Private Equity Blogger Poll

The Internet has become a mega promotional resource and online publicity is one of the most sought after media sources. Bloggers offer a vital solution to reach and also target mass audiences.

A new PR practice is to now pitch stories to Bloggers as well as traditional journalist. However, the same as with all media relations to address Bloggers you will still need a strategic plan and approach. If the process is done correctly the returns can be phenomenal.

Today Blogging is just as valuable as major newspapers and magazines. For example Engadget a tech related blog that is associated with Weblogs Inc is valued at a whopping $15,263,467 million dollars or more. Might I also add that AOL purchased the company for a cool 25 million. Take a look at Boing Boing, which is considered one of the most recognized blogs in the entire world. This website is valued at $11,653,234 million dollars or more. Leading the creditability of Blogging to now be a valuable media source.

How to Pitch PR Stories to Bloggers:

1. Understand Cultural

It is important that you understand the cultural of these professionals who operate Weblogs. Seasoned professionals like to be addressed by their names and almost despise PR pitches submitted in their comments area. Moreover, a lot like reporters they are short on time and you have a small window to pitch your PR story. Remember there is no same protocol so review each website to see how they prefer to be contacted. Email is always a most common practice.

Example:

Subject Line: How Hair Ribbons Are Making A Fashion Statement

Dear: List Name of Blogger – Not Attention Bloggers!

I enjoy reading your blog and you often cover topics on the latest fashion trends. Here is a storyline you might find of interest for your readers.

Hair Ribbons are making a fashion statement and comeback. Young girls and women can be seen wearing fashion ribbons for their hair.

Tip: Include a direct link to a media release related to the PR story you are pitching.

2. Research Match

Make sure to do your research and only contact individuals that have readers that best fit your target audience. Selecting a source because of how many readers but is not a direct fit will prove to be useless. Moreover, the story will have to be a fit for the readership in order to be featured as well. It would not be good to provide a storyline about fashion to a tech related website.

3. Build Relationships

These relationships will need to be developed overtime and natured. Remember it takes time to build relationships and you have to keep at it. Once you become successful at pitching PR stories to Bloggers that they can actually use most will view you as a reliable source.

Now that you got the fundamentals down of how to plan your strategic approach you are ready to launch your publicity promotion. Building relationships still takes time and you will get out what you put in. Happy blog hunting!

Bonus:

To learn more about finding websites that best match your target audiences please visit
technorati.com

Learn how to develop a successful PR Campaign, visit this
site

“CR” Cataunya Ransom is the Co-founder of Mosnar Communications, INC. She developed a niche for Luxury PR & Global Marketing. Guiding clients on how to brand, market, and promote luxury products, events, and services. Highly respected as a luxury public relations expert! “CR” consults clients and speaks to audiences about luxury public relations and global marketing practices.

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Tags: blog, blogger, pr, media, public

Are you making customers, prospects, the news media and other visitors work too hard to get information they need from your Web site? They’re only going to give you a couple of minutes to make your case, so make it easy.

Here’s how: Put all the good stuff just a click or two away from the home page by creating an online “Newsroom.” You’ll make a good first — and lasting — impression.

Paste a “Newsroom” button onto your home page. Have it take visitors to a special page that includes contact information (nothing worse than having to search all over for a company’s address and phone number) and links to product and service brochures, bios, press releases, news clips, testimonials, speeches, event information, white papers, FAQs, newsletters and case studies. Also, make the documents downloadable as .pdf files where possible.

Too often, organizations — even large ones with plenty of resources — put off creating a central information page until “we finish redesigning the Web site.” No need to wait. Everything you need is probably already there. If, for example, product sheets and executive bios are featured somewhere on the site, just link to them from the press page. In no more than a couple of clicks, visitors should be able get to the information from the newsroom. That makes it easy and inviting. Your online newsroom may also function as a sales and marketing kit.

This is also a good place to link to video clips, blogs, podcasts, slide shows and other media that feature recent presentations, product demos and the like.

It’s very important to keep the online newsroom and its contents up to date. If the last news release you posted is dated back in 2006, for example, it gives the impression of stagnation.

Check out the Web sites of companies you like and see how they have organized their online newsrooms. Pick one example and use it as a model for yours.

Robert Deigh is principal of RDC Communication/PR and author of “How Come No One Knows About Us?” (W Business Books), the PR guide for organizations large and small that want to win big visibility. Deigh helps organizations increase their visibility and build their brands by creating strong and positive relationships with the press and other audiences. He is also a frequent speaker and trainer on media and PR topics. Feel free to visit his website.

