15 ways to promote your blog

Posted on November 24, 2009 by rgeller

A number of our clients are jumping into blogging.  They all want to be assured that the hard work that goes into running a good blog gets rewarded through recognition for the blog in terms of ranking, traffic. etc.  As such, I thought I’d write this post, which includes tips for promoting blogs.

First, the basics:

  • Blogs should be set up for pinging – this makes the posts “visible” to search engines.
  • Enable comments and trackbacks; these encourage participation and are the first steps to engagement and community building.
  • Make sure that directories such as Technorati and BlogCatalog list and accurately classify your blog; take some time to learn about the directories as they can be a good source of traffic, but each has nuances and features that you need to learn about if you want to get the most out of them.

Now, moving on to what we call the human elements:

  • Find out which blogs have big followings amongst the audiences you are trying to reach.
  • Identify conversation threads and topics of interest by plugging keywords into search alerts.
  • Comment on these blogs – comments typically let you include a link to your blog/website.
  • List like minded blogs on your blog roll – hopefully the linked bloggers will return the favor.
  • Identify the Web pages, directories and forums that list blogs like yours, as well as “Top Blog” compilations; submit your blog.
  • Identify social news sites that are important in general (e.g. Digg, Reddit), and any specific ones for your market segment; these sites let you vote on your favorite stories.
  • Alert influencers like reporters, analysts and bloggers when you have a post that might interest them – you don’t want to overtly twist their arms to write and link, but if the subject matter is aligned and interesting than the approach should be welcome and a link could very well result.
  • Tweet a link to your blog along with the post subject line – ask colleagues, friends and family to do the same.
  • Include the blog title and URL on your email signature, and on your website and your business card
  • Tools like ping.fm are great ways to write once (including a link to your blog) and post simultaneously to many places, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
  • Contribute content to sites that target audiences of interest; include a link to your blog in the byline and within the article.

It may seem like a lot of work.  Remember, not all these steps need to be done all the time; What really matters the most (and perhaps the hardest part) is to get into the habit keeping the blog fresh with great content.  I’ll be doing a post soon that helps with this aspect of blogging.

Posted in PR Tech | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

What is your Return on Acronym?

Posted on November 19, 2009 by rgeller

Had a great day meeting with clients, friends and colleagues at the Web 2.0 / Interop / Chem / Everything but kitchen sink show at the Javits center yesterday.  It is a sign of the times that there are so many shows under one roof, no line to register and no fee for registering day of.

We wrapped up the day by briefing with one of these freelancer / trade press writer / consultant types. You know, the briefings in which it is anyone’s guess whether an article or sales pitch will result.

No matter, whatever you call him this was one sharp guy who has been around the block once or a million times and who provided feedback to my pre-launch tech start up client that was more rich and insightful than what we heard from some of the name brand analysts firms we met with earlier;  advice that was more than worth the price of a nice steak dinner at Jack’s, where we continued the conversation after Javits.

During the dinner we had a very open, collaborative and intellectual conversation about one of my favorite topics, namely finding the right categories and words to describe things in tech.  In this case, we were struggling to find a label that encompasses the businesses that provide computer software, hardware and support services to small businesses.  Our client sees these types of businesses as an important channel and route to the market.

“Service provider” did not quite work because it sounds too telecom; consultant, VAR, system integrator, even MSP all had pluses and minuses.

In exasperation, and (if I must say so myself) moment of genius that great conversation, steak, and wine can inspire, I pointed out that analysts are great at coining terms that they sell to industry and  build lucrative practices on.  Why not call this business model “return on acronym” (and define an acronym ROA for shorthand!)

The consultant came back that people in my field, PR, are also experts at using words in this way.  Touche’! I took this as a compliment.

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Why I Like Getting Pitches

Posted on November 17, 2009 by rgeller

While checking my Blackberry over the weekend an email with the subject line “Your Media Profile” caught my attention.  Thinking it might be Spam, I was intrigued enough to open the message anyway – and was surprised and pleased that the email was a note from the MyMediaInfo (now Notified) media tracking database folks asking me to update my profile.

While many journalists and bloggers grouse about these types of databases, and the pitches that being listed inevitably invite, this email did not bother me.  First, getting listed is validation for this blog.  It is always nice to get some recognition in return for the hard work that goes into blogging, and trying to do it well.  I am deeply appreciative of this and other benchmarks, like getting on the blog rolls of other PR blogs, being listed on top PR blog lists, and being added to the Cision database awhile back.

I also reflected on the growing number of pitches I have been getting.  Unlike others, I do not mind these, I actually get a kick out of them (I fully realize that if this blog ever goes A list and draws tons of pitches, I may change my mind).

