By Maureen Streett, Director, What’s Up Interactive

Public Relations are meant to get the word out, usually to media and/or consumers in general. Online PR is a great way to get the word out to not only people, but also to search engines.

Often when “PR” comes up, people immediately think media relations and pitching stories.  The important distinction between traditional and online PR is the latter’s efforts’ end goals are typically SEO-related.  Campaigns can be effective for expediting rankings, boosting site traffic and keeping your brand top-of-mind. That said, if not done correctly, online PR can become a tedious, time-consuming task with no end results. Here are three tips for success:

1.  Submit your news to the right place(s).  There are a lot of sites out there to submit news to.  Considering this is (usually) a manual process, do some research and choose a handful of channels to start with. Use sites that allow links back to your site – preferably anchor text – and choose those that report how many reads or hits your release garners (see tip #3).

2.  Don’t be spammy. Have a lot of great stuff to talk about? Don’t submit a press release every day stuffed with keywords, and insert an excessive number of links to your site.  The same principle in writing Web site content for SEO applies here: you want it to be search friendly, but crafted with the user in mind.

3.  Build a measurable strategy. The act of submitting press releases with no benchmarks will get you nothing in the long run.  Decide what to measure before you start, and track it over time.  A key statistic is the number of reads your release gets – if the channel reports that, you can gauge brand impressions.  Know where you rank for the keywords you are targeting and monitor them.  Measure referring site visits from PR channels, and analyze: are they engaged visitors? If people are bouncing off your site within seconds from one channel in particular, try another (see tip #1).

Building an effective online PR strategy is simple, but takes thought and planning to be well-executed.  Educate your team and/or clients, use the right channels and craft compelling content.  Most importantly, measure your results!

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Maureen Streett is the Director of Search & Social Marketing at What’s Up Interactive. A Kalamazoo, Michigan native and graduate of Indiana University, she has a background in Public Relations and has been at What’s Up since 2008.  Maureen is an active member of Atlanta’s chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) and the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA). m.streett@whatsupinteractive.com

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Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010, 7:13 am   |   Internet, Public Relations  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback