In today's PR and media relations, your main focus is still the media -- whether that be traditional, offline or social media, online.
However, the benefit of today's public relations is that you have the side-benefit opportunity to by-pass media and reach the end user -- through the magic of search.
I was fortunate Wednesday, Oct. 21, to be part of a half-day seminar focusing on how non-profit organizations can use social media for fundraising, reaching their stakeholders, etc. The seminar was organized by Denise Dahl of Dahl Consulting. My focus was on -- as you can tell by the headline of this post -- socializing your PR efforts. Other presenters were Jermaine Young, director of IT & development for the Greater Toledo Urban League, Chris Malanga, chief executive officer of the United Way of Williams County, and of course, Denise.
In my talk, I started with a couple key stats to show how being "findable" is so very important in your online public relations effort.
First, according to the 2008 Journalists Use of Search Survey,
- 91% of journalists use standard search engines to research companies, find past media coverage and subject matter experts.
- 64% use social networks in their search
- 55% use blogs
- 50% use Wikis
Second, according to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report (March 2009):
- 81% of marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated exposure for their business.
While that "exposure" was focused on search engine optimization (SEO) and increased site traffic, if journalists are searching for you, and social media helps your SEO -- you have to take advantage of those tools!
My presentation from Wednesday is up on SlideShare.net. Please have a look and let me know what you think.
-Mike
Comments
Good, easy to understand presentation Mike. I consider a website an offering and a blog a conversation. The nonprofit I am involved with is switching from a website to a WP conversation. I really like the "blog as newsroom" concept.
You mentioned SEO. Everything online ends up in search if you try hard enough. It is just absolutely critical that every organization, for profit or not, finds a set of keywords that their CLIENTS use and keeps them consistent throughout their online presence. Optimization is so much easier and becomes an attainable goal.
Thanks for sharing this Mike!
Wow!!! thank u very much for all this information. Keep on supplying such useful information. It is really interesting.
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