Not to get anyone’s hopes up, I generally don’t do much with them – I rarely take briefings, and don’t do many product or company reviews.

Being pitched and listed in the media tracking databases helps me better understand the worlds of the influencers that our teams spend time courting and building relationships with.  It gives me a chance to walk in their shoes.

Also, I am reminded of my days back in sales when a colleague reminded me of the good karma one builds by being nice to telemarketers.  That is why I don’t call out the bad pitches, although I can see why others do; when blogging one is always looking for fodder and it is all too tempting to turn to your email in box for inspiration

Despite the cluelessness many in our profession are sometimes accused of, most of the pitches I receive are not bad ones and are aligned with the topics I cover.

These pitches are the drumbeat, the background music of people in our field that are hard at work as they take the steps needed to be diligent, cast a wide net and do a good job for clients.

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Scenes from the Sausage Factory: How News Gets Done

Posted on November 11, 2009 by rgeller

The story is about to break about a sex scandal involving the governor – reporters from a major daily and the governor's press agents scramble behind the scenes to get the facts right before publication…

A supreme court justice visits a NY prep school – the school newspaper holds back on the story while his staff reviews a draft and "tidies up quotations" to "better reflect the meaning the justice had intended to convey."

Two very different scenarios, true, but they both raise the same question: are they symptomatic of collusion between a pliant media and the people at the center of stories they are covering?  Or are they nothing remarkable, just examples of how news get done these days?

The first story came to my attention when my Fusion PR colleague Lisa pointed out an article that ran in Gawker last week.  The article claimed to shine a light on questionable dealings between the NY Times and then-NY Governor Elliot Spitzer's handlers leading up to the breaking news of his hooker escapades.

Gawker claimed that the NY Times showed extraordinary deference to the governor's press agents.  At times, it seemed like roles were reversed – the flacks seemed almost more determined than the reporters to get the key facts right.  As the article said:

It's a bizarre world where flacks are more vigilant than reporters when it comes to trying not to mislead readers.

If nothing else, the piece provides an extraordinary window into the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of a PR crisis as it unfolded.  They got this look by obtaining emails through NY's open records law (tell me please, where is the protection of journalistic sources here?).

I am on the side of the many commenters that say Gawker overstated its case.  As the saying goes, no harm, foul – the story was accurate, got out and the rest is history.

The second story, from the NY Times today, covers Justice Kennedy's visit to the Dalton School in NY.  The school newspaper was not able to cover the event in a timely way, and instead wrote the following disclaimer, as reported in the Times:

“We are not able to cover the recent visit by a Supreme Court
justice due to numerous publication constraints,” the note said. It
promised “an explanation of the regrettable delay” in the next issue.

It turns out that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy,
widely regarded as one of the court’s most vigilant defenders of First
Amendment values, had provided the newspaper, The Daltonian, with a
lesson about journalistic independence. Justice Kennedy’s office had
insisted on approving any article about a talk he gave to an assembly
of Dalton high school students on Oct. 28.

His staff assisted with the fine tuning alluded to in the opening of my post.

While few may get too exercised about what runs in a school newspaper, his visit was very big news indeed to the Dalton school community and surrounding area.  It must have seemed strange to have the story held back.  Then again, Supreme Court justices don't get out much; they are known to be extremely circumspect and I suppose there are good reasons behind this.  It is a tremendous privilege indeed to have someone of that stature visit the school – if this comes at the expense of judicial (judicious?) fine tuning of an article, and a delay in its publication, I do not see the harm in that.

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Handshake 2.0 Launches Innovative Campaign for SmartCollegeVisit.com

Posted on November 9, 2009 by rgeller

My friend Anne Giles Clelland implemented a very innovative social media initiative, designed to get the word out about SmartCollegeVisit.com.  She asked me to participate, and I was very happy to do so.

I first learned of the effort through an email from Anne with the subject line “A Synthesis of Social Media.”  The note started off:

I’m sending this to you for two reasons.  One, I hope you’ll share your story.  Two, this is an example of  how social media works.  I’m hoping you’ll see it’s a synthesis of  trust-engendering, risk-reducing, deal-enhancing “who you know” + who you are + subtle publicity of people, products, services and companies + savvy, best practices use of multiple social media channels.

The idea was simple yet brilliant – in support of the launch of the portal SmartCollegeVisit.com (a source of info for college-bound kids and their parents) Anne solicited stories from her extensive social network – stories that can contribute to the content on the site and to a successful launch.

