Here at C&M, we’re advocates of ‘less is more’ and focusing on the bottom line – like proving what impact our work has on real-world conversions.  As such, here’s our working list of things to measure campaigns by (albeit with a slight bias on B2B requirements…)

So, without further ado here’s our working list of basic things to put in a monthly Online PR / Social Media client activity report…

(NB: Tell us what you think!  What have we missed? What are you measuring??)

Conversion Metrics

• Sales, etc (!!!)
• Sign ups to newsletter, etc
• Downloads of papers & supporting content, etc

Publishing Metrics

• Number of blog posts created
• Number of white papers published
• Number of videos / podcasts posted
• Number of Tweets
• Number of Online Press releases issued
• Number of Articles published

Campaign Metrics

• (eg) PPC click throughs
• (eg) Costs per click, conversion, etc

Basic Web Site Metrics

• Number of visits
• Number of page views
• Average time on page
• Average bounce rates
• Snapshots of most popular content

Basic ‘Follower’ Metrics

• Blog: number of RSS subscribers
• Blog: number of comments received
• Twitter: number of followers
• Twitter:  number of retweets
• Twitter:  number of backlinks

Basic ‘Coverage’ Metrics

• Blogs:  number of post mentions / links
• Media:  number of mentions / links

Basic Social Bookmarking Metrics

• Delicious:  number of tags
• Dig:  number of articles (etc) tagged
• StumbleUpon:  number of articles (etc) tagged
• …etc

Basic Social Networking Metrics

• LinkedIn:  numbers of A’s to Q’s
• Facebook, etc, etc

Social Media Sharing Metrics

• Video views (You Tube, etc)
• Article views (Scribd, etc)
• PPT views (Slideshare, etc)
• …etc

Influencer Tracking

• Number of blog comments posted by identified influencers

Staff ‘Engagement’

• Number of blog comments posted, blog posts, Tweets, etc

SEO, SERPS & Rankings

• Google:  volume of backlinks generated
• Google:  search position in relation to top keywords
• Google:  news position in relation to top keywords
• Google:  blog position in relation to top keywords
• Site: number visits driven by keywords
• Site: bounce rates driven by keywords
• Technorati:  blog authority score

i) Get Some History

We’re not really that interested in creating new unified theories for this brave new world (as recent times have demonstrated, ‘sharp predictions’ can be a dangerous thing) – we’re more concerned with devising a bunch of practical methods and tools for doing our stuff really well.

This means being transparent in what we do, and making it as useful and measurable as possible for our clients.  For this reason we intend to get a little more history, in order to understand what’s worked well (and what hasn’t) in previous new world orders.  

Claude Hopkins is a good place to start.  As is David Ogilvy (more of whom here).  Both these people based their work on sound research, analysis and reporting.  We’ll do likewise.

ii) Less Haste

I don’t mean uncontrollable in terms of output – we’ll always be responsible for that …I mean in terms of input.  We Tweet most of the day and night, and our base working material is a never-ending fire hose of web content.  This means that it’s hard not to work.

But we have to – otherwise our work suffers… a lot.  We crash and burn and our ideas become stale.  C&M is a smart shop: we produce creative, practical solutions to web marketing and online PR problems.  We can’t do this unless we’re fresh.

So, 2009 will be the year of working smarter:  eight hours a day max; time for family; time for cat naps; time for research; time for preparation before the next meeting / call / etc; lots of time for thinking; and generally Less Haste…

Here’s our top five reads of 2008. The following ought to give you some idea on how and why we do our schtick…

(NB: only some of the following were published this year; others we only just got around to reading.)

1: My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising (Claude Hopkins, 1966)

It being the year of doom, gloom, Black Swans and ‘I told you so,’ we found it good to ground ourselves in a little history. Claude Hopkins was one of the founding fathers of modern advertising: not of the glossy, brand-driven type, but of the hard-edged, research and coupon-driven type. Next year the spoils will go to those who can measure what they do. Check out our man Claude for a bunch of fundamental ideas on this theme… (We’re still in the same business as he was all those years ago, you know.)

2: Here Comes Everybody (Clay Shirky, 2008)

Mr Shirky is a professor of ‘Interactive Telecommunications’ at New York University. He’s documented pretty much every major trend in the Interweb over the past 10 years. You might say he’s a bit of a guru. He’s certainly hip: no academic twaddle here, just a stream of superb ideas on how the Interweb is changing the way that communities are built and mobilized (including a super story about how one guy with a laptop can raise an army to help recover a stolen mobile phone). An essential read for anyone with a Social Media brief.

3: Building Findable Web Sites (Aaron Walter, 2008)

Much of what we do at C&M takes a steer from the semi-technical worlds of SEO and web usability design. Up until now we’ve been mashing things together in our own way. Then we discovered this book. ‘Building Findable Web Sites’ does what it says on the tin: it provides a complete framework for optimising every single atom of your web site so as to make it stick with Google and users alike – from code to colours to content. Very much a new C&M bible.

4: Mckinsey’s Marvin Bower: Vision, Leadership, and the Creation of Management Consulting (Elizabeth Haas Edersheim, 2004)

More on the history tip, this time from the man who invented modern Consulting (with a capital ‘C’). Before Mckinsey it was your accountant who told you how to go about your business. After Mckinsey it became the job of a bunch of super-talented super heroes in blue suits. Granted, the world of the Management Consultant has become maligned of late, but this is a superb insight into the birth of a new kind of information-based business service and the generous mind of its creator. If every consulting company were run this way then the world would have many, many more happy clients…
 

5: Open Here: The Art of Instructional Design (Paul Mijksenaar and Piet Westendorp)

Mr Mijksenaar and Mr Westendorp make this list a) because their book is genuinely funny, b) because it teaches us the basic principles of good information design in a beautiful way and c) because they’re Dutch (and hence make it all seem so very simple!).

The subject of information design is one of those sublime things that we so often get wrong because it seems so fundamental to our thinking. We’re all experts on ‘telling’ because we do it hundreds of times each day, right? This book shows us otherwise – it takes a mass of commonplace examples from today and yesteryear and shows us what a hash we make of the art of explanation. (Check out the instructions for the first VHS video recorder: classic stuff – brought back fond teenage memories of wrestling with an eight page fold out on the living room floor. Check out Mijksenaar’s blog for more of the same…)

Bonus Ball!: At Large and at Small: Confessions of a Literary Hedonist (Anne Fadiman, 2008)

This collection of ‘familiar essays’ (aka, noodling and musings on stuff that Ms Fadiman finds interesting) is a superb bedtime / fireside read. It has bugger all to do with what C&M does for a living, but it does have the ability to restore your faith in the power of great writing. So if you care for well crafted copy or just love a little lyricism in your life, then give it some time…

NB:  A health warning – when combined in the right fashion in Netvibes (or any decent RSS feed reader), they can become extremely (extremely!) addictive!!!

1: BackType

BackType is an uber-monitoring and discovery tool for the Blogsphere. It’s jaw-droppingly good and simple. Use it to locate the blogs that you care for and – even more usefully – for following specific people’s comments trails.

…ie, once you’ve identified a blog of note, you can use it to trace the ‘footprints’ to and from it by discovering all the other blogs that the blog author and the blog’s active commentators have been commenting on. In other words it’s a superb tool for establishing spheres of influence and then getting engaged within them.

