A Bountiful, Utah steak restaurant called Mo’ Bettah Steaks has a simple web page but it has a lot of personality. Their web site is not fancy and it’s not search engine optimized. But front and center they invite you to become their friend on Facebook. And they encourage it at the restaurant too. This has paid off at a time when a lot of restaurants are hurting. They attribute 20-30% of their business to their Facebook presence. They’re planning to expand soon.

They have over 1,300 friends on Facebook which for a local business is great. They held a photo contest and gave away free food to the winners. That gave them a lot of photos to post. They also have two videos.

Another local restaurant Blue Lemon in Alpine made a group (don’t like the look as much) that has over 100 members. Local restaurants are natural fits for social media. Guru’s Cafe is on Twitter and Facebook but they don’t promote either on the home page of their web site. I haven’t been in for a while but it wasn’t mentioned at their restaurant that I could see.

When you do social media you need to integrate it into all of your marketing - and inside your store. The most successful marketing often is blending of many online and offline resources. There are so many tools (email, Twitter, Facebook, web site, blog, events, press releases, etc) to get the word out.

If you want to learn more about this, I’m part of Smart Media 2009 conference June 18-19 in Lindon, Utah. We’re looking for a Utah restaurant who wants to sponsor lunch for about 100 people. In return we’ll weave your restaurant into the training. That means we’ll create a Facebook Page for you (or a Twitter account) and show you how to market it. Contact me at grocerybike@gmail.com or the contact form on this blog if you’re interested.

I’m a social media junkie and love how press releases, blogs, and social media can combine to create some amazing PR campaigns and results. This campaign was to help business for a car web web site.

The site is basic - it highlights cars on eBay that go for under $1,000. So he (Chris Hedgecock - is that his real name??) doesn’t have his own product (which I like - I hate dealing with products). You too could start a business like this if you have some online savvy.

I thought it would be a great idea to buy a car for under $1,000 from the site and drive it coast to coast in an attempt to get some news coverage and visitors to the site. We were successful in appearing on a dozen news broadcasts and driving almost half a million visitors to the site in three weeks - all for free.

On the largest day we did over 110,000 uniques - all for free. Not to say it wasn’t a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun.

You’ve got to read about it on Shoemoney’s blog for the details. While he didn’t hire a PR firm, he did get friends involved (and he has good contacts who had the know-how). I wouldn’t say it was free but it was definately less than he could’ve spent running ads and much more effective.

Notice that he had:

• A personality and attitude - he likes meeting people (being social). He was willing to be creative and then do what it took to accomplish what he was after.
• Time. Notice he drove across the country and planned all of this - lots and lots of time. He wasn’t sitting in his office. He followed up A LOT and kept track of things. He took the time to make the story relevant to the local market he was in.
• Know-how. He learned or knew how to create a YouTube channel, video, blog, etc. If you don’t have this, you learn or you pay someone for consulting.
• Contacts. His real estate friend did a lot of legwork. He had someone write the press release (free?)
• He used News Power (the free trial?) who figured the news value was over $92,000!!!

Here are some posts from Drew Schulte:

Tips for social networking
and another list of niche social media web sites

Many times the trick is tracking results. He had web site analytics see to see how many people were coming to his site. He then used News Power to track how many stories resulted.

Thanks for sharing your experiences - a great example of creating your own news and running a campaign around it. I talk about this in my book. If you don’t have something newsworthy, then create something. These can be some of the best campaigns.

I recently participated in a social media campaign as a blogger and learned a lot from it. It took place in Utah but it has principles that could apply to your business. My friend Jyl did a great job working with the bloggers on this campaign and consulting with the client on what goes into a successful event.

Who: Goldsmith Jewelers in Provo, Utah
Goal: increase foot traffic to store (1 location)
How:

• Invite local bloggers to a special event commpelling enough to draw them in. You must provide a lot of value because they aren’t paid, they’re busy and they have lots of offers from brands. Make it worth their time (read: you’re going to need to spend some cash - but do it right and it will be more than worth it).
• Communicate with us regularly before and after the event.

Online Presence (Before): they don’t have a great web site, no blog, and before now had never done social media and had no presence on social networks.

Results (After): Facebook profile, many blog posts on popular blogs (example, example), Flickr feed, lots of foot traffic to the store. Google “Goldsmith Jewelers, Utah” and one of the blog posts is already #2 and this just happened last week. Since I’m a little competitive I’m hoping this post will show up on the first page As I love to suggest for events like this, use PitchEngine for a social media press release (could be updated with video and photos though).

Most helpful: Giving bloggers images, sample Twitter posts with a link and Facebook Wall suggestions. Being open about expectations after the evening.