Given that I had just completed a round of college visits with my daughter Carli, who is a senior in high school, and that I like to write, this was something I was very open to helping with.  Also, I knew that my post would be featured on her popular blog among other places, with links back to this blog.

It seemed like an effort designed to provide wins all around.

Here are links from Handshake 2.0 that describe the campaign’s evolution in more detail.

Anne’s vision statement about the client

Strategy

Founder’s announcement post

Posted in Campaign Analysis | 4 Comments

To Catch a Blogger (online conversations after new FTC rules)

Posted on November 4, 2009 by rgeller

For some reason, the new FTC rules that will make it necessary to disclose material interests in the
brands that you blog or Tweet about made me think of conversations between hookers and undercover cops (I clearly would not know about this first-hand but do watch a lot of TV).

Anyone who has watched Cops or other similar crime reality shows knows that the trick (no pun intended) is to catch the hooker in the act of offering sex in exchange for money.  So it becomes a game of sorts – the first one to mention the money and the act is the loser (if the cop does this it becomes entrapment; if the hooker does she goes to jail).

When thinking about the new FTC rules, one can anticipate enforcement efforts that will result in conversations like the above.  Except in this case the trick will be to disclose the money and act, while the enforcement officer will only “win” – or make a bust – if this is not done.

Here is a look ahead at how a conversation like this might unfold on Twitter:

@Flogster     Damn, my dogs are tired!

@CoolDude   Yea, my feet are sore too – I really need some new shoes.

@Flogster     Well, it may not be new shoes you need after all.  Have you seen those Gellin’ commercials about Dr. Scholls insoles?

@CoolDude   Yea, wait a second, are you recommending that I buy those?

@Flogster      Not at all! Just thinking about how comfortable they are on my feet!

@CoolDude   That sounds a lot like an endorsement…

@Flogster      Well, to be in compliance with code FTC 16 CFR Part 255 I do need to inform you…

@CoolDude    Not listening, can’t hear you, LA LA LA LA LA LA LA YER BUSTED!!

It also made me think that federal enforcement of online crime might be better focused in other areas, such as the real predators and scammers.

Note: The information featured in this blog includes views that are opinions of the blogger.  No material compensation was received from Dr. Scholls or any other commercial entity in exchange for inclusion in the post.

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Serendipity: Not dead yet, not by long shot

Posted on October 29, 2009 by rgeller

Damon Darlin wrote in his NY Times article Serendipity, Lost in the Digital Deluge that a downside of the Digital Age is a loss in serendipitous information discovery:

WE’VE gained so much in the digital age. We get more entertainment
choices, and finding what we’re looking for is certainly fast. Best of
all, much of it is free…But we’ve lost something as
well: the fortunate discovery of something we never knew we wanted to
find. In other words, the digital age is stamping out serendipity.

Everything we need to know comes filtered and vetted. We are
discovering what everyone else is learning, and usually from people we
have selected because they share our tastes. It won’t deliver that
magic moment of discovery that we imagine occurred when Elvis Presley first heard the blues, or when Michael Jackson followed Fred Astaire’s white spats across the dance floor.

Although I think the nature of serendipitous info discovery has changed, I do not agree that it is dead – not by a long shot.  In fact, with growing info sources and increasingly diverse ways of receiving and digesting media comes even more opportunities.

I thought what I would do is illustrate this by describing recent jewels I have uncovered – articles and posts from different sources – and in the process show how information from a typical post on Flack’s Revenge comes together.

I was casually going about my normal social media intensive day searching for mentions of this blog when I came across a false positive – a link not leading to a mention of Flack’s Revenge, but instead to an article called The Revenge of the Flack – one that is perhaps a little dated in terms of being a year old but still extremely topical and interesting.  It is about taking PR directly to the people, and one that I found totally by accident during a Google search.

Not long afterward I was scanning headlines in my email in box to find the nuggets amidst the all the BS I normally need to wade through.  One headline from Ad Age fortuitously jumped out: As Media Market Shrinks, PR Passes Up Reporters, Pitches Directly to Consumers.

The trifecta of information discovery was completed when Andrew Fowler of Newsvetter shared a post via Twitter about diminishing news beats, and what this means for PR (this is perhaps less serendipitous as Andrew knows me and thought I might have an interest).  Nonetheless, the combination of affinity and serendipity led me to several related stories and provided fodder for a future post.

Damon’s article assumes that the people in our networks are homogeneous and share the same narrow range of tastes that we do.  This is not true in general.  So, whether you see a Tweet with a link, see the results that surround your searches and search alerts, someone shares something unexpected, or yes watching TV and reading real mags which most of us still do, we are surrounded by info and it is harder these days NOT to accidentally discover something totally unexpected and interesting.

