Archive for the ‘Social Media & Online PR’ Category
So you might have heard it from a friend, you might have seen posts on Linkedin and on marketing blogs, but what is Pinterest? And how can you get your hands on it?
Let’s start with telling you what it’s all about. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the things that you find on the web. You can use your pinboards to organize your life – from hobbies to clothes you can save all your favourite things in one spot. Best of all, is the discovery side of the website in which you can view pinboards created by others, allowing you to draw inspiration from people who share your interests.
Right then, let’s show you how it all works!
First of all when you visit the site, you’ll be greeted by an invitation only screen:
You might know a friend who already has an account; therefore you can get them to send you an invite. If not, simply apply and you should be able to start using the site within less than a week.
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Google have announced their new privacy policy, which comes into effect on the 1st of March. The new policy is intended to centralise and make simpler its old Ts&Cs. The move has been met with the same despair, praise and controversy that every Google announcement seems to warrant, and marks the end of over 60 current privacy policies into a new, simpler, integrated policy.
The main change seems to be that user data will be shared across Google platforms and products. Processing over one billion search requests every day, Google collect a lot of data about its users and now data from search, YouTube, Gmail, Docs and other services will integrated, making it all the more insightful and helpful both to Google and its users, through personalisation.
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Public Relations is about managing the flow of information between an organisation and the public. How does PR relate to SEO? Online PR has its own set of objectives, but has a lot in common with SEO. PR professionals looks to get a company or product mentioned in well-read and authoritative press, whether that’s a print publication or a news website, to help spread company messages and awareness of a brand. An authoritative website picking up a company story can be a great win for PR, increasing exposure of a brand or message, but it can also fulfil SEO objectives; gaining links from trusted and authoritative news sites can help a website rise up the search rankings.
The problem with online PR in the past is that it has tended to ignore SEO. This means that these company or product mentions are rarely accompanied by the keyword-rich hyperlinks which can help a website gain better visibility in search rankings.
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When Facebook was launched I decided not to join up. It just seemed like another website to waste my time entering data into, uploading pictures and then never use. But suddenly I found that I was missing out on events, news and parties because everything was happening through Facebook and I wasn’t part of it. So I joined up, got sucked in for a while, checked it 20 times a day, changed my status, uploaded pictures etc. After a while the novelty wore off a little and now I just dip in from time to time, but it’s still a great way to stay in touch and connect with people without actually having to ‘get in touch’ with them.
Then there was Google Buzz and just as I decided to start using it, it seemed to vanish. People found Google Buzz difficult to get into because you couldn’t categorise the people you were following. It also had a big security flaw when it was launched that opened up Google Profiles to outside people so that they could look at who your contacts were and who you were chatting with most, so many people were sceptical about getting involved and it got off to a slow start. Also, with most people already using Facebook and Twitter, a lot of people thought ‘what’s the point?’ Google Buzz was around for a little over a year before Google announced that they were going to shut it down. I’m glad I didn’t waste my time.
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Katie Swan from Speed PR was in the SiteVisibility Offices last week to learn and share knowledge. She wrote this blog post about her experience here with us.
Online content is being generated at a staggering rate, so just how do you make your company stand out from the crowd? I’ve spent the week at SiteVisibility, to find out more about SEO as part of a skills exchange programme between SiteVisibility and Speed Communications.
As a PR, I’m all too aware of the increasing shift to online media content; an increasing number of people are turning to online news sites, blogs and social networks for their daily news fix rather than relying on the paper. This content remains online long after it has been written – what do you want people to find for your company when they search online?
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Often in the world of search your ideas and scope are limited by the available resources and budgets. The knack of a good SEO is working within those parameters, but what would you do if there weren’t those limits?
So I fired up my Rolodex and asked some of the great and good of UK SEO and asked…
You’ve been approached by a start up backed by some of the biggest VCs in the world. They’ve got one mission to beat Amazon at it’s own game. They’ve hired you in-house and given you a million pound budget to spend.
Where and what would you spend the money on? Read on
There’s a really interesting trend I’ve seen in some excellent posts like PR has a big role in joined up marketing, but can it step up? by Danny Whatmough, talking about Earned and Owned Media in relation to PR and Social media. Earned and Owned Media are part of a trinity with Paid Media.
Lots of people have been talking about this in the world of PR and Social media, but not in search, which is a shame as I would have thought the industry should be thinking about these ideas.
I’m a big believer that there’s a fine line between Link Building and SEO and I’d go as far as saying as ‘online earned media’ is probably a better description of what most link builders get up to rather than building links. Read on
I’ve been getting more and more involved with social media lately, especially with Twitter, which in turn has led me to conduct a lot of research into free tools to help with my work. After some lengthy sessions of going through blog posts about Twitter tools lists and then using them, I initially realised that there are so many out there. However, despite the fact that there are many tools and blog posts about them, there are very few people who have looked into making a definitive list of completely useful tools (I stress the importance of useful). Therefore, for your reading and Twitter pleasure I have whittled them all down to my top 5 list of free Twitter tools for 2011.
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Originally produced and presented by Graeme Benstead-Hume and SiteVisibility for the Brighton Digital Marketing Festival event September 2011. Measuring social media with Google Analytics covers a number of ways to segment your Google Analytics data to better measure the success of your social media campaigns.
Handouts for this presentation are available below or as a download here: Measuring Social Media with Google Analytics Handout.
Creating Campaign Tracking Code
Visit http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578 or alternatively search for ‘URL builder’ in Google.
Website URL – Enter the URL you will be linking to from your social media activity.
Campaign Source – Enter the name of the social channel / site you are linking from, e.g. twitter.com
Campaign Medium – Will group your campaign sources together in your reports so enter Social or Social Media.
Campaign Name – Choose a more specific identifier for your campaign, e.g. twitter outreach.
Click on Generate URL and copy and paste the resulting text instead of your usual URL.
You can find your campaign report in Google Analytics under ‘Traffic Sources’ and ‘Campaigns’
This even works when the URL with tracking code is minified.
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In this episode of the Podcast, Kelvin and Andy are discussing Google’s newest release, Google+. We’ve written about it on our blog, and there’s been a lot of buzz around it so the discussion this week is around how it will affect businesses, how the scarcity of invitations makes it a much more engaging product, and the strategy behind this new venture.
Wired Magazine: Inside Google+
