In the good old days of SEO (2010), cranking out an endless supply of online press releases was standard operating procedure.

Whether or not it was newsworthy, whether or not it was well written, and whether or not it provided any useful information at all, the online press release provided something of undeniable value: inbound links.

Knowing press releases were an easy way to generate links, spammers and well-meaning but overzealous SEO practitioners flooded online news services with content that was far from newsworthy. To meet the explosive demand, online services sprung up with editorial standards that were liberal, to say the least.

From Google’s point of view, no news was bad news.

Today’s guest post is by Brad Shorr, @bradshorr on twitter.

And so the value equation was changed.

Rolled out in February 2011, Google’s “Panda” algorithm update (so named for Google engineer Navneet Panda) was a major step in Google’s broad strategy of rewarding high quality content and penalizing spam.

As a result of this update and a number of other algorithm tweaks, links from online press releases are not as valuable as they once were.

This is a welcome development. With Google placing greater emphasis on quality, companies that publish useful information enjoy higher rankings, meaning that companies disseminating genuine news stand a better chance of reaching people who care.

If SEOs – and businesses – are smart, they will adapt to the post-Panda world by being extremely selective in what and where they publish. By limiting their press releases to actual news, companies offer something of real value to customers, prospects and stakeholders. Google recognizes this and rewards the content with higher rankings. The company, the searcher and the reader all win.

Right now we are in transition. Not everyone understands the new rules, so we continue to see content farm-quality releases and skeptical searchers. However, as time goes on SEOs will turn their attention to more productive techniques, and online press release quality will continue to improve. When readers recognize the change, press releases will be able to do a better job of generating brand awareness, leads and new business.

Furthermore, as content quality gains the upper hand over content quantity, Google will continue to increase the value of press release links. And then, he said cynically, we can start the process all over again …

But that’s the future. What can companies do today to manage their press release program?

1. Cut back on volume. If it’s not newsworthy, don’t publish it.
2. If you reduce your press release output, don’t reduce your budget; instead, reinvest in other, more productive PR or marketing activities. A slow economy necessitates as much promotional activity as you can possibly muster!
3. If you don’t have news, make some! Perhaps the new SEO landscape is just the catalyst you need to bring something fresh and exciting to the market.
4. In the eyes of Google not all press release services are created equal, so be careful where you publish. High caliber distribution platforms deliver much better link value than lesser ones.
5. Continue to apply good SEO practices to your leaner and meaner press release content. Optimization may matter less, but it still matters.

Today’s guest post is by Brad Shorr, @bradshorr on twitter.

Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago SEO agency. The firm works with middle market B2B firms doing everything from merchant credit card processing to vehicle GPS tracking. Follow Brad on Twitter and join Straight North on Facebook for conversation on SEO and other Internet marketing topics.

Want more information on Google’s Panda? Here’s a video about how Google’s Panda update changed SEO best practices forever for you.

And, if you came here looking for Po the panda, check out Kung Fu Panda’s Marketing Mastermind Moves.

Everybody’s making videos, but who really knows how to marketing them? For the answer to that question, I’m passing this topic over to a guest author.

The last time this special guest posted here, his post about keys to writing a press release for SEO and page rank landed in the top social media posts of the first quarter of 2010. In the course of working on some Instant E-Training video projects together, I asked Bob Tripathi if he’d like to guest post again. Lucky for us, he decided to share three YouTube and video marketing tricks he picked up in an interview with Greg Jarboe, a co-founder of SEO-PR.

Thanks for reading. After you read this post, please answer this question in the comment box: How do you use video in your PR efforts?

3 YouTube & Video Marketing Tricks You Should Not Miss

by Bob Tripathi

YouTube has changed the video landscape with user generated video content and as a result grown so fast that it prompted Google to pay $1.5 billion to acquire the company.

According to ComScore, in March YouTube drove about 143.2 Million unique viewers with an average user spending 275 minutes watching videos on YouTube.

If YouTube were a search engine then it would be the second biggest search engine after Google.

On YouTube, a video can go viral almost instantaneously, if optimized correctly, and generate huge amount of video views. So I met up with Greg Jarboe, Author of “YouTube & Video Marketing: An Hour a Day” and trainer for our upcoming Social Media for Business training workshop to get his insights on optimizing video.

Based on my conversation with Greg Jarboe here are my top 3 takeaways:

1. Embed Video in a press release

Greg narrated the story of Journalist Jill Carroll of Christian Science Monitor who was held hostage in Iraq and was going to do an 11 part series about her experience.

While promoting this 11 part series for Christian Science Monitor they came across some video outtakes of Jill Carroll’s interview video with ABC News. While going through the footage, Greg and team came up with the idea of embedding the video in a press release to give people a feel of what was coming.

