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5 Quick Tips on Writing Press Releases That Will Get Read

April 15th, 2011 :: Monika Jansen

Public relations seem to be falling by the wayside—when you can connect with your audience directly via social media and blogs, why bother with press releases? There are three reasons, actually, but when your overall goal is to stay in touch with your target market(s), writing and distributing press releases is an important part of your marketing efforts.

The three reasons to bother with press releases:

Improve your website’s search results
Drive traffic to your website
Increase brand/company awareness

Another reason not to write off press releases (pun intended) is because writing them is easy. If you can write great blog posts, you can write a great press release. Your press release need not be long, just relevant to your target market. Come to think of it, there are a lot of parallels between blog posts and press releases, so if you want your press release to be read, just follow some of the same basic guidelines you use when writing blog posts.

Grab ‘Em With Your Headline

While incorporating keywords in your headlines are important, they shouldn’t take over and make the headline awkward. The goal of your headline is to grab the interest of your target market. Use the keywords you can, and don’t fret about leaving some out.

Too many keywords: The ABC Group Launches New Social Media Marketing Consultancy to Build Brand Awareness and Generate Leads For Small and Emerging Companies

Better: The ABC Group Launches Social Media Marketing Consultancy

Rethink the Opening Paragraph

People love stories. They’re engaging, interesting, dramatic and memorable. Begin your press release with a story that draws in the reader, especially since so many press releases are now read directly by your target market (rather than journalists), whether they find it through search or a PR syndication service. The traditional who-what-where-when-why model is dated. If you want your press release to read like a newspaper article, have at it, but if you want to engage your audience, tell your story.

Add Lots of Hyperlinks

The more hyperlinks in your press release, the more engaged your reader will be. You can link keywords to other blog posts you’ve written and pages on your website, thus leading your readers to more information on whatever it is you are promoting.

Include Calls to Action

In your press release, ask people to do something! Whether you want them to subscribe to your blog, follow you on Twitter, like your Facebook page, sign up for your email newsletter or download an eBook, provide them with links to it. Add an incentive if you’d like: bonus eBook chapter, new whitepaper, free hour of consultation, whatever.

Insert Photos and Videos

Insert photos and videos in your press release for a truly interactive, engaging experience. You can show screen shots of your new app, photos of your new product, “how it works” videos, video testimonials and more. Be creative!

Image by Flickr user Kimba Howard (Creative Commons)

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Tags: blog posts, brand awareness, keywords, Marketing, press releases, public relations, website traffic, writing press releases
Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business | 1 Comment »

Contests, Content and Keywords: 3 Online Marketing Success Stories

February 9th, 2011 :: Monika Jansen

HubSpot recently released an eBook written by David Meerman Scott called 11 Examples of Online Marketing Success. Because I love to learn from other companies and apply their successes to my own business, I couldn’t wait to read it.

Here is what I learned from a museum that used a contest, an e-commerce site that used content, and an industrial manufacturer that used keywords to energize their online marketing efforts (more success stories to come in future blog posts!):

1. Use Contests to Generate PR and Supercharge Your Social Media Marketing

This is a rather extraordinary example, but it is worth including because it is so darn clever!

Last summer, the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) in Chicago decided to hold a very creative contest. They wanted a Web-savvy person to live and sleep in their museum for a month, explore it and share their experiences via a blog and social media. A 24-year-old Chicagoan, Kate McGroarty, won the contest, which included the 30-day museum-living experiment, $10,000 in cash, an array of tech gadgets and lifetime membership.

The contest was covered by mainstream media channels. Once she was living in the museum, Kate blogged at least once a day, generating a steady flow of comments. She created videos and uploaded them to YouTube. She tweeted and created a Facebook page, which has nearly 4,000 likes and is still up (even though the contest ended at the end of November 2010). Her page invited people to visit MSI’s own Facebook page, which now has over 17,000 likes.

Lesson: Use a creative contest to generate publicity, reach your target audience and expand your presence on social media.

2. Create Unique Content to Attract and Convert Leads

Creating unique, valuable content can really ignite lead generation, as e-commerce site Suitcase.com learned. Last year, they launched a survey via an e-mail invitation that queried customers on luggage usage, travel habits and other luggage-related questions. They packaged the answers into the Consumer Luggage Report and placed the report on a Web page on their site where visitors could download it. That page generated a 20 percent conversion rate, and the report was even picked up by Reader’s Digest. As a result of sharing their knowledge, Suitcase.com has become a thought leader within the rather crowded online luggage e-tailer space.

Lesson: Repurpose content to create buzz, position your company as an industry leader and attract and convert leads.

3. Leverage Keywords to Improve Quality of Leads

I love this example, because it shows how a company in a very unsexy industry can greatly improve lead generation with a very basic online marketing tool: keywords.

SRS Crisafulli sells dredging and pumping products worldwide. In order to effectively reach their numerous target markets, they decided to do some competitive keyword analysis. They began using highly searched keywords to determine what products were most in demand, and they created content based on that information to educate potential customers. By doing so, SRS Crisafulli has been able to generate more high-quality leads that are sales-ready.

Lesson: By understanding your potential customers’ search behavior and needs, you can create the educational content that turns a website visitor into a strong lead.

Have you held a contest, turned a survey into a report, or used keyword research to supercharge your online marketing efforts? We’d love to hear about your successes!

