Blogging as a PR Tool

Blogging as a PR Tool

Using a blog for PR can be very effective, if you know how to do it properly. However, there’s more to blogging then just typing out a random post once a week. The content needs to be relevant, interesting and engaging. It also needs to be useful and grab the attention of the audience. In order to do this, you need to know who you’re writing for. You should personalize the content for them and make them want to share it with their like-minded networks. Here are some more suggestions to help you blog better.

1. Make your posts news worthy
Traditionally, PR people would have to hound news people to get their press release into the mainstream media. The digital age has flipped this around. If you write strategically, you can bring the press straight to your client via your blog. According to Mashable.com, news media don’t only rely on traditional wires anymore. They’re constantly on the look out for new stories on the Internet and, if you play your cards right, a blog post can be considered news worthy. If written carefully, it can morph into a press release. A pre-published draft post, when shared with reporters under embargo, can even be considered a legitimate news source (Mashable.com). Interesting and well-written content, combined with short, punchy headlines (which can be easily shared via Twitter and the like) could effectively turn your blog into a news-wire.

2. Make your posts share worthy
Every digital PR dream is to go viral or, at the very least, get significant retweets. In order to achieve this, Mashable.com suggests that blog content should be less about the client’s product or business and more about the culture that surrounds it. In other words, it needs to be about what the client’s target audience is interested in. To get this right, you need a clear picture of exactly who will read the blog and what kinds of topics they will want to read.

Also Read - Floating Share Buttons For Blogs

You can get creative; post how-to advice, have experts in a related field guest post their wisdom or post links to interesting articles. If the target readers like what you’ve written, they’ll want to share it with their social networks. Mashable.com recommends that you have the appropriate sharing plug-ins on your blog pages. A Twitter and Facebook button is standard and if your content is aimed at a professional network, then a LinkedIn button is needed. If you want to go viral, Reddit or Digg could do the trick. However, you need to keep it simple; don’t have more than three share buttons.


3. Make your posts visual
Well-written content is gold, but an interesting video post can make your blog come alive. It can make it more personal and real, as video is often seen as more authoritative than text. These days, it’s easy to capture video: you can use a smartphone or a digital camera. You can also easily upload videos to YouTube via apps. Mashable.com suggests that your videos be between 30 and 60 seconds, so you need to keep to the point. You can encourage your client to be filmed while at events, or just around the office.

If you follow these suggestions, your blog can be a great PR tool. You can get a message across just as well (if not better) through video, so remember to incorporate some visual elements into your blog from time to time. Well-written and targeted content will bring the right people to you, and if you regularly write relevant and interesting posts, they will keep coming to your blog – and they’ll spread the word by sharing it.

Author: This post was written by Ang Lloyd, a freelance writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. Ang relishes the challenge of writing on a variety of topics, including the value of PR blogs.

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Ways To Market Your Company on Facebook

The importance of marketing cannot be emphasized strongly enough. As a result, many businesses have their own marketing department, which will take care of advertising, market research and other promotional activities. If a company and its products or services are not properly marketed, then the chances of people getting to know about them are limited. As a result, sales will also be limited, and hence a business may vary likely risk to close down eventually.

The Importance of Online Marketing
There are countless marketing methods used by businesses. Lately, the internet has dominated these marketing endeavors, as many more people can be targeted online nowadays. As a result, there are several internet marketing techniques that one can make use of. Social networking sites are some of the most effective and popular possibilities. This is mainly due to the fact that many people nowadays make use of such sites on a daily basis. Facebook and Twitter are the most popular ones. Many businesses set up their own page so as to attract loyal customers and prospective, new customers, to join them. Let us discuss some ways to market your Facebook company page.

Also Read - Tips For Social Media Marketing

Facebook Company Pages
Thanks to a Facebook page a business can practically have a secondary website. The best thing about it is that updates, such as news, feeds and posts, will be automatically uploaded to the friends' walls, if they have joined the page. Hence, the effort is not to remind people of the company, but rather to have people get to know about the page, and entice them to join it.

Advertising on Facebook
In order to do so, there are quite a few methods that can be put into practice. The easiest one is to advertise on Facebook itself. This can be done by paying for an advert that will be shown on one side of the screen along with a few other adverts. It is very important that such an advert is made to be as appealing and as eye-catching as possible. The more it stands out, the more people will be made to click on it. Upon clicking, they will be led to the company's Facebook page, which should also be made equally appealing, so as to encourage them to join. Links should also be placed on the company's website, and on any related forums or blogs.

