Let me start out by making a bold statement: Online PR is the most underused marketing tactic in the world of marketing. Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with many marketers, from tech startups to Fortune 500 companies. And with almost all of them, Online PR was a marketing tactic that made perfect sense, was financially feasible and an area that had yet to be explored. Marketers try all sorts of different tactics, many of which require significant media investments, so finding an affordable marketing strategy with enormous upside is no easy task. And an Online PR program is just that.
Two reasons why Online PR is so important
Consumers research purchase decisions online
Duh. I am not sure if I can think of a category where consumers don’t go online to research before making a purchase decision, other than if you’re selling Cheerios or maybe oil. So I think it’s fair to assume that the majority of your consumers will be researching you online to decide whether it’s a good idea to a) buy your product or b) do business with you. That means people will google you and then at least partially make decisions based on what they’ll learn by digging into your front page results. Do that for your company and products, and see what shows up. If you could use some more positive mentions, then you need to think about doing Online PR. Having managed dozens of different websites; I can also tell you that having positive results on the first page of Google will more likely than not increase conversion rates on your website - in a very significant way.
Decision makers communicate online
Even the weather guy is twittering these days. If you want to read breaking news about technology, TechCrunch is where people look. Brilliant journalists like Jeff Jarvis have blogs. So does Malcom Gladwell. People can now stop arguing that thought leaders sit behind walls somewhere locked up in the New York Times headquarters. They don’t. But even more important, new thought leaders are establishing themselves every day in ever deeper-reaching niches. There are dog bloggers, cat tweeters and Gary Vaynerchuk talking about wine. Thought leaders are online and it’s easier than ever to build relationships with them - not by pitching them but rather by contributing to the conversations they’re igniting and leading.
Here are some tips on how you can build an online PR program. Some of these might be considered social media ideas, which is fine, because those lines are blurring all the time. And best of all other than maybe giving away some products, none of them cost a penny in media.
How to build an online PR program
1. Give your product away for free to bloggers for review
People like free stuff. So do bloggers, but only when it’s relevant to what they’re writing about. Reach out to a blogger (hopefully a blog that you’ve been reading for a while) and tell them about your product and why you’d think their audience might be interested in it. It’s ok to pitch people your product, just be sure that the blogger you’re pitching is interested in your category. My blog is about marketing, and you're not going to get me to write about hot air balloon rides, no matter ho much you bribe me.
Check out these bits on how to not pitch a blogger, written by Lee Odden at the excellent Top Rank Blog.
• It should go without saying not to pitch irrelevant stories, but all those PR interns out there hacking away make it so. Please don’t.
• Don’t send a copy and paste email with salutations like, “Dear Nameoftheblog” or some other equivalent to “Hey you” or “Hey Guy”. If you can’t bother to find out the name of the blogger, then your message isn’t really that important.
• Don’t send blanket solicitations to bloggers in the same general industry. For example, we get pitches from PR firms about major brands running new viral or social media campaigns. That’s great, but what does it have to do with search marketing? We don’t review advertising campaigns here and never have. That’s what AdRants is for.
• Don’t embargo an announcement for more than a few days. Bloggers are on the move, writing about what comes to mind on a daily basis. Expecting a blogger to keep under wraps news for several weeks is ridiculous. There is no editorial calendar or story board in place with 99% of blogs. Give them something they can act on now.
• Don’t demand to be covered as if you’re gods gift to the blogosphere. An “assumptive close” might work with phone pitching to print story editors, but not with bloggers.
• Don’t insult the blogger, even as a joke, especially if you don’t know them. Would you condescendingly ask a stranger for a favor and honestly expect them to do it? Offend a blogger this way and they’ll likely post your sorry ass pitch online for all to see.
• Don’t lie or make promises you can’t keep. It’s sad but true. Just like tip #1.
• Don’t send story ideas that are about as exciting as mall music. This is true with regular media relations, so why do it with bloggers?
• Make sure you have a “do not pitch to” list. For example, a list of competitors that run blogs in your client’s industry. In our case, I can understand because Online Marketing Blog has become pretty popular, but it’s highly unlikely we’re going to run a story about another SEO firm’s recent client win or office expansion.