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Tags: pr, press, public relations, web, blog

It seems you can’t turn around these days without hearing how traditional media are in a severe decline. Newspapers’ readership is declining, radio is battling iPods and satellite radio for the listener’s ear, and digital video recording has taken the wind out of TV’s sails.

I personally have been disappointed to see articles I have earned for clients in major outlets like the New York Times and Chicago Tribune yield little to no response. In the past, such a “hit” would result in countless inquiries that could almost turn a company around overnight.

So where do you go from here if you want to engage public relations to help expand awareness of a new product, initiative, or simply just to maintain your company’s reputation? Where else but the Web? The same client who had little feedback from those national newspaper “hits” actually experienced a huge response to an article posted on CNN.com.

But it’s essential that you think creatively, strategically and consider your company’s message when you begin to explore the many tools now available online to help you spread the word. Below I’ve outlined four examples of companies who creatively used a Web technology as a public relations tool and saw great results.

Blogging With a Purpose

Everybody and his brother appears to be blogging these days on everything from their favorite sports team to their pet. And many companies are jumping on the bandwagon too quickly without a solid strategy in place to use their blog to reach their target audience.

Breakaway Adventures, a company who books walking and cycling tours of Europe, worked with my public relations firm to create a blog that would engage their potential and existing clients and provide them with helpful information.

Last year, I led a group of journalists on one of the company’s cycling tours to the small island of Gozo, part of the Malta archipelago, and I suggested that I do a daily blog detailing my experience and posting photos of our trip. This allowed potential clients curious about this little-known island to follow my trip live or read it afterward and get a firsthand account of what the trip was truly like. The blog went much further than a typical brochure blurb and presented real-life issues and a taste of the culture, while providing them with photos of exactly what they would see.

The blog was a success, with several readers following it live and posting comments. To date it has resulted in more than 1200 page views. The idea is for the company to encourage future travelers to host similar blogs that will then be archived on their Web site for visitors to read.

A Video for the Dogs

For a client who wanted to quickly expand awareness about a new product they had developed, a tooth-brushing kit for dogs, my firm encouraged them to produce a video they could post online. Since brushing a dog’s teeth can sound daunting to some, we recommended they create an instructional video to walk pet owners through the process and convey the message that brushing a pet’s teeth can extend its life.

It was important that the video be conversational, simple and pleasant to watch so it would appeal to a variety of folks online. The video could also be used for a variety of marketing purposes, such as trade shows, giveaways to clients and more.

In addition to posting the video on their Web site, www.keepitcleanusa.com, my firm also posted it to some 20 free video-sharing sites, such as YouTube, Yahoo Video and Break.com, and sent it virally by e-mail, encouraging anyone and everyone we knew to forward it along in the interest of promoting pet health. Since its posting, more than 1200 people have watched the video on YouTube alone.

Sending Fans to Facebook

With Microsoft recently buying a stake in Facebook, valuing it at $15 billion, the current buzz is all about social networking. Millions of people are flocking to sites like MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook to interact with friends and business colleagues by sharing photos, videos and information about themselves, as well as joining groups, communicating through messages and posts and networking.

Gillette came up with a creative contest to engage Facebook users, which number about 50 million, as part of their Gillette Fusion Power GameFace College Tour. Sports fans are directed to go to the www.gillettegameface.com site where they can watch a video of Cleveland Browns quarterback Brady Quinn offering advice on how to get your “gameface” on. Fans are then directed to Facebook where they can join the Gillette Gameface group to upload a video or photo sporting their best “gameface.”

Once you join the Facebook group, you can get shaving tips, view others’ submissions, post your thoughts on the discussion board or “wall” and more. The promotion appears to have been a success with more than 1800 group members on Facebook.

A Little Bit of Everything

One of my favorite examples of smart uses of Web tools to engage an audience is NBC’s “The Office” television show. “The Office” has created lots of dedicated fans who are truly looking for ways to stay involved with the show beyond its regular Thursday night air time.

So NBC created a whopper of a Web site, sporting all kinds of cool tools that can keep fans busy for months. One of the most creative applications is the Dunder Mifflin (the name of the company in “The Office”) Infinity site, which is a social network where you can do all kinds of fun tasks related to the show. You can “apply” to be an employee of the company and get assigned an official position. Then, you can perform various jobs, just like the characters do on the show, such as developing a local ad campaign, a task they completed on a recent episode. According to a recent article on MediaPost, this network now has 100,000 “employees.” Not bad.

Two of the quirkiest characters are Dwight Schrute and Creed, and you can read their deepest thoughts on the Schrute Space or Creed’s Thoughts blogs regularly updated on the site.

