MTV: SWITCH Blog
Friday, May 23, 2008
Connors has been working on a blog project with MTV for a few months now. The project is a campaign the music television giant has launched called MTV SWITCH, which promotes a green lifestyle and presents a cool image of how to fight global warming. MTV has teamed up with ad agencies to create commercials and PSAs about climate change that they have been airing on their international channels. They have also tapped a company to create the main MTV SWITCH website. And we created the blog that accompanies their efforts. It’s an important topic, a great name behind it, and there’s a lot to write about.
So what’s been happening? The first posts went up in late December and since then we’ve been populating the site with content. The search traffic is coming in and that means we can use the HitTail suggestions to supply ideas for additional posts. So far we’re at just about a hundred unique visitors a day. It’s a beginning, and we expect the numbers to go nowhere but up.
As a brand new blog in the crowded “green” space, we are working to separate ourselves from other environmental sites by adding an MTV edge.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, HitTail, MTV Switch, music industry, politics, seo
Quality SEO
Thursday, February 14, 2008
In addition to what my colleague, Adam Edwards, writes below on the ROI of SEO, I would like to present an example that illustrates that it is not just important to invest in SEO, but to invest in quality SEO.
GoCompare.com, a UK site that allows users to compare car insurance rates, used to rank number one on Google for the coveted term: "car insurance". What this translated to was that 17.49% of people searching on that term would visit the site. As you can imagine, this amounts to a huge number of people as "car insurance" is a very popular search term.
Not surprisingly, this term was responsible for most of the traffic to GoCompare.com. Even more so than its actual name spaced out: "Go Compare".
At the end of the week of January 28th, GoCompare.com lost its coveted number one ranking because Google uncovered dubious inbound linking to the site. Apparently, GoCompare.com had invested a bit too much in the pay-per-blog "methodology", which provides links to a site (which helps with optimization) for a fee.
So, how did GoCompare.com rank after it was found out? From number one, it plummeted to the obscurity of the seventh Google search page. Needless to say, the results were detrimental.
Just 2.31% of people searching on "car insurance" went to the site the following week. This equaled to an 87% decrease in traffic! The part that probably hurt the most was the gains made by GoCompare.com's competitors, the search traffic for which increased as much as 77% in the aftermath.
Google rightly decided to hone in on the practice of paying for inbound links as it falsely portrays a sense of authority. Your site is not ranking highly on a term because you offer quality data on the particular topic, but because you paid some key blogs and other sites to link to you.
So beware! Many SEO firms that claim to shoot your site right to the top of your most important search terms are probably using these unethical practices, to which Google is catching up.
Quality SEO, just like anything else that's worthwhile, takes time. At Connors, for instance, we build your site content out so that it is SEO friendly and worthy of a searcher's attention.
Our technique does not just ensure success in the relative near future, but also for years to come. Please refer to Adam's eloquent metaphor below to get a better idea of this important difference.Labels: Connors Communications, optimization, seo, Web 2.0
Connors in the New Year
Friday, December 21, 2007
It’s hard to believe that Christmas is just days away and that 2008 is looming around the corner. The decade, which we have yet to name, is almost over!
It’s early still to reflect on the first ten years of the 21st century, but I think it is safe to say that we have come a very long way since the days of Y2K. In fact, in that short time, we have overcome the first web revolution and found ourselves basking in the glory of the second.
Some people laugh at the phrase Web 2.0, but it’s not just a gimmick. For example, yesterday there was news from the San Francisco Chronicle about a study recently conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project on the propensity of teens to engage in online content creation and sharing.
The study found that “almost two-thirds of online teens have created something online.” The article then goes into the specifics of the data, the most impressive of which is the rise in the percentage of blogging teens. In 2004, the number was just 19%, where as now, almost 30% of teenagers blog in some shape or form.
And it’s not just a phenomenon reserved for the younger generation. We are all coming to rely on the Internet at an exceedingly growing rate. If you’re skeptical, just look at what’s happening to print publications. We’re clearly no longer getting information in the ways that we grew accustomed.
It is for all these reasons that in the new year, Connors will no longer be doing PR in the same old way. We have been split between traditional PR and SEO for years, but taking society’s changing ways into consideration, it is becoming more and more clear that the traditional PR road is no longer paved in gold. The road online, however, is looking very bright.
Our president, Connie Connors, recently spoke to Enid Burns of ClickZ about our changing direction. In the resulting article, Connie points out that the communication channels no longer equate to “one-to-many.” Rather, “many-to-many” is the formula that dominates, creating a “sphere of influence.” Meaning that, with the help of the Internet, we are all now playing a more active role in each other’s lives.Labels: Connie Connors, Connors Communications, Internet, new media, Public Relations, seo, Web 2.0
Google Ogling
Friday, June 15, 2007
The issue of privacy is once again at the tips of our tongues and the culprit is, of course, the all mighty Google. One complaint revolves around the new Google Street View the other about why the company must store our information for 18 months, which was reduced from up to 24 months just this week. First, let’s examine Street View. Google went around some major US cities and snapped photographs of just about every inch of them on street level with a camera that was strapped onto a car. The images captured are now available for public viewing. What’s the purpose? You can check out a neighborhood virtually if you are, let’s say, moving there from far away or simply want to get a feel for the area where you will be having dinner tonight. In Tuesday’s Time article on this topic, Stephen Chau, product manager for Google Maps, describes one of his favorite and most practical uses of the service as checking out the street signs where he parked his car that evening to make sure that he won’t wake up to a parking ticket. So what is all the hoopla about? Well… obviously, some photos that were taken are a bit embarrassing (guy peeing on the side of the road) and some might even jeopardize reputations (guy climbing a fence, seemingly breaking into a building). In the Time article, Kevin Bankston, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said “We don't think what Google's done here is necessarily illegal, though a few images may cross the line and may create liability. It's more that they've done something that's really irresponsible and rude to people.” So is it really all Google’s fault that people behave this way? Should the people themselves not be held accountable for their own actions? Google has an explanation as well. Chau contends, “Street View only features imagery taken on public property and is not real time. This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.” Google also plans to blur out the faces of people captured in Street View, securing their anonymity. And what about Google saving our IP addresses in relation to our search queries for 18 months? This past week, Google received a complaint from the Working Party, which is a group of privacy policy advisors for the European Union. In response, Google made the change from storing the information for 18 – 24 months to just 18 months. Yet some are still concerned about this length of time. The other day, we were discussing this very issue in our office. Our SEO guru and Connors Vice President, Mike Levin, was explaining that privacy simply cannot be regarded with the same standards of even 10 years ago. This is our sacrifice to technology. But it’s not as dramatic as it sounds… 1984 is in the past after all and Google is hardly big brother. But I will say that it is always beneficial to have people on both extremes, fighting the “what ifs” and keeping Google and the like in line. Labels: Connors Communications, Internet
The Cobbler's Children DON'T Live at Connors
Saturday, April 28, 2007
OK, here's the remarkable thing to make my point about blogging, SEO and the long tail. This page is in the first page for the term "cobbler's children".
I was merely stating that the Connors Communications PR firm that created HitTail is NOT a victim of cobbler's children syndrome, because we do practice what we preach.
Did that earn us the first page of Google on this 2-word term, as if we were a Wikipedia entry? I don't think so, but hey, you be the judge. Comments welcome.Labels: Cobbler's Children, Connors Communications, HitTail, PR firm, PR firms, seo, The Long Tail
What is a Public Relations Firm ?