Two things they did were:

1) They hosted the video on YouTube and

2) embedded the video in the press release.

Turns out Greg and team were stunned at the number of views their video got on YouTube and the buzz generated through the combination of video and press release.

The point is lot of us are announcing news through press releases almost regularly but not leveraging video. I would say if you can create a press release then you can also create a video.

2. Do Keyword Research on YouTube and not on Google

[I love this one! - editor]

Search engines play a huge role in driving quality traffic that converts. This is due to the fact that search is mainly used when the customer is closer to the purchase decision mindset. As a result, optimizing text in a document or the text surrounding the video can be huge.

On YouTube that means optimizing video title, description, and inserting the right type of keywords as tags.

A common fallacy for search and social marketers is to go straight to the Google keyword tool and use the same keywords that they would use for optimizing non YouTube related content. Instead, Greg suggests using the YouTube keyword tool. This way you get keyword intelligence based on what people are searching for on YouTube.com and not on Google.com

3. Share your video on social media

Besides optimizing your video by using right keywords in tags, description, and title, your video will rank higher in YouTube results if you have a high number of video views and ratings.

This, in YouTube’s eyes, is the popularity factor and one good way to kick start this process is sharing the video with the group you are already popular with. That would be your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn contacts, and so on. This way your video starts getting some traction with video views and with proper optimization as described above hopefully it will start ranking higher on YouTube.

Here is the video of my full conversation with Greg Jarboe about YouTube and video marketing:

Bob Tripathi is the Founder & CEO of Internet Marketing Training company Instantetraining.com providers of online certification workshop and online training video. Prior to founding Instantetraining.com, Bob spent number of years working at companies like Sears, Discover Financial championing in-house SEO, PPC, and Social Media initiatives. With over 10 years of digital marketing experience, Bob has worked with businesses of all sizes helping them generate revenues and drive double digit growth through internet marketing. Bob is a regular speaker at industry conferences and is also co-founder of SEMPO Chicago Working Group.

Image copyright Barbara Rozgonyi from the 2011 CES collection. If you’re wondering about the camera shown here, you can watch this YouTube video about video cameras for skateboarders.

On Friday, the first day of spring!, I’ll be presenting this 20 minute social media mashup to the National Speakers Association’s Illinois Chapter. My inspiration comes from a play our family saw called “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged.” On our family trip out west a few years back our daughter – who was into Shakespeare and theater at the time, insisted that we see this play on the last night of our trip.

We had many reasons to say no: it was the last night of our two-week family vacation, it didn’t start until 8, we hadn’t packed yet, we had to check out at 5:00 a.m., not everyone could go [way past our youngest son’s bedtime], it was too long, we wouldn’t get back to the hotel until 11– and wow, the clock did say it was 5 – only three hours until the curtain went up and 12 hours until we had to drive to the airport.

Weighing the pros and cons, I said yes, we will get dinner, pack, go see the entire play and be ready to leave at 5:00 tomorrow morning – who’s with me?

Three of us: the 14 year old, the 12 year old and I went to the play. When the kids wanted to sit in the front row, I objected saying I didn’t want to be too conspicuous. But, we sat there anyway. At intermission, my son said, “What does conspicuous mean?” Being referred to continually by the players, because we were in the front row, was – ahem, super conspicuous, but it was also okay. Somehow a mom and two kids got worked into the dialogue – they loved it.

In preparing this talk, the night at the theater in Jackson Hole came to mind as good parallel for how I would present social media in 20 minutes. Granted I will be the only one presenting this abbreviated performance. But, I’m hoping that the audience will remember it and be moved to jump into social media by starting with one platform, building a character profile and then interacting with their community. That is, of course, after they weigh the pros and cons and make the decision to take a seat in the front row. To outline the process and keep me on track, I prepared this guide. At the end of the presentation, I’ll invite them to experience the longer condensed version at an upcoming workshop. Who’s with me?

Wired Branding: Fusing Social Media Marketing, PR and SEO

Energize Your Business and Connect with Your Community

Social Media Toolbox

• Personality
• Community
• Value
• SEO

Social Media Hazards

· Privacy

• T___ M_______
• I__________
• Strategy
• E__________

Social Media Rules

• Be Nice
• Don’t _______
• Don’t Sell
• Be ___________

Best Social Media Sites for Professional Speakers

LinkedIn – professional

• G______
• Q______ and Answers

Facebook – fun with a twist

• F_____
• Social
• C_______

Twitter – groove and grow

• Follow
• F_________
• S_________

Flickr – snap and click

• I_____
• Video
• G______

Slideshare.net – PowerPoint on steroids

• Slides
• A_______
• S_______

Video – quick or pro

• V_______
• Y_______
• U_______

Blogs – community conversations

• C_______
• C_______

Communities

• Speaker____________
• Forums
• Social Media Club Chicago on Facebook
• Membership sites

Resources

PR Articles for Speakers

LinkedIn Marketing and PR Strategies

Energize Your Business with Wired Branding: Fusing SEO, PR, Social Media & Marketing Workshop

Hands-on and fear-free, this all-day workshop condenses the essentials, equips you to update or create a profile, clarifies your speaking business strategies, illustrates success stories and shows you how to start building a responsive community right away. For more information, call 630.207.7530.

