PR and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

As the worlds of public relations and Internet marketing continue to merge in ways never seen before, we often find ourselves working closely with complementary agencies to help our clients further their message in the world of online PR. Our friends, the online advertising experts, at The Booyah Agency work side-by-side with us on many of our client campaigns and they have put together a post that I thought was worth sharing.

Online PR is Public Relations & SEO Working Together
You finally got your website full of great optimized content and persuasive calls to actions, interactive maps, interesting blog posts, and other hot Internet technologies – now what? The most important part of optimizing your website actually happens off the page – where links and mentions of your website and company play a vital role in how popular and important your website will become.

Quality one-way links from websites related to yours is the key to top rankings on the search engines. You need to develop strategies to ‘win’ these links. Obtaining these links is not easy, but winning targeted links with important keywords in mind are proven to produce results. When pursuing one-way links, keep in mind that every website is run by a person, or a group of people, meaning that you not only need to target websites but also ‘convince’ real people to add a link to their site. This makes good public relations and link building a natural fit when combined to form an Online Public Relations campaign.

There are several key reasons why Online PR can be effective for SEO:

1. Press releases can be easily optimized and targeted to specific keywords using the Heading, Subheading and About Us section of the press release.
2. News stories stay online and can still be read for months after the event.
3. Online press releases can increase traffic and provide link popularity.
4. There are dozens of good free online PR sites and several quality newswire services.

For high quality one-way links, the paid PR services provide more opportunity for keyword rich links and often provide a greater distribution for your story. While you don’t have to use the paid PR services for every online Press Release, it can be well worth the fee (often under $100) for your important online Press Releases.

Mashable: Prop 8 Decision Protesters Use Wikis and Facebook to Organize

Social media is a great medium to quickly gather together supporters for a specific issue or cause, but a lot of causes don't know where or how to start.

Yesterday Mashable's Ben Parr did a great post about how Prop 8 protesters are using social media to organize and raise awareness about their cause. If you're one of those folks who aren't sure where or how to use social media to get the word about about your cause, be sure to read this post.

Live from Boulder Social Media Workshop...

I've decided to kick off the holiday weekend with a little live blogging from a social media hotspot in Boulder! This morning a number of us GFMers are participating in a social media workshop (Social Media and PR in the Digital Age) put on by the Boulder Chamber and the Small Business Development Center. Our own Laura Love is currently moderating a panel with TechStar's Andrew Hyde, The Camera's Kevin Kaufman, Filtrbox's Ari Newman and ColoradoBiz's Mike Cote discussing the changing social media and PR landscape. While I feel like I've attended hundreds of these discussions it's amazing that the content is ALWAYS different. Twitter seems to be the hottest discussion topic right now and how companies can use to get their news out and learn what people are saying about their businesses.

Other interesting insight and advice from the social media junkie panel:

• Be sure to start off your social media program by listening! What is the social media universe saying about you and your company now?
• Find the social media channel that makes you excited to participate and get involved in that channel. If you like it, you're more likely to do it more often.
• Show your personality!
• Be honest, authentic and transparent.
• Check out what your competitors and others in your industry are doing on social media. It's a great way to get ideas!
• Check out Twitter in Plain English video - a great explanation about what is Twitter.
• Demographics for social media channels are all across the board. Twitter seems to skew older than Facebook and Facebook skews older than MySpace.
• It's more important to have good your content rather than just frequent content.
• Handheld video is a great way to add an extra punch to your social media campaign. It doesn't have to be professionally shot video.
• Top pitfalls to avoid: don't pretend to be something you're not; be sure to take advantage of the tracking tools available; remember you're having conversations in a permanent, public archive - think twice before you post; be conversational, not a corporate robot
• Take a few deep breaths and have two people review your response before responding to an angry post.
• Social media is a skill set that is essential for all marketers and PR pros today.
• Check out LinkedIn for B2B companies.

Last words of advice:

• Kevin: be brave and curious and explore
• Ari: Don't get focused on the tool; social media is bigger than a single tool
• Andrew: Google is your home page. Have a personal blog and a company blog.
• Mike: Get ready.

Bringing home the gold (and silver)!

Last night was the 2009 PRSA Colorado Awards celebration. This year's event was a little different than recent years (kudos to CSU PR students for a super creative auction and to Andrew Hudson and Bruce Goldberg for adding their unique humor to the emcee honors), but the purpose was still the same - recognizing amazing PR campaigns and the people who execute them.

At GroundFloor Media, we were honored for five our clients' campaigns to be selected as Gold and Silver Pick winners. Here's a snapshot of the awards breakdown:

Gold Picks
2009 Events and Observances (7 days or fewer) – Association/Nonprofit Organizations
"The Children’s Hospital Makes 111 Miracles Happen"
GroundFloor Media and the Children’s Hospital

2009 Media Relations – Associations/Nonprofit Organizations
"Celebrating 20 Years of Financial Education"
GroundFloor Media and Young Americans Center for Financial Education

Silver Picks
2009 Reputation/Brand Management – Business
Qdoba Builds Brand Through Creative Q-dentity Profiles and Taste Bud Politics
GroundFloor Media and Qdoba Mexican Grill

2009 Media Relations – Business-to-Business
CH2M Hill Sheds Light on Solar in 25 American Cities
GroundFloor Media and CH2M Hill

2009 Blogger Campaign
Leveraging the Influence of Top Consumers Technology Bloggers to Launch Fuser.com GroundFloor Media and Fuser

Our heartfelt congratulations to our clients and to every one of last night's winners. We feel very blessed to work in a city that is home to so many smart and creative PR professionals.

You can read a full list of winners here.

Social Media and Swine Flu

Over the past few weeks the story of the H1N1 virus (aka: swine flu) has taken over the media. You can't tune into the local news, national news, even log onto the Internet or walk down the street and say hi to your neighbors without being inundated with messages about signs, symptoms and statistics about this emerging health issue. It can be overwhelming and, to be honest, a little scary at times.

Here in Colorado, the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE) has done a great job leveraging social media to offer Coloradans news about the virus in bite-sized, consumer-friendly messages that has made the H1N1 virus a lot easier to understand and, quite frankly, a little less scary. On a Web page specifically dedicated to the H1N1 virus, Colorado residents can sign up for free e-mail updates each time the page's information about H1N1 is updated. The page also provides links to the information about H1N1 translated into a variety of languages including Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic, to name just a few. CDPHE has also provided links to practical and informative videos and podcasts such as "How To Wash Your Hands" and "H1N1 Flu Preparedness."

GroundFloor Media was honored to work with CDPHE on one of its first social media programs through the What If Colorado? campaign - and we're thrilled to see that the foundation built during that campaign is still in place.