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Public Relations or PR is the art of managing communication between a company and its targeted public audience. The goal of a PR agency such as Connors Communications is to help its clients build and sustain a positive public image. Some of you may be wondering, "How is this goal realized?" The simple answer is; "By carefully creating strategic outreach plans to influence the influencers." Some of these methods include things like press releases, press conferences, and Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ). Public Relations was originally meant to be a broad field but there has been a recent movement of PR firms towards specialization. These so-called "boutique" firms are specialists in areas such as public relations crisis management, technology PR, or health care PR. Connors specializes in helping emerging technology companies through online outreach, crisis management, brand building, and much more...Labels: Connors Communications, pr, seo
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Connie Connors, and HitTail's Mike Levin
Ever wonder what we look like in person? Meet Connors Communications' founder and president, Connie Connors. Also meet Connors' in-house inventor of the new HitTail website optimization product that's starting to get a lot of attention in marketing circles.Labels: Connie Connors, Connors Communications, HitTail, HitTail Plus, Mike Levin
HitTail.com: PageRank of 5 in 4 Months
Friday, October 13, 2006
So, the HitTail.com was registered on June 6, 2006 and we're only at mid-October. In one third of a year, the PR firm of Connors Communications brought a site from a Google PageRank of 0 to a PageRank of 5. Not that PageRank is all that important in long tail optimization, but with all else being equal, if two sites target the same keywords, the one with the higher PageRank will win. So, it's nice to see it go so high so quickly.
This is also a testament to the marketing approach of saying to heck with link building. Just put out a superior product that everyone loves, and make some portion or version of it free. We have no affiliate programs. We haven't asked to trade links. People are just spontaneously linking to HitTail.com throughout the blogosphere. This is yet another reason why search engine optimization is really just a subset of the public relations industry. It's just that no one in PR or SEO really accept this fact yet.
Sure, one can argue that HitTail has been such a success organically because it appeals to the online-savvy crowd predisposed to linking. But that is only particularly true of HitTail because we are so early in the evolution of the new online media of citizen publishing. Give it a few more years, and the "superior product gets rewarded" strategy will work in just about every industry as those audiences go online. And link-building campaigns will be so last-century.
So the message here is that Connors practices what it preaches. We bring our own sites from brand-new unregistered domains to PageRank of 5 and search engine results out the wazoo in under 1/4 of a year, without even asking for a single link. Often, companies are guilty of the "cobbler's children have no shoes" effect. I'm here to tell you that my PR and SEO teams at Connors are as effective in garnering publicity for its own internally incubated technology as they are the handful of emerging technology companies that we take on as clients. And that will serve as one impressive modern PR case study.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, Google, HitTail, HitTail Plus, pr, seo
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posted by Mike Levin |
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How We Help Clients
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
As an agency with a strong base of loyal clients, Connors strives to serve each and every client by maintaining strong relationships and continuing to provide valuable services in the areas of public relations and search engine optimization.
Each and every work day, the agents at Connors work hard for media placement and search engine authority on behalf of various clients. Once a week, the teams meet with each client to discuss how the project is going, what the accomplishments are for the past week and what the next steps should be. Then, taking the client's expertise in their industry along with Connors' expertise in PR and SEO, each team has an internal meeting each week to organize outreach and proactively plan what should come next. This puts Connors one step ahead, looking at what is working now and what will work in the future. This is why a client at Connors Communications does not just have a launch, but they have a launch followed by announcements, news, and profiles, and other timely coverage spread out over time. The same goes for blog coverage and other online outreach.
Helping clients means obtaining the goals that they give as well as using the expertise in the office to figure out what more can be done for optimal coverage. Then, working with the client, these ideas are explored and implemented as seen fit. It is this special attention, hard work, and proactive thinking that allows Connors to help clients each and every day in the office.Labels: Connors Communications, pr, seo
PR Bloggers
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Robert Scoble wrote that blogging is existing and that this word of mouth network is the new PR. If you want your idea out there and you want your news to matter, it needs to be in the blogosphere and people need to be talking about it. A company's own employees can be talking or bloggers can be talking about the company. Either way, someone needs to be saying something on a well-respected blog in order to get anyone online to listen. It's an interesting idea. Connors is a PR firm that blogs and also reaches out to bloggers. Connors blogs, therefore it is.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, pr
Communications Firm
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
So what does it mean to be a communications firm? It involves reaching the public with the right message that will help raise awareness and appreciation of a company. This communication is achieved a number of ways. We write content so that people searching will come across information and get the messages directly. Another way is to work with reporters to let them know about the company so that they will be interested in communicating that to their readers. Sometimes a viral campaign and outreaching to bloggers is the best way to work toward communicating with potential customers.
Communicating is all about getting a piece of information out to a certain person or groups of people. When the scope of this communication makes one-on-one conversations impractical, a communications firm can hit strategic places to get the message out through as many avenues as possible. Connors is a PR firm that specializes in successful communication.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, pr
What Makes a Good PR Person?
Monday, July 24, 2006
While blogging, I've spent a lot of time discussing what Connors does for clients and what sets Connors apart from the rest. When it comes right down to it, people are what make Connors successful. The talented and sharp public relations specialists who work here make all the difference. So what exactly does it take become a good PR professional?
A good PR person is someone who has impeccable speaking and writing skills. It is someone who can look at a bunch of information and pick out exactly what is news and what of it matters the most. A successful public relations agent is personable and can "read" people well, picking up on subtle clues and implied meaning as well as stated comments. To do well in PR, you need to always be thinking, strategizing, and brainstorming. If one method doesn’t work, you switch to another and always do research beforehand. Most of all, a PR professional can’t be afraid to pick up the phone and must be able to accept no as an answer. Most outreach does not lead to coverage, but it is this process of outreaching and building relationships that will end up getting coverage for clients.
A talented PR person can come from any major or prior career track. Much of PR is utilizing the relationships with reporters that you build through time in the industry. This experience gives you a better sense of what each reporter is looking for and what news will appeal to each. It is through these connections and knowledge that a truly successful PR agent is formed and Connors pools its experience in the industry to cultivate this success.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, outreach, pr
The Buzz About PR 2.0 Firms & Technology
Sunday, July 23, 2006
It seems that PR companies "getting it" either consists of partaking in online dialogues via blogging, optimizing press releases, or word-of-mouth buzz. I went to a conference recently, and any time I would introduce myself as being from a PR firm, people immediately thought I was going to talk about the "buzz thing". Some of our peers out there that have done a very effective job of positioning PR as word-of-mouth bumble bees, real-time bloggers or press release optimizers.
While we believe in and partake in these practices, the PR industry has been so successful in getting these messages out, that it makes the challenge even more difficult for PR agencies that are technological innovators. Its one thing to be experts at using online tools, such as blog software or newswires, but it's an entirely different thing to have the insight and capacity to invent wholly new technologies and marketing methodologies.
And PR agencies such as Connors are doing exactly that with applications such as HitTail. And now that we have defined a new category of software, tools to help you write for the long tail of search, we have to get over the hurdle that we're branded as buzzers and bloggers and blasters... oh my!
HitTail fosters a decidedly softer sell that's more aligned to the true mission of PR--to get you publicity that you could never have paid for at any price--usually in the form of editorial coverage. You generally pay less for PR than large advertising campaigns, but the pay-off can be much greater. The favorite saying is what is a mention in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal worth? Today, the equivalent is saying what's a top position in Google, Yahoo or MSN worth? PR and SEO are the same. And brilliant editorial coverage is what happens when the client's prospects FIND THEM in the due course of their research, vendor selection process, or the like. In other words, that taboo acronym: SEO, but made palatable to the mainstream marketers of the world.
So, the question is how does a PR agency formulatize the process of SEO? It needs the intimidating luggage that goes with that horrible acronym removed. And it needs to be executed in a reliable, confidence-building fashion, similarly to how the traditional process may involve positioning & messaging, SWOT analysis, pitching news to journalists, and staging newsworthy events.
PR's answer to online marketing is not merely making those same press releases more effective through search, though that helps. PR's answer is not just in opening a corporate blog and entering the online discussion, though that helps. And PR's answer is not merely in chatting it up online or off, though that helps. The answer is in incrementally and systematically dominating an entire conceptual area on the Internet. And since some conceptual areas are so difficult to penetrate in natural search, the answer is in finding the right starting point, carving out a niche, and continuing digging out from the niche in concentric circles until it grows into a crevice, then a cavern, then a canyon. This is not theory. It actually works. You can control a lot of quality traffic in your space this way.
