BuzzTart

We made the decision several years ago that all content coming into Swayve Newsrooms would be quality controlled. That decision is now paying off, with Google’s continuing algorithm tweaks.

What the new order of Google means is that websites that publish volumes of low quality content — that is,  content that is written around key words rather than real news, or at least new information — are downgraded in search results.  Some websites have disappeared entirely.

To ensure this doesn’t happen to our press release services, we moderate all releases that come in to make sure they’re of a standard that meets the demands of Australian journalists. And of course we also try to make sure they don’t contain any defamatory or offensive material – although we don’t stand in judgment and we do try to be nonpartisan.   Not all topics will interest everyone but our customers share a common goal — to reach media outlets and social media with high quality content of interest to niche audiences.

As Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told Fortune magazine recently, there are only two ways to get good, quality content. To paraphrase Jimmy:   One way is that you are already a good writer so you write it yourself or you pay a professional PR person or a journalist to write it for you. The second way is to have a product, service or intangible communication that gets other people excited – and they write it for you, free of charge.

You can tell a mile off if a person is truly excited and interested about what they’re saying — it’s part of the positive fallout of social media that it is very very difficult to pretend to be someone you’re not in any kind of sustainable way.

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Have you ever received an invitation to one of those “FREE Publicity”  workshops?  One lobbed in my inbox today: “Never pay an expensive PR agency again!” was the headline.

I’m sure the promoter means well – to teach small business and solo operators how to generate their own publicity is a noble task. But why the need to decry the work of professional PR people? This kind of blanket statement just irks me.  There is NO WAY to “do your own PR” without working on it – there are no shortcuts, despite the promises.  More often than not, it will work out cheaper in the long run if you let a professional run the show.  Would you ask your gardener to fix your plumbing?  It pays to employ the right person for the right job.

Implying that the PR agency is duping you by charging for their services is flawed and a reflection of last-century thinking.   You see, anyone can get a story in the paper once or even twice, but PR people do it over and over and over again across all media distribution channels.  They succeed because they are trained to give journalists and news consumers what they need, and many are gifted writers and speakers.

This promotion also claimed you don’t need a “media hook”. Huh?   journalists use hooks in every story they publish to capture readers, listeners and viewers.  What you need, if you plan to entice a journalist to talk about your wonderfulness, is a story.   Or as Glen Frost from In the Public Interest says in Top 20 Trends for PR Practitioners 2011, you need to ‘drive the narrative’.

If you are a small business owner who has the skills, time, energy and patience to do this, I admire and support you, as any PR professional would!

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These are the tools I use every day – I included them in my last newsletter, but here they are again so you don’t need to search your email:

1.  Amplify – this is a new service that lets you share with all your social networks from one interface (incidentally, NewsMaker only shares manually as we want to make sure the right messages are delivered to the right place on your behalf).
2. Compete – measure your performance in terms of hits and popularity, against your rivals.
3. Addictomatic– introduced to me by the media-savvy Gerry McCusker, this is a tool that reveals what’s been said about your brand, all in one screen, in virtual real time.
4. Social Mention – one of my favourites, allows you track any brand or name and have measurement of its “strength, sentiment, passion and reach” – as the name implies, it includes mentions in social media.
5. Alexa – this is not a new tool but it certainly is one of the fastest and more reliable ways to measure your ranking against websites in your region and across the whole world wide web. It also shows you the top keywords people used to find your pages.

PS: NewsMaker will launch its new platform in 2011. We’ll be using Swayve® software (Sway for Influence and VE for visibility engine). As well as PR productivity tools for publishing and distribution, Swayve lets you track and report on the coverage from your media campaigns in both social and traditional media. Register at Swayve to find out more about our release date.

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The Australian Festive Season is traditionally the time when all business goes quiet – only to wake up again on Australia Day. This period between Christmas and the end of January is a fertile time for PR professionals to be thinking about their clients’ media communications calendar for the whole year. It’s also a time when radio stations and metro dailies are crying out for topical stories.

Radio stations employ stand-in presenters during this period while newspapers and magazines often work with skeleton staff. They need ideas that are going to entertain, excite and inform.

Here are some surefire ways to increase awareness and attract media coverage from Christmas through to Australia Day.

1. Random acts of kindness
Many people are faced with personal and financial challenges at this time of year. Tell people about your charity or volunteer work and the difference you make*.

2. Trends and opinions
Tell media about your event and especially any anecdotes or strong opinions that were shared – or any trends you’ve noticed in holiday conversations. Include pics if you have them.

3. New Year sales and promotions
In January, everyone is looking for a bargain. Now’s the time to announce your special offers, deals and sales.

