OK, so you have written the perfect press release, now what? Chances are you are going to post it to a newsroom online somewhere, and send it for wire distribution. So how can you ensure you are getting the most exposure to your press release? Optimize it for search of course! By posting your press release to the wire, distribution services such as PR Newswire, PRWeb and Business Wire will post your press release to their websites and distribution networks. In turn, online news sources such as wsj.com, nytimes.com and news.yahoo.com will scour these websites for content to post to their newsrooms. Finally, search engines will scour these sites looking for relevant content to add to their search engine results pages (SERPs).
All these websites and newsrooms are potential readers of your news, so it only makes sense to optimize your press releases for search. Here are a few best practices you can follow to set your press release up for success.
Step 1: Determine your keywords
The first step in optimizing for search is determining what keywords and phrases you want to optimize your release for. Try to determine two or three phrases to keep focused. For example, if your press release is talking about the launch of the XYZ Phone from 123 Corp., then I think it is pretty clear what your phrases should be: XYZ Phone, and 123 Corp. Sometimes it can be a little tricky to determine what key phrases to go for, but there are lots on online resources out there — Wordtracker being one of my favorites.
Step 2: Write a clear and concise headline
Probably the most critical thing for optimizing your press release is having a well-written headline. Headlines are set off with the use of heading tags like <h1> and <h3> for example, so search engines can quickly spot them in the HTML code. Also headlines are often used in the Titles and URLs of webpages, greatly boosting chances for high rankings for those keyphrases. So after you determine what key phrases you are optimizing your press release for, make sure at least one of those phrases is in your headline.
Keep your headline short and to the point while you are at it. Search engines look at the keywords and the keyword density of your headline to determine what your press release is about and how important it is. So a headline with your key phrase along with six other words will have a higher keyword density then a headline with your key phrase and 20 other words. The higher the keyword density, the better.
Step 3: Use key phrases in your subheadline
OK, so using the examples above, you determined your main key phrase is XYZ Phone, and added that to your title, good work. So now, what about the other key phrase, 123 Corp.? Add it to your subheadline if possible. Use the same rules as writing your headline, keeping things clear and concise.
Step 4: Use bolding, italics and hyperlinking to your advantage
In the body of your press release, help search engines understand what phrases are important to readers by bolding and italicizing these words where it makes sense. Also hyperlinking these words is a good practice. For example, a hyperlink to a corporate website from the mention of the product makes logical sense, like so:
Today 123 corp announced the XYZ Phone which has a 12 inch screen, and reads your mind.
Step 5: Don’t be spammy
So with all this, keep in mind that more is not always better. Avoid the temptation to add your favorite key phrase to the headline of your press release three times, because if once is good then three times must be better. It’s not, and the search engines are smarter than that.
Yeah I hear you there are a million rules for search engine optimization, but keep these 5 steps in mind and you should be on the path to success. Your main focus should be to create strong content that has a clear and concise message. If you do so, search engines will respond and the visitors will follow.
The effect color has on the marketing of a product is substantial. Years ago, researching color marketing and the psychology behind it is what sparked my initial interest in this industry. Something as simple as a color can hold extreme emotional bonds to a product. If you see a red-and-white soup can, what brand comes to mind? Campbell’s, of course.
Would you buy a blue banana and feel safe eating it? I hope not. One of the first things my former college marketing professor teaches every class is that the banana has the best packaging in the supermarket, and probably even further. Think about it: A banana has perfect attributes of color marketing. You know when it’s fresh, it’s ready to eat or it has had better days, all by the color of its packaging, not to mention how recognizable it is across all ages.
I recently read an infographic from KISSmetrics that offers a great high-level explanation of how important color is when marketing a product. I found it interesting yet not surprising that 93% of consumers place visual appearance and color above all other factors when shopping. The same infographic also says color increases brand recognition by 80%. When you combine those two factors, using the wrong color or not sticking with one color can be detrimental to your brand.
Transforming traditional color marketing into the next generation of Web development is an important task. A website has to fit your corporate brand and appeal to Web surfers. For example, take the Hershey’s Chocolate website; it fits the brand well by sticking to the brown chocolate-colored background, with bright colors that jump out at you with calls to action. Their website is user-friendly, and has smooth transitions to help make it easier on the eyes.
Web visitors are very aware that with the click of a mouse, they can hop on a search engine and find a different website to browse. With attention spans shortening and the number of websites increasing, it is more important than ever to ensure that important information jumps out at Web viewers, in a reasonable way. Have a “buy now” button? Don’t let it blend in; have it stand out by using a different color.
Photo by Anna Lisboa Signor
We’ve all seen the mundane status updates from our friends and brands we follow on Facebook:
- “Cat just coughed up hairball. Great.”
- “PBJ or ham & cheese…hmmm…”
- “People are here. We’re starting our meeting.”
