Global PR Blog Week 1.0

Step-by-step promotion

If you already blog, you use a tool that can promote clients. Elements of your writing become part of a larger mass of information that is trawled and combed by Internet search engines. Linkages between your message and other related themes bubble up. Those linkages become part of directories of information. Before venturing into public space with any sort of a message, it would be wise to know how to make the best use of your effort. This knowledge enhances return on the time and money invested in forming, promoting and tracking messages.

As a PR lecturer, I teach some checklists that help measure return on investment (ROI) for clients. We mount campaigns during the academic term that invoke specific rules of thumb. If we pretend the "Global PR Blog Week" is a client, we can tick off the checklist items step-by-step as our promotion campaign evolves.

The three phases of the campaign:

1. Preparation
2. Implemetation
3. Evaluation

1. Preparation.

• Form a message. In the Global PR Blog Week event, the message percolated in a Yahoo Group mail system. People commented on what they wanted to cover, content evolved, topics gelled, and a programme gestated. The ring leaders were helped by an gold-plated ingredient: new content by PR bloggers.
• Distill memes. These two-to-five word phrases--sought by search engines--might be hot topics extracted from the press or they may be exact links from other sites. Select the correct memes and you spawn your own talking points. From a client's point of view, a well-defined set of memes helps put campaign goals in the crosshairs.
• Storyboard the release. Don Crowther brilliantly explained the basis of this tactic. My quicklist follows:
  • Write snappy titles to all text items.
  • Construct links from specific text fragments.
  • Slice up your content according to individual themes.
  • Use web design skills to craft a presentation template pleasing to both a human reader and a search engine crawler.

2. Implementation You should polish most of the implementation tasks well before the campaign starts. Many campaigns start the minute an embargo expires. Here are the steps.

• Release the information text. When released through bloggers, your campaign information should document linkages from other entries directly into related pages on your client's web site. In the case of Global PR Week, a half dozen other bloggers link directly to topics being discussed on the program.
• Make comments on other people's blogs, linking into your page that discusses that same topic, again, using your targeted keywords as the text in the link (sometimes called the "link text.")
• Ping related URLs. In blogging programs such as Movable Type and TypePad, you can "ping" other blogs via Trackback or you can send your ping through http://rpc.pingomatic.com and automatically alert electronic crawlers from all major search engines.
• Release images. We often offer photo albums on blogs that promote products, people and services in a PR campaign. Photo editors need that kind of collateral. Provided quality captions accompany the photos, we're able to promote a client's message through a photo blog. Students helped the 2003 Kilkenny Arts Festival.
• Check your blog items through several different browsers on several different connection points. I have seen items copied and pasted into blogs from Word or from e-mail and the information displays unwanted characters and annoying line breaks.
• Monitor live flows. Geobytes offers a way to see who is on now.

3. Evaluation. This stage documents measureable results. You must monitor the program’s implementation. You must assess its impact and efficiency of various nodes of information.

• Daily evaluation.
  • Look at links, power links and inches of coverage. The Global PR Blog Week includes a live tracking of traffic with Sitemeter.
  • Technorati searches the "world live web." Type in a url (try it for Global PR Blog Week), keyword or phrase above and search the World Live Web. Checking on the client's URL (www.globalprblogweek.com) gives us 241 links to the site.
  • Check on Feedster and find 350 posts pertaining to the client.

• Offer weekly management indicators. Many clients prefer to have simple bits of information that prove their PR campaign is working.
  • Egosurf on Google. First, I egosurf (look up the key memes or campaign phrases) on Google. For example, when I egosurfed for “Global PR blog week” in the middle of the campaign, you get 5,600 pages returned. One month before the first online session, Google showed just over 1,800 pages. This is remarkable reach for a campaign.
  • Get a snapshot from Vivisimo, a service that shows a thematic view of where the campaign is placing the client. In the case of “Global PR Blog Week,” Visimo presents a snappy result that suggests the Global PR blog week campaign has a Public relations slant, uses a Wiki, features some Irish parts, and appeals to the fuel industry.
• Analyze referrers on a monthly basis. Sitemeter data shows general numbers and specific referrer strings. These two separate data sets tell us that the campaign is building momentum since the numbers of readers on a daily basis are increasing. More importantly, the referrer strings show the campaign is attracting a significant amount of viewers through e-mail boxes. This suggest a word-of-mouth campaign has started on the back of general news releases.
• On a quarterly basis, review the lessons learned. Each stage in program evaluation contributes to increased understanding and adds information for assessing effectiveness.

Author: Bernard Goldbach | Jul 14, 04 | Permalink | 0 comments
Category: @ Bernard Goldbach | Topic 3 Making PR Work

 

 

About

The Global PR Blog Week 1.0 is an online event that will engage PR, marketing and business bloggers from around the globe in a discussion about blogging and communications. The event is scheduled for July 12 - 16, 2004.

Links

The New PR Wiki

Recent Entries

Looking forward to 2.0

Site Statistics and Trends

A participant’s final thoughts

Traditional PR is dead - Long Live DIY PR

Quiet is the new loud

Recent Comments

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