• Addiction Rating = 5 (out of 5… be careful!)
• Usefulness Uber-Proxy Index Score = 5 (out of 5)
• Ease of Use-ology = 4 (out of 5)
• Ouput to RSS-i-ness = 5 (out of 5… creates an RSS feed for everything, so that you can take the monitoring feeds and plug them straight into Netvibes, etc)

2: MonitorThis

MonitorThis made me fall of my chair sometime this autumn. It’s a keyword monitoring tool on speed (and perhaps acid). It simply creates a bunch of RSS feeds based on keyword searches on just about every major search engine and blog and/or social search tool there is.

For example, if you’re interested in ‘Online PR’ it’ll squirt you out a single OPML file that plugs into your RSS feed reader and gives you a view of whatever ‘Online PR’-related blog posts, Tweets, news stories, etc, are circulating on the big bad Interweb – in real time.

• Addiction Rating = 5 (out of 5… be careful!)
• Usefulness Uber-Proxy Index Score = 5 (out of 5)
• Ease of Use-ology = 2 (out of 5… takes a while to futz around with)
• Ouput to RSS-i-ness = 5 (out of 5… creates an RSS feed for everything, so that you can take the feeds and plug them straight into Netvibes, etc)

3: Conversation

Conversation is a natty, affordable tool from our good friends at eCairn. It’s a blog monitoring and discovery tool with a difference: it’s built to be used by teams in a ‘project mode.’ In other words, it’s a web-based collaborative space where you can identify blogs and then share them, and interact with them with your colleagues.

For instance, once you’ve identified a blog ecosystem, Conversation gives you a realtime stream of post updates which you can preview inline, comment upon, annotate and then send useful alerts to other people. We’ve been using it for a few months now and it’s become an essential part of any project-based blog work we do.

• Addiction Rating = 4 (out of 5… it’s a working tool rather than a drug!)
• Usefulness Uber-Proxy Index Score = 5 (out of 5)
• Ease of Use-ology = 4 (out of 5… interface takes a while to get used to)
• Ouput to RSS-i-ness = 5 (out of 5… creates an RSS feed for everything, so that you can take the feeds and plug them straight into Netvibes, etc)

4: Addictomatic

The name Addictomatic says it all. This tool is a low-fi version of MonitorThis for people who don’t necessarily want or need to tailor their monitoring interface or their variety of feed sources.

In simple terms, it provides a basic search interface that runs keyword queries against a bunch of important social, search and blog services. Easy as pie to use. Just try it!

• Addiction Rating = 4 (out of 5… MonitorThis is more powerful, but this is a close second!)
• Usefulness Uber-Proxy Index Score = 4 (out of 5 …MonitorThis gives more depth)
• Ease of Use-ology = 5 (out of 5… easy as a Google search)
• Ouput to RSS-i-ness = 0 (out of 5… essentially its an RSS aggregation tool – a dashboard-like substitute for a customised/personalized service/tool)

5: Mint

Mint is very fresh indeed. OK, so it’s a web site analytics tool rather than an Online PR monitoring tool, but it warrants a place on this list because it’s so sweet and simple… and very, very addictive.

In short, it puts all your web site KPI’s on one page so that you can stare at the screen and watch your site work its magic in real time…. and learn stacks about its performance along the way – like which of your pages are working the hardest, how ‘findable’ you really are, who your best referral sources are and which of your keywords efforts are working the best.

• Addiction Rating = 5 (out of 5… be careful!)
• Usefulness Uber-Proxy Index Score = 5 (out of 5)
• Ease of Use-ology = 5 (out of 5… once it’s set up – but you’ll need a techy to help you install it!)
• Ouput to RSS-i-ness = 0 (out of 5… it’s more a report aggregation tool, a dashboard, and not meant to be spliced – though no doubt you could if you tried!)

Generally, here at C&M we try and break down our tasks, thinking, plans and actions into the following buckets:

• Writing / Content
• PR and Social Media skills
• Consulting / Planning / Project Management
• Coding and Geeky Things
• Analysis and Measurement

…and being the consultant-type around here, I couldn’t resist turning it into a wall chart.  So, here’s our (very cool) ‘Cut Out & Keep’ Anatomy of Online PR (click for a big version):

What do you think?  Have we got the balance right, or are we missing stuff…???

Meantime, if you’re one (or more!) of these people, then we’d love to hear from you. (We’re hiring – again!!)

Like some other folks in our industry I’m not altogether downbeat on what next year might hold for the world of Online PR (see here and here for some good examples of positive thinking). In fact, I’m relatively bullish.  This is because I see Online PR working really well in the following areas:

i) Online PR Proof of (Cost) Concepts

We’re seeing (and enjoying!) a bunch of Online PR projects getting commissioned as a ‘proof of concept’ vs a traditional PR program. Our clients are experimenting by freeing up a sensible amount of cash to ‘play off’ Online PR vs offline methods – to gain some valuable experience and see how far their money will go with all this new-fangled stuff.

In times like these, this type of thinking makes sense – whatever the outcome… And in practise, we’ve been able to generate some great results with positive and negative outcomes for the traditional PR camp (ideally, what we do compliments traditional PR… but sometimes we’re finding it just makes better commercial sense to back an online campaign instead of an offline campaign.)

ii) Online PR for Problem Solving

Online PR for problem solving is another other area for action. This is quite a large bucket of activity, ranging from help with ‘reputation management’ (or crisis comms) to more brute (but innovative!) ideas for helping to generate meaningful leads in tough times.

Again, we’re running some of these campaigns against or alongside traditional PR campaigns… But in the majority of cases they represent new solutions to new problems (for example, we’re currently looking into a thorny issue caused by Google’s ‘Auto Suggest’ search function – a branding concern that didn’t even exist 12 months ago).

…and that’s kind of it for the first six months of 2009. We’re already booked out, with most of the work falling into these two camps.

The other thing we hope to see next year is a new form of (healthy) skepticism injected into most things we say and do in the workplace. For more on this, check out this great post (‘Sublime Skepticism’) from my good friend (and client) Steve Morgan at Squiz.

His business (open source content management) is the perfect thing for next season’s cost-conscious enterprise IT recessionista. And, like him, we’re also expecting some positive returns on a new wave of questions.

The lines of enquiry we expect to see are fairly obvious… things like:

• Am I getting value for money?
• Is this activity measurable?
• How does this effect my bottom line?
• Am I generating anything of tangible value?
• ….and so forth

I love these kinds of challenges. I think they’ll make the world of business a better, more responsible place next year – and they’re certainly attuned to the sweet spots of Online PR: ie, better, more measurable, more-cost effective communication.  

Anyways, enough of C&M, what about you?  If you’re into Online PR, how do you see it shaking out next year…?  …and are you going to be a ‘Sublime Skeptic’ in 2009 or not?

There are two charges to take into account:  your fixed distribution costs for ‘wire’ distribution services and your soft costs for agency ‘pitching’ services. Prices range from free to hundreds of pounds a pop for the former …and you’re probably paying hundreds or thousands a time if you’re doing the latter. 

But what do these things really buy you???

As a line item on a PR campaign budget, I think ‘press release distribution’ is near-dead.  Or, at least it should be.  