To no surprise, these types of status updates rarely receive a “like” or comment. Following the f8 developer’s conference in April, TechCrunch wrote a post detailing Facebook’s insight into the algorithm that makes the all-so-important Facebook news feed tick.
To most, the news feed has become second nature. Log on to Facebook at some point in the day, scan your news feed and receive quick updates about what your friends or brands you follow have been up to lately. Simply put, a user is far less likely to specifically click over to a particular group, page or person’s profile on Facebook on a regular basis. For online marketers, this emphasizes the critical need to publish content that will continually pique the fans’ interests and prompt them to engage with brands.
So, what is this “secret sauce” that determines what shows up in your news stream? The technical formula can be found on the aforementioned TechCrunch post.
But, what does that mean to you? Great question.
Teach to Digital Fish has done a superb post addressing just that topic.
How is all this being used by brands?? Another great question.
Smart brands are providing extremely engaging content via photos/video, gathering feedback from fans, prompting action and promoting deals. In January, I provided my recommendations and tips around elements that make a good status update. This of course varies based on your overall goals and primary use of a page.
Case Study
I would encourage you to hop over to Thomas Umstattd Jr.‘s blog where he has embedded a video from a recent SMB Austin event. In the video (at about the 6:30 mark), Thomas talks about the work he recently did on a political campaign and the strategy and tactics he utilized to engage fans in support of his candidate. It’s an excellent case study and example of the crucial role page content plays in bolstering engagement.
Big Takeaway
No one brand has the golden ticket answer as to how to build a foundation of hundreds of thousands of engaged fans overnight. Certain brands are certainly doing things better than others but all brands should at least be cognizant of thinking through the implications of each and every status update. Most importantly, continue learning, tweaking and improving by analyzing Facebook Insights all the time.
In the communications industry, “creativity” carries a wide array of meaning and interpretation. All too often, the word is aligned with designers and marketing specialists who are responsible for creating a fancy brand or dreaming up a viral PR/ad campaign. Dangerous.
For agencies large and small, it’s all too easy to bucket out creativity without recognizing the crucial importance of infusing a creative mindset across an agency setting. In essence, creativity should never be thought of as that “thing” that you focus on only during client brainstorms. Similarly, creative resources should never be aligned with “X person” at your agency that is identified as THE creative head.
The reality is that each and every person at your agency has the potential to be creative. How your agency activates and leverages that potential as an asset to your client base and as an overall competitive threat is a key capability differentiator.
Last week, I had the opportunity to chat with David Mahlmann, VP of Ideation and Creative Insights at Waggener Edstrom to discuss his thoughts on infusing creativity into agency culture.
I couldn’t agree more with David’s thoughts on the topic. Personally, it’s the creative nature of my job and the industry that keeps me excited each and every day. In the world of communications, there are no boundaries to how we craft messages, build narratives and develop compelling prompts to generate action.
Whether it’s the physical environment of your agency, your team’s approach to brainstorming or the unique way you pitch new business and market yourselves online, take a moment to think about the multitude of ways creativity can separate your agency from the pack.
Use PowerPoint, not Word. Seriously.
I know you were expecting some answer like use more data or numbers or talk slow, but one of the biggest problems I’ve seen when PR tries to integrate with marketing is that they aren’t presenting the message right. When I first started at HP in a Global Marketing Unit (GBU) I wrote my first report in Word. I thought I had committed a cardinal sin. My manager told me to put it in PowerPoint and never do that again.
Social media is continuing to blur the lines between PR and marketing. Waggener Edstrom has traditionally been a PR/communications agency, but over the past several years we have shifted to doing integrated communications. Which means we are just as likely to work with marketing as we are PR. But still, most of our clients are in PR.
The first thing I noticed about PR vs. marketing was PR’s propensity to use Word. It makes sense; most of the stuff PR does (or used to do) was done first with typewriters, then with word processors (the hardware devices, not the software), then Word.
PR people usually come from a writing or journalism background. They write. Marketers don’t do that. Formal pricing documents like SOWs and initial RFP responses are usually done in Word, but that’s it.
My advice to PR people who find themselves working more with marketing is to use PowerPoint and lots of visuals like charts; they like charts.
Marketers don’t read; they just want pretty pictures.
I, like most of us here at Studio D, tend to see patterns and ideas emerge from everyday 
situations that are relevant to building social media strategies and audience engagement efforts. Well, last week — trudging back upstairs from our second fire drill in five hours (yes, second) — was no different. As we were cleared to head back from what was thankfully a false alarm, a few things came to mind:
- Preparation is important. As groan-inducing and interruptive as they can be, fire drills happen for a reason — so that you know where to go, what to do and who does what when it really matters. The importance of advance planning for, say, a crisis communications program is probably obvious, but it’s a vital part of a strong social media engagement strategy as well. Running through a variety of scenarios before launching your new account/website/campaign can help everyone involved understand the process and their role. It’s one thing to prepare for a fire by looking at a building map, it’s another to actually walk the route (and find out it can take a lot longer than anticipated to make it down seven packed flights of stairs…).