Jyl worked with a PR firm and identified key women who blog or are active on social media (mom blogs).  It’s vital that you work with someone who “gets” the culture and can interface with bloggers and build credibility. You must be compelling enough that they will come and participate. You must frame it well. There’s also a LOT of planning/managing involved.

Bloggers were invited to a red carpet event. We literally walked on red carpet, had our pictures taken and ate great food. We each got gift bags including product information (images, etc), product catalog, and a strand of pearls. They cleaned our wedding rings (mine has not been this sparlkly since I got it). The best part though was to be among other bloggers and get to know some of the local big shots.

The jewelry store was debuting a new line they are carrying called Pandora. We each got a bracelet and a charm and could buy more at a discount. I got one called “happy little bird” in honor of Twitter.

In addition, there were prize drawings and everyone got coupons for a free strand of pearls to give away on their blogs. Others got gift certificates to use as a giveaway.

This was much different than my experience with tech bloggers. We couldn’t wait to see what each other writes and comment on each other’s blogs. We’re very interactive online. We talk a lot in real life but it’s a different tone. It’s more like what we’re doing professionally and new technology we’re using. Then catching up on local goings on with others in the group.

With the mom blog crowd it was more like talking to a group of girlfriends. We talk about everything. We are vocal about what works and what doesn’t. However, the posts are written for the readers and not for each other.

My advice

Goldsmith should have their best rep who really knows the new line preview it in detail for us. Create profiles for everyone (in writing). Take our wrist size and preferences. Show us everything. Helps us assemble a bracelet that we’d like, writing down all of the beads we would need. Then give us a copy and keep one on file (for gifts in the future - we could send our husbands in to pick up if we wanted to). THEN take us to pick out our bracelet and bead.

Don’t market to us overtly but let us know about the discount and make it quick to purchase anything we choose while we were there. This is a balance but I felt they could’ve been more open to some marketing.

I also would’ve put a stipulation on the strand of pearls - either put a minimum purchase on it ($25) or ask people to preview the line and give feedback - a quick 5 mins.)

I’m not a mom blogger and generally speaking I don’t have local reach on my blog. I do have a more local following on Facebook and I write a neighborhood blog (which I keep thinking of expanding to Utah in general).

Next: I hope Goldsmith will invest in a new web site or blog with a gift bag and links to individual products. Great example of PR 2.0!

PRNewswire has added a Digital Center to their social media press releases (they call MultiVu). Basically, it’s a CMS (content management system) to hold your video, audio and digital photo content for your news stories.

“As more organizations create digital content, there is an increasing need for multimedia portals to archive, manage and make that information available, 24/7, to anyone, anywhere in a format that is easy to download. With The Digital Center’s online platform, storing, sharing and distributing multimedia materials is a seamless process.”

Here’s what you can do:

1. Upload your video, photos and logos into one place to store and manage them.
2. Download content in multiple formats that cater to journalists in the US and Internationally.
3. Distribute an advisory to PR Newswire’s vast communications network reaching thousands of media points and Web sites, and to the tens of thousands of members of PR Newswire for Journalists each time new content is uploaded.
4. Make your information public or password-protected so you control the media, bloggers and websites that can access the digital assets.
5. Comment and rating system that enables consumer and media to provide feedback on videos and other promotional materials.
6. Reporting and tracking so you can see how many times a video is streamed and what is downloaded.

You can upload existing video “or enlist MultiVu to produce new video, audio or other multimedia assets.” I’m not really sure what they mean by this - if they will produce content for you or if they have a DIY system.

Recently PRNewswire added a package that lets you display photos on billboards in Times Square and Las Vegas. They also have direct-to-blogger distribution and SEO capabilities (though I’m not sure what they are specifically). What I like is that you can grab video (either singly or by RSS feed) to go along with a news story you want to blog about.

Example of a multimedia press release on MultiVu: I saw a story on MultiVu from Google.org about geothermal energy - something I’m really interested in after watching 60 Minutes last Sunday and being reminded of the mess we’re in because of global warming. If I click on the video title I can download or insert the video onto my blog. Pretty slick. It’s much easier for Google.org to store and manage those videos as well as control who gets them.

Here’s more information about pricing and services from PRNewswire: http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/multivu/37897/docs/37897-PRN_Digital_Center_FINAL.pdf

This is a sponsored review.

Forgive the title - I want to address businesses who want to do SEO but have a tough time finding keywords that have much demand. Most businesses rank naturally in the top 10 for their branded terms. For example, I should rank highest for the term Newspapergrl. However, that doesn’t describe what I do and only reaches people who have already heard of me.

I’ve noticed some clients who have a name that doesn’t describe what they do and they provide a service that isn’t searched for online. This is the time to get creative.