Press release distribution doesn’t buy you news coverage or online buzz.  Great PR execution gets you these things.  It’s the PR-reporter relationship, a killer creative idea, ‘going social’ or ‘viral’ (yuk – sorry, hate that word!) or sheer chutzpah that gets you noticed, not three paragraphs of bla bla text in an email/web page and a follow-up call from a PR flack.  

At best, when done sensibly some online press release distribution services will buy you a little (low value)  Google-juice and link equity.  They may also hook you into other media-community services, like those provided by the more interesting, community-style disti tools like Sourcewire (check these guys out – they’re good!).  But otherwise, there’s no real point in paying services like PR Web around £300 for the privilege. 

There are any number of alternatives that will offer you roughly the same service for free (ie, ‘premium services’ that guarantee distribution to Google News, etc… see this paper for a few ideas on how to do it more cost-effectively).  Equally, I think there’s little value in paying a PR agency to harass people on your behalf unless you’re a certain style and size of company. (See here and here for why.) 

In basic terms, I think that paying for distribution on the web is an anachronism.  (Hell! It’s supposed to all be free isn’t it!!??) 

Smart Online PR means getting your distribution for nothing.   It’ll drive buzz, interest and media coverage, but it rarely involves a bog standard press release (and a battery of account execs hitting the phones).

A better way to do this stuff is by listening in, and understanding and participating in the online conversations that are most likely to drive your message home …and then building ‘socially relevant’ pieces of content that make it easy (and compelling) for audiences to ‘get it’ and then pass it around.

In other words, when you have something to say, forget about the traditional PR machine and start using Twitter, blog networks, forums and communities to spread the word and drive interest and traffic in new ways… (For an idea of the principles involved, check out this comment from Social Media star Robert Scoble in response to a fantastic post on the death of traditional PR mechanics from Techcrunch yesterday – just search the page for ‘scoble’ and you’ll get there …And if you’re in the PR business, please, please, please read the rest of the piece!)

So – no more crafting of wordy press releases and hitting ‘send’ or ‘publish’ (and getting deleted / ignored).  DON’T PAY FOR PURELY MECHANICAL DISTRIBUTION.  It’s ineffective.  Instead you should be encouraging the brave new-fangled world of the social-media’ly Interweb to do your distribution on your behalf. Socially-centred Online PR is the way to go…

This time we have answers on:

• How to make your content stick online
• How to find and locate your audiences
• How to optimise your content
• How to make content relevant
• …and what sort of content to avoid

The idea is simple: in order to engage with your audiences online, you need to shape your words, messages and tactics around their agendas, not yours. In other words, your Online PR efforts need to be a whole lot more social than they have been up until now.

Go get our new Online PR best practice paper now!

(….and please do tell us what you make of it all!)

Uber-hot UK-based online PR agency Content & Motion today announced that its all-new, all-star Online PR ‘playbook’ is now freely available to download, read and get excited about.

Entitled ‘Party Hard – the New Social Theory of Online PR,’ the article helps modern marketing people, CEO’s and geeks to think through what it takes to generate buzz, awareness and new traffic through smart Online PR tactics.

It provides five tried and tested ‘theories’ to help make Online PR campaigns fly.

They are:

1. Listen up! Don’t attach names or labels without taking counsel
2. Be interesting: create noteworthy content (make people laugh, mad and/or excited)
3. Party harder: seek and you shall find. (Don’t expect folks to come to you!)
4. Be a good social citizen: give your content away freely and generously
5. Be socially useful: don’t build unnecessary content services

The paper discusses each of these theories in turn and provides a wealth of balanced examples and insights on how to use them to improve your Online PR work.

Says C&M founder Roger Warner, “We put this paper together to help companies figure out how to change their Online PR and content marketing practices for the better. We’re asked on a daily basis to help people generate more buzz and traffic – and nine times out of ten the solutions we come up with are similar. So rather than sit on them we thought we’d do the decent thing and share them around.”

The paper is available, FREE, today via: http://www.contentandmotion.com/resources/party-hard-five-basic-social-theories-of-online-pr/

Go get it!

About Online PR Agency, Content & Motion

C&M is an Online PR agency that excels at Content Creation, Content Optimisation, and SEO. We use a variety of groovy web marketing techniques to help you win new friends and influence people. The company was founded in mid-2008 by Roger Warner – web marketing junkie, ex-director of PR at IBM Europe, and personality type D.

The company works on the partnership model of all great consultancies, meaning that ownership is shared, staff are obsessive, brains and egos are large, and attention spans are notoriously focused. Fortunately this is good news for our clients, who tend to benefit from consolidated bouts of outrageously good service and smart thinking and execution.

For further information, see: http://www.contentandmotion.com/online-pr-agency-services/

No surprise there, right? That’s our job! But rather than sit on these experiences, we thought we’d do the decent thing and share our insights with you…

Nine times out of ten we strike on a a set of common, fundamentally ‘social’ ideas that we know will make 100% of difference – and yet, for one reason or another, they tend to grate with traditional marketing theory.

As such, this paper is our attempt to convince you that great Online PR is easy. All it takes is some basic rewiring.

The idea is simple: in order to engage with your audiences online, you need to shape your words, messages and tactics around their agendas, not yours. In other words, your Online PR efforts need to be a whole lot more social than they have been up until now.

An Early Digression: The ‘Party Hard’ Principle of Online PR

Aida Eldermariam wrote a great piece for the Guardian in December 2008 on this very topic. Entitled ‘The Most Popular Story in the World,” it looked at how news media are adapting their tactics to engage better with a fragmented online readership.

She shares the same problem as our clients: how to ensure a message hits home in the manic environment of the web…?

Eldermariam draws a super analogy with the social mechanics of a networking party. Imagine it’s in full-swing and you have an important message to pass on to your fellow guests. You have limited time and resources, and no stooges to spread the word on your behalf…

How do you do it? Do you…

a) Stand on a chair in the middle of the room and shout your message repeatedly?

b) ‘Speed date’ by shaking the hand of everyone at two minute intervals, cranking out the message whirlwind-style as you go?

…or

c) Mix, mingle and meet folks, and – when you find the nice guys – pass on your message in the context of a conversation (and in the process encourage them to go spread the word on your behalf)?

Unless you carry the charisma of Jack Nicholson, then options a) and b) are out. Actually, they’re counter-intuitive – they’ll probably alienate you. (Who are you? Why should I care? Jesus – go away!! Somebody call the authorities!!!)

The point is, of course, that when you’re operating in a loosely structured environment like the web / a party – an arena where nobody ‘owns’ the terms of engagement – the best way to communicate is by being more social. Yet we seem to miss this point on a consistent basis.

As Eldermariam describes, the crux of our problem is that when it comes to the web (or newspapers, or any form of mass communication) there’s “a great tension between what people want and what we think they need to know.”

We’re so obsessed with the importance of our message – and so ignorant of our audience’s wants and needs – that we seem content to bleat without direction into outer space. In practice, we run elaborate flash banner campaigns (hey, give me that big chair to stand on – I’m gonna try to shout the LOUDEST!), and we build reams of funky little microsites (hey, screw this, nobody’s listening…let’s have our OWN party!).

