Posted by Tom Allinder
Well after weeks of work, my first white paper on News Release Optimization and Syndication is ready.
If you read through the blogs here, you will see that this is a subject that I have been beating to death for weeks!
News releases and search engine optimization combined together can create a powerful force for companies looking to get found on the Internet. Once a company starts getting found, it obviously improves their opportunities to sell products and services and if they are publicly traded, obtain more shareholders.
Posted by Tom Allinder
Short video on using news releases to build your offsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and move your website up in search engine results.
Posted by Rosemary Sorg
So many bloggers write about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because it is the difference between small companies getting found and competing with larger companies which have significant larger budgeting dollars. This leveling of the playing field is an incredible opportunity for small companies, startups and local business.
The convergence of social media and SEO is the tool that will get you found by your potential audience. Statistics show that in one month there are 14 billion searches conducted. Can you wrap your mind around 14 billion people searching google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask on a monthly basis? Needless to say that SEO is one of the most effective online marketing tactics for generating conversions.
So which digital assets can help you with SEO?
Twitter is the micro bloggling site that helps you to establish a viral connection with your customers and gives you website integration. Even though twitters value to your sites SEO is limited, tweets will rank high in search results and twitter is good for ranking your profile name and breaking news.
Flickr is a photo and video sharing website. Flickr is heavily indexed in search engines, passing links and page ranks. Flickr also helps images rank higher in google images and in building inbound links.
LinkedIn, a social networking site for business professionals, also has a very high page rank for your company name and you are almost guaranteed to be on the first page of search results.
Youtube is very good for building links back to your site because videos rank high.
Digg, a social news sharing site, helps your page(s) to be indexed quickly. If your story becomes popular on Digg it will assist you in getting linked to by bloggers.
Delicious, a bookmarking tool for news, is an excellent source because when your page gets bookmarked, it's a direct link back to your site. Being on the front page of this site will boost SEO since the big category tag pages are full of trust, which will pass directly to your URL.
StumbleUpon, a personalize bookmarking tool, is very good if your story makes it to the top page for its tag.
These are just a handful of sites that can assist you with some SEO juice. Let me know what kind of results you have gotten or are getting with any of the above mentioned assets. If you have found results with other platforms please feel free to share with the rest of us. For more information on SEO, Social Media Marketing and Web Design and number of other items explore our site; if you have questions please contact us!
Posted by Tom Allinder
I have spent a lot of time talking to company management teams about their most underutilized asset which is their own web site. I have also expounded on their second most underutilized asset which is press releases; a great way of doing inbound marketing. Private companies can put out press releases just like public companies can.
The case can be made and is made by saying that public companies use press releases to drive interest in their stock. What about private companies? Does it matter? I think the point of press releases for the most part is being missed…
My renewed interest in white papers has brought me to this blog as a way of laying out how it works.
What is the Point?
Let me break this down and try to make it simple:
Onsite Search Engine Optimization (Onsite SEO)- all the things you can do to make your site as marketable as possible. Altogether, about 25% of your website grade
is made up from onsite SEO items.
Offsite Search Engine Optimization (Offsite SEO) – let’s just call this inbound links (or back links etc) to make it simple. This is the biggest part of the grade.
So let’s say your site is perfect with regard to onsite SEO; how are you going to build your site’s authority through Offsite SEO (inbound links/back links)?
How about… press releases?
There is really no better way to get started building inbound links (Offsite SEO) to your site than the press release. You may have a great blog and site but you need to get inbound links in order to “be found” so that others will link to you just because your content is remarkable.
If you want a big bang, you can use a larger wire service like Market Wire, Business Wire or PR Newswire. But, you do not need to spend hundreds of dollars on press releases… Just make sure you can use ANCHOR TEXT
to build inbound links to your site. I am using a service right now for our press releases that costs $12 per release. Every release we do results in more inbound links to our pages. There are even FREE services you can use!
It is a time consuming process but beats a PPC campaign
to hands down!
Posted by Rosemary Sorg
To say that times are changing is an understatement in todays advertising world. Thanks to the internet, growth in social media is exponential and the traditional ways of advertising your brand have been turned upside down. Once, outbound marketing ruled the world. You could send email and print campaigns and have them be very effective. To have a company ad in the front pages of your local newspaper would have guaranteed more awareness for your business. Those days are long gone, outbound marketing is ineffective and useless.
In todays PR world, inbound marketing is the gold medal! Inbound marketing is the electrically charged particles that energize your websites visibility. Just how do you achieve this golden status you may ask? Here are 8(eight) quick ways to start winning that inbound marketing gold medal!
- Use keywords in link text
- Earn links with great content
- Promote on social networks and share that great content
- Link up with business/marketing partners
- Cross link internally to landing pages, other content
- Embed links in news releases
- Encourage others to social bookmark your content
- Syndicate content via RSS
So why is link building so important? Link building is important because it will drive traffic to
your website! Remember text used within the links is very important because it infers meaning! Variety in link building sources is important but always be relevant and on topic.