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Clip Book of the Future

Posted on October 27, 2009 by rgeller

While assembling yet another new business deck with yet another array of impressive news clips, I got to thinking that perhaps this staple will soon be another relic of the trade, and deserving of a mention in my PR Death Watch series (if you are a new reader, this is a series of posts in which I kill off outdated PR trappings) and to wondering what will replace it.

The clip book has given PR agencies bragging rights for as long as there have been PR agencies.  They show our clients and prospective clients how we have been successful, generally by sharing examples of impressive placements in top media, in hard copy or PowerPoint.

New times call for new tools.  I thought I’d take a look at how the vaunted clip book can evolve in sync with the realities of the day – an era in which traditional media are taking it on the chin and social media is rising in importance.

Not to downplay the importance major media (I cannot foresee a day when you would not want to show off a national TV spot, or a major story in a national daily), but top tier is not what it once was.  Getting a high visibility placement can sometimes work wonders in terms of achieving PR and business objectives.  But mere mentions in major media are no longer as impressive, and with all the other distractions people are faced with, sometimes seem to barely register.

Below I have lined up traditional indicators of PR success and compare them with ones that are rising in importance:

Traditional (column A)                 Emerging (column B)
Major daily print  hit                        Major blog hit
Millions of impressions                   Millions of conversations
National network news segment      Millions of views of your YouTube video
Your news, across the trades         Your news, voted up on Digg or SlashDot

Now, if you are still with me, you might look at column B and say “well that is all well and good but how does column B get put into an impressive looking clip book?”

Stay tuned, I will be coming back to this topic soon.

Posted in PR Tech | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Obama v. Media: Is Tiff with Fox well Advised?

Posted on October 20, 2009 by rgeller

There was a good article in the NY Times Sunday Week in Review, The Battle is Joined; Now What? about the Obama administration's much talked-about dust up with the Fox News.  According to the story:

Administration officials seemed to have decided that they had had enough.

“We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent,” Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, said in an interview with The New York Times. “As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

The article analyzed the situation within the historical context of past presidential media wars.  For example, it brought up the Nixon administration, one that was famous for its paranoia.  (To put clients in the right frame of mind in our media training sessions, we start off with famous quotes about the media; e.g. Nixon's "The press is the enemy").

The story included words from Nixon VP Spiro Agnew about the media (“self-appointed analysts” at the Big Three networks exhibited undisguised “hostility” toward President Richard M. Nixon), but did not mention his famous quote denouncing the press as "nattering nabobs of negativism," one of my favorites.

We all know Fox has it in for Obama but does it make much sense for his administration to publicly declare war? Why turn a cold war into a hot war?  The elephant in the "unbiased media" room is that everyone knows there are biases, left and right leaning, and everyone plays favorites (or opposite) in their media initiatives accordingly.  As the article says:

… pretending has traditionally been a valuable part of the presidential playbook. Smiling and wearing beige even under the most withering news media assault is not only good manners, but also has generally been good politics… the history of administrations that have successfully taken on the media and won is shorter than this sentence.

It also cites a rule of thumb in political PR regarding battles: People who work in political communications have pointed out that it is a principle of power dynamics to “punch up “ — that is, to take on bigger foes, not smaller ones.

I'll add one more: Don't let them show you are sweating.  A president that is well known for his cool demeanor should not encourage his operatives to be so blatant about participating in media wars.

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Flack’s Revenge Relaunching as Cloud-based Service

Posted on October 19, 2009 by rgeller

I am pleased to inform my readers that Flack’s Revenge will be relaunching as a cloud-based service.Cartoon-clouds

I can no longer put off this move as the clamor for all things cloud-based has become just too great to ignore.  My focus through the years has been tech marketing and PR; tech clients seem to be increasingly all about the cloud, and I need to adjust and conform to client needs.

As technology is expanding so has the need for my blog to expand with the new incoming developments. Even if they are confusing, they can help me to deliver a more efficient service.

This may cause confusion for some, who have perceived Flack’s Revenge as simply a blog and not a technology or a service that can be delivered from the sky.

After all, what is PR if it is not about floating above the noise? Or about finding silver linings in events, people and products?  Or weathering the occasional storm?  About praying for attention to rain down?  About fluffy and lofty imagery?

There may be some who see this move as a cheap ploy, a PR stunt if you will.  To those I say, don’t mess with clouds, dude, especially PR clouds.  We can muddle just as easy as we can enlighten.  We can rain on your parade.  We are Thor, catch this thunder bolt.

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