A much better approach is to listen first, and then do the talking. We should try to understand what our audience cares for before we open our mouths. Effective web marketing does this in spades, just like the good guys at the party. They get their message across (and get all the traffic) not because they shout the loudest, but because they’re the most engaged and the most engaging…

In other words, it’s all about being more social.

With this in mind, here’s our five Basic Social Theories of Online PR…

(We recommend you print them out on nice glossy paper, stick them on your wall and then bake them into everything you do online…)

C&M’s Basic Social Theories of Online PR

1) Listen up! Don’t attach names or labels without taking counsel

Launching a new piece of content or a new site without first understanding the language of your marketplace is Online PR suicide.

SEO 101 teaches us that in order to make our content ‘findable’ by users and ‘indexable’ by search engines, we need to work within the linguistic framework of our searching public.

It’s easy to understand the psychology of search via tools like Google Suggest and Wordtracker – both will give you an instant read on the keywords your audience is using. Your job is to take this vocabulary and weave it into the fabric of your content: in site names, urls, page titles, meta descriptions, headers, links, and so forth.

For example, if you provide a slicker-than-average ‘personalised tone service’ for mobile phones, you may want to position yourself as something bigger and groovier than a plain old grubby ringtone …but your customers won’t be making that distinction. They don’t even know you exist. You might prefer to call your stuff a BingTone or a HumTone, but they’ll be searching for a plain old ringtone. And if ringtone isn’t at the heart of your content strategy, then rest assured you’ll be off the Google map and missing a stack of motivated traffic.

Getting these principles right is what’s known in the trade as Content Optimization – and you can learn how to do it here. It’s inherently social: it’s all about talking like a customer, and it’s the most cost-effective way of generating the right kind of web traffic.

2) Be interesting: create noteworthy content (make people laugh, mad and/or excited)

Whenever you create content you have a choice to make: you can work hard to engage with your audience, or you can choose to be lazy and just crank the stuff out.

This dilemma is what separates good Online PR from bad. Your primary goal is to find a home for your message. Your secondary goal is encourage people to spread it on your behalf. As such, you should do everything you can to make your content interesting and worthy of emailing to a friend, bookmarking, commenting upon, or linking to.

If you can encourage people to do this, you’ll achieve a wonderful snowball effect (formerly known in ‘creative’ circles as ‘going viral’). In simple terms, a reference to your content on someone else’s blog enhances your ‘findability’ in the true sense of a referral. It’ll also help your SEO because it represents a ‘backlink,’ which makes you more desirable to the Greater Google God.

As such, you should ask yourself what it’ll take to frame your next piece of content in a more desirable, funny and/or controversial fashion. Tools like Google Trends, Twitter Search and BackType will tell you what the world is currently searching for and talking about. Use them religiously and try to find ways of embedding relevant and popular themes into your work.

At the same time, other more basic formatting ideas will make your content more enticing and accessible: for example, you could re-cut that white paper as a natty, controversial list rather than a long boring essay. And you might find the right angles to change your product literature into cool three minute VoxPops video shorts.

Another thing to consider is the inclusion of ‘social’ tools that will make it easier for people to pass your content around and/or bookmark it. It’s a simple task to embed an ‘email a friend’ widget and a social bookmarking tool at the bottom of your page templates; and you really ought to provide an RSS feed for all your content as default. In addition, there are a number of great ‘widget’ tools to help you create ‘Content Feeds’ for FaceBook, desktops and web pages – so that users can get hold of your content when and where they please, without having to visit your site.

3) Party harder: seek and you shall find. (Don’t expect folks to come to you!)

The most profound idea in Online PR playbook is the ‘give to get’ rule. Your content could be optimised to the max, super-hot and super-sharable, but if you don’t work hard to hawk it around then it still might still miss the mark.

This principle is all about operating within your target markets. Once your content (or web site, or widget) is ready, you need to make it stick by seeding it in the most vibrant, influential and interesting places.

Tools like Addictomatic, Google Alerts, Twilert (for Twitter), BackType, and MonitorThis will help you to keep a close watch on the most active and relevant communities of the web. They’ll all provide you with a daily dose of alerts based on your chosen keywords. They’ll also allow you to identify and follow the most influential people within a given debate. It’s powerful stuff!

Once you have this ‘social targeting’ knowledge, your task is to actively participate in the right hot spots and to seed your ideas and content. You should be commenting on and contributing to other people’s blogs, forums and profile pages on a daily basis, and generally getting engaged with the conversations that you’d like to be part of.

Like the party analogy, you need to be a social butterfly. And if you can do this effectively, we guarantee that you’ll soon be able to steer the debate. (In addition, tuning in to communities, debates and forums is simply the best way to get new ideas for new content. When you participate you become part of your own focus group, which takes the guesswork out of content generation.)

4) Be a good social citizen: give your content away freely and generously

This idea ought to be common sense by now …But we still see firms that are obsessed with locking up their finest content assets in secure zones that only reveal their secrets in exchange for a name, an email address and an inside leg measurement.

This approach is crazy. It’s you who should be working hard to generate buzz, sales and leads, not your customers! You invest stacks of time and money to drive people to your web site, so there’s no sense in locking people out.

In our experience, when you take away the sacred ‘web to lead’ form, the effect is always positive: you open up more keyword-rich content for Google to index and you enable more people to distribute it freely on your behalf. What you lose in ‘leads’ (and I’d question that term strongly – how hot-to-trot can a web sign up ever be!?) you gain in increased visibility and distribution. So, if you haven’t done so already, get your content out in the open today.

The same goes with any non-core tools and services that you create. When you give peripheral value away for free you generate respect, trust and loyalty. A great example that’s close to home for C&M is SEOBook. If you ever need a steer on the science of SEO then look here. You can pay to buy the book or attend the courses, but the site also gives you a stack of fantastic free tools to help you do better SEO work.

As a result, SEOBook makes a lot of money and has an incredibly loyal following. Even better, its decision to give much of its value away for free has had an immensely positive effect on its Google performance on ultra-competitive keyword searches like ‘SEO tools.’ (Note: because much of their stuff is free and because I love it, I’m linking to the site here and adding to that SEO equity. In this respect, ‘free’ and ‘useful’ approaches can really become virtuous.)

5) Be socially useful: don’t build unnecessary content services

This last point is an extension of ‘free’ thinking. ‘Free’ is only good if it’s also ‘relevant’ and ‘useful.’ Your latest whiz-bang content widget will only be successful if it ticks all of these boxes.

This point is best illustrated by some negative examples:

• The celebrity CEO blog sounded like a great idea in 2005 – until we figured out that it had a) no audience, b) nothing interesting to say and c) no real value or utility. (So we ditched it and replaced it with a product development community blog, which is now going great guns.)

• Likewise, the FaceBook widget that lets users connect and share their passion for SprocketWise version 5.7 is also doomed to fail. It may be free, but it has no purpose. (I’ll stop now. This one really gets my goat!)

The point is that all of these new-fangled widgets, platforms and content services can really help us to sell, support, and educate in more sophisticated ways – but only when they’re used in the right context. Social networking platforms are great for hosting virtual ‘before and after’ a conference session. They’re superb for any product or service that has an inbuilt community with a passion for sharing information. But they tend to fail when they’re built for the hell of it. So make sure you can prove their value before you start working with them.