- Opportunities are everywhere. The coffee shops and delis that line the streets around our office vie for our attention and lunch dollars with fliers that inevitably end up in the recycling bin. But if one of them had noticed the hundreds of cold office workers filling the parking lot (twice!) and grabbed a stack of cups and a thermos of coffee, they would have created an opportunity to meet — and caffeinate — dozens of new potential customers. Watch for simple, unexpected opportunities to connect with and surprise your audience — and act quickly.
- Mix it up. People fall into patterns and rely on habits to navigate their world — online and offline. Despite a single staircase separating the 6th and 7th floors here at Waggener Edstrom, our routines tend to keep us on our own floors. As everyone spilled out into the parking lot during the fire drill(s), WE folks were mixing and mingling, happy to be “forced” to reconnect with friends and meet new people. I know I can fall into similar ruts with my social media and Web navigation habits, potentially missing great content and chances to connect. How can you help your audience mix up their usual, predictable experience with your brand’s online presence, enabling them to discover new content, connect with other fans and break out of their navigation routines?
Image from Vinc.
A recent report from the Pew Internet Project and an announcement on Mashable reinforce an online trend over the past few years — video is hot. As stated on Mashable:
52% of the American population is watching videos online — that’s 69% of all Internet-connected American adults
In addition, a few other key findings stand out in the study (benchmarked from 2007):
- Increased popularity of online video consumption outside of the 18-29 year-old age range
- Comedy or humor videos have risen in viewership from 31% to 50% among adult Internet users (now trumping news video consumption)
- Increase in educational video viewership from 22% to 38% among adult Internet users
On the video creation front, men and women are also now posting videos at a similar rate (used to be more popular among men) and video sharing is most popular on social networks:
As PR/marketing pros continually look to integrate video into contests, digital storytelling efforts and general communications campaigns, the primary challenge is to move people from a “spectator” status to “creator” status. Active participation on the creator front can ramp up the amount of authentic content to engage target audiences — a key asset when budgets are tight or geographic restrictions are in place.
Here are a few steps that can be taken to move your spectator group into action:
- To start, if video does not already play a significant role within your overall communications plans for clients, it’s time to go back and rethink those plans.
- Common Craft has demonstrated great success in the ”how-to” space but given the upswing in educational video popularity, don’t shy away from generating a creative “how-to” video. In other words, make the technical process as simple as possible for your audience to get involved.
- Yes, YouTube and Vimeo are primary video hubs, but don’t forget about pulling people in through social networks and niche communities.
- Keep your ask simple. Visa’s FIFA “Goooal!” campaign is a great example. Clear ask, easy to participate and affords a world of creativity.
As a general takeaway, it’s important to note that as technology advances, video creation will undoubtedly increase. More video creation will result in a general rise in familiarity with video as as a communication medium and eventually drive quality content. All-in-one devices and faster upload times will help prompt this process as we continue to push past the first wave of mainstream adoption.
What role do you see video playing in the next 5-10 years?
A piece by Teressa Iezzi and Ann-Christine Diaz worth reading in today’s AdAge covers how traits of digital communications are rubbing off on all disciplines of marketing. The anchor quote of the article really spoke to me:
The best companies have harnessed the digital mindset and taken the shareable, ongoing, interactive, participatory nature of digital and created brand experiences that matter to people where they ought to — in their real, everyday lives.
I feel this really is the cornerstone of how we at WE Studio D think about our jobs. People often ask me if the “D” in Studio D stands for “digital,” and I tell them that while we work primarily in digital communications, we’ve kept the D purposely vague: digital, design, development, data, demand creation, dialogue, etc.
I think this blurriness of the lines between the marketing disciplines is a good thing, allowing ideas and creativity to bleed out of a model built on distribution and toward a model built on participation. The article mentions Nike Plus and Fiat Eco Drive as “arguably the most compelling brand ideas of the last decade” and how, although they started online, they were successful because they manifested themselves in reality in ways that actually mattered in peo
ple’s real lives.
Pepsi’s new cross media campaign “Refresh” is a great example of this — not positioning itself as a digital campaign per se, but as a campaign that wants to be part of its customers’ lives and to create opportunities for customers to do something important to them. From the article:
Pepsi and TBWA/Chiat/Day’s Refresh Project funds ideas that would make the real world a better place. Rob Schwartz, chief creative officer, TBWA/Chiat/Day, L.A., said that with Refresh, the agency “didn’t set out to create a ‘digital idea.’ We set out to make our brand idea — Refresh — an action. … It’s a brand idea that lets you take action to do some good in your world, your neighborhood, your street.”