Microsoft’s getting lots of attention [Small Businesses to PPC: Drop Dead] for its survey that finds 70% of small business owners would rather do their own taxes than manage a PPC [pay per click ad words] campaign.

We don’t do our clients’ taxes, but we do manage their marketing strategies, create online PR campaigns and help them prioritize their advertising spending.

We tell them to never purchase a PPC program until we talk to them about it first.

Why? Well . . . PPC is complicated to explain, to implement and to keep going. Yet, you have to keep going. Thinking of jumping in? Here’s a . . . 

PPC Preliminary Checklist

Purpose – why are you doing this?

For most small businesses, the answer is leads.

Goal – how will you know when you’re successful?

Do you need 1 or 100 clicks a week? The better your ad, your landing page and your offer, the lower number of clicks you’ll need.

How much are you willing to spend – for how long?

Think about this one carefully. If you want to play around and test, go ahead, but limit your investment to an amount you’re willing to spend.

Do your prospects click on ads?

Like most marketing tactics, it’s best to be where your customers are.

Is your industry overly competitive?

For keywords like “credit” you can expect to pay thousands of dollars to get traffic.

Will you design a landing page for every keyword?

To convert traffic, you’ll need a custom landing page. Sending ad traffic to a home page with no way to collect data or take action is like losing the lead before you get it.

Who will manage your campaign?

If you have money and the zeal to attack this task, then study with a master like Perry Marshall. If you outsource your campaign, ask to see comparable results from similar businesses. Make sure the contract has a cancellation and a competition clause you’re comfortable with.

When will it end?

Ideally, you will continue to run AdWords, but some campaigns may be cancelled as keywords change and costs increase. 

How Online PR [Public Relations, Press Releases, Page Rank] Stacks Up Against Pay Per Click Advertising

PR people like to tout the benefits of public relations over advertising. To us, it makes sense to maximize your budget by optimizing your efforts. Here’s how we think online PR outperforms pay per click advertising . . . and no, this is not apples to apples. We know that. But, we also know that online PR is one of the most under-utilized search marketing and community building strategies. Have you tried online PR? How about PPC?

Interested in test-driving an online PR campaign?

So many interesting Search Engine Strategy Sessions, so little time to attend them all. In terms of search engine optimization priorities, you might put lots of other topics ahead of storytelling. Like links, AdWords and platforms. But, what’s a person, company or organization without a story?

Because my company is named after two legendary storytellers in my life, I decided this was a session I wanted to share with my readers. Thanks again to Search Engine Strategies for the press pass that got me everywhere I wanted to go.

This is one in series of articles. Browse Wired PR Works’ Chicago Search Engine Strategies 2008 category for the complete collection. Visit Search Engine Strategies’ blog for total conference coverage. Here’s the session description from the program guide . . .

Storyteller Marketing:
The Art of Storyteller Matches Up With the Business of Marketing Description from Search Engine Strategies Program
One communication method that beats all others when it comes to delivering a memorable, motivating, and meaningful message: telling a story. This session will show you how the framework of storytelling can be used to deliver real advertising results by generating content that communicates. You’ll learn the five basic story types, how to analyze the stories around your brand, and how to create a solid strategy for generating, changing, or renewing great brand stories. Great search strategies are built around great content; this session will give you the economic and social tools you need to create that framework.

• Moderator:
  Stewart Quealy, VP, Content Development, Incisive Media
• Speakers:
  Gary Stein, Director of Strategy, Ammo Marketing
  Sally Falkow, President, Expansion Plus Inc.

Gary Stein, Director of Strategy, Ammo Marketing

To learn about storytelling, listen to Ira Glass on “This American Life” on  NPR.

Gary opened by telling the story of a man returning a tire to a Nordstrom store in Alaska; completely fictional, but seems real because of the details and Nordstrom’s reputation for customer service.

Story: chain of events, shared, lived, experienced, characters, ability to retell, needs to be given

Word of mouth marketing is always about stories. We want people to have an experience so they tell their own stories.

In the networks that matter, The Story is the critical unit of communication

People tend to connect with details even in the face of logic [as in the Nordstrom story]. Start telling stories and logic takes the back seat.

Stories shape behavior – the “prospect theory” says people are motivated to avoid loss rather than capture gain. The way that you tell a story changes the way people behave.