Conclusion: Great Online PR is Social

I started off by saying that effective Online PR grated with more traditional marketing techniques. From our perspective, it’s important to let go of yesterday’s ‘command and control’ approach to communications.

In today’s web-dominated world, the winners will be the firms that are able to listen and tune in to their audiences before they embark on the next big thing. This is what we mean by a ‘social’ approach to Online PR.

It’s not happy or clappy, it’s just common sense. Do a bit of research first, understand your users wants and needs, and then give them a little of what you know they want.

In other words, make like the good guy at the party and work the room. You don’t need an MBA or a degree in Marketing to do this well.

I’ll admit it was very provocative in some areas, but we had a very definite point to make. Traditional PR can be wasteful because it’s inaccessible, it doesn’t scale and it’s not very measurable. Online PR is the antidote to these issues, and is perfect for firms who want to see an immediate return on their marketing spend.

Anyways, the post sparked off a whole bunch of debate (thanks to everyone who commented and wrote to us – all super stuff!!) and a variety of really interesting conversations with clients… So I thought I’d do a wrap up piece that breaks the core ideas down into bite-sized chunks.

So here goes – a bullet list view that describes why traditional PR is broken and why Online PR is a winner….

Traditional PR Doesn’t Scale

• The mechanics are this: when you have a story, the gateways to seeing it in print are i) a reporter and ii) his magazine and its editorial brief. To break through these gates you have to i) beat the reporter’s ‘information overload’ (you’re one press release / one call amongst a million) and ii) conform to an editorial agenda that’s driven by advertising requirements (ie, it’s probably not aligned with your interests!).

• Further, this model is finite: there are only so many traditional magazines and papers, and each have a limited amount of space (determined by advertising) and a limited editorial remit to reach a set audience profile (in fact less so now that audiences are moving online).

• As such, traditional PR doesn’t scale because it’s tough to grab a reporter’s attention and traditional media destinations are few. (In addition, as already mentioned, your PR agency will also have a limited amount of ‘goodwill’ that it’ll be prepared to use to influence reporters on your behalf.) Supply outweighs demand – there is a limited inventory of ‘ink.’

Traditional PR is Fluffy

• Beyond that, traditional PR works on a loose and fluffy principle of influence – ie, ‘I read your article, so I may (or may not) be inclined to call you / visit your web site / etc’. This is not very measurable.

Online PR Scales Infinitely (and is Therefore Accessible to Everyone)

• At a very basic level, Online PR scales extremely well. The guts of it are driven by software and an abundance of user-generated media (blogs, forums, social networks, etc). Both of these things can’t get enough content.

• Google is insatiable – it’s mission is to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ It doesn’t filter content like a magazine editor, it consumes it and indexes it in order to give searchers a richer, more valuable search experience.

• At the same time, the number of ‘user-generated’ (ie non-traditional) publishing outlets is booming (eg, Technorati indexes millions of blogs every day, and this number is growing). This means there are infinitely more ‘homes’ for your content online than off.

• These online services and destinations are more finely targeted than traditional media can ever be – there are blogs, forums and search queries for every requirement imaginable; therefore working within this sphere is more cost-effective as audiences are infinitely more engaged.

Online PR Drives Valuable Web Site Traffic and is Very Measurable

• In addition, even with a low volume of audience ‘impressions’ (ie, low readership/viewing), if you’re able to make an impact in these online destinations, then the ultimate payoff is better PageRank and search engine performance. Your very presence on them will establish more paths back to your web site (aka backlinkage) which provides enormous value to Google. This aspect is an extremely powerful reason for doing Online PR: when done in the right way (and using the right language/keywords), it will have a very positive effect on your SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) performance…

• Either way, a very basic benefit of good Online PR is generating high quality web traffic – ie, you can more or less guarantee that good Online PR will deliver a positive, demonstrable result that can be measured easily (via a web analytics package, by signups, by purchases) …unlike traditional PR, whose ultimate gain is intangible (at best, ‘feel-good’). (Of course, there are other benefits to great Online PR – such as reputation management, customer engagement and support, buzz and so forth – but I won’t go into them here…)

Now, I’m not suggesting that traditional PR is a bad thing. Far from it. It’s a brilliant tool for generating trust, awareness and validation. A piece in a trade mag or the FT is worth its weight in gold.

My point is that this net result is attainable only after investing a stack of cash. Therefore for some companies, it’s better to start in the Online PR arena for first – ie, create some Online momentum and then go for traditional PR tactics when you’re ‘hot’ enough for the traditional PR machine to care for you and accommodate you.

In other words, in traditional PR, the cards are firmly stacked against some companies because the model doesn’t scale to accommodate them… whereas, with Online PR, if you box clever, you’ll always find success.

Most traditional PR and marketing only gets out of bed for ‘New.‘  It’s the way we’re programmed.  We get excited by ‘new’ products, ‘new’ think pieces, ‘new’ research and ‘new’ features.

So we tend to plough all of our PR/marketing time, effort and schedules into laborious worships of the ‘New’.  Press conferences.  Micro-sites.  Brochures.  Novelty pens …etc.

Now, whilst all of this greases the wheels of the traditional ‘news’ media, giving them new things to say about all of this ‘Newness,’ there’s one critical type of audience that we’re guilty of ignoring:  our non-Newbies… ie, all of our longer term customers or prospects (and partners, staff, and investors).  (Sure, customers also like a little bit of ‘new’ – but go with me here…)

Whilst we’re getting all hot and excited about the rich functionality of the soon-to-be-announced beta Version 6.7 of SprocketWise, what about all those customers that still haven’t made the leap to Version 6.6?  Or the partners who are figuring out the best way of perfecting a service model around Version 6.5?  Or the investment team that are still waiting for a return on Version 6.4?

The problem with the ‘New’ in traditional PR and marketing is that it’s often only new and nothing else… and most of the time, for many audience requirements, it’s just plain ‘IRRELEVANT’.

What Doug talks about, and what the majority of our PR/marketing audiences really need instead of ‘New’ is more DEPTH and RELEVANCE.  Beyond the shock and excitement of the New, the things that will clinch the deal are answers to questions like:  ‘tell me how to make more of the feature set?’; ‘how can I adapt my business model to make more money from it?’; and ‘can you convince me how good you are at support?’

Answering these questions requires a different approach than ‘New’.

The really sad thing is that most of the content that helps us stay relevant and get deep and meaningful already exists somewhere – like a white paper in a web site archive, an executive speech on the Intranet, or a set of training slides in Dave’s drawer under a mouldy sandwich.

Yet we nearly always discard these things because they’re not ‘New’ or ‘News’ – because our traditional PR/marketing mechanics don’t cater for them.  They’re not the kind of thing that you can organise a press conference or a product launch around.

At the end of the day, this gripe is aimed at PR and marketing tactics that care for traditional media requirements at the expense of the the majority of our (non-New) customers, prospects, partners, etc.

‘New’ is totally irrelevant and out of place when it comes to nurturing a slow-burning relationship with a customer prospect.  Your announcement of SprocketWise V6 got them interested six months ago.  Now they want to hear more about your service expertise and other important facets that set you apart from the competition – your thought leadership and your human side if you like…. not another whiz-bang widget.