One of the drawbacks of Facebook adverts is that they are small, and so the content has to be very limited. Therefore one should choose an innovative visual aid, and a few interesting words, so as to make an impact. Having said that, Facebook provides the possibility to target a niche market with the adverts. Thus, you will be able to specify the types of clients that will be more attracted to the firm and its products or services. This could be a geographic, gender, age or other preference.

Mention Your Facebook Presence in Other Advertising
Besides making use of these adverts, it is also crucial to make sure that you include the Facebook sign in any merchandise you have and in any adverts you make on other media. So, if you are printing a brochure, a leaflet, or an advert on a newspaper or magazine, make sure that you mention that you are present on Facebook. Encourage viewers or readers to look up your page and join you.

This practice should be given importance in various activities. You should also try to include this fact on the product's packaging or label if possible. If you have any merchandise, you should also try to include it.

Competitons and Promotional Ideas
Another effective way is by introducing promotional ideas that will attract more visitors. Common methods include competitions where those who join will get in the chance of winning something, or else distributing vouchers or attractive discounts to all your followers. These methods are gaining a lot of popularity since many people tend to join a page so as to receive something in return.

Interaction is Key
It is also a good idea to encourage those who join to share your links, photos, videos and other uploads with their friends. The "like" and "share" possibilities on Facebook should be made use of as they can be a very effective way of increasing your views, and as a result getting more people to join your page. It is also important to link your page with other companies' pages which are in some way related to your line of business. In such a way, their friends, may eventually also become your friends.

By making use of these ways to market your Facebook page you will manage to increase your followers quite easily. The key is to be innovative and to make use of effective methods and propaganda techniques that can attract people's attention.

Good luck to all with their Facebook marketing efforts!

About the Author :OnlineClock.net are the creators of the world's most popular web-based alarm clock. True to the words in this article, they invest a lot of time in marketing the Online Clock Facebook page. Take a look at their Facebook page to see a live example of Facebook page marketing in action.

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Tips for Effective Social Media Marketing

These days, in order to be a real success in business, you need to concentrate not only on a great SEO optimized website but also on your social media strategy. Your marketing is what will make your business a success, and by following the top tips for effective social media marketing, you will quickly see the returns on your business.

If you are unfamiliar with the Internet and how it is used as the most powerful selling tool around, then you will need to take the advice of the experts who were born into the computer age. Surely you will have heard of Facebook, and with over seven hundred and fifty million active users, there are few people who haven't. Successful media marketing however is not just about opening a Facebook account or following someone on Twitter; it is about putting you in the limelight and selling yourself on a global scale.

1. Familiarize yourself with social media sites Facebook may be the most talked about social media site, closely followed by Twitter, but they are far from being the only sites around. As well as these giants, you can use MySpace, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and even YouTube to market yourself and your firm or product. With over a billion regular users of social networking sites, you need to realize just how important it is to familiarize yourself with the different options and utilize them to promote yourself successfully.

2. Plan your marketing strategy Just as with traditional methods of marketing such as banners or paper publications, you need to plan your social media marketing strategy, taking time to ensure that you utilize the sites to their full. Many people have become over excited about the wealth of new opportunities around, this resulting in them diving in head first with no plan. For effective marketing, you need to plan and learn ahead so that you will be able to cope with the time you need to devote to your sites as well as the way in which you will manage them.

3. Success comes from preparation as there is a wealth of different social networking sites to choose from; you need to decide which one to use. There is no point opening accounts with all sites as you will not have time to use them all to their full potential. Research your options, look at the user age ranges as well as the nature of the sites and compare them with your product or service. Then confidently open appropriate accounts, sharing relevant information with people who will actually be interested in your content.

4. Promote yourself honestly and in the best light possible Social media marketing is about selling yourself globally, so always sell yourself in the correct light and be totally honest about what you write; one negative tweet could bring your business crashing down. If you intend to sell yourself with video such as on YouTube, make sure you look your best and you prepare your shoot as professionally as possible. By following these effective social media marketing tips, you will see your business grow and flourish in a way that only a decade ago was not possible. Social media marketing is the future, so follow these tips today and you won't get left behind.

Also Read - SMS Vs Email Marketing

Author: Ludwing Hernandez, Social media Writter and guest blogger enthusiast. Follow him @ Mezee

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Seven Steps to a Successful Summer for Business

Amidst calls for growth, the current economic crisis, and government’s seeming inability to rectify the situation, the onus for business success and growth is on business owners. Success in business depends upon a good business strategy, hiring the right people and keeping them, and making the best use of current technology. If you want to see greater success from your business this summer then you may want to consider implementing at least some of the seven steps listed below.