We need more of this — integrated comms grounded in driving action, creating opportunities to DO stuff.
I’m a sucker for time-lapse photography. In fact, the moment I come across the phrase “time-lapse” online, I’m already clicking through to check out the linked content.
Powerful, quality images are, of course, key assets to consider for any digital storytelling initiative. Stand-alone images serve their own purpose in drawing a user’s attention and prompting contemplation within the context of a site. Positioning a single image on a site’s home page and tying in a concise message or call-to-action can tap the pathos of a visitor as an entryway to perception shift.
On that same token, there are times when one image is not sufficient to help convey the full story and message you are trying to present. In such situations, time-lapse photography can serve as a powerful tool to help deliver your message.
Time-lapse photography is certainly not a new concept. Particularly in recent years, we’ve seen time-lapse used for a variety of purposes. It’s become a regular portion of news station weathercasts, serves as a tourism promotional tool and can act as a discussion catalyst to prompt change:
Recently, Walmart posted this time-lapse video showing activity in the store over the course of a 24-hour period. As simple as it appears, the video is a fantastic way to provide a strong visual representation of the high-level of activity within the store.
But, is this enough? Is there more that can be done to take help position a time-lapse spot as a key piece of content in your content-sharing arsenal?
Absolutely.
To help you get started, here are five key tips to keep in mind when tackling your own time-lapse project.
1. Strategize — Make sure you think through the primary message you’re planning to convey and map out your key visuals that are going to help drive that message. Get creative! Maybe consider using a time-lapse spot as a unique way to engage your employees for recruitment purposes or create a sizzle spot that recaps some great project work for a client.
2. Keep It Short — It’s called “time-lapse” for a reason. There’s no point in having a time-lapse video that someone has to watch beyond 1-2 minutes. The shorter, the better. You’ll need to capture an excessive amount of footage but keep in mind that jump-cuts can be played off very smoothly in editing together your final piece.
3. Make It Compelling— Though the Walmart video above is good, it doesn’t tell us anything about what we just watched. Walmart could have worked with the editing team to insert some key stats throughout the video. Adding a note at the end to show how many people passed through the store, tacking on interesting stats around which items were sold or possibly ending with a closing figure on sales would have beefed up the spot. Help your audience put context around your content.
4. Make It Shareable— Be sure to fish where the fish are, uploading your spot to Vimeo, YouTube and any other applicable audience-relevant video-sharing sites to make it easy for others to post across the Web.
5. Promote — Tweet it, post it, embed it, share it. Do everything possible to let people engage with this content piece. Is there opportunity to create a series of these videos to help tell a bigger message? Can you involve employees and tag them in the spot to help spur attention in your various publishing channels? Make sure you’re considering all options for promotion as opposed to posting and hoping others randomly discover your spot.
Have you tried your own time-lapse project for your company or a client? Feel free to share additional tips below!
Seth Godin’s post today speaks to some of the same issues at the heart of our recent Zombie Trilogy, though he approaches it from a somewhat different angle. Godin is worried that “the endless search for wow further coarsens our culture at the same time it encourages marketers to get ever more shallow.”
H
e’s particularly concerned that we’ve become focused on increases in traffic versus affecting change and emphasizes that if you want to make an impact, you should focus on your target audience and ignore the masses. Although that’s basically obvious to us, I think the following questions are ever-present in our work:
“What works to change mindsets, to spread important ideas and to create an audience for work that matters? What’s worth your effort and investment as a marketer or creator?”
Especially as marketers are asked to do more with less, how do you scale influence while maintaining meaning and impact for key individuals? Answering this question is easier said than done, but there are a few key points to remember:
- It’s not just about targeting the right people. A successful strategy needs to also target those points in the decision-making process where consumers most want to be influenced and utilize the particular communication strategy that best suits that consumer at that point in time. How do you identify these opportunities for each key audience? Through rigorous research to understand consumer trends as well as measurement of the effectiveness of efforts already in the marketplace.
- An integrated social media strategy isn’t just about integration across channels in the digital space. It needs to be a part of a truly holistic multichannel effort that impacts customers throughout the consumer decision journey. If your message in a consumer’s experience with your widget doesn’t live up to the information they discovered that prompted them to buy the widget, they aren’t going to become the active loyalist that you need them to be in order to make your social media integration worthwhile.
- It’s not just about what you say but how well you listen. You have to monitor your social media outlets and align this information with the results of research insights gained through other channels. This information then must be transformed into action in order to capitalize on and maintain the relationship.
This work is hard, but it can also be fun, and when done right, the reward can be huge: Yearly revenue growth can be 100 basis points higher for companies that execute a multichannel strategy well versus those that do not.
Image by davidking