In order to cater for these needs you need to develop deeper, more meaningful content relationships around a different set of processes and platforms.

Content-based relationship marketing like this is better executed using tools and tactics like: ONLINE PR (!!!), demand nurturing apps, blogs, social networking platforms, microblogging, and the like….

Forget about the New a little.  The New New is really the Old.   Stop sending NEWSletters.  Send OLDSletters instead …because there’s a tonne of super-helpful and relevant things you can do to clinch sales and build relationships with your old, deep and meaningful stuff…

Footnote: Want to learn how SEO works in non-technical, layman’s terms?  Cool!!  Here’s an OLD paper of ours which tells you everything you need to know and more about Google in under 30 mins.  It’s the best thing we’ve ever written on the subject and I’ll bet it’s the most useful thing you’ll read this week.  It was first drafted in 2007.  So there you go.

We’re based in East Sussex, UK.

Despite the meltdown of the global banking system, we’re growing fast – and we’re hiring!

We really need a shiny, dynamic Online PR consultant type – someone who:

• Takes Twitter to bed
• Loves LinkedIn
• Maintains a rip-roaring blog
• Gets turned on by Google Analytics
• Writes a great headline (and sub-head, and body)
• Knows how to distribute, agitate, and generally get stuff into people’s faces online
• Understands the basic mechanics of SEO, web development, social media, and the rest
• Can successfully convey groovy web ideas to skeptical clients
• Argues about this stuff at the pub on a Friday
• ….and inspires maximum love and adoration in clients and colleagues alike

If this is you – and if you’re up for getting in at ground level with one of the hottest properties since the toaster – then drop us a line using the form below…

We’re based in Lewes, East Sussex – 10 minutes from Brighton and one of the finest places to eat, drink and be merry on the planet. (Boy, life is good here!) We work with a bunch of great clients and agencies, helping one and all to win new friends and influence people.

You’ll be working directly with MD Roger Warner as part of his team. He’s a nice guy who promises to help you get everything you want and more out of a digitally enhanced working life.

Did we mention the wonga? £25-35k, depending on experience.

We’d guess you’ll have around two or more years experience in doing the kind of things mentioned above – either in-house or at an agency. We’d assume you’re also extremely ambitious and are up for growing your role quickly within a real pocket rocket of a new-fangled web marketing firm. You may have a degree, but frankly it’s not that important to us. We only really care that you’re a really smart cookie.

See this page here for further information about our Online PR agency…

If you’ve read this far then we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch using the form below…

It’s been designed with a view to help nervous clients shake it all out and relax a little.

Here it is (Go on, have a good old click….!)

Some important notes about our Cut Out & Keep Guide to Social Media:

• Normally these types of charts place you, the client, in the middle

• This one doesn’t

• In fact you’re nowhere to be seen

• Spooky huh?

• Fact is, we have to get used to Joe Public ‘owning’ our brand through the stuff he does on his Facebook profile, the things he posts on his blog, comments he posts to forums and – if he’s an amatuer photographer – the images he chooses to plonk on Flickr in relation to your stuff

• In other words, you’re not part of the picture, and there’s no easy way of mediating this flow of content (unlike the good old days of PR)

• BUT, you can choose to participate and join in with the things that Joe is doing.  You can even add you own stuff to these online properties, and get involved in discussions and wotnot

• IMPORTANTLY, all of this ‘user-generated’ content will have a huge impact on your search visibility.  It’ll be stuffed with keywords, brand and product names, links to your site and all manner of Google-juice

• You can choose to see this as a negative, or a big fat positive

• The positive approach is to accept this stream of random content as a plus point – an outsourcing of your content production efforts if you like

• The trick is to harness it properly….

SearchWiki is a piece of ‘social web’ functionality that has been layered on top of Google’s standard search interface and user experience. In Web 2.0 terms, it’s a ‘Digg for search.’ In layman’s terms, it allows anyone with a Google account to compliment their normal searches with the votes and comments of other searchers.

In other words, SearchWiki allows you to click a link on your Google interface and find out which web sites other public users have ‘voted for’ in relation to your search term.

It also allows you to restructure your results pages for your common searches by placing your favourite web sites at the top of the page and displaying any comments that you’ve pinned to them.

Here’s how Google’s technical team describe it…..

And here’s your C&M early tasting notes…

What does this all mean to Online PR….!?

Functional Overview

• Google SearchWiki adds x2 new things into the search experience mix:  the ability to vote on a web site in relation to a search term and the ability to contribute a comment against that web site (in relation to your search term – on both counts)

• Importantly, you have to be signed in to your Google account in order to see the ‘SearchWiki’ tools and to use it (if not, then none of the buttons/links/functions will appear)

• When you vote for a site, this site will be elevated to the top of your results page. If you also comment on it, then this comment will be displayed under the site listing. Importantly, this funky new presentation will only apply to your results pages, and not those of other people (!!)

• When conducting a search (and logged in to your Google account), if you scroll to the base of the page you can click on ‘See all notes for this search Wiki,’ and you’ll see all the sites that have been voted for and commented upon by other users in relation to your search term

• When you’re at this ‘SearchWiki’ screen, you can click on the ‘Comments’ link that’s listed under each site, and all the comments that other users have made about that site will be displayed

• You’ll also see the number of ‘Votes’ that each site has received in relation to your search term

• NB:  the default view on the SearchWiki page is for comments NOT to be displayed.  You need to take the time to click the ‘Comments’ link in order to show them.  However, you will be able to see all of your own comments on both the normal results page and the SearchWiki page

• The comments and votes are rendered in relation to your exact search term.  eg, if I search for ‘Online PR’ and contribute a vote/comment for the C&M web site, this will be shown in relation to all other searches for ‘online PR’ but NOT in relation to the search term ‘online PR firm’

• Importantly, according to Google, all of this ‘social’ data is NOT being used to inform/alter the public search rankings and what gets presented on its standard search engine result pages (SERPs)

What’s the Benefit?

• In its first release, the way that SearchWiki has been compiled, and the way the interface works, it appears to have been designed primarily as a personal search aid – to help people structure their own searches more effectively. (And it’s being pitched as such. Check out the Google blog entry that describes the new functionality – it’s described as something that’ll help ‘make search your own‘)

• ie, when you’re logged in to your Google account, and performing a common search (ie, for something you’ve searched for before, using the same keywords), you’ll be able to see all those sites that you’ve commented on and/or voted for promoted to the top of the pile on the results page (and you’ll also see all your comments, in line)

• As such, at first glance, SearchWiki is all about making it easier for you to cut through the clutter and zoom in on your favourite sites for your most common searches

• The second order of business for SearchWiki is to compliment your search experience by way of a syndicated ‘phone a friend’ basis…. in much the same way that Digg works for news stories

• ie, if you’re not happy with the standard Google results… or if you’d like to supplement them with the findings of other people, then all you have to do is click ‘See all notes for this search Wiki’ and you’ll get a view of the sites that other people think are helpful in relation to your search term

• Clearly this is very, very helpful (and interesting)

What’s the threat of Spamming / Gaming the System?

