Step In Front of the Ball
Ouch.
I just received a call asking me to join a national PR consultancy cooperative. They found me through Google search while looking for a PR firm in this area. After a couple of phone calls and some vetting on both sides, I got the offer and accepted.
They found me on Google–and I think mostly because of this blog. Blogs are good for search engine optimization, or SEO. (More on that in a minute.)
I have a client who hates blogging–thinks it’s a chore even though she’s a very good writer with a real knack for blogging. She was telling me today her business had fallen off and I said one very inexpensive marketing activity was to update her blog daily.
“I know,” she said wearily. “But–”
I told her about the consultancy call–one I received purely by virtue of blogging (and having a cool website, many thanks Shelly!). My client thought it over and agreed to blog every day for a few weeks to see what effect it would have.
Here’s what I think she’ll find (source: NewMediaSocial) if she does it:
But new evidence strongly demonstrates the SEO and traffic-building benefits of regular daily posting — that’s every day daily — are very compelling. In fact, when social media blogger Justin Kownacki reasoned that fewer, longer, more carefully written posts might be a better strategy for him than shorter, daily posts, he kept careful track of the results.
It wasn’t pretty. His page views declined 36% in a matter of four months. His Alexa traffic ranking, relative to other websites, slipped from about 162,000 to over 245,000.
What Kownacki’s data doesn’t show is whether the fall-off was related primarily to declines in organic search visits, but that’s the conclusion drawn by Bruce Clay in a related post.
The lesson here: Google and the other search engines are on a constant, minute-by-minute scouring of the web for fresh, high-quality content. Google treats blog posts and news posts as a special type of content, often rewarding them with high rankings right out of the gate, then (unless external links argue otherwise) usually letting them sink in the rankings as they age.
Heck, I don’t consistently blog every day, but I’m going to.
Let me use a baseball metaphor:
You don’t get on base unless you swing the bat, wait for the pitcher to walk you or you step in front of the damn ball. If you want to guarantee you get on base, you know what you have to do. Sure, it stings a little, but it gets you there.
Of course, it can also kill you. But I digress…
Share what you know, what you care about and what drives you–share it with the world on your company or personal blog. Get in the game. You may even hit a homer.
Do What You Want. Be What You Are.
Great advice from the gurus at Brainzooming. Read the entire post, but this part in particular really caught my eye:
Don’t make them suffer through your brand identity crisis. This can be especially challenging for solopreneurs and small businesses with less considered brand identities. A huge part of a brand promise is predictability. Even if your brand is edgy, it should be predictably edgy. So when communicating with your audience, make sure you behave in a way that’s consistent with what your audience expects.
via Social Network Audience Strategies for Easy Participation.
In a world where people can actually make money by being edgy–even a tad vulgar (in a good way), irreverently funny and even inexplicably sexy, it’s perilous for the “solopreneurs and small businesses” who try on personas without fully embodying them. So enough with the Lady Gaga attitude, Mr. Insurance Salesman! To quote the wise men Hall and Oates, do what you want….be what you are.
On Desperation and Ways to Fight It
Today’s economy is creating a glut of misery and uncertainty. It’s also rife with desperation.
Desperation–when you’re at the end of your rope–is bad for a lot of reasons. Perhaps the most insidious is that it often robs you of the ability to know you are reeking of desperation, which makes things worse. Check out this excerpt from an excellent post by Mitch Joel:
When you’re desperate it’s hard to win business, get that job, market a product or do anything (like find a mate).
The trouble is that most people who are desperate, can’t even muster up the levity to see, feel and hear it in themselves. When you’re desperate, your confidence drops, so whether you’re looking to meet someone, get a job or close a piece of business, nobody wants to connect with someone who reeks of desperation – and therefore lacks confidence in whatever it is that they’re doing.
If you can’t find a job, there are plenty of things that you can do.
What most people fail to realize is that while they are looking for work, their full-time job is actually making themselves as knowable as possible (Hugh McGuire over at the The Book Oven and one of the co-hosts of Media Hacks once brilliantly stated, “don’t Blog to be know. Blog to be knowable”). Our work/world has changed. If you are looking for work, pay attention to this…
Read more for “Four Ways Not to Reek of Desperation” on the Six Pixels of Separation blog.
It’s Not About You
If you’re a public relations professional and find yourself antsy that you aren’t getting the glory, you may just be in the wrong line of work. One of the most important aspects of your job is to present your client/boss/company in the best possible light. Then–and only then–you may bask in the reflected glow of that light.
If you think you should be out front and have a personal fan base that rivals or eclipses that of your boss/client, you should think about what your priorities really are. Credit deserved is one thing–but that should be reflected in your performance reviews, kudos from the boss/client and your paycheck. If that isn’t enough, then you may find yourself looking for a new job or new clients.
Please remember public relations professionals: it’s not about you. Once it becomes all about you (as in you the messenger) the message is lost. File that under #FAIL.
Your time in the spotlight is when you are advocating for your client or their brand, introducing your boss at an event or responding to a crisis. The second you believe you have your own cult of personality–particularly one that is of equal or greater importance than your client– you cease to be effective. See also “Don’t Upstage the Boss.”
Exceptions to this rule? Certainly. Your client may want you to be the “face” or spokesperson of the company; host of the podcast, author of the blog and master of the Twitter feed–but everything you do in those capacities have to be of benefit to your client or in service to their brand.
Always remember: in the end, it’s about the client. It’s not about you.