HitTailing works because there's easy pickings out there in the long tail of natural search. If you pick a phrase that's at all off the beaten track and write about it in blogging software, you're almost assured a strong position in the search results. And it may pay off. The difficulty is in knowing where to begin and improving your odds. And a PR agency has the answer. A PR firm has such a deep strategic understanding of natural search that they were able to break out just a tiny piece of the SEO offerings that they offer to their clients, with that alone, potentially move the entire state of online marketing a large step forward.
The technology is necessary, filling a major missing hole in online marketing tools. Why? Because, if you begin in the wrong part of the long tail of keywords, you're going to be doing a whole lot of writing for nothing. But if you start in the right place, then you're going to start growing traffic and improve the accuracy in your decisions of where to go next in that endless long tail of potentially lucrative, but mostly time-wasting long tail of search. This technology is 50% automation, and 50% hard work, because you can't automate the craft of writing original content.
But I find myself constantly having to knock down the buzzing and the blogging and the news blasting hurdles, which were the first PR attempts to master online media. It has actually given the some SEM firm counterparts a lot of ammunition to discount PR agencies as limited in technical capabilities. As practitioners of warm & fuzzy relationship building, there's no way we can consult about search on a strategic level, some say. In fact, they plan on making the search discussion so technologically intimidating, that they scare away traditional agencies, and reduce the competition in the new media agency space.
Connors has actually made the deliberate decision to deliver paid-search through partners, and to focus instead itself on genuine editorial search coverage. This is the proper domain for PR, and is ever more widely acknowledged by industry observers as the most valuable company asset. Those who master natural search--especially ACROSS engines--are not beholden to anyone. As engines come and go, their asset and very strong posture will remain. With properly executed public relations, a strong presence in search is not the result of an advertising campaign that only lasts as long as you're buying the media. Instead, it persists, just as with the genuine reputation that comes from repeated exposure from trusted sources.
Connors has developed technology to do exactly that. It's different from the type of software you'll find in the SEM world, such as bid management tools, because it's not a media buy. It's a media seize--but in very small, smart increments. Results will be completely measurable, and over time, you can grab bigger and bigger pieces of the editorial media. Eventually, such small grabs will build enough critical mass within your site that making the big keyword grabs becomes possible.
What do I mean by that? Well for example, search for PR firm in any major search engine. Connors was not able to achieve the first page position across all major engines over night, even though it's the subject matter of the main homepage. We first had to start with smaller concepts. We used HitTailing to build up the content of our website and our blog. And over time, the concept of PR firms kept coming up, and natural links started to occur to us from people discovering our site, and they would reliably refer to us as a PR firm, without any prodding on our part. It's a 100% organic process that led from obscure HitTailing to spot-on cross-engine top positions on a paydirt primary keyword that PR firms much larger than us would kill for.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, Google, HitTail, HitTail Plus, MSN, outreach, pr, SEM, seo, Yahoo
PR Buzz
Friday, July 21, 2006
Every day around the office, we toss around PR terms and lingo. One of these terms and one of the most coveted results that public relations outreach can achieve is "buzz." When lots of people are all talking about one piece of news, it has buzz. But how do you get everyone aware and talking at once?
There are a number of ways to create buzz. One way is through traditional public relations, getting the news into print and other media. These news outlets must always be fed with stories and are seen by a lot of eyes who may talk about the articles or segments over the water cooler. Or, you could try to get a viral campaign started, tapping Internet resources and blogs. This is a smaller start but can be just as affective at creating big-time buzz. Another way to create buzz is through an effective advertising campaign, although this can be a costly and time-consuming approach compared to PR.
When working on generating buzz, it has to be the right kind. The tricky part is choosing the right message that will resonate and generate the most positive buzz for the company. It is not always the case that all news is good news and you need to make sure that you're creating beneficial buzz that is not only good for the company now, but will be built upon by future messages for maximum affect and brand building. This is where the expertise of a specialized PR firm like Connors Communications can come in handy.Labels: buzz, Connors Communications, pr
PR Plan
Thursday, July 20, 2006
What exactly is a PR plan and how does this lead to press coverage? It's much more than a matter of calling the media with news about a company. When outreaching, you need to know what news you are going to go out with when, who you are going to take it to, and what this will accomplish. An article here and an article there can get some people aware of what is going on at your company. However, articles carefully placed with messages that build off of one another create a bigger picture and help generate buzz.
It is this kind of PR plan that Connors helps companies create and execute that makes the most impact. It incorporates both print media and online media and then uses the messaging points that will make the news resonate. A carefully built grass roots campaign that gets local interest first has a much different momentum than a news story that makes a big splash in a few major papers first and then trickles down. Connors can see where the news will have the most impact and put together the right PR plan for the right message.
It all comes down to experience. Knowing the publications and knowing the reporters means that Connors can see who will be interested and where the news would be best spread. Also, being a leader in PR for emerging technologies, Connors has a knack for what angle to pitch. Every successful company launch or news outreach starts with a comprehensive public relations plan. Connors can help you build and execute that plan to get the most value out of your news.Labels: buzz, Connors Communications, pr
Boutique Agency
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
You may recognize by name the big public relations institutions that are located in New York City and elsewhere. These firms have lots of clients and a cookie cutter PR plan. Numerous employees can contact all sorts of media…for a large firm fee.
When a PR plan requires a bit more finesse, a smaller and more personalized PR firm may be more effective. A boutique agency like Connors Communications can create a strategic plan that fits your needs precisely. With highly experienced PR agents who have personalized contacts with media, your message will get out to exactly the audience you're looking for. Connors is especially experienced in emerging technology, being able to execute launch outreach, explain new technology to interested press, and outreach to traditional as well as online outlets.
With a boutique agency, you can get more attention and a more companied-specific outreach plan than at some of the larger firms. You know exactly who is working on your account and know you can trust each and every member of your PR team. A boutique agency like Connors Communications can create and execute a carefully-crafted PR strategy that will garner media interest in your company.Labels: Connors Communications, outreach, pr
Putting Your AdWords into Stealth Mode
Thursday, July 06, 2006
With the recent Yahoo settlement of the click fraud case, the flurry of follow-up news is coming out, including a study just announced by Outsell, Inc. Their survey states that 37 percent of marketers reduced their click-based advertising, and that the money paid in fraudulent clicks is about $800 million... compared to the $7 billion size of the industry, that's a sizable percentage if it is to be believed.
Are you planning to cut back your paid search spending? Perhaps we can recommend an alternative. If you want to get high-quality click through and conversion, advertise on keywords other than the obvious "benchmark terms" known by you and your competitors, then switch from broad matching to narrow matching. In this way, you keep running your PPC campaigns, but they go into "stealth mode" in the long tail of search.
But how do you choose such keywords? Well, Connors just happened to develop a tool for natural search engine optimization which is proving to be an invaluable asset in improving AdWords campaigns when you import the natural search keyword list. How is this possible? Your cost per click is driven down in Google as your relevancy is deemed to be improved. This is why you have to remove terms that are underperforming in order to "fine tune" your campaigns. We have HitTail users reporting campaign improvements doubling, from 3% to 6% click-through. Using your long tail keywords in your paid campaign appears to trigger off some sort of "relevancy" magic that both improves performance and drives down campaign cost.
So, use HitTail for a few weeks, and export the natural optimization keyword lists using HitTail's new export tool. Plow them into your AdWords campaigns. Switch from broad to narrow matching, and watch your PPC campaign go into stealth mode, and confound your competition who probably doesn't have the time or resources to monitor on more than a fixed list of well known benchmark terms.
This of course has the secondary advantage of helping you start to fix your state of natural search results. The same terms that will fine-tune an AdWords campaign are often excellent subject matter for new blog posts, which will in turn improve your natural search results and further reduce your exposure to click fraud risk by simply making a larger portion of your clicks into the free variety. It's a form of hedging your bets.