The business of stories

Personal stories have way more weight in social networks than media reviews – take movies, for example.

Annette Simmons – The Story Factor says there are only six types of stories

1. Origin – formation and background

H-P created by two guys in a garage in Palo Alto. This story positions the founders as dedicated, do-it-yourself crafters.

Clif Bars – 20% of the space is a personal story from the guy who invented the Clif bar

2. Purpose – shows why your company is in existence

Google star chart is a story that people can tell and is a clear story that communicates what company is about.

3. Vision – where your company is going

Google scanning books – they imagine a future where this is available.

4. Education – so people can put your product in context

Starbucks put couches in stores and told stories about how men in Vienna drink express.

5. Ethics – what you’re doing right 

Zappos – tons and tons of stories that people tell about Zappos doing the right thing. Again, it’s not the company telling the story, it’s people.

6. Connection – with the company

A lot of what story building about is giving people experiences so they can go out and tell stories.

Ammo Marketing Strategic Process: Review, Evaluate, Build and Deploy

Read reviews and categorize stories – for example, in a home stereo system’s reviews, most were vision stories. They recognized that advocates were already telling vision stories. Ammo made a recommendation and refined the story into something much more specific. It’s not about stereo systems, it’s about how people visualized the system performing in their homes.

On Search: Ammo is seeing more and more “benefit-statement searches” like cell phone-great coverage. See how these benefit statements are embedded in CGM – consumer generated media – and then use them in your storytelling marketing.

Most incredible story that’s happened: Barack Obama became president.

He brought on Marshall Ganz who teaches social policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Obama’s team hired Ganz to put together the grass roots campaign. He did it the way a social movement is done.

Traditionally, campaigns get volunteers to memorize policy statement speeches. Ganz put together “Obama Camp” – the first thing they did was to develop a personal narrative as to why they came to the Obama campaign. The core of anything you believe in is your own personal narrative.

The Story is the most powerful form of communication.

Gary has his master’s degree in American Literature – stories are powerful, they’re motivating and allow us to connect with consumers in new ways so they can tell their own stories.

Watch Gary’s “AfterAdvertising” presentation on Facebook.

Sally Falkow, President, Expansion Plus Inc 

Expansion Plus PRoactive Blog

Sally looks for stories in companies. She has a public relations background and believes that there is always something going on that drives the company and there in is that story. People will experience that story when they interact with you. Whether you think you have a story or an image or not, you do.

It’s really important to do the review process and to think about who we are and why we do what we do.

Create Your Brand Story before someone else does.

Surveys change the dynamic, you can ask for an opinion. Online, you can look and see what stories people are telling.

Example: I’m a PC. I’m a Mac. Mac guys told that story. Somehow, the PC guy became Microsoft. Who’s fighting back? Microsoft.

Now we have I’m a PC. Done a whole social media campaign – upload yourself.

Kleenex campaign – “let it out”

Kleenex put a couch down in the middle of the street or wherever and people are doing it [i.e. “letting it out”].

Dove campaign “Dove is Pro-Age”

Took a completely different stance from anti-aging to pro-aging and told their stories of real women over 50.

Nichols Concrete Cutting Stanford Project Campaign

Doing the impossible – cutting holes in walls. Within the business he is regarded as the artist who will do things nobody else can do like disassembling and reassembling an historic building. Media loved the story.

FLOR campaign

Chicago company, whole story in that

HerRoom.com bounce test sports bra campaign

Do sports bras work? There is a real medical issue around these. Created mainstream media coverage.

Insincere or fake stories will backfire – Wal-Mart.

Hone the story down to: simple, repeatable and memorable.

Everyone will have their own story, but your story is in there somewhere around that.

Listen for the story as it comes from employees, customers and suppliers – also online conversations.

All creative must be tied to the story, create content across all digital channels.

Create content around your brand story, they will be wanting to pass that on. Figure out how to amplify the story. Use optimized press releases with images. Tag images, audios and videos with your keywords.

Whirlpool has an American Family podcast with no mention of Whirlpool products. Video tells a story and the search engines are looking for video content. Syndicate your stories with RSS so it takes on a life of its own. RSS is like multi-level marketing for content.

Consistency – must have a strategy and present yourself consistently. Create the story, but make it possible for the person to have their own story. Let the story spread.

QUESTIONS

Can we over-tell stories?

Gary – stories are the pathways to authenticity. Obama camp not rehearsed. Stories shouldn’t be the same every single time.

Is there a danger of hyperbole?

Gary – no, there isn’t. Because of the nature of stories and people’s willingness to believe in a story well-told as long as the core stays.

Sage Lewis, speaker at the conference, talks about Motrin moms on twitter.

Sally – another example of not getting it right and not really listening first.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your Turn: How do you tell your company’s story?