For anyone doing interactive PR , PitchEngine has become a vital tool for creating, distributing and promoting social media releases. It's simple, fast, powerful and gets results. Here are three more specific reasons to love it: Features —it's all there, the ability to easily add social networking links; links to other resources such as white papers, product sheets and webinars; branding elements; keywords; images; and online video. Exposure —even for clients in very niche b2b markets (e.g. high-volume automated web publishing ), these social media releases often get 100+ views in just the first few hours. Search —based on experience, it can take weeks for Google to pick up a press release posted on a client website. PitchEngine releases are typically picked up with half an hour of posting. PitchEngine is the most no-brainer, must-have PR investment my clients make. (And no, Jason Kintzler didn't pay me to write that! But I will let him quote me.) ***** technorati tags: i...

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Interactive PR on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: PR 2.0 SEO social media interactive PR? THINKing Harry Hoover HARO PitchEngine Online Marketing Blog Lee Odden Jason Kintzler Steve Rubel Lori Luechtefeld Orange Soda blog Search Engine Journal Loren Baker Content Marketing Today Newt Barrett David Meerman Scott The New Rules of Marketing and PR del.icio.us tags: PR 2.0 SEO social media interactive PR? THINKing Harry Hoover HARO PitchEngine Online Marketing Blog Lee Odden Jason Kintzler Steve Rubel Lori Luechtefeld Orange Soda blog Search Engine Journal Loren Baker Content Marketing Today Newt Barrett David Meerman Scott The New Rules of Marketing and PR icerocket tags: PR 2.0 SEO social media interactive PR? THINKing Harry Hoover HARO PitchEngine Online Marketing Blog Lee Odden Jason Kintzler Steve Rubel Lori Luechtefeld Orange Soda blog Search Engine Journal Loren Baker ...

The emergence of social media has dramatically changed the role of public relations. While traditional journalists still have significant authority, influence is now more diffused among writers, analysts, bloggers, customers, and other internal and external subject matter experts. As the landscape has shifted from being dominated by one-to-many mass media to many-to-many participatory social media, the skillsets required of PR professionals have changed. Technical ability —not all that long ago, PR pros' primary tools were email and the phone. Now they need to know how to properly use (from both a technical and etiquette standpoint) all the major tools on the social media landscape , how to produce thought-leadership content, how to put together social media releases , at least a passing knowledge of online video production and sharing, and more. Conversational style —PR people used to interact primarily with industry journalists. "Pitching" and "spinning" w...

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Interactive PR on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: PR 2.0, Cece Salomon-Lee, Twitter, LinkedIn, Search Engine People, Jennifer Osborne, optimizing press releases, StraightUpSearch, Laura Moncur, SEO tricks for press releases, Speak Media Blog, Jennifer A. Jones, social media newsroom, How Best to Avoid Dying, Search Engine Watch, Mark Jackson, Brian Solis, FutureWorks, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg del.icio.us tags: PR 2.0, Cece Salomon-Lee, Twitter, LinkedIn, Search Engine People, Jennifer Osborne, optimizing press releases, StraightUpSearch, Laura Moncur, SEO tricks for press releases, Speak Media Blog, Jennifer A. Jones, social media newsroom, How Best to Avoid Dying, Search Engine Watch, Mark Jackson, Brian Solis, FutureWorks, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg icerocket tags: PR 2.0, Cece Salomon-Lee, Twitter, LinkedIn, Search En...

This content has been moved to Don’t They Know Who You Are? Why Reputation Management is Crucial on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Lee Odden, digital reputation management, Jon Rognerud, Guy Kawasaki, LookupPage, Google Knol, TechCrunch, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Twitter, Wikio, Mixx, Digg, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, Tim Young, Socialcast, LinkedIn, Facebook, Naymz, Jigsaw, Plaxo, ZoomInfo, CrunchBase, VisualCV, Scott Monty, Christopher Barger del.icio.us tags: Lee Odden, digital reputation management, Jon Rognerud, Guy Kawasaki, LookupPage, Google Knol, TechCrunch, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Twitter, Wikio, Mixx, Digg, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, Tim Young, Socialcast, LinkedIn, Facebook, Naymz, Jigsaw, Plaxo, ZoomInfo, CrunchBase, VisualCV, Scott Monty, Christopher Barger icerocket tags: Lee Odden, digital reputation management, Jon Rognerud, Guy Kawasaki, LookupPage, Google Knol, TechCru...

Despite the fact that several smart PR bloggers, including Cece Lee , Laura Moncur and Elge Premeau have written about what works in blogger outreach for PR, there are still a lot of agencies and PR people who just don't get it. Their efforts at appealing to bloggers are awkward at best, counterproductive at worst. Want bloggers to write nice things about your product, service or company? First, it helps to understand how to get bloggers to write about you. Second, here are 6 practices to avoid. 1. Just send a press release. This is likely to do your company or your client more harm than good. There is an extremely low chance that a blogger will write about you based on getting press release, but a pretty darn good chance that he/she will view you as a spammer and ignore any subsequent emails you send. Imagine it's a phone call instead of an email. And imagine you're on the phone with a really influential blogger, like... Seth Godin . Seth answers the phone, you...