And this answers the two notions that have been nagging at the back of the minds of online marketers for some time: is click fraud happening on my site? And isn't doing well in natural search a better online initiative? If you answer Yes to both of these questions, then the time is perfect for you to check out the new HitTail tool that is advancing the state of online marketing.Labels: Adwords, Connors Communications, Google, HitTail, HitTail Plus, Yahoo
PR Firm Makes it to Museum of Modern Betas
Monday, July 03, 2006
That's right, a product created by a NYC PR firm has reached Saurier Duval's clever and popular Museum of Modern Betas site... twice! Thank you, Saurier for recognizing the value of re-listing us since our name change. It will help us a lot in getting established.
For a variety of reasons, we changed our name from MyLongTail to HitTail. And in doing so, lost some initial momentum. The MyLongTail beta site was becoming linked-to at an increasingly rapid rate. The domain acquired a Google PR of 2 within days of the beta announcement--rare for a brand-new domain. So it was with this sense of urgency that we wanted to get the renaming over with as quick as possible.
Thankfully, we are rapidly regaining our momentum, and just about everyone who blogged about us during our beta release in June has made follow-up posts with our new name. It's in this spirit of gratitude that I'm making this post, to acknowledge the important role that Saurier and site's like his play in giving new beta sites their fair chance in the new Darwinian landscape of Web 2.0... whoops, Web Infinitiy Plus One, betas. Now, if we could just show up in O'Someone's Radar and Michael Arrington's blog. All in due time, I suppose.
Incubating HitTail inside of a New York public relations firm has been an interesting experience, balancing the needs of clients against the desire to extract and abstract a tiny piece of the secret recipe that gives us our edge--then, altruistically giving it away to the world. We're doing this in great part because it is going to be a big public relations win, in and of itself. But we're also doing it with great care, so we do not upset either our Clients, to whom we provide a far greater superset of services, or the search engines themselves, for whom we wish to make their jobs easier and not harder.
The process has also been an exercise in intellectual acrobatics. The connection between PR and SEO was absolutely clear in my mind when I joined Connors. But the way to turn it into a universally appealing product that was not too techie, and which could also scale to meet the potentially massive worldwide demand was not. That took some thought. But we're there now.
Almost everything about HitTail is innovative and counter-intuitive. It hearkens back to the days when Google first started making the rounds outside Stanford. Remember your first reaction? It was probably "so what". It definitively took a few open-minded tries to understand why this stripped-down, seemingly rehash site was indeed something special. It was a culmination of simplicity, relevance and performance at a time that AltaVista and others left an opening so big you could drive a GooglePlex through.
And so it is with HitTail. But instead of the opening being made by anti-search Portal-centrism, the opening is made in the broad divide between the disciplines of natural search engine optimization (intimidating even just to say) and pay-per-click search engine marketing. In other words, the gap between SEO and SEM.
This gap is colossally larger than the chatter on the Internet would lead you to believe. One field is full of technical and editorial projects with built-in inertial resistance. The other field is becoming more like media-buying every day, as analytics increasingly tie back into the campaign / bid management software in order to auto-optimize campaigns, thereby removing the once-technical barriers; in other words, easy!
Are you following? SEO, the free and natural part, remains difficult and rife with politics and inertial resistance. SEM on the other hand, the $7 billion industry part, is becoming easier and more automated due to the financial incentives to make it so. In between lies the void. Atmospheric pressures collide, and there, inside the tornado, lies HitTail.
It is with this level of strategic thinking that we created the HitTail product. It is with the desire to fill this void that we named it with a noun, a verb, and a present participle. You use the HitTail site, therefore, you HitTail. This makes you a HitTailer engaged in the practice of HitTailing. And it is neither the intimidating uncertainties of SEO, nor directly paying homage at the alter of G/Y/M.
And because HitTail is solid, delivering on exactly what it promises, and is adding features with the same cautions "stay close to core" approach as Google, we're not getting shoved into the crowded analytics space (the "portals" of today). Also, similar to Google, our service is so radically different, without seeming so at first glance, due to something very analogous to PageRank that lurks behind the scenes--something that makes our writing suggestions super-charged for natural search effectiveness.
We are effectively taking a practice that many of the most advanced, top-of-their-field SEOs have long engaged in, and making the average marketing Joe able to do the same thing. But this is the nature of all technologies. They are arcane and difficult-seeming at first, but then someone comes along and cost reduces, improves ergonomics and markets it for the masses: like Henry Ford. Or like Prometheus bringing fire to the people. It's a recurring theme, and is inevitable.
But we are not simply making a high-end SEO method as it existed available to everyone. We are adding our own special formula. Just as Larry Page realized that hyperlinking was the equivalent of academic citations, and was a key indicator of relevance in what was to become PageRank, so have we come to understand the key indicators of what is bound to work in terms of natural search.
And THAT is what makes the HitTail data so special, and using HitTail such a source of competitive advantage.
So, on this note, we'll end this blog post that started as a simple thanks to Saurier Duval and the Museum of Modern Betas. It's a real sign of the times when a PR firm in New York City can incubate one of these puppies itself, from idea to execution, instead of waiting for it to come in as a Client.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, Google, HitTail, HitTail Plus, pr, seo, The Long Tail
PR Isn't Adapting, It's Leading
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Where does Public Relations' ability to embrace new technologies and business models come from, where traditional advertising channels are struggling to hold onto their piece of the global marketing budget pie? I think the ability to adapt and jump on unorthodox approaches to generating publicity is just part of the DNA of public relations. Let me explain.
The notion that a company can announce its own activities as newsworthy is in itself a radical and relatively new notion. It brings up church and state issues in journalism. None-the-less, there is no denying that the activities of companies impact society, current events, and even our personal wealth with how more people are invested in stocks. And where high-tech is concerned, it is all the more so, because it reflects upon the overall human condition. The constant flow of nanotube news comes to mind, and how we're inching ever-towards manufacturing on the molecular level. Pure science and industry have never been so closely coupled.
And it is this technology itself that is disrupting traditional media businesses. As data flows more freely, and distribution barriers fall, special interest channels rise, and reaching your audience becomes simultaneously cheaper and more challenging. It's cheaper, because your information is just bits that fly over the ether at virtually no cost. It's more challenging, because anyone can do this, and audiences are organizing and reorganizing themselves into ever-shifting ad hoc communities. Targeting them is more like programming an intelligent missile rather than aiming an arrow.
It is in this environment that public relations shines, and the "old formulas" of press releases and pitching transform into new formulas of blogging, email and social networking. The three big networks of ABC, CBS and NBC are forced to co-exist with countless cable networks, and now even user contributed content over sites like YouTube. Print has undergone similar fragmentation, and additionally has to compete with free RSS feeds that are readable now on the average mobile phone. There is no equivalent today of the ABC, CBC and NBC... well, almost no equivalent.
Search has elevated itself into a mainstream media, and today's giants are Yahoo, Google and MSN, constituting an eerily similar "big 3" resemblance to TV networks. In the runners up, you've even got the media mavens of QVC fame in Barry Diller of Interactive Corp and Ask, and Rupert Murdoch of Fox and MySpace. While you can't achieve similar saturation with a simple media buy as you could on the big TV networks 15 years ago, you can be sure that virtually your entire audience will be visiting Yahoo, Google or MSN some time soon. And you can "rig" the system to deliver your message at exactly the right moment... when... they... search!
It's like today's equivalent of the big-3 networks have an ultra-efficient method of delivering advertising, where you the advertiser never has to pay until the moment you know your intended audience is actually interested and predisposed to your message. And this form of media is competing for the same global marketing budget as TV and print. It is more like a redistribution of these fixed marketing dollars than it is growing or shrinking of advertising budgets. And public relations is uniquely suited to deal with these shifts.