The show also offers plenty in the way of video, allowing visitors to download past episodes, watch deleted scenes and Webisodes only available online, see interviews with the characters and more. They also offer a real hodge podge of other nifty activities to keep you returning, like chat rooms, silly contests, virtual office basketball and subscribing to the Scranton (the city in Pennsylvania where their fictional office is located) newsletter and more.

The same MediaPost article reported that “The Office” section of the NBC Web site has had more than 800,000 unique users visit to date. I’d say it’s a hit.

All of these examples provide great lessons and hopefully inspirational ideas for the wide range of possibilities you have when marketing yourself on the Web. So, don’t just blog to blog, post any old video on the Web, or create a profile on MySpace which you never go to again. Be smart, strategic and innovative, and you will be rewarded with new and better customers.

About the Author: Lyn Mettler is the president of Step Ahead Web Strategies, a company that offers clients a comprehensive online strategy from a public relations and marketing perspective.

The company helps businesses and organizations expand their Web presence beyond their Web site, engaging the latest and most innovative technologies, including online video, social networking, search engine optimization, blogs, Podcasting and more, to reach their target audiences with the right message. She also owns Mettler Public Relations, a Charleston, S.C.-based PR firm, and is a freelance writer for a variety of publications.

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Tags: pr, web, technology, blog, facebook

In the five minutes it takes to read this article, more than 100 new blogs will be created. Perhaps the hottest topic in the public relations industry, blogs have emerged as the most important new communications tool since e-mail.

Blogs–short for “web logs”–are rapidly gaining in popularity, replacing online newsletters and articles as the vehicle of choice for anyone who has an opinion to share or a skill to teach.

Blogs are self-publishing in its purest form. Blogs allow anyone with an Internet connection to reach a potentially large audience with minimal cost. With such a far-reaching impact, it’s no wonder businesses large and small are jumping on the blog bandwagon.

Yet despite the surge in blogs, very few media training firms include blogging in their programs. Spokespersons need to know not only how to write their own blog (or contribute to the organization’s blog), but also how to contribute to outsider blogs that influence their customers and the public. As part of our media training services, we are fortunate to have the resources of the Blog Squad, specialists in blogging, available to our clients.

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, is an executive who knows how to harness the power of blogging. As he said in a recent blog posting, “I’m a big believer in the transparency blogging drives for me and Sun.” In other words, blogging–putting himself out there for the public to see and hear–ends credibility to Mr. Schwartz and to his company. After all, a man who isn’t afraid to attach his name to his own opinions, ideas and fears is a man who can be trusted, right?

Trust and credibility are at the core of organizational success, and blogging is quickly becoming one of the easiest and most accepted ways in which businesses can gain that trust within the marketplace.

Blogs are also a great way to ensure that your web site is constantly full of interesting content. If your organization sells software, a daily or even weekly blog about new developments in the software industry will soon gain a large following of like-minded software professionals who want to hear what you have to say. Do you publish text books? Why not offer a blog for teachers discussing the latest trends in education? Do you manufacture camping equipment? How about a blog that lists great places to vacation? The goal is to make your site—and by association, your company—an authority in your industry.

Hosting a Successful Blog

Interested in starting a blog for your own company? The following media training tips will guide you toward blogging success.

1. Speak your readers’ language. Who is your audience? Are they professionals within a specific industry who will understand technical jargon? Or are they novices who would prefer to read a more casual approach to your subject?
2. Deliver a useful message. To be truly effective, your blog must provide a service. No one will become a faithful reader of your blog unless you are consistently giving them useful information, be it a list of on-line resources, a how-to article, a product review, or a place where they can be part of a stimulating discussion.
3. Keep it short. A blog entry should be relatively short; often a paragraph or two will suffice. Articles on the web are more enticing if they have short paragraphs and plenty of white space, as busy readers will rarely spend the time to read long tomes. If an entry needs to be long, post the opening two or three paragraphs then have the reader click to continue.
4. Encourage comments. At the end of your post write such things as, “What do you think? or “What experiences have you had with this?” or “What suggestions do you have?” And then direct them on the next step to take: “Enter your comments below.”
5. Be consistent. Update your blog on a regular basis (the Blog Squad recommends at least twice a week, but encourages clients to do even more frequently) so that your readers can develop a habit of checking in.

Lou Hampton is president of The Hampton Group, Inc., a Washington, DC firm specializing in media training, speech coaching, and message development. For tips, tricks, and techniques on how to communicate as a leader, go to Lou’s blog

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Tags: Media relations, blog, training, internet, traffic