Step 1: Develop a Good Business Strategy

Undertake a thorough review of how your business has fared during the last year and then develop and implement a new strategy for the coming year. If you want your business to succeed you need a strong and workable strategy for the coming year. Start with a list of small but important changes you could make. Has your business floundered in certain areas in the past? Improve your daily practices to ensure business continuity for your customers and for the wider community where necessary.

Step 2: Review Your Hiring Process

If you want your business to grow you may need more staff, look at how you have done it in the past and see where you can make changes. Getting the right employees is a key factor in the success of any business. Be more hands on in the hiring process, check applicants’ backgrounds and make sure that their career goals are in harmony with what you want for your business.

Step 3. Enhance Working Processes

One of the quickest and most effective ways of enhancing general working processes is to opt for unified communications – i.e. using one platform for all communications or enabling a variety of different media communications to work in harmony. The idea behind the above is that it provides a platform for instant communication between staff members and sometimes between staff and potential clients.

Step 4. Rejuvenate Your Marketing Plan

Your marketing plan may have had some success last year but you want something that will deliver better results this year and in the future. Set marketing goals, e.g. three tweets a week, direct mail, email and text marketing. Chart the progress of your marketing plan so that you can see what works for you and what doesn’t.

Step 5. Focus on Benefits and Assistance Rather than Sales

Any business that takes their focus off the people they deal with or develops a tunnel vision where all that counts are sales will eventually stagnate. Emphasise the help that you can provide to the public and how they will benefit from that help.

Step 6. Your Website Matters

You may have a dull website with out of date information. In this day and age your website is important and often the first impression that potential clients will have of your business. Keep the site interesting with lots of information about what your company is currently doing and how it can help the searcher. Make sure your site is easy to navigate.

Step 7. Time Out

No matter how keen you are on work and developing your company, you need some time away from it. Taking some time away from the company helps put things in perspective and often leads to some great ideas, like those in this article.

This article was written by Ben Frisby on behalf of Maintel, business continuity and unified communications experts. To discover more about business continuity or unified communications, please take a look at their site.

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5 Common SMS Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

SMS (text) marketing to mobile users is a great way to build a rapport with your customers. It can also be extremely influential to helping your business's growth plans. However, making your way through the world of SMS and mobile marketing can be like navigating the ocean without a compass, it can be easy to get lost and end up in a bad situation.

Also Read -  SMS Vs Email Marketing

Know The Rules
SMS marketing is not an open playground without any rules. Familiarize yourself with the Mobile Marketing Association's Consumer Best Practices. It's also a good idea to learn about the CANN-SPAM Act and read the CTIA Wireless Association's Playbook. Major cell phone carriers, T-Mobile for example, have blocked marketing agencies for violating SMS marketing rules. Make sure you know the industry's best practices and don't try to bend the rules.

Target Wisely
Just like any other type of mailing campaign, SMS marketing is most effective if you personalize your message to the reader. Your customers are much more likely to read an SMS message that includes their name rather than just write "Dear Customer" or "Dear Shopper." Your content should be tailored to pique your market's interest as well, make sure your offer or promotion is something that they will really be interested in.

Don't Overdo It
One quick way to get your customers to text STOP and opt-out of your SMS list is to bombard them with messages. Even the most rabid text-addicts don't like getting hit with marketing messages every day. It is a balancing act, because you want to keep in touch with your customers and build a rapport, but you don't want to hound them. Spread out how often you send your marketing communications and reserve them for special offers or timely information.

Have a Clear Call to Action
With only 140 characters to work with, you don't have time to get wordy. People are more likely to read a single page SMS message than one that spans multiple pages. It also annoys some people when they get multiple messages at the same time. Make sure you ask them to do something specific like visit your website or use coupon code XXXXX for $5 off their next purchase of $25 or more.

Mobile Friendly Website
This may seem obvious, but some people do jump on the SMS bandwagon without realizing that they're directing users to a website that is difficult to navigate on their cell phone. In order for you to get the most out of your SMS marketing efforts, make sure that your business's website is optimized for as many devices as reasonably possible. If customers have to struggle to view your website or follow your call to action, they will lose interest quickly.

SMS marketing opens up exciting new ways for businesses to connect with their customers, but like any other type of marketing it should approached with forethought and planning. Even large corporations have made SMS marketing blunders, so there is a learning curve for everyone. Avoid these five common mistakes and you will be a step ahead of your competition.