While public relations does have a "formula" per se, involving press releases and pitching, it has always had a more versatile word-of-mouth and publicity aspect that revels in unorthodoxy. It is the unexpected or the extreme that can make a grab for the "free" editorial space that exists in all media. On TV, it's the equivalent of news spots and guest appearances. In print, it's usually the subject-matter of the main articles. And on the Internet, it is both the viral word-of-mouth thing, AND the "natural" results in search.
This is contrary to much of the message that the "inner circles" of the public relations industry are repeating these days. Much of the talk centers around how the traditional formula involving press releases is changing, or how blogging is such a powerful method of engaging in the public dialogue. While I wholeheartedly agree with these notions, I also think that they are missing the big picture by such a broad mark that I had to develop a product by way of responding.
And the HitTail product is Connors Communications way of throwing its hat into the ring. The field of public relations is not merely adapting to these media changes; it is leading. Public relations is not merely keeping itself relevant, it is educating the rest of the world on what it means to be relevant in the new media landscape. Public relations is not merely struggling to reproduce the big viral marketing wins of years past, it is creating brand new methods of virally disseminating a message.
Indeed, HitTailing is like solving simultaneous equations in a way that produces results already described by detractors as "too good to be true." It provides your corporate blogging strategy and your free search hit strategy in one master stroke. "Too good to be true" is quickly becoming the strongest argument among HitTailing naysayers. Think about that. The only things standing between us moving forward the entire state of Marketing are keeping pace with demand, and convincing users that "too good to be true" sometimes IS true.
This is an admirable accomplishment indeed, both for Connors Communications and the field of public relations as a whole. The very companies that stood by and watched as new businesses incubated from operations like Idealab are now able to become their own incubators, their own Angels, and their own Venture Capitalists. For Connors, it was the culmination of about two years of providing these services as a public relations value-add, realizing they had something that could only achieve its fullest potential if let lose in the Web 2.0 ecosystem, and so it has.
So, where multimillion dollar media buys can still allow you to achieve saturation of a sort on today's equivalent of the big-3 networks (PPC campaigns on Yahoo, Google and MSN), the equivalent of getting onto the Ed Sullivan Show or American Idol is HitTailing. It costs you nothing more than the work of putting yourself in the right place at the right time to be discovered, doing it by piecing together the minute clues left for you by your past website visitors.
This unorthodox thinking is something that has always been characteristic of the public relations industry. Sometimes it has taken the form of glitzy stunts that capture the news cameras. Other times, it takes the form of stunning acts of generosity and altruism by PR clients. Very often, it takes no form at all, merely being an invisible influence over what companies and stories are favorably covered. When PR is at its finest, you don't know it is there at all. And so it is that the free and practical alternative to paying for search hits was born in the offices of a New York PR firm, and is now suitable for use by every marketing department in every company in the world.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, Google, HitTail, HitTail Plus, MSN, Myspace, pr, Yahoo, Youtube
Friday, June 30, 2006
HitTail - A Practical Alternative To Paying For Search Hits
Welcome to HitTail, a practical alternative to paying for search hits--and a free service to all low-to-medium traffic sites.
Connors Communications, the company bringing it to you is the PR firm that launched Amazon.com and Priceline. We worked with GoTo.com in the early days, helping to establish the pay-per-click industry. And now, we're doing it again... but this time through the long tail of natural search.
What is The Long Tail? It's a notion popularized by Wired Magazine Editor-in-Chief, Chris Anderson, implying that less popular items collectively account for large amounts of business. Here, the items in green outnumber the most popular items in red.
Initially, this concept was great for online music stores with no physical inventory, so their library was impossibly large, compared to their retail counterparts. But soon, the concept was equally embraced by pay-per-click firms, managing massive keyword campaigns.
But a dirty little secret is that long tail strategy is even better when applied to natural search than PPC... where all the less popular search terms already account for the largest amounts of traffic. We just take it to the next level.
What's natural search? It's the portion of the search results that people come to the search engines for... shown here in green. It's the equivalent of editorial content... while sponsored pay-per-click results are the equivalent of advertisements. This advertising / editorial mix is characteristic of most media, maintains trust, and we expected to continue.
And as a PR firm, we believe that natural search is better... because it's the equivalent of real world reputation. Securing a listing HERE is the best deal in marketing, with the lowest possible cost of customer acquisition--even lower than PPC. It's like landing free editorial coverage in mainstream media. Every visitor is partially pre-qualified and in is in a receptive state.
The mission of our new HitTail service is to lower your reliance on paid ads while increasing your qualified visitor traffic from natural search... in a sustainable, long-term, cross-engine fashion.
The problem was that until now, no product has been able to deliver this without incurring some sort of penalty... keeping it out of the world of mainstream marketing. HitTailing changes all that. By knowing what’s “almost working” for you, you can grow the mouth of your opportunity funnel while respecting the search engines, and being good net citizen.
The technique has already been used to help many Connors' clients create "super-niches". For any journalists listening, we may be able to get them to talk.
So, whose a candidate to become a HitTailer?
• Anyone who wants to stop paying to acquire visitors
• Anyone who currently has a pay-per-click ad campaign
• Basically, the marketing departments of every company in every country of the world
It's an easy value prop: Use HitTail to quickly identify lucrative new topics, and apply all that saved energy to actually WRITING about the topic. You thereby help increase sales and lower marketing costs. This “formulatized” approach is safer and more long-lived than other methods. It's blogging with insight.
How is this accomplished? HitTail tells you WHAT to write about for growing an effective long tail of natural search...
Watch in real-time as the search hits come in... and get addicted to the black river of keywords that occurs in any healthy site. Learn which keywords HitTail suggests that you write about.
The HitTail site actually shows you the growing long tail of your site. Far into the tail, and for reasons that are not obvious, is the best and most often overlooked data. Connors has developed a unique way to identify these words and turn them into short, actionable lists! Using HitTail is like us doing all the mining dirty work, and handing you the gems.
By optimizing on these gems, you take results found many pages in and bringing them to the top--exposing much more of your site overall. Determined searchers are thereby cluing you into where you should locate yourself for each future iteration.
Each HitTail tab lets you quickly review and pair-down lists, until you have an editorial checklist of topics that will drive traffic.
The first three tabs are only there for their good looks. It's in the Suggestions tab that the HitTailing magic resides. Evaluate new words that appear under this tab, and choose to write about them... or not. Move only the good ones to the To Do tab, which simply works as an editorial checklist. Check them off this list once you've actually used them as the title topic of a blog post or other content on your site, such as FAQs or press releases.
It's that simple. That's HitTailing. It works.
Keeping this up over time results in the snowball effect. A site that snowballs in size and quality over time is rewarded by nearly all search engines. HitTailing helps this happen at a faster rate than with blogging alone. Seeing the results takes much longer with Yahoo than with Google and MSN, but your patience will pays off. Overall, this strategy takes longer than PPC. But PPC is like paying rent, while at the end of HitTailing, you own the house.
How does HitTail know what terms are "almost" working on your site? Just like analytics software, we provide a snippet of code to be inserted into your template. The moment the tracking code is in place, you will see your search hits occurring. Notice the real-time black river of keywords.
This alone has driven many a HitTail user to detox.
So, how do you get started down this alluring trail?
Simply, go to www.hittail.com, click the login link and register. Put the snippet of code in your template, and volia!
It's important to remember that HitTail is NOT analytics software. We are not tracking individual users or conversions. We just do suggestions... bluntly stating: "If you write it, they will come" This deceptively simple process is off-putting to some who love pouring over analytics. That's fine. They're in the best position to see the results of HitTailing, as opposed to being the practitioners.
But for those who see the magic, we've provided what we think is the fastest way for you to feel the love. The sooner you get started, the better it works.
So, what's your next step?
You can give it a try by clicking the login in link and signing up as a beta tester.
You can spread the word... or keep it as your SEO secret weapon. You decide.