Internal links are also important and a tool that sometimes gets overlooked. And last but not least, inbound links from relevant, authoritative websites are key!
Do you have any other methods of inbound marketing that you could share with us? If so, your feedback is always appreciated and sharing this knowledge with each other will only help us all to learn and grow!
Posted by Tom Allinder
With regard to inbound marketing or any other uses, I had all but given up on the white paper… With short attention spans we all seem to live in a TwitterWorld of short, concise messages. Everything in our lives needs to be condensed into 140 characters or less if we expect anyone to read the entire thing that we write. Oh, I believe I have already gone over 140 characters…
This line of thinking changed however when I decided to attend the White Paper Summit 2010. Michael Stelzner author of Writing White Papers is the event founder and the leading instructor. When I attended the first session, my interest in white papers was suddenly rekindled. Wow! What an inbound marketing tool!
All of the instructors have had their own remarkable success with white papers, marketing and copywriting. In short, this was one of the best online learning experiences I have ever had and worth much more than the money they charged to attend the summit. I truly enjoyed the entire process and have a ton of great reference material to fall back on now…
Among the things I learned was how to engage the reader right off the bat, how to cleverly market my own services within the white paper, how to market the white paper itself as well as many other techniques. The key for me was using a white paper as an inbound marketing tool which is very important to me.
I am looking forward to publishing my first white paper soon. I have been accused of having some blogs that almost qualify for being a white paper so now I can really put all of this newfound knowledge and inspiration to work!
Posted by Tom Allinder
Yesterday, I was having an animated phone conversation (it’s the only conversation I know how to have) regarding all sorts of things “inbound marketing” with Dan Ronken, owner of PullnotPush.com and he said something truly remarkable. “These companies have about 18 to 36 months before they are so far behind that they will never catch up.” In Dan's most recent blog, he uses "death bed" in the wording which I love!
We are seeing outbound marketing die via a slow bleed. Even in my niche business
of dealing with mostly publicly traded companies, the cost of doing outbound marketing has become so prohibitive that only the big players with deep pockets can compete.
Complete Rebuild
The bottom line is that for now, we can apply some band aids like social media platform (Twitter, Facebook etc) presence, search engine optimization (SEO) for websites, social media marketing and so forth. But we are rapidly approaching the point that companies need to completely rebuild their online presence. Redoing the website to make it prettier and/or applying some SEO is not going to cut it anymore.
The company website needs to be an inbound marketing machine built from the ground up. I also know this: Any company with any sort of business needs to have an inbound marketing platform if they are to succeed from this point on.
Market What?
I am in the process of finishing my first Whitepaper; it is on news releases. News releases are typically the second most underutilized resource (second only to their website) that companies have at their disposal. I am pointing out in the Whitepaper how news can be repurposed in several ways to build website authority which results in more website visitors which, in turn likely means more customers, clients and if publicly traded, shareholders.
The real purpose of the website is to drive awareness of or make sales of products and services. But, as in the case of the news release, the right platform can increase awareness and sales across the board! Marketing of news on a company website is reason enough all by itself to build a platform that will facilitate inbound marketing.
Management teams of small companies in most cases are aware of their website. But, they have little knowledge of its performance and how the website can be improved. Management focus is entirely on selling products and services and if they are publicly traded, selling their stock. To me this focus is misplaced. The focus should be on the platform
for the sales; Google makes a lot of money through free platforms.
A big upgrade of your platform will result in better sales no matter what you are selling.
I look at businesses (the product or service) and their websites (delivery vehicle) like nuclear weapons… you can have the most powerful bomb ever built but without a delivery vehicle to put the weapon on target, it’s useless…
Posted by Rosemary Sorg
Social Media is growing at an enormous rate. The amount of time people spend on social media sites has increased by 82%! That's growth at an exponential rate. If you read this data correctly you can see why social media is such a formidable marketing tool.
The question begging to be asked is, "What are business owners who are not in tune with social media and web 2.0 asking?" What are their main concerns?"
I've compiled 5 questions that you, as a business owner, should be asking your PR Agency. Dear PR Agency, be prepared to answer these questions for your clients to set yourself above your competition!
Experience: How much experience do you and your agency have with social media? Anyone can attend a webinar or two or have created a twitter profile and/or Facebook page. Ask specific questions like who is in charge of clients social media campaigns? Which social media platforms do you use to establish a brand for the clients? They should be able to give you data of the top platforms and why.
Social Media Strategy: What is your social media strategy? You have to know your audience and that requires research. Agencies must drill down and get keywords right for your company/brand. They must establish a community and connect with that community. They must create content that will be informative and valuable to that community of followers. They must engage their audience to keep them coming back for more.