Go to SpyFu and type in your URL to get an idea of what keywords you rank for. Here’s my list (this isn’t always accurate). This used to be better but as you can see it’s all over the map. As you can see I’m ranking for terms that aren’t very helpful - I’d rather rank for terms such as “Online PR” “online press releases” etc. It also shows my top competitors online. If they have nothing to do with what you do, you need to focus on relevant keywords in your writing.

I have focused on my blog design, getting my professional services page updated, and many things. Just writing regularly has been a challenge. Now that I’ve gotten past a lot of the most difficult parts I need to focus in on SEO more again. I also need to finish my online PR book and get a web site up about online PR.

According to SpyFu this is what I rank for (if you pay they’ll give more results). It’s far different than what I used to rank for.

14 jeremy palmer affiliate high performa…
27 innuity
32 email marketing guide
41 affiliate marketing article
42 www optimizemysite com
44 calling libya
45 replacesearch
49 corporation attorney

Back to the point about SEO for businesses where people aren’t actively searching out what you do online. One creative way to approach finding keywords is to think about problems you solve or the audience you want to reach. If your audience is small businesses you might search “for small businesses” and see what comes up. Use a keyword tool such as freekeywords.wordtracker.com or Google’s Keyword tool.

You also want to look at what your competition ranks for, or who you want my competition to be. Or even who you work with or want to work with. For example, I put PRWeb into Spyfu. Since I write optimized press releases that I distribute with PRWeb, they are a complementary business.

I notice PRWeb ranks on terms that have nothing to do with press releases. Obviously they are ranking for their actual press release content, not for what they do. They’re not ranking on “optimized press releases” or “online press releases.”  A blog is an excellent way to build your rankings for keywords and create your own content. Even though PRWeb is one of the most known online press release services, smaller online press release businesses are ranking for terms relating to their business.

Sometimes there just isn’t demand or it’s so small that you need to focus on other tactics after ranking for the obvious terms like your brand name. For most businesses that is easy. You may then turn to getting mentions in blog posts, leaving comments, being active in forums or social networks and other ways to build your visibility online. This is where relationship building is key. It’s vital to find out where your audience is spending time online and getting creative about how to reach them.

Rather than focus on SEO you will need to identify publications, associations, bloggers, groups and complimentary businesses and work on those relationships. See if you can offer content in exchange for a link and some publicity. Try advertising in newsletters, running contests, and finding other ways to engage with your audience. Most of all produce content that your audience will relate to. See who is ranking well for your audience and see if you can partner with or engage them.

These are ways that I found effective, but it’s something I’m always thinking about. Each business challenges me to think of new ways to market online. What creative ways have you found to market your business online when SEO and keywords aren’t a good fit?

Did you hear about how In-N-Out Burger drew a lot of down-and-out job applicants recently? They opened a new store in Las Vegas and needed to fill about 50 positions. What happened? 1,000 people showed up to apply.

Wow.

If you get the stories from applicants, these aren’t your usual teenagers looking for a minimum wage type of job. They were people behind on their mortgages, people who had stable job histories. The average American down on their luck.

I’d love to ask how the experience went for the applicants but it’s a heart-wrenching story. It’s also an incredible PR opportunity for In-N-Out that I’m afraid they’ve missed (but could still do).

Eventually these people will probably be employed, and In-N-Out can leave a good taste in their mouth right now so they’ll come back to eat there.

Here’s what I think they should’ve done….

• Given each applicant a coupon for a free lunch.
• Call the media and get camera crews to cover the event. Perhaps a plea to other employers to consider some of these applicants or let them know if they’re hiring so In-N-Out can spread the word (perhaps gather email addresses and send out posts).
• Make it into a bigger story about this trend. The local news station could look like heroes. They could do a segment saying here are some candidates looking for a job right now. Perhaps focus on one a day at the end of the newscast.
• Send out a press release about what In-N-Out Burger is doing to help Americans find jobs or beat hunger. Spread the word on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook.
• Donate to an organization that provides food or helps people find jobs or build job skills. Spread the word.
• Put all of this on their blog or web site (it has a flash intro! They need OrangeSoda to help with SEO issues on their site).

I think they passed an incredible opportunity to look like heroes in a sad situation. What do you think?

I hear the chorus - when it comes to pitching the media - traditional media like newspapers or tv shows - they want the story. They are sick of pitches that either don’t apply to them, or that aren’t interesting.

Most of the time, it’s not interesting that you named a new CEO or made a new partnership. Your software or product isn’t that interesting (unless you’re Klimit). What makes things interesting is the human element or the story.

Reporters are burned out, stressed out, and many are losing their jobs right now. They don’t have energy and time to read about your news. So what is a PR firm or a company trying to get attention to do? Tell and distribute your own story. When and if you have a story that’s interesting or bigger, then go ahead and pitch.