Thanks for listening, and we hope to see you join us soon.Labels: Connors Communications, Google, HitTail, HitTail Plus, MSN, pr, seo, The Long Tail, Yahoo
I HitTail, You HitTail
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
We chose a wonderful name for the new Connors Web 2.0 killer app, and the positive quotes being left all over the Internet are telling the story. And that's all while we're in the first few weeks of a very quiet beta soft launch. I only just announced the service at a few forums specializing in "search engine optimization" and registrations have been almost doubling every week ever since. We've got our scaling plan all worked out, and we expect to make a very big splash in the worlds of public relations and marketing.
Our name implies that we are a noun, verb and present participle. Visit the HitTail site where you can HitTail. You will be HitTailing, and that makes you a HitTailer.
Another major accomplishment was taking some very obtuse concepts and making them understandable to the world. Chris Anderson is doing a big favor for us by mainstreaming the Long Tail concept, which is one of the principles at work behind the HitTailing process. But also, we have been able to take our original PowerPoint demo and Flash-ify it for a much livelier, more engaging experience. At the end, you're like "oh, of course!" And THAT is a huge accomplishment for something that one could hardly wrap ones' mind around a few months back.
So in a few months, I expect a lot more folks will be joining us as HitTailers, looking at search hits that occurred on their sites as unique events to be learned from as assuredly as if someone slipped a note into a suggestion box. In a very real way, it is like W. Edward Deming's principles of total quality management (TQM) applied to website content. Who knows what keywords to target better than your most determined Website visitors who actually worked hard to find you?
Take their advice, and make it easier for everyone the next time.Labels: Connors Communications, HitTail, HitTail Plus, The Long Tail
PR Firm NYC
High up in the towering skyscrapers and glass-enclosed office buildings, all sorts of businesses can be found all over the city. There are businesses meant directly for consumers and businesses that help support other businesses. New York City is a hotbed of commercial enterprise and Connors has a great location, right in the middle of it all. Connors Communications is actually located in the Flat Iron District, not all that far from the Empire State Building. The office is in a building only twelve stories tall, unlike some of the financial district giants. This building has character, and I think that very accurately reflects the people working inside.
To survive as a PR firm in NYC, you need to be competitive, successful, and ahead of the curve. There are so many choices in this town to pick from. But as soon as clients walk into our office, the polish of the surroundings and the professionals working there becomes apparent. There is a buzz of activity with phone calls, meetings, outreach planning. Inside the walls of this Flat Iron District office building, Connors is alive with activity and working hard for clients. Although we are not one of the larger PR firms, and take on only a small number of clients that we can highly service, we still like to consider ourselves among of the best PR firms in NYC. :)Labels: Connors Communications, pr
Writing for Search Engine Optimization
I've written before about the importance of writing in an SEO strategy. Recently, I haven't been the only one authoring online content. As part of the latest Connors offering, HitTail, Mike has been busy blogging about its creation, progress and uses. He has worked on explaining the product and in the process, starting to show up on some very useful keywords.
I'd like to mention this because it's a great way to back up a launch. In addition to gaining top rankings for important search terms, it also helps to manage brand image. If you search Feedster right now, you will find articles from SEO Scoop and other sites mixed in with all the HitTail blog entries that Mike has been writing. Any issue brought up, like whether or not the site will always be free, is quickly answered by a blog post on the product site, with an official response. Any questions are either anticipated and covered or answered once they're brought up elsewhere. In this way, all feedback is encouraged and any concerns addressed, making it a very flexible, receptive, and active launch.
I just wanted to bring this up because I've been following Mike's blogging and think it's a great example of what we're working to do here with search engine optimization writingLabels: blog, Connors Communications, HitTail, HitTail Plus, Mike Levin, seo
Public Relations Campaign for New Business
This thought kind of ties into my last post. Not all new businesses are e-commerce, yet all new businesses can greatly benefit from a carefully planned PR launch. When you’re working on spreading the word about a new business, there’s a lot of work that goes on beforehand to ensure that the launch is successful. After having a good deal of experience, Connors knows what it takes to plan a successful Public Relations campaign for a new business.
Pre-Pitching
In an effort to make the launch a big news story through the art of surprise, you may spring it onto journalists last minute and be surprised yourself at how little coverage results. Instead, let reporters know, but let them know that it is embargoed news. They want to be on top of a breaking story just as much as you want them to cover your news. Also, start to let analysts in to check out your offerings, especially if it has a technology base to it. If you can get analyst support behind you, this will greatly help your cause when pitching reporters.
Planning for Everything
Things don't always go as planned and the best launches have a back-up plan ready in case something goes wrong. Brainstorm about worst case scenarios. Think about what kind of criticism your product could potentially get. Then plan for it. Figure out now what you will do then and if anything does happen, you'll be ready. Don't let this scare you too much, because if you’ve done all the background work, this should stay on the shelf as an unused emergency back-up plan.
Do Your Homework
There is nothing more useful than knowing your industry, the issues currently in that industry, and the reporters who cover that news. If you know what people are writing about, you can see how you fit into the bigger story. You can also get a better idea of who you should be targeting in outreach. Having that initial list ready of all the people who should know about you will help tremendously when you announce your big launch and you want to get some coverage.Labels: Connors Communications, pr
Europe's Silicon Valley
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Silicon Valley in northern California has been a household name since the dot-com era. Silicon Alley in New York City is also fairly well-known. Connors has been proud to work with companies from each over the years. And while we've also had clients from Europe, we are still wondering where exactly the equivalent is across the pond. A quick search on Google reveals a number of different areas vying for the honor. London, UK. Limerick, Ireland. Sophia Antipolis, France. Munich, Germany. Barcelona, Spain. The whole country of Estonia. Even all of Scandinavia. Will Europe ever decide? From a purely public relations standpoint, right now the best candidate seems to be Sophia Antipolis. Why? It's in the south of France near Cannes, already a hotspot, and some are calling it Silicon Beach... which sounds a lot better than Europe's Silicon Valley. The key to success isn't going to be in copying what's out there already, but in making it your own. Consider Silicon Fjord in Trondheim, Norway! In any event, if you are from a hi-tech company in Silicon Beach or Fjord or any others listed above and you're looking for a North American presence for PR, you should consider Connors Communications. We are well-connected in the industry and also have the tools to help with your multilingual search efforts to ensure your visibility online as well as off. Labels: Connors Communications, pr
eCommerce Case Study
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
The bubble grew, the bubble burst, and now the tech sector has the support behind it to no longer be considered a bubble. The companies that are emerging now are savvy eCommerce companies with good products and low overhead. And while it may be hard to get to get a brand started and widely recognized on today's over-populated Internet, a PR firm can definitely help to get things started.
So what does Connors have as far as eCommerce PR case studies? Well, we helped Nordstrom.com bring their brick and mortar company online. We were an integral part in their launch and creating the buzz around this launch by helping to plan a "Win Shoes for Life" contest. We also teamed with Priceline.com to help them launch the "Name Your Own Price" service back in '98. This involved educating the media and public alike about a whole new way to shop and began with a teaser campaign letting people know through postcards that "The possibilities are endless."
We know how to reach web-literate consumers through the media. In fact, we mix traditional and online media to get the best resonance in the circles where you need to be seen. Check out our eCommerce case study page for more information on our efforts.Labels: Connors Communications, eCommerce, pr
More on PR Internships
I know when I came out of school, I knew I had learned to learn and learned to be a student, but not necessarily acquired skills directly related to real world applications. However, sometimes the learning to learn and communicate is a skill in and of itself. The field of public relations is a great match for a liberal arts background. It takes intelligence, awareness, and strong communication and writing skills. It involves thoroughly understanding a client’s product, seeing the story there, targeting media, pitching media, setting up interviews, and following-through to the publishing of the coverage. This field is challenging as well as rewarding and may be just the perfect career fit for some recent graduates or current undergrads.