About the Author: Genesis Cran is a business marketing consultant who enjoys teaching business owners how to incorporate SMS surveys and other types of marketing into their overall campaigns.Read our guidelines to be a Guest Author at TechGau.Org 

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5 Reasons why Affiliate Marketing is Better than the Rest

Marketing is a huge concept. According to some marketers, marketing is all about knowing your customers and giving them exactly what they’re looking for. Even if you don’t have what they want, you need to develop a marketing strategy that can convince them to come to you and buy your product. There are different types of marketing and one of them is Affiliate Marketing.

Also Read - SMS Vs E-Mail Marketing

Affiliate marketing is slightly different from the other marketing techniques because it is a performance-based marketing technique. A business that uses affiliate marketing technique rewards its employees on the basis of customers, visitors, or clients that he or she manages to bring to the company. The greater the number of customers brought, the greater would be the reward.

Affiliate marketing normally consists of four main players. The four key players are the merchant, the network, the publisher, and finally, the customer. All of them play a very important role in this marketing technique and each one of them has his or her role to play. The absence of a single one of them alters the entire marketing process. This is why their value cannot be undermined.

The thing with affiliate marketing is that it uses third parties to bring customers, and thus, sales, to the business. That is why it is also confused with referral marketing. However, the two of them are entirely different when it comes to the rewards that the company is paying to the affiliates. (In order to incorporate this kind of marketing, Chicago SEO companies can be of great help.)

Why use affiliate marketing?

After knowing all about affiliate marketing, the question that arises is why use it? Why not use the other marketing techniques? How is this type of marketing technique better than the rest? The answer to all such questions is given below.

1. Performance-related pay: This is something that is best about this type of marketing because you don’t have to pay for any kind of useless efforts. The company only has to pay when they get a customer and a sale is made. This type of pay system motives the affiliates to work well. This helps save costs and boost up efficiency.
   
   
2. Ease of pay: Another benefit of this type of marketing is the flexibility that the businesses have when it comes to paying their affiliates. This is something that can help a business in a great way because one isn’t bound to pay the affiliates and the flexibility factor makes it very easy for the company.
   
   
3. No need for sales associates: The company, in this type of marketing, does not need any kind of sales associates because the same task is performed by the affiliates so what the company would otherwise pay the sales associates, is covered by paying the affiliates only.
   
   
4. Automation: The aspect of automation is another plus point for the company considering the fact that everything is done via the internet or the computer. Things and operations tend to be more speedy and quick in this type of marketing which helps save time as well.
   
   
5. Low start-up costs: This is something that really motivates the owner of the company because normally what matters to the owner is the start-up costs of anything that he or she plans to do. If the start-up costs are low, people are more attracted towards a particular deal, and it’s the opposite in the other case.

Mentioned above are some of the advantages of affiliate marketing and are the reasons why people should choose this type of marketing technique. One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that everything and every decision always has an opportunity cost, and so is the case with affiliate marketing. But its benefits are huge enough to cover the few disadvantages that it has.

Author:

Brendan Egan is the CEO of Simple SEO Group that offers e-marketing and web design services to online small businesses. Brendan can be contacted at www.SimpleSEOGroup.com.

Read our guidelines to be a Guest Author at TechGau.Org

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Facebook Stock Down By 12% (Morning) On First Trading After IPO

Facebook's first day as a Public company was not so good in terms of trading, it began with a 4.5% down in pre-trading and has gone as low as 12% cut (Morning), standing at the 35-36$ mark after it began at 38$ a share.

The lackluster opening of the public trading of Facebook Shares comes after Facebook’s long-awaited IPO on Friday, posting a morsel of a gain (23-cent gain) over its $38 opening share price.There have been various theories abound to why Facebook’s IPO didn’t take off, one possibility is that glitches and bugs from Nasdaq that delayed trading in the stock for 30 minutes may have stopped the momentum of the stock.It was expected to perform much better than it actually did.

Whatever Facebook does, there will be ramifications on other social networking sites as well, we could clearly see this as the stock rates of Zynga, LinkedIn, Yelp were all down.

We can only wait and see what happens in this unpredictable market.

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SMS Vs E-Mail Marketing

Email and SMS are two of the most common, fast and efficient communication methods. Both are used by businesses in order to get messages out to customers; business SMS and email marketing usually provide results above and beyond those of direct marketing campaigns. Bulk SMS and email marketing are lower-cost alternatives, with the SMS being a better way to build and maintain a more personal relationship with customers.  Here, you will learn some of the biggest differences between the two marketing methods.
In comparing bulk SMS to email marketing, there are more differences than there are similarities.

With SMS, you can type a message on your computer or on your phone, and send it to many contacts at the same time. With email, there’s the “reply all” button, but selecting certain contacts takes a bit of time.  What’s more, text messages are far more likely to be read than emails; most people carry their mobile phones everywhere (the same can’t be said for computers!). Many people discard email marketing messages without even opening them, and in many cases, spam filters send these messages to the “junk” email folder.

