’t quite so savvy and are spamming these bloggers,” Heather Whaling lays out an excellent model for doing blogger outreach right, including collaboration (“how can we provide content that will drive traffic to their site?”) and content (“before you ever think about pitching a blogger, make sure you’re offering something valuable”).

Is the Press Release Dead? 5 Tips to Revive It by iMedia Connection

“Has the press release taken its last breath?” Paige O’Neill answers “not yet” if it evolves into a social media release, and provides guidance on how to create and share one effectively.

Social PR News and Commentary

The Future of Public Relations and Social Media by Mashable

Erica Swallow interviews 14 PR experts including Jeff Esposito, Lou Hoffman and Dave Delaney to get their opinions “on the future of public relations and how they see social media changing the industry.” In short—relationships with key influencers have always been and will continue to be the key to an effective public relations strategy. Social media changes how those relationships are formed and maintained, but not fundamentally what PR pros do.

Google Launches Blog Finder for Any Topic by ReadWriteWeb

Marshall Kirkpatrick dives into Google’s expanded blog search capabilities and concludes “The search results in this new search by blog feature look pretty good to me. The ranking of those results, however, seems questionable…That said, in as much as I know about the topics I searched for, the top blogs in those fields definitely peppered the search results, to greater or lesser degrees.” PR pros shouldn’t rely solely on Google’s tool when developing an outreach list, but it’s a good one to add to their arsenal.

Update on Trusting PR Agencies without a Social Media Presence with Your Social Media Programs by PR Meets Marketing

Cece Salomon-Lee reports on the progress PR firms are making in using social media for their own business as well as their clients’—”eating their own dog food” so to speak. Among her findings: “While most agencies didn’t link to their social media channels on their website in 2009, 83% included this on their home page in 2010. Twitter was the most popular social media channel, with 80% of PR agencies having a presence. 35% had followers numbering over 1000.”

PR and SEO

Why PRs can be better link builders than SEOs by Econsultancy

Kelvin Newman contends that the skills which make PR pros successful (e.g., deep vertical industry knowledge, writing, relationship-building) also make them natural link builders for SEO. There’s no question that online PR plays a key role, in conjunction with SEO, in successful web presence optimization.

SEO Press Releases Extend Your Coverage by Adventive Marketing
5 Stars *****
Janet Killen explains in a comprehensive yet concise manner step-by-step instructions for getting maximum SEO benefit from a press release, integrating keywords, links, online distribution, social media and RSS.

Get More from your SEO Press Release by InteractMedia SEO Content Marketing Blog

Expanding on Janet’s advice above, Beth Hrusch reminds us that keeping readers in mind is critical too, and provides seven tips for optimizing press releases for both search engines and people.

Related Post

Best Social PR Guides and Tips of 2010 (So Far)

Social media and PR seem like natural allies. Both are primarily focused on brand awareness, credibility building and image enhancement. Both are critical tools for dealing with bad news or crisis situations. Both require relationships with influential people in one’s industry to be effective. And both rely on the ability to tell an interesting story.

So why do corporate PR and social media efforts so often appear disconnected and out of sync? To be sure, some agencies and companies get it, and do an effective job integrating social media and PR efforts. But many organizations in both groups still treat the functions as separate silos—or worse, mix them awkwardly, damaging both efforts.

But integrated properly, social media can help amplify PR efforts, and effective PR can help generate social media coverage. It’s a virtuous circle that looks something like this.

In this example, a press release is distributed online, posted to the company’s Facebook and Twitter updates, and used to create a social media release (using a tool such as PitchEngine). Any significant online news site pickups of the release are posted to Twitter (it’s okay to repeat news a few times on Twitter as not all of your followers will see all of your tweets, just don’t overdo this) and to social bookmarking sites.

For SEO and traffic purposes, the press release and social media release link back to the company’s website/blog. The social media release also links back to the company’s LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

The social media release is used for blogger outreach. Since many (most?) bloggers are overwhelmed with pitches and unlikely to write about the company’s press release, the company uses the press release as a hook and offers to write a (informational, non-promotional) guest post on the topic. When a blogger publishes a guest post from the company, that post gets linked in the company’s LinkedIn groups, Facebook page, Twitter and social bookmarking sites. These links send more traffic to the blog (which the blogger likes) and spread the company’s fame.

Likewise, any other blog or media coverage, or bylined articles by the company, are shared via social media sites. Bylined articles will—and other blog/media coverage may—include backlinks to the company’s website/blog as well. And the website/blog includes social sharing buttons, making it easier for site visitors to share the company’s content with their connections across popular social networks.

PR and social media can also be used together to promote events, speaking opportunities, corporate presentations, video and other content.

Social media and PR can both be used to influence journalists and other influencers online. Smart companies and agencies are putting this together.