In the old days, email signatures pretty much just mirrored business card information: name, company, title, phone, fax (gotta love that 80's technology still hanging on!) and email address. For most people, that's still the only information their email signature provides. A growing number of Web 2.0-savvy executives, however, are breaking out of the old mold and creatively integrating social networking into their email sign-off. After all, the two purposes of an email signature are to tell the recipient a little about yourself (e.g., your title, company and location) and to give them different ways to contact you. Social networking sites are simply an extension of those two functions, giving other people more information about yourself and additional ways to interact. Based on my informal research, here are the most popular social media elements people are adding to their Web 2.0 email signatures: Twitter page, LinkedIn profile and blog link: these are the most popula...

I've been participating in an alpha test of a new social press release creation tool called PitchEngine (public beta coming soon). In the words of PitchEngine creator Jason Kintzler , "PitchEngine shakes up the PR industry making it possible for PR pros, brands, and agencies to build and share digital, social media releases with their contacts for free. Our PitchEngine SMR (social media release) takes the press release to the next level, eliminating the need for antiquated email attachments, word documents, image CDs, and more." Although the tool has a few minor glitches at this point (the number of characters permitted for subheads and the "quick pitch" is way too small, the feature for adding Resources and Related Links is touchy, and hyperlinks have to be recreated after cut-and-paste from Word), overall it's very slick and easy to use. I created a social media release for version 10 of the Quick View Plus desktop file viewing utility (a VERY useful...

This content has been moved to How to Pitch Bloggers on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: blog coverage, ITtoolbox, ON24 In The News, illuminate Solutions, corporate blog, Digg, Sphinn, Searchles del.icio.us tags: blog coverage, ITtoolbox, ON24 In The News, illuminate Solutions, corporate blog, Digg, Sphinn, Searchles icerocket tags: blog coverage, ITtoolbox, ON24 In The News, illuminate Solutions, corporate blog, Digg, Sphinn, Searchles Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

This content has been moved to Good, Bad and Ugly Blog Pitches on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: How To Pitch To Bloggers, Laura Moncur, Cece Lee, Lauren Barrows, Dean Levitt, Mad Mimi, Flimp Media Inc., rich media marketing platform, AngelVision, VHD Technology, Ajaxian, 37signals, Backpack del.icio.us tags: How To Pitch To Bloggers, Laura Moncur, Cece Lee, Lauren Barrows, Dean Levitt, Mad Mimi, Flimp Media Inc., rich media marketing platform, AngelVision, VHD Technology, Ajaxian, 37signals, Backpack icerocket tags: How To Pitch To Bloggers, Laura Moncur, Cece Lee, Lauren Barrows, Dean Levitt, Mad Mimi, Flimp Media Inc., rich media marketing platform, AngelVision, VHD Technology, Ajaxian, 37signals, Backpack Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

I'll be starting off my presentation at the Blogging for Business Conference tomorrow with this statement: The practice of PR has changed more in the last five years than it did in the previous fifty. What do you think? Is that: Completely off base; A pointless statement of the blatantly obvious; or An intriguing contention that makes you want to hear more? It's not just a matter of new technology. Technological change has been ongoing, from manual typewriters to electric ones to PCs, fax machines and email. From wire services that really were wire services to light years faster and more capable online platforms. Web 2.0 and the explosion of social media over the past few years are more than just new technological tools for PR professionals to adopt—they change the philosophy of PR. Prospects and stakeholders no longer want to be an audience for corporate news, they want to be participants. And through various forms of social media—blogs, video, wikis, forums, podcasts, social...

Being social media savvy, you add blogger outreach to your PR plans for a new product launch. You carefully research blogs using related keywords and competitor names to build a solid outreach list. You carefully craft your message, following best practices for blogger PR outreach : personalize each message, make it clear that you've read the blog and understand its subject matter, and explain the relevance of your message. You send your messages, and then...nothing. Or very little response. What now? Just as with advertising, PR relies on frequency. There are many possible reasons for low uptake by bloggers; follow-up is essential to determining what may have gone wrong, and how results can be improved. Blogger PR follow-up follows the same rules as initial outreach: make it personal, informal and relevant. In addition, follow-up should: Provide new or updated information, not just a rehash of the original message. For example, with a new product launch, an update could i...

Wikipedia defines interactive PR as "the practice of using Internet tools and technologies such as search engines, Web 2.0 social bookmarking, new media relations and blogging...to build awareness of and credibility for (a) message without relying solely on mainstream publications." More directly, the techniques of interactive PR transform press releases from bland, internally-focused documents clogging up the inboxes of editors and staff writers into keyword-rich, user-oriented prose that is found by search engines, picked up by bloggers, tagged by readers, and creates a dialog with the market though comments on social media sites. David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing & PR provides an excellent primer on the subject. Expanding beyond the scope of his book, here are some of the best articles and blog posts of 2007 on maximizing the impact of public relations activities through interactive PR. Proof You Can Gain Additional Rankings And Build Relevant Lin...