Being a newer marketing method, bulk SMS hasn’t encountered these problems yet. Text messages don’t come with spam filters; people must manually block messages. SMS marketing is far more immediate, and many businesses send messages to people in local areas, because it’s easier for them to act on those messages. There’s an immediacy to text message marketing that just isn’t there with an email campaign.
Email marketing is a one-way communication method, (albeit far-reaching and rich in content) while SMS marketing allows for large-scale, two-way communication between you and your customers. Both methods are powerful marketing tools, and a well rounded strategy will combine the two. For instance, you can send an email blast that also encourages readers to send an SMS to receive additional offers. Combining SMS and email marketing is a great way to increase response rate and build your brand, because you’re offering your customers a choice in how they’ll respond.

Email marketing may have its drawbacks, but it still has its place; it’s an ideal way for businesses to offer deals and send newsletters to those who have opted in. SMS marketing will likely become more and more popular, as it calls recipients to action, and makes it difficult for them to disregard your message.

Must Read - Business Mobile Trends 2011

Author: Guest post by Crispin Jones written for Collstream, experts in bulk business SMS.Read our guidelines to be a Guest Author at TechGau.Org

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Business Mobile Trends in 2012

As the year progresses there are a number of important business trends in the mobile market that companies should take on board if they want to maximize their performance in this sector. Here are just a few of the most significant trends that are worth outlining in order to help you secure greater success with your mobile strategy.

Mobile Transactions

Payment is no longer limited to cash or cards because mobiles are now used more than ever in order to facilitate financial transactions. The proliferation of NFC (near field communication) technology is allowing consumers to spend money without the need for a wallet, using multiple accounts linked to a chip in their smartphone.
 Meanwhile, using integrated applications or a mobile browser makes it possible for users to shop online without having to fire up a laptop or PC. The emerging 'm-commerce' ( a spin off from e-commerce) industry is changing the way that retailers look at sales and it is also helping to support the high street because this multichannel approach benefits those who are on the move the most.
Portable terminals set up in-store could replace fixed-position checkouts in the near future, allowing consumers to make payments from their mobile phones and leave at their leisure, which ought to ease queues while serving to streamline a business.

Advanced Mobile Features

For businesses, mobile phones have become important for receiving and sending e-mails, browsing the web and running simple applications in recent years.

However, analysts at Info-Tech Research Group Inc. believe that 2012 will be the year in which small and medium sized businesses begin to realize the full potential of contemporary portable hardware.
Customer relationship management (CRM) and apps generated specifically for the industry within which a given company operates will be just two of the features that businesses will begin to exploit to their advantage.

Meanwhile, the power of the cloud will make it possible for mobiles to do much more than their basic hardware limitations might usually allow. Scalability and flexibility will be the watchwords of the business mobile market in 2012.

Part of the reason that mobile apps are becoming so prevalent in the business world is that employees often prefer to use them when compared with desktop equivalents.

The reason behind this is one of practicality; apps must be usable on smaller displays, the majority of which utilise touch-screen controls, so they have to be designed carefully and clearly. This results in a better user experience that still has all of the power of traditional alternatives.

Platform Wars

While the consumer market is dominated by Apple's iPhone when it comes to brand awareness and saturation, some believe that the business market is not as entirely infatuated with this range of handsets.
Google's Android operating system is becoming increasingly popular among professionals, not least because it offers a large number of apps that is almost equivalent in terms of quantity and quality to Apple's offering.
Part of Android's appeal is that Google operates a far more open-source approach to its software than Apple. Anyone can build an app and have it accepted with relative ease for availability on an Android handset. Meanwhile, Apple's fairly stringent rules about blocking certain apps from being published can put off businesses that want the freedom to use a mobile platform as they see fit.

There are plenty of other ways in which the business mobile market will develop this year, with trends shifting almost autonomously as companies decide the fate of certain platforms and manufacturers. Regardless of your position, it seems that mobile business trends will continue to rise to prominence over the coming months and years.

Author: Daisy Group plc are an independant provider of business mobile phones and mobile broadband, offering the latest business mobile handsets including smart phones, Blackberry smartphones and durable phones at competitive prices.As an O2 Center of Excellence and Vodafone Premier Partner you can be confident that we will provide you with a range of services, tailored to meet your business requirements.  Our business mobile packages are designed to help keep your business connected whether your a single user, a small- to medium-sized company or a large corporation.Read our guidelines to be a Guest Author at TechGau.Org

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