Image by Flickr user Ca Ribiero (Creative Commons)

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Tags: Branding, content creation, contests, keywords, lead generation, Marketing, public relations, publicity, search engine optimization, Search Marketing, social media
Posted in Branding, Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, Social Media, Thought Leadership | No Comments »

The 5 Types of Blog Posts You Should Be Writing

January 19th, 2011 :: Monika Jansen

Mixing up the types of blog posts you publish is crucial for a few reasons. One, you don’t want to bore your readers. Two, when you are building thought leadership, sharing your knowledge is just as important as opining on trends in your industry. And three, taking the time to create a video, post someone else’s video (with your own commentary), or film a short video blog from the comfort of your desk is like hitting the SEO jackpot.

The key to success with any of the blog posts you write is to make sure they are keyword-rich. Try using Scribe SEO or Zemanta—they are online tools that will ensure your blog posts contain the keywords that your customers use. In no specific order, here are the 5 types of blog posts you should be writing:

1. How-to’s

These contain information your customers can actually use. They are usually short and can be written quickly. This blog post is the perfect example!

2. Fun

These are meant to be purely entertaining, and they are a great way to humanize your company. Whether your customers are other businesses or consumers, everyone likes to put a face (and personality) with a name. If done well (meaning, they really are funny), they’ll end up driving a lot of traffic to your blog and you’ll get lots of links. Here’s a great example from Hubspot.

3. Opinion pieces

These are a great way to establish thought leadership, but they require time to write. You can analyze trends; offer your view on a popular or emerging subject/tool/software/business process that is relevant to your audience; dissect someone else’s article, blog post or video; yor interview a thought leader in our industry—let them offer their opinion to your audience. If you write a few times a week, I would only do an opinion piece once or twice a month. Here’s an example, written by Ben Casnocha.

4. Bold contrarian opinion pieces

These are totally different from regular opinion pieces, which are more thoughtful in nature. A bold, contrarian opinion piece is written to start a debate, ruffle feathers and generate a lot of attention. You’ll most likely receive numerous comments, so be sure you can defend your statements. Here’s an example, written by Penelope Trunk.

5. Series

A blog series will take time to write as well, as you will be delving down deep into a particular subject. They will probably include a lot of links, screen shots, and maybe videos, but once you are done, you can turn the series into an e-book to sell or to use as a promotion to gain leads, new fans on Facebook, new subscribers to your newsletter, etc. A great example is the three- part social media series I just wrote for the Network Solutions blog.

Image by Flickr user Brice Ambrosiak (Creative Commons)

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Tags: blog writing, blogs, keywords, lead generation
Posted in Marketing, Small Business, Social Media | 4 Comments »

How Much SEO Can I Do By Myself?

June 9th, 2010 :: Monika Jansen

After months of procrastinating, I really need to get my website tricked out with some SEO. Because it’s such a technical process and can be rather expensive, I started wondering how much I could do myself. I have zero knowledge of or experience in HTML and web programming, and a budget of…well, let’s say not enough to pay an SEO expert what their service is worth.

liferoiblog/Flickr

Based on my research, which consisted of my limited knowledge, a Google search, and finally asking SEO guru Ken Fischer of Click for Help, there is quite a bit you can do on your own. Needless to say, it’s not going to be nearly as effective as adding all those tags and metadata and technical gee gaws to your website, but it will certainly help.

Here’s what you need, in no specific order:

Keywords. Research keywords for your industry simply by plugging words and terms related to what you do into any search engine. You probably already know what some key terms are, but get really creative. Ask friends and family for their thoughts—you might get even more ideas.

Once you have a list of keywords, add them to your website’s content wherever possible. To make your content both readable and effective, you’ll want to craft your messaging and positioning statements around the keywords rather than just randomly inserting keywords into your content.

Strong, original, well-written website content. If your content is poorly written, no one’s going to click through your website, let alone contact you. Remember that the reason you want your site to be optimized for search engines is not just so people can find you, but so those people become customers. Without good content, that goal is a lost cause.

If you’re not a good writer, find someone who is. If you think you’re a good writer, find a good editor. Make sure your content uses plain English rather than jargon and is thoughtful and original. Most importantly, make sure your content speaks to your audience’s needs. Explain to them how you are going to solve their problems and how you are going to do it better than the other guy.

Links from other websites. Link from websites to yours (aka, a backlink) are gold in the SEO world. Think about it: why would someone provide a link to a website if it didn’t contain useful or interesting information? Links drive traffic to your website and make web pages more likely to appear at the top of a search engine’s results page, which, in turn, pushes more traffic to your website. It’s a nice little cycle once it gets going.

Publish articles to the LinkedIn groups you belong to and to an online article distribution service like EzineArticles or GoArticles. As long as what you are writing is relevant and interesting, it will be shared over and over again. You can also distribute press releases, sprinkled with backlinks to your website, to an online news release service like PR Web. It will get picked up by news services, and because PR Web is recognized as an authority, backlinks from their website can drive a lot of traffic to your website.

Social media. When you post to your favorite social media platforms, be sure you are offering advice, tips, and success stories with relevant links back to your website. Avoid outright sales pitches at all costs. Of course, if you’re running a special promotion, a sale, or launching a new product or service, you’re going to advertise that. But people are more likely to pass along good advice than an announcement regarding a new product launch. If your company sounds interesting, people will visit your website.

Blog. As with social media, blog posts that offer useful, relevant information and contain links back to content on your website will spur web traffic. Publish a great blog, and people will pass it along, post it to Facebook, tweet it, and refer to it and ultimately drive traffic to your website.

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Tags: backlinks, blogs, copywriting, keywords, LinkedIn, links, seo, social media, website content
Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, small business | 4 Comments »