Today we bring you a guest post from Celina Rodger of Dialed-In Local. In this post, she covers some near obvious ways to promote a small business, all of which are often overlooked for various reasons. When it comes to business, one of the most important rules is that you need to spend money to make money. Without denying the accuracy… read more →
The following slide deck was my supporting material for a presentation to the Austin Online Marketing Club on November 27, 2012. It addresses the question of whether you should be managing a website, or a more comprehensive web presence. In the document, you will find a couple of case studies, a review of how the buyer’s journey has changed, and… read more →
This week, let’s take a moment to look at PR / Public Relations for a moment. PR has long been a primary way by which companies of all sizes influence public opinion, build brand awareness and familiarity, and create general goodwill toward a brand.
With the latest social media tools and networking capabilities, there has been a great deal of debate about how PR is changing. Some speculate that the discipline is due to become obsolete, others advocate a revamped approach, and still others merely see today’s PR environment as a small offshoot of how we have always done it.
Surely you have seen the news by now that Google allows certain employees to manually adjust index rankings under special circumstances. Needless to say, the implications are rather widespread.
According to what I’ve read, employees sometimes have to make a judgment call about whether to lower a site’s ranking for a particular keyword or set of keywords. The main scenario where this is deemed “okay” by Google is when companies vertically integrate to a content-heavy model, using existing “SEO Juice” to enjoy visibility that is not yet deserved. That certainly seems like a good thing, does it not? Particularly since big brands can leverage existing budgets, SEO benefits, etc. much more easily than the smaller outfits or self-employed.
Judging by the pageview stats and general response, it is pretty clear that my last post, Social Media is NOT a Strategy, really caught your attention. Since I’m on a roll with the whole “not” thing, let’s come at it from another angle.
Like I said last week, I am a huge proponent of using social media for specific business purposes, particularly when you can measure it. This is in addition to my “doesn’t have to be said” stance that everyone with an online identity should be using it for personal reasons. But just because it’s a no-brainer for personal use and is a great new tool for business, that doesn’t say it is right for YOUR business.
Earlier this week I was talking to some colleagues of mine about “corporate speak”. You know what I’m talking about…all of those made up words that aspiring young professionals in big companies use to try to sound smarter. Surely you’ve seen resumes, proposals, or other business documents that were littered with nonsensical words, most of them of many syllables and tenuous definition.
Public Relations (PR) is one of the best ways to get some quick and potentially extensive exposure. But PR is much more than just crafting press releases and paying to post them to the business wire. Unless you are a larger company that can afford to keep dedicated PR resources in-house, you can do it yourself or bring in a PR vendor to manage it for you.
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