In the meantime, your audience is a search engine. Or, it’s a social media site like Facebook where you interact with potential customers (or just people) directly. It’s really about being human, responding, and building trust with communities. It’s where someone who specifically cares about your industry, your product, or your company will find you.

You pay a lot for distribution (hiring someone to get the word out to new audiences). You have something to say but no one is listening. You can say it on your web site, but how many people will find it? Some. But if you distribute your news online hundreds of others outlets will see it, you’ll get more exposure. Your news will be interesting to someone and be reprinted, blogged about, or linked to on other web sites that otherwise wouldn’t know you exist.

Or, your news will just sit there until someone looks for it in a search engine. That’s good too. Because search engines don’t get headaches. They’re not overwhelmed or losing their jobs. They have space. Sure it helps to be interesting. But it’s not the same as pitching to media.

When it comes to news, search engines are the holders of information about your company. Traditional PR needs to weed through the news and choose the right outlet. Many stories will go to search engines. Some will get on the news. Clients must change from wanting to see stories about them in the press, to thinking about impressions, traffic to their web site, and direct sales from their news releases.

“You have to stop thinking like a marketer, an advertiser and a communicator and start thinking like a publisher. Create information your consumers want, and they will share it…”
- David Meerman Scott

Lee Odden’s blog has a great summary of a presentation by David Meerman Scott’s on PR and marketing.

I love this rule: “Nobody cares about your products (except you).” And I’ll add, get over it.

He also said to stop using your own corporate speak and use the language your customers are using. To find out what words they are using, look at customer reviews for your products or products that reach your audience. There is a lot of information online. I like using it to write my product descriptions. Amazon reviews is a great start.

David shared the top ten overused words from a recent study:

* Next generation
* Robust
* Flexible
* World class
* Easy to use
* Scalable
* Cutting edge
* Well positioned
* Market leading
* Mission critical

Stop the fluff. Get to the point quickly. And give us a reason to care. That’s good marketing - and good writing.

I just wrote about how Google is selling off Performics search engine marketing services and keeping the affiliate division. I wish Google would sell the entire division of Performics but they kept the affiliate marketing part. Both seem like a conflict of interest. (Sidenote: Has anyone signed up or tested the Google Affiliate Network?)
What’s interesting to me in the industry is the whole issue of print vs. online advertising or marketing. Clients want PR and advertising to be more seemless - to have both in one place and to measure results across both. But the PR side and the online side are so different that each struggle to figure out how to combine them.
I see it on both sides. We (OrangeSoda or myself) offer press releases to clients for online visibility. To get search engine rankings and a permanent link and online distribution. Clients also want to get press coverage, which we don’t measure. We don’t find and distribute press releases to traditional media or even to individual blogs - but maybe we should. However, it’s not our expertise.

On the other side, PR firms are trying to expand their online offerings to include search engine optimization and social media services. Often it’s tough to define and charge for - as I eluded to in my last post (what terrible anchor text!). Obviously, the biggest players are trying to sort this out, as is the rest of the industry.

I’m very interested in the intersection between PR and social media. PR pros are trying to figure out how to “leverage” social media and measure it in the ways they are used to measuring things. Chris Brogan wrote an insightful post with advice to PR pros. He warns how “messy” it is to embark into social media - most will need a lot of direction as they do.
When it comes to approaching bloggers, it’s a very different approach than pitching stories to a publication. Chris says: “I’m writing to you as a human being who likes people, community, innovation, and business, not to mention art, creativity, play, and many other things.” So are the people you’re trying to reach. He explains it like this:

“Bloggers aren’t all the same. I’m definitely not the same as Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. I’m not the same as Seth Godin. I’m not the same as most bloggers. I’m just doing my own thing, and they’re doing theirs. It pays to understand which of us you’re trying to reach for what, and reading the last 10 things we posted, just to get a sense of whether we’re the right kind of person to write about your thing.”

One thing is no matter how high up you go people are still learning, whether we’re professionals or just starting out. This industry evolves quickly and involves a lot of creativity and unintended or expected outcomes, we all continue to learn. Which is what makes my job fun.
So you will make mistakes - getting involved in social media and various online communities has an element of unpredictability. As Chris wrote: “If you mess up, say sorry fast. Acknowledge that you made a mistake, and then act on what you can do better next time.”
In the comments: “Whats hard for us agency types is the transition between “old school” marketing strategy, where ideas and plans were what was sold to the client; and today, where in social media, participation is the product. Its all new to us, but well get there.”

Participation as product. Is that enough - to simply show that you are participating? Should we tell clients - we’re selling you a Facebook profile. We’re selling you our expertise. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to charge, what to offer, and how to define these types of services. So are PR firms.