• We’ll all use this ‘phone a friend’ functionality as a means to filter our search results and (one hopes) to get a more social steer on how to find the most relevant site for our search needs. As such, there’s obvious value to voting/commenting and contributing to the system. It’ll work – just like Digg works

• However, at a very basic level, this leaves SearchWiki open to some fairly easy manipulation in more obscure (‘long tail’) keyword markets (like UK Online PR Firm), but less so in competitive markets (like Tom Cruise) where the social/crowd effect will separate the good comments and votes from the bad

• So, for niche search markets there will be a motivation to game the system and generate lots of votes and comments for any given term. This may or may not be an expensive exercise – depending on how this gaming is done

• Will this gaming of the system be worth it?  Well, that’s debatable. It depends on the context of the search activity. As argued here before, this type of social media gaming gives a questionable benefit. But when it’s applied to the mechanics of search, then that could change…. Vote and comment spamming will no doubt be widespread in a very short space of time. (For example, my wife just voted and commented on the C&M site. Spam? Maybe!? But she does have some funny things to say and whether or not she slammed us is beside the point…. she did find it easy to do.)

• My view is that the value of SearchWiki will lie in the system’s ability to filter out the crap. As users, we all have the ability to approve or disapprove of comments and we can all vote a site down as well as up. This ought to make for happy communal policing in hot search/keyword markets…. But in the backwaters of search – where narrow (ie, longer or more obscure) search terms are concerned, I’m not so sure….

Online PR Agency Content & Motion got all hot under the collar today with a new ‘Think Piece’ that suggests that ‘Old School PR’ is a waste of money for companies of a certain shape and size – those in the ‘small to medium’ bracket.

The piece looks at the basic social economics of the Old PR business model, and states that “Traditional PR no longer works as a revenue and brand building exercise for small to mid-sized companies with a limited profile and budget…. even if they have great ideas, products and services. The reason for this because the traditional PR game doesn’t scale very well.”

The full piece can be read at:  http://www.contentandmotion.com/blog/why-the-old-pr-game-is-broken-spend-wisely-online-pr-rules/

It’s controversial stuff – and a recommended read for anyone in the PR business or those companies who are evaluating their PR spend. The basic premise is that if a traditional PR agency has “X number of clients (and more, if it’s a good agency), then every day it will make decisions that enhance its core assets (its media relationships) at the expense of some of its clients interests.” …and goes on to reason that Online PR delivers far more value and less risk when it comes to generating brand awareness and quality web site traffic.

Says author of the piece and C&M founder, Roger Warner: “our intention isn’t to rubbish ‘old PR.‘ But in many cases ‘old PR’ simply won’t work for small to mid-sized companies because the cards are stacked against them. We’re biased of course, but, nine times out of ten, if you’re looking to drive awareness, sales, signups and general web site traffic, then our advice is to check out Online PR first.”

For further information about who C&M is and what the hell they do, see: http://www.contentandmotion.com/online-pr-agency-services/

About Online PR Agency, Content & Motion

C&M is an Online PR agency that excels at Content Creation, Content Optimisation, and SEO. We use a variety of groovy web marketing techniques to help you win new friends and influence people. The company was founded in mid-2008 by Roger Warner – web marketing junkie, ex-director of PR at IBM Europe, and personality type D.

The company works on the partnership model of all great consultancies, meaning that ownership is shared, staff are obsessive, brains and egos are large, and attention spans are notoriously focused. Fortunately this is good news for our clients, who tend to benefit from consolidated bouts of outrageously good service and smart thinking and execution.

For further information about what C&M, the Online PR Agency does, see: http://www.contentandmotion.com/online-pr-agency-services/

Here’s our (semi-controversial) hypothesis on what’s at play…

‘Old PR’ tactics and large PR Agencies no longer work as a revenue and brand building outlet for certain types of small to mid-sized companies who have a limited profile and budget…. The reason for this is because the ‘old PR’ game doesn’t scale very well.

I’ll explain why in a moment.  First off….

Here’s a quick review of the mechanics of ‘old PR’

Acme Corp will pay PR&Co a monthly retainer to help convince reporters to write about them in print and online news media.  PR&Co may offer additional services such as writing press releases and positioning and message consulting, but this is a second order of business to generating press interview opportunities – as it’s really only here where this stuff can be put into practice.

So, the primary function of ‘old PR’ is to act as a broker of relationships between Acme Corp and a set of reporters.  And the reason that Acme Corp pays PR&Co a retainer to do this is because PR&Co – because of it’s track record in press relations – is able to do it better (and on a more flexible basis) than Acme Corp could in-house.  In other words, Acme Corp is paying PR&Co to trade on its database of press contacts and relationships.

(At this point I should say that this stuff really does work extremely well in the right circumstances.  The Acme Corps of this world can’t do this work effectively themselves unless they employ an army of PR consultants in-house – and even in this case a ‘old PR’ agency will tend to do a better job because they have a greater variety of experiences and reporter relationships by virtue of working on more than one account.  And there are stacks of really great ‘old PR’ firms out there.  Plus the flip side of this client/agency relationship is the relationship between ‘old PR’ agency and the media, which is also invaluable because reporters rely on good ‘old PR’ relationships to supply them with decent content to write about.)

As such, this setup tends to work best when Acme Co is either ‘hot’ or ‘loaded’ – ie, when it’s…

1. …an established brand that reporters really care about
2. …an innovative company that has ideas that reporters want to learn about
3. …a wealthy company capable of spending large amounts of money to convince reporters (and their agencies) that they really ought to care

But if your company doesn’t fit this description then there can be problems.  You may be either a start up or a smallish fish in a big pond that struggles to be noticed.  You may also have good ideas and products that don’t quite sit in the ‘killer’ category.  And, of course, like many of us in today’s climate, money may be tight.

As such, I’m suggesting that these types of ‘contender’ firms shouldn’t spray their money on ‘old PR’ with a traditional PR agency in an effort to become ‘hot.‘  (Typically, I’m talking about those firms who are plugging away with a spend of £3k per month or less on ‘old PR’ services)… because the cards are stacked against them.

Here’s why…

‘Old PR’ Agency Service Models Don’t Scale Well to Accommodate Smaller Fish…

As mentioned, ‘old PR’ agencies trade on their relationships with reporters.  These relationships are treasured, polished and nurtured over time.  They are of incredible value to PR&Co – they’re the Coca Cola formula that the company sells to its clients; and they’re the assets that Acme Corp is really buying when it buys ‘old PR’.

The trouble is that they’re finite and that PR&Co also works with other – often bigger – clients.  There are only so many relationships that PR&Co can establish within a given market, because there are only so many magazines and reporters that really matter.  And it’s PR&Co’s express objective to nurture and protect these relationships by providing reporters with a steady stream of helpful, smart comment and ideas that will help them to write better stories and advance their careers (this is the end game for ‘old PR’ – the brokerage service).  As such, the ability for PR&Co to provide a good service to reporters is dependent on its roster of clients and the quality of these company’s stories/pitches/ideas etc.

Now, this is all fine if Acme Corp is ‘hot’ or ‘loaded’ – because its commercial interests are perfectly aligned with the agency’s.  But if you’re not so hot or not so flushed with cash, then the ‘old PR’ model gets a little bit broken because it doesn’t scale to accommodate your needs.

Look at it this way: if PR&Co has X number of clients (or more, if it’s a good agency), then every day it will make decisions that enhance its core assets (its media relationships) at the expense of some of its lesser clients interests – since some of its clients won’t possess powerful (or helpful) enough stories/pitches/ideas.