• Don’t send a regular pitch with a press release to a blogger. Bloggers don’t typically scan press releases and write stories. They point to press releases hosted elsewhere, or better yet, point to stories other people have written based on a press release.
• Don’t use traditional media relations tactics with bloggers, but rather, make an effort to connect with them individually. Make relevant comments and offer something of value. Ask them what they want and provide personalized pitches and story ideas that clearly indicate you’ve made an effort to understand what they write about.
• If you’re going to pre-write the blog post for the blogger, keep in mind their writing style. Don’t overdo it. It’s a risk to take the effort to pre-write a post, but the easier you make it for the blogger, the more likely they may copy and paste what you’ve written and add a few comments. Just provide a nice concise summary of your news with the foresight that the blogger may just copy what you give them. Sandwich that summary with a personalized message and you may just get somewhere.
• Don’t play bloggers like a numbers game. True, most PR firms count “hits”, so the more blogs that cover the story the more successful the campaign is labeled. However, as there are tier one, two, three etc print publications, the same goes with influence in the blogosphere. I’ll take one story on Boing Boing over 50 unknown blogger mentions any day.
• Don’t be rude and not thank the blogger for covering your news. If don’t, chances are they’ll just ignore future pitches. If you do send a thank you, there’s a very good chance they’ll be open to future stories. Don’t over do it though. Keep it small, relevant and personal.
2. Participate in conversations, not just about your products, but your category
Leave smart comments on blog, initiate conversations on LinkedIn and respond to questions on forums and answer sites. Please don’t think of metrics such as ROI per comment, as participating in online conversations should be considered mandatory just like customer service. Also, enjoy this part of your online PR program. Because if you don’t like talking about your products or category, then you’ve got the wrong job.
3. Empower your employees to communicate
More and more companies are recognizing the value of online conversations. So more people are participating which will translate into more content being supplied. Yet consumer attention likely won’t increase, which means the fight of attention will only become more aggressive across all sorts of online niches. That means not only will you need quality content, but you’ll also need more of it. Why not empower your employees to help you participate in online conversations and help you generate world class content. Besides, I bet your head of engineering is going to find much more of an audience than your senior director of communications. I want to learn from your smartest people, not your PR department. You’ve got experts, bring them to the forefront and let them build audiences.
4. Stop breaking news with press releases
Press releases are lame. And they’re inherently limited. They’re also impersonal and absolutely non-viral, which I think is why they’re one of the worst communication tools out there. Why not break some news o your Twitter feed and then guide people to a rich microsite where they can learn more about whatever story you’re releasing.
5. Get agile, real agile
News pretty much break in real time these days. Nobody is waiting for the newspaper to be printed anymore. Actually many times blog entries are old news, because people have tweeted about whatever it is they’ve discovered. So, if you want to be in the business of online PR, or any kind of PR for that matter, you need to be agile and get used to working in real-time. So cut down on your approval process, start building a Twitter audience (which will allow you to respond to efficiently respond to whatever news might be spreading) and start following every conversation and every channel that might be relevant to your business. Yes, you’re a communication professional but more than anything you need to become a listener. Use Google Alerts, Twitter search, and other social media monitoring tools to help you stay on top of what people are saying. Throw away your 2002 crisis communication plans and begin by empowering smart, agile communicators to make decisions when needed.
6. Measure everything
I work in performance marketing. Everything gets measured. And Online PR shall be no different. But here’s the thing. You need to attempt measure dozens of different metrics as the game is constantly changing, and new benefits and disadvantages are popping up every day. So rather than make decisions based on one or two metrics, here is a long list of measurable goodness.
- News wire metrics
- Web analytics (visits from referral sites)
- Google and Yahoo alerts
- Monitor blog search engines (easily subscribe via RSS)
- Press release landing page conversion tracking
- Twitter mentions (you can use search.twitter.com)
- Inbound links
- Mentions on blogs
- Mentions on other web sites & online publications
- Search engine rankings (I use SEOMoz tools for all my tracking)
- Conversions: Sales, white paper downloads, webinar signups, newsletter subscriptions, etc.
Stop giving away my secrets!
Ryan, sucks, huh? First your swiss bank account gets made public and now this.