If this sounds like a good fit, by all means, surf around our site, check out what we're all about; then drop us a line. I was definitely once in the shoes of the college grad with a degree but little direction and happened upon Connors. It's a great environment and I am still learning new things every day. This is a career path that is exciting and ever-changing. If you thrive in this kind of environment, we hope to hear from you.Labels: Connors Communications, pr
Public Relations Internships
Spring is in the air and most colleges have finished exams and are on summer break. This is good news for college students, but can lead to a bit of a dilemma as to how to spend the summer. For recent grads, it can pose as even more of a dilemma regarding what to do post-school. One way to work on that question is to try out something that interests you and see if it's a fit.
Connors Communications has an internship program for hard-working and enthusiastic grads and undergrads who want to get involved in the world of public relations. They can get on-the-job training at a small PR firm where they can acquire extensive experience. This is a vibrant office where everyone is part of the team, all efforts matter and each employee directly affects results. Our interns work hard and learn a lot. After a three month internship, there is even an opportunity for interns to join as full members of the team, if the job is a match for the person and the person is a match for Connors.Labels: Connors Communications, pr
Best PR Firm in NYC
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Please excuse this VERY SHORT post. I'm making a point about PR 2.0, search engine optimization, and Connors Communications' new product "HitTail" (previously MyLongTail). I will link to an explantion of the point of this post in the comments section in a few weeks.Labels: Connors Communications, HitTail, HitTail Plus, pr, The Long Tail
More Than Just a Press Release
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Besides knowing that the acronym PR stands for public relations, most people only have a superficial knowledge of what public relations agencies, such as Connors Communications, actually do. In addition to handling press releases and coordinating media relations, we employ a variety of techniques to help our client’s message influence media in order to get their brand name and product out to the appropriate consumer demographics.
When Connors engages in a PR campaign, we use different approaches that may begin with creating lists of media at business publications such as Forbes or BusinesWeek, industry trades, as well as blog review sites like ZDNet. Once such a media list is compiled, a pitch is created which will give the targeted analysts an incentive to write and learn more about our client’s message and product, such as Voice Over IP (VoIP) with Vonage. Finally when a positive response is received from a pitch, we are able to get our idea out into many publications and outlets, both online and in print, readily available to our client’s consumers . We highly value our press relations which enable us to maintain a very favorable position within the media and subsequently our clients.
Utilizing unique technologies is another priority here, for example we pride ourselves on offering SEO and tracking technologies not available anywhere else. The work done here at Connors involves a much more proactive approach to positioning our clients message than most people think, and not only focusing on dealing with negative PR, crisis management and writing press releases.Labels: Connors Communications, crisis communications, pr, seo, Vonage
PR Firm
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Over this past holiday season, I went to quite a few of those gatherings where you don’t know many of the people there and you make a lot of small talk. Of course, the first question that almost always came up was the standard, “So where do you work?” Most people nod appreciatively at the mention of a PR firm and some look a little blank. I’m never sure quite how much to explain or how much I should just gloss over and assume is already understood.
What I find interesting is that unless you work in the industry, many people have only a vague idea of how much PR, or public relations, influences our daily news. With a few exceptions, some information in every article we read has gone through the hands of a PR person. A PR firm is not just there to spin bad press or react to stories about their clients’ industries. Most of what a PR firm does falls under proactive pitching and actively working on getting their clients included in upcoming stories.
Take Connors Communications, for instance. We look to find what about our news would be of interest to particular reporters who we have contacts with. By thoroughly understanding both the reporter’s beat and the clients’ news and industry, we can match up reporters with valuable information and resources. This is what makes us successful and so valuable to our clients. And giving away quick initials at a cocktail party may give a glimpse of what we do, but it certainly doesn’t tell the whole story.Labels: Connors Communications, pr
Influence the Influencers
Thursday, December 08, 2005
When asked who should know about your product or service, the most obvious answer may be, "well, everybody." However, few companies, if any, truly have the resources to reach out to everyone all at once. What you need to be able to do is locate the opinion leaders and reach out to the key people that will help you to reach everyone else.
Connors maximizes our efficiency by knowing how to influence the media and the search engines, which in turn influence the public. By hitting key places, we can start a message which will reverberate. By influencing the key people or search engine criteria, we start the ball rolling down the hill and any time it starts to slow down, we give it a push. Once the right people start talking about it, others are sure to follow. This maximizes your budget and gets your message out to as many people as possible.
The most successful PR campaigns have a strategy and a goal beyond simply raising awareness about a company. You want the control the public discussion and this involves crafting the appropriate message for the right contact in order to get the ideal message out. Connors will help you craft this strategy and get you mentioned in the right media and ranking on the right keywords to help you attract the qualified customers you're looking for. Connors Communications is successful because of our focused ability to influence the influencers on behalf of your company.Labels: Connors Communications, media, pr
Strange Searches and their Amusing Results
Friday, November 11, 2005
Todd Barrish is part of the team here at Connors and is the "largest todd in the world," according to a recent MSN search. He's not that big, really. I'm fairly certain that the person who came to the Connors website during this search did not find what he/she was looking for. However, this begs the question, what the heck were they looking for, anyway?
Hello world! I'm Jessica Ek and part of my job here at Connors is to monitor what keywords are generating traffic. I look at trends in searching and what phrases are important to bring qualified traffic into clients' sites as well as our own. While looking at the results and sorting the wheat from the chaff, I find great entertainment in some of the phrases that people are putting into the search engines.
As a colleague of mine once said, "Search engines don't speak English." While they search words in English, they don't understand what those words mean individually or in context. Google can't read your mind and you can't ask it a question. You can only provide search parameters and it will supply you with the results of this query. And once in a while, this clash between the human search request and the search engine program leads to strange websites.
Search engines are defining how we look for things and what we find. Here are some stranger phrases that have brought searchers to our website:
Zombie background (this was right before Halloween)
Fallout boy
Tiger population
Connors footwear
Drawings of Gwen Stefani
European casual clothes
What do they all have in common? They led to the website of a mid-sized public relations firm in New York City. Sometimes I just shake my head and laugh. It's always interesting to see what people will be looking for next.Labels: Connors Communications, Google, MSN, search
Worthwhile Blogs
Friday, October 21, 2005
Out in the blogosphere, there are many interesting blogs that are must-reads and there are also many that aren't quite worth the visit. How do you separate the ones that will highlight interesting news and offer insightful commentary from those that read more like a Live Journal? Or how do you find the funniest blogs to entertain you during your Web surfing? We, at Connors, know how hard it is to find diamonds in the rough when it comes to blogs. We focus on blogs as part of our outreach and know the space well. So what do we read to keep us in-the-know? After a little internal survey, here is a review of some of our favorite blog destinations.
News Blogs
Blogs are great places to find news, especially in niche markets, and also see current commentary on the topic. As part news site and part blog, Slate is a good site due to its insights on current events. Another site that is frequented by us at Connors is Slashdot. This is a great place to look, especially since many of our clients are technology-related and are sometimes mentioned in the blog. It is pretty much a compilation of everything cutting edge that's going on and as one Connors PR rep put it, "Slashdot always has what I'm looking for." Or, if you're looking for news that's a bit off the beaten trail, Boing Boing points out the interesting, the bizarre, and the amusing from across the Internet.
Tech Blogs
Many of our more technical people and savvy programmers keep to date by following the influential blogs on business and tech. These include avc, John Batelle Search Blog, SEW Blog, ClickZ News, iPod Hack and Wired News. Among the responses, Matt Cutts was singled out as a good insider SEO blog and the Ask Jeeves Blog was noted as becoming a more interesting read since they bought BlogLines. For the latest in industry buzz, these are some good blogs to check out. For the latest news on high tech gadgets however, Engadget and Gizmodo have great reviews on the latest products.
Fun Blogs
Blogs come in all shapes and sizes. Many are not quite so serious. When we look for amusement and entertainment on the Web, there is another whole list of blogs to recommend. An in-house Milwaukee Brewers fan checks out Brew Crew Ball and Al's Ramblings for his baseball fix. For laughs about random things that people say, Overheard in New York and Overheard at the Office are also worth a visit.