Or, to put it another way, how willing is PR&Co to pitch your story over and above any other story that it may be responsible for pitching?  Are you ‘hot’ or ‘loaded’ enough to compete in this finite market of ideas and relationships?

An Alternative Way to Drive Your Brand:  the Online PR Agency…

Alternatively, you could invest your time and money in an Online PR Agency.  In fact, if you’re not currently ‘hot’ or particularly ‘loaded’ we’d say it’s the best thing to do right now.

Here’s why…

Great Online PR is primarily concerned with making you more noticeable in and around the web – via search engines like Google, and within the right online communities and blog networks and such.  It aims to:

1. Generate real Online PR buzz when and where its needed most… (eg, a blog- and Twitter-torrent and Google stardom at the moment you’re pitching the big deal)
2. Get important people to do the things you really want them to do… (eg, drive people to crucial events, have them put their hands up, declare love for you and even buy stuff off the page)

And, as a healthy byproduct, this activity will tend to radically improve your PageRank (by using smart Content Optimization, SEO and link generation techniques).

Great Online PR is all about raising your brand awareness and driving web site traffic in an very tangible and measurable way via smart online networks.

Importantly, Online PR doesn’t have to maintain a set of relationships with a finite number of human beings.  (It can do if you want to use Online PR tactics to feature in online news stories (ie, by doing media relations, online); but in order to generate the type of outcomes outlined above, traditional PR techniques aren’t really necessary).  Instead, successful Online PR is driven via a different mechanism where search engines and other web-based networks are the middlemen.  In other words, Online PR Agencies are in the business of convincing Google rather than reporters.

And this is the critical difference, because there’s no real concept of ‘scalability’ in Online PR. Unlike a reporter, Google can’t get enough of your content.  In fact, the more the better.  And unlike a traditional news media outlet, the web possesses a myriad of platforms that will all welcome your contributions.   As such, a sensible spend with a good Online PR Agency ought to enable you to create great (well optimized) content and seed it in such a way to create buzz, excitement and, most importantly, search engine visibility.  (And you don’t need to be burning ‘hot’ or ‘loaded’ to do it – you just need to be SMART.  Check out this case study as a good example.)

(Note:  I’m not talking about ‘content spamming’ here! I’m talking about smart generation, distribution and seeding of good content in the most appropriate outlets to drive quality traffic and boost your Google rankings on a set of pre-determined keywords.)

Conclusion:  Think About Online PR First, ‘Old PR’ Second

Don’t get me wrong: my intention isn’t to rubbish ‘old PR.‘  I’d be a fraud if I did.  This is my background, and I know that it works extremely well given the right client/agency fit – and there are many, many great ‘old PR’ agencies out there that do super work on behalf of their clients and their reporters.

My point is that in some cases ‘old PR’ simply won’t work because of the mechanics described above ….and yet many companies seem hell bent on spending their way out of this dilemma.  (Believe me, lots of firms continue to burn cash in this way – as there are no shortage of agencies waiting to pick up the cheques….)

So if you’re looking to drive awareness, sales, signups and general web site traffic, my advice is to check out Online PR first.  It’s an extremely simple way of standing out in a noisy marketplace.  It may not buy you a framed reprint of an FT centre spread feature, but it’ll probably help you to drive sales via your web site in an extremely measurable and cost-effective way.

Besides, there’ll always be time for an executive press breakfast briefing after you’ve made your first £15 million….

You can check out his rant here. It’s a wild walk in the park for anyone intending to sell web marketing services on the back of social media networks, tools and platforms. Coming from a deeply set SEO’ers point of view, it asks a super-relevant but often overlooked question about all this rinky dink 2.0 new stuff that we’re so excited about: namely, what’s the value of web traffic driven via social media platforms?

Here’s a snippet that sets the tone:

What is the value of 10,000 Diggers hitting your site to look at, say, a picture of a monkey riding a bicycle? Zero. The trouble is that a lot of marketers are watching the web scorecard – that spike in the visitor stats that shows the number of visits – and using that as a marketing metric. “Hey, I’m popular!”. Sure, with 10,000 teenagers amused by a picture of a monkey riding a bicycle. But how is that helping boost revenue?

I love this guy. (His blog is brilliant – I recommend it to anyone interested in Online PR and SEO… it’s a place where the web marketing rubber really hits the road.) The great thing about seeing the world through an SEO lens is that it’s so commercially driven and direct. SEO is obsessed with delivering one incredibly valuable thing: new traffic that spends money (or signs up) on your web site. And when this is your sole lookout, life becomes reassuringly simple (and ruthless) – your efforts either succeed or fail based on some fairly simple metrics based on traffic volumes and revenues.

As Wall states: “Traffic only becomes an asset when it translates into something else. When it becomes a bookmark, a sign-up, a link, or helps establish a genuine relationship. It must also result in an increase in revenue. If it doesn’t, then traffic remains an expense.”

Which is why he’s so skeptical about using Social Media Marketing as a pure traffic generation tactic. And rightly so…

There are a number of technology tools and agencies out there that make a virtue of deluging social media properties with your content. (For example, check out this robo-spam company.) They’ll take a snippet of your content, a bunch of your URL’s and a handful of keywords, and post and bookmark these assets like crazy on blogs, Digg, Stumbleupon and the like…. All with a view to establishing backlinkage and new, indiscriminate traffic to your site.

Now without digging into the science of SEO, we can say that there’s very little value in doing this stuff because it’s unlikely to make your cash tills ring.

Think about it: there’s an extremely tenuous link between this traffic’s original activity (hanging out on Facebook, reading ‘social’ news feeds, etc) and a decision to check out your site. At best, people might click because they’re curious – but rarely will they do so because they want to buy stuff from you (or sign up for your event, etc).

As Wall says: “the intent of the users when engaged with social media is not conducive to selling stuff.”

Contrast this with (well executed!) Search Engine Marketing, where the goal is to get into the faces of people who are actively searching for solutions in relation to a purchasing (or a research, etc) activity. When you work hard to improve your Google standing in a smart way then you’re making moves in the land of the looking. But when you deluge blog readers/FaceBook browsers/etc with spam-like sales messages/comments/bookmarks it’s a very random game indeed.

Most people don’t use Social Media Networks to make direct purchasing decisions – so, you shouldn’t be using them as a blunt traffic acquisition play. This is a dumb mistake to make (if you’re doing a lot of it today, then check out the effect it’s having on your bounce rates, page views and average times on page – I’ll wager they’re tanking).

Instead, you should be using Social Media to help deepen your relationships with customers, partners and prospects.

There’s a bunch of other more sophisticated things that you can do with Social Media to help improve your customer correspondence and service levels, and generally grease the wheels of commerce…. Some of which can be found here.

Here’s the C&M top 10 Online PR Tools and Resources links for November:

1. Best Practices for Online PR: a C&M white paper, giving you some good ideas on how to generate buzz and use social media effectively.
2. Best practices for SEO content: another C&M paper, this time showing you how to do radical things for your SEO through Content Optimization (ie, creating more search friendly stuff for your web pages and finding/using better keywords).
3. Reputation / Keyword Monitoring Tool-age: See MonitorThis for a rather brilliant