Online Real Estate: Ask if they have a website and go check it out. Ask if they have a social media presence and where? Check and see how they do social media on their own property. See if they are actually practicing what they preach onto themselves. Many people claim to be experts or gurus at something and when you do research on their website it turns out not to be the case.
Case Studies: Ask them for case studies. Check out what they have done for other clients. How did they come up with the idea/plan/strategy. Have them provide some data to you and interpret it for you.
ROI: The golden question that drives social media. Can you measure my return on investment? What tools do you use to measure ROI? There are many tools out there that measure ROI. What is important to you is that not only should they be able to provide this data to you but they should also be able to translate it to you in a clear, measurable insight! Did it meet the objectives you set out with?
Beware of agencies that promise the skies. Agencies should operate under the motto, "Under promise and over deliver." Remember, like everything else, social media takes time. Campaigns take time to develop a voice, a presence in these communities and anyone promising you quick results is lying. Some campaigns take anywhere from 6 months to a year.
I heard this from an innovative man, Todd Defren, and think it's appropriate for this blog. "PR is not just about hits, it's frequency, distribution, relevant-content via the right channels, to boost credibility and find-ability!"
Do you agree? If not, what other questions would you include? Do you agree Mr/Mrs Business owner? Your input is always appreciated.
Posted by Tom Allinder
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), your local SEO expert is likely still using meta-tags for your SEO. This is a very antiquated method of doing SEO because most search engines ignore them. You should still put your keywords into the code of your site but they are far from the most important aspects of Search Marketing.
Here is a good way for you to find out how good your SEO is: Go to HubSpot’s Website Grader and put the url in of your site. It only takes a couple of minutes. You will instantly see where your site is deficient.
If you are not an expert in websites or do not know what many of the items on the report mean, there is an explanation that can be looked up right from the report. The last thing you might want to do is take this to your old SEO/web expert. They are likely to steer you down the old road to nowhere; a place you have already been if you are reading this.
If you spend enough time on this site and my other websites, you will see that I am a shameless promoter of HubSpot and their resources. Awareness of modern marketing methods is severely lacking at the small company level in this country and around the world. All the tools you need to greatly increase your company’s visibility on the web are readily available.
As time goes on, I will be publishing my own resources on this site. So, check back soon; some new tidbit of useful information will have shown up!
Posted by Tom Allinder
Every CEO, management team member and shareholder wants to see their stock become the next hot stock. But, here is where my opinion differs from many service providers and management team members in the small and micro cap stock community.
"What do we have to do to get the stock moving?" I hear so often from other IR types, CEOs and others involved with publicly traded companies. When I ask them about their business, more often than not, I get a long pause before any response. In most cases from my experience it seems that company management thinks- Get the stock going and we can get the business going.
The whole reason that investors and traders buy stocks is not because of the stock, but because of what the company behind the stock is doing. We have seen this time and time again: The companies that have stocks that are successful for more than a couple of days has a good story being told. The stock of any company is a reflection of the investing community's perception of that company- not the perception of the stock.
Now, I know you are thinking: We need to raise money from the sales of stock so we can get our business going. This is true, but think about it- If you have no business or your business is weak, why would anyone buy (and hold) the stock? You can do what many companies do- hire a promoter or short-term IR firm to pump the stock for a day or two to raise some money. Once they are done, then what? It becomes an endless cycle of pump, spend and pump again.
There will always be a market for short term promotion of microcap stocks. However, there is also a growing line of thinking that the only way to be really successful for weeks or months or even years, is to have good brand recognition and a great story being told across the Internet. For a company to be successful over time they need to have:
INVESTORS
Traders are great for short-term liquidity; but companies are built on investors; those that buy and hold the stock over a period of months or even years.
Strategy
Most microcap companies have no strategy at all for intermediate or long term success. Most of the management teams live in an instant gratification world. Instant gratification you may have noticed has caused a lot of trouble over the last 10 years or so.
Developing a strategy for 3 months, 6 months or a year or more is the only way to start to build a story that will lead to a successful company and stock. What should be strategized?
Web Site
It is my honest belief that many company management teams, not just of public companies but private as well think that just having a web presence is good enough; as if an online business card is sufficient. I have ran close to 500 company websites through HubSpot's Website Grader and the average score is still about 45 (out of a possible 100). You need a website that can be found, engage visitors and encourage people to communicate and interact with your company.
News Releases
I have written about news releases to the point of having no fingerprints left and still, most ignore the findings of HubSpot as well as my own research. There is a technique to writing news releases to ensure a maximum chance of syndication in as many places as possible.
The Story
Many stocks have had good runs because they had a "catchy and engaging" website and because they had a steady stream of good news. There is also no doubt that these companies thought their strategy out well and then executed on it. But also, the companies developments were being talked about not just on the message boards but in blogs, on Twitter and many other social media platforms.
The bottom line is that without some sort of intermediate and long term thinking and strategy with the proper help, you may keep doing what you have always done and keep getting what you always got...