Finding Blogs
When looking for just the right blog, you need to know your options. There are some great blog search engines out there. Some of the ones we check every day for vital news and information are Technorati, Blogpulse, Feedster, Blogsearch (Google), Blogdigger, Waypath, Intelliseek and Blog Runner. Surprisingly, there isn't just one single blog search engine that has stepped ahead of the crowd and delivers all the pertinent results, but we're on the look-out for one that will fill this role.
Out of all the blogs we look at and outreach to and monitor, these are the ones that keep us coming back. So take a look and perhaps you'll find a new favorite too. The world of blogs has a lot to say, but it's all about knowing who to listen to.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, pr
Google is the Matrix?
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Just like in the movie that was oh so big a few years ago, before the rest of the trilogy came along and ruined it, the world is full of supercomputers creating our current reality.
Okay….maybe not. But if our world itself isn't comprised of millions of lines of data, our Internet most certainly is. And every minute of every day, people from all over the world are flocking to search engines. Their ideas and interests are visible in a stream of searches leading to sites all across the Web. The Internet is a constant flicker of activity as people jump from page to page. Think of all the hits to your website, scrolling past in a constant march of glowing green data made famous in the movie. It's a digital representation of us and our search matrix, if you will.
In fact, don't just think about it; take a look. We welcome you to the Connors Search Engine Matrix. Relax, wait a minute, and watch the page come to life with search activity and history. A steady influx of visitors leaves their mark, adding to results. Look at what has brought people here. We have harnessed the flow of information that is filtered through Google, Yahoo! and MSN and is then siphoned off to our site. And this insight drives our SEO endeavors to create more search activity in a self-feeding cycle.
Perhaps Google is not the matrix. However, it is the compilation of thoughts, wishes, queries, hobbies, interests and quandaries of a society. And it scrolls past in glowing green text.Labels: Connors Communications, Google, seo, Yahoo
Emerging Technology
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
There is a level of excitement that is exuded from our bustling, loft office here at Connors. This energy is especially apparent when a new client walks in the door with an emerging technology that is simply electrifying in its potential.
Most of all, it's the knowledge that we can really make a difference in the future of a company that drives us forward. With the whole Connors team combined, we have amassed a whole lot of experience in tech companies and their PR campaigns. We have the media contacts and know the process for introducing a new technology to analysts. We know the possible friction of getting the new innovations accepted by the general public and how to position a message that can overcome this obstacle. We have, after all, been at the cutting edge for a long time now.
Back at the dawn of retail Internet, Connors was integral in launching such companies as Amazon.com and Priceline.com. We worked with their business models, potential markets and target audiences at the ground level. Through close ties to Idealab, we helped some of the most innovative companies get off the ground, such as GoTo.com/Overture Services and Picasa. These companies were later purchased by Yahoo! and Google, respectively. Breakthroughs like these have given us a name for being right there, when it happens, as soon as it happens. This has brought us industry-leading clientele with hot new products such as Vonage, SLOOH, Cablevision and Evolution Robotics. We continue to work on media relations for the newest of the new.
Each client poses new challenges and unique opportunities. We research the industry thoroughly and take this knowledge to craft a tailored plan for each client. It's exciting to have the know-how and depth of expertise that can help make a difference. We know we can succeed; we've done it before.
That's one of the main reasons Connors attracted me in the first place. It's a company that always has something new going on, specializing in helping emerging technologies recognize their potential through public relations. A client comes in with high expectations and we help them achieve these goals. That's something worth getting excited about. It's a lot of fun to know you're on the cusp of something important and it's rewarding to see a client succeeding due in part to your efforts. I think that may be why a lot of us are here.Labels: Connors Communications, Google, pr, Yahoo
Marketing Communications
Monday, October 10, 2005
In business, the word communications can mean a lot of different things. To some it means telecom, yet we use it more to mean in the realm of marketing (sometimes called marcom). While marketing can broadly apply to both advertising and public relations, it is a field in and of itself which can lead people to be confused. As a public relations firm, Connors helps companies craft their messages to be found by reporters, consumers and analysts through our established relationships with people influential in the industry along with tools like newswires and search engines. Yet we do not do so through advertising in any medium (be it print, broadcast, or paid search). Though advertising can be effective in reinforcing your brand, to some it is more of a one-way communication vehicle. Public relations, on the other hand, is concerned with facilitating credible, two-way dialogue between experts and researchers (which could be either journalists or the general public). In essence, PR and natural search help people find what they're looking for while advertising tells them.Labels: Connors Communications, outreach, pr
White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO in PR
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
I found an interesting article today on the difference between white hat and black hat SEO. It provides the following chart to distinguish the differences:
SEO Criteria
White Hat Black Hat
Rules Play by the rules There are no rules
Text/technology Focus on text Heavily leverage technology
Strengths of Optimizer Marketing IT/Programming
Speed Take time/invest Get it done NOW
http://www.marketingprofs.com/5/fielding1.asp
This made a lot of sense to me. At Connors, we focus on white hat and this chart shows just how much PR is involved in white hat SEO. It's all about marketing and it takes time to build a brand and gain the trust of the consumer. Searchers are becoming very savvy and are recognizing SEO spamming techniques. This can result in a very negative backlash, with low search hits no matter where on the page you've managed to appear. The way to bring them to your site and stay there is not a win-at-all-costs campaign with only keyword stuffing and backend programming. It involves taking the time to build an online image and creating text that invokes trust. This text, in conjuction with relevant programming and linking techniques can bring you, legitimately, to the top of the results. PR involves playing by the rules of the publication and SEO involves playing by the rules of the search engines, resulting in what amounts to a third-party validation of your company. And that result is more than you could achieve with any black hat campaign.Labels: Connors Communications, pr, seo
PR and SEO
Friday, August 26, 2005
Greetings Connors Blogging Team and the world. This is our first post onto the Connors Blog Site, and I'm using it by way of introduction, and challenging the team to jump in and participate in blogging here. We have dozens of interesting and engaging discussions here at Connors Communications every week, which would be much better unleashed onto the Internet, and leveraged to achieve some level of blogging celebrity. We talk about very leading edge issues, as we are determined to associate the emerging field of search engine optimization (SEO) as a natural extension of the Public Relations industry. We use better-than-best practices, because when it comes to the build-vs.-buy question, we often build, enabling us to accomplish feats that are unimaginable with Analytics packages alone. So why are PR and SEO connected?
Public Relations deals with getting publicity where paid advertising cannot, usually at a lower cost, and almost always where the defenses of media-savvy consumers are lowest. When you think about it, good PR gets you editorial coverage in the media channel's main attraction. On TV, it's the television programs and not the commercials. In print, it's the articles, and not the advertisements. Effective PR is about enhancing a company's pure reputation through effective word-of-mouth, influencing those who influence many. So it should be no surprise that Connors views the emerging field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a part of the growing field of Public Relations.
In other words, Public Relations is to Advertising what SEO is to Search Engine Marketing (namely Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, collectively known as SEM). With paid advertising, your ad runs only as long as you run the campaign. When you stop paying for the coverage, the effect goes away. It is a clear deal, for your marketing dollar, and comes with certain guarantees. PR on the other hand doesn't give such guarantees. Reporters may or may not pick up your story.
I believe that a well executed SEO campaign can be more effective than the equivalent SEM campaign, and is money better spent. There are dozens of reasons, but the most poignant is that the effect of SEO is permanent, and benefits compound over time. As paid keyword campaigns become more competitive and expensive over time, the reason behind the organic approach will become more and more clear. We encourage you to follow our Blog to see how it develops.
Team? By the way, one of the most effective ways of incorporating blogging into your day-to-day procedure is incorporating blogging into Microsoft Word with Blogger for Word. That's how I published this first post, link and all.Labels: Adwords, blog, Connors Communications, Google, pr, seo, Yahoo
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