4. Run a competition or survey
While you have some thinking time, plan a competition with a prize suited to your customers. Surveys also work well in media – the larger the survey group the better but even small surveys work.

5. Good news week…
Are you looking forward to a prosperous New Year? Tell people about it – we all want to hear inspiring stories about business growth.

6. Take pictures and record video
Make 2011 the year when you capture everything you can as an image or video. The combination of text and video is the most powerful trend in media. Back it up by announcing your video’s existence in a news release so it will be shared widely.

7. Be bold or crazy
Do something mad, fun and not too dangerous…. Or play it safe and make bold predictions about the year ahead. As with point 6, record them on video as well as text to increase their pulling power.

* Join Donortec for great discounts on software and hardware for nonprofits.

Australian nonprofits; nonprofit technology, free marketing, free PR, free publicity, media, media release, press release, public relations, social marketing, social media

Re Cameron England’s story in the Adelaide Advertiser this morning

I’m not surprised that 75% or more of local businesses don’t use social media, as reported in PPR’s report quoted in the article!

Twitter for small business use is under threat because, in the flood of messages, each user has only limited capacity to spend their day chatting up a whole bunch of people who will never become ‘sales leads’. A business needs to know who they’re talking to – you follow for research or amusement but it’s who follows your words of wisdom that’s really important. Is anybody listening or are they just counting scalps?

Further, the trend for some businesses to offshore their tweeting will surely kill Twitter stone dead. Of course I could just unfollow when I see this happening!

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It’s no surprise that NewsMaker’s top story of the month is this one: ‘Melbourne Storm Brand dead’ – leading image consultant

The story provides a few valuable lessons for anyone writing a press release:
1. Keep Up With Current News
The press release is about the most significant topic in the Australian news for that day – and therefore is sure to result in more interest. Read, view and listen to the news and be proactive in meeting the needs of the media by providing new angles to their story.

2. Time Your Press Release for Media Needs
Image Group International was quick off the mark, writing their press release for release on the same day the story broke. This means they had the information ready at the exact time journalists are looking for comments – and when the public is searching for “Melbourne Storm” related topics in Google Search and Google News. In both cases the NewsMaker story showed up on page 1 in both media, even when competing with literally thousands of other stories mentioning the Storm.

3. Write a Great Headline
The headine is a grabber – sure to appeal as it is controversial and courageous. Plus it reflects that it is an expert opinion – a well known image consultant has this point of view. Journalists chasing down stories are looking for strong opinions.

This is a great press release example and media campaign case study, featuring high in Google and in the professional media, and leading to a pronounced spike in website visitation for Image Group International.

Image Group's Melbourne Storm press release features at No 1 spot.

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A University of Sydney study reported in The Australian’s media section this morning says it’s a myth that journos don’t use PR and press release content to generate their stories – instead, 30-80% of content comes from PR efforts.
The article also reports it’s a myth that PR people don’t spin – or to put it another way, it’s true that PR people spin, when directed to do so by their clients. (You always hope that readers are smart enough to see that, equally, journalists work under the instruction of their editors. They have to espouse the party line they don’t always share and sometimes put a negative spin on stories just to increase their newsworthiness.)
The study’s author, Jim Macnamara, says: “PR is a fact of life. Journalists should recognise it as an important communication channel and not deny it. And if there is PR material being used, it should be open and transparent.” Couldn’t agree more – the more quality PR, the better the relationship with the journalist, the better you become as reliable and trusted a source as any other. Bloggers themselves have become both a source of news and a publishing vehicle for PR – there’s another debate in the making.
A debate on this topic will be held on Wednesday this week in Sydney.

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Can journalists and PR people ever really be friends? Mainstream metro daily journalists are driven by their editors to produce a certain kind of content. They are not there to promote your product but to provide controversy, humour, human interest or some other parochial factor that aligns with editorial policy.(This differs from the ‘op-ed’ opinion based columnists who are more like bloggers.)
If you, as a PR person, bombard a business or general news journalist with product-focused media releases, you are going to get the flick. You, and more likely your client, then get upset because your perfectly crafted words and ground-breaking world first announcements have been rejected. Product releases belong with the trades, unless they truly are sensational, ground-breaking world firsts.
It’s a better strategy to offer your favourite journalists a real story at any time – even when it doesn’t apply directly to your client. And even to offer journalists stories you’ve identified when they’re not related to your clients at all.
The problem is of course that your clients want you to send product focused releases – so send them you must. What I find works for me is to send the release but include in the body of the email a note that talks about how the content of the release could fit in a real story – whether this is because it’s relevant to the news of the day or because it could become part of a larger feature story. This is hard work – and you must convince your client of its value. That’s a whole other story .

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