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PR & SEO Blog from Silicon Alley

A Voice through Google News

Friday, August 10, 2007

Just when we thought we could foresee where the world of PR was headed, Google throws us a curve ball with its revamped Google News. Yesterday, word came out about Google featuring a truly unique option on their news site that would allow people and companies to respond to articles in which they are mentioned.

The feature is currently in an experimental stage, but if it is to succeed, which with Google's track record is highly likely, it holds incredible implications and possibilities for the PR profession.

You're probably wondering how Google will be able to determine whether the comments submitted are truly from the company or person mentioned in an article.

According to Google, a new division will act as the gate keepers to qualify sources submitting comments by validating email addresses and/or calling the sources directly to confirm identities. While their methods do not sound exactly scientific or efficient in terms of time, I have faith that Google is not approaching this endeavor blindly.

An example of what we might expect is up on the news site. The scenario involves an article on a study that found children prefer to eat food from McDonalds that comes in visually appealing packaging to food that does not look kid-friendly. Following is a lengthy response from the Corporate Communications office of McDonalds and a much shorter response from a professor of pediatrics in the University of New Mexico.

Even from this 1st example, PR professionals should be taking notes. Who seems to be the party with something to hide? Might it be the one with the convoluted 550+ word statement? I vote yes! McDonalds clearly doesn't appreciate the fine art of brevity. Also, it doesn't help that their "statement" is simply regurgitated marketing material.

A simple, "Of course children like food that has cartoon characters on it! But we also have cartoon characters on our apple slice containers, so the choice in our establishments is based on food, not on packaging." would have been sufficient and effective.

We in the PR world know that few issues are black and white, and so it often becomes our job to simplify matters in favor of the companies we represent. Yet sometimes the problem with an article isn't that it was swayed in favor of the opposing viewpoint, but that a company was simply misquoted. As Calcanis, co-founder of Weblogs, Inc, pointed out in an Information Week article on this topic, "Journalists have misquoted people for so long," and it is high time technology offered a way for meaningful corrections to be made.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


Future of PR

Thursday, August 09, 2007

The world is changing, but the signs as to how are always there if you know where to look. If you want to find out where the media and PR industries are headed in the near future, one only needs to read between the lines on Silicon Alley Insider this week.

  1. Newspapers are embracing blogs, but the online divisions are still not seeing revenue like their counterparts in print. The online division of the New York Times is bringing in 10% of the company's revenue.

  2. Yet online advertising budgets are expected to surpass that of newspapers in four years.

  3. Meanwhile, bloggers can make a decent living on their own thanks to a chunk of that advertising -- in the realm of six figures.

  4. And, in an effort to keep up, editors at the Times are asking reporters to cut down on article length. It's not just to save paper or for people's attention spans; it's also to compete with those very same bloggers in search engine results. Short stories can be just as influential as novels in PR (meaning PageRank), so it's better for editors to get two shorter pieces for the price of one.

What does it all mean? You can expect more editors and journalists leaving high profile publications to become independent bloggers. It's no coincidence that journalists Mark Frauenfelder, Jeff Jarvis, and Om Malik have been made into celebrities through their blogs. They are smart guys with devoted readers, and they figured out how to build their own brand and create new destinations online. Even those who stick to their day jobs are branching out, from Walt Mossberg on All Things Digital to David Pogue's musical vlogging at the Times.

That begs multiple questions. Do you go to read a publication because of its reputation or because of its writers and editors? What is your loyalty to said publication? If your favorite columnist left the Times to go to the Post a few years ago, that might not have been enough to get you to switch your paid subscription -- but now it's easy to read both in your RSS feeds. This is just another indication that media consumption is going from one-to-many to many-to-many.

How does that affect PR? Blogs are leveling the playing field with traditional media, so future PR professionals had better start learning their names now. Clients, too, need to realize it's not always about getting a cover story. A post on the blog of that publication's former editor can be just as effective in getting your message across, if not more. That blog post you once thought was quaint probably has a link to your website providing a clear call-to-action and increased online authority in search engine algorithms. Plus, the blog post is more likely to come up in search results than a corresponding online version of a print article, meaning it has longer shelf life. That doesn't even include the viral marketing opportunities in such a post!

We see the future, but we understand it can be hard for some people to give up the past. Publications often have such vaunted histories that there is still a tendency to cherish the printed story above all, despite the fact that getting written up in influential blogs can often have equal or higher ROI.

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posted by Adam Edwards  0 comments


The Popularity of a Website

Friday, July 13, 2007

This week, Neilson/NetRatings announced that website hits will no longer count towards the popularity of a website. Instead, the amount of time spent on a site, termed “Total Minutes” and “Total Sessions”, will be analyzed to determine rank. Why the switch? Many sites now use technologies like online video and programming languages like Ajax, which require a visitor to spend more time on a site in order for their visit to count.

Neilson is of course not the first to recognize time as a factor. Hitwise and comScore have long been measuring it along with page views and others. comScore spokesperson, Andrew Lipsman, explained,

We have a host of metrics, and you can theoretically rank on any one of them. It’s just important to examine the space that you’re looking at and maybe determine what the most appropriate metric to use would be.

That makes sense, and I am not the only one who seems to agree. Online advertising experts quoted in Louis Hau’s Forbes article voiced their concern about Neilson’s bold move citing that while more than just page views are relevant for Web 2.0, it is not to say that the measurement is all together irrelevant.

Hau goes on to address the growth of the online advertising space (up 28% from last year), but reminds us that it is still just 6% of the entire industry. Not surprisingly, our eyes on the Internet are more easily monitored than for any other medium and it might take years to sort through all the available data and figure out what metrics are truly valid.

In the midst of all this talk about advertising, PR is inadvertently part of the dialogue. We also need to know the popularity of a site, just as we need to know the circulation of a print publication.

A distinct science for this is still clearly in the making. In the meantime, we are advancing in our knowledge of reaching an audience online. In our world, we would argue that page views, for example, still hold a lot of merit as reading a blog or a 500 word article can take no time at all.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


The Mixing of Old and New Media

Friday, May 11, 2007

This week the topic of new media infringing on the old was brought up at the 56th annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference. Reuters reported that executives from the industry “said talk of the demise of traditional media in the digital age was overblown.” Elaborating that television still has a firm place in the homes of media consumers and that the “new” technologies have actually resparked interest for some.

This type of talk is to be expected from media moguls, and there is also truth in their claims. YouTube, for example, drove thousands to Saturday Night Live after million watched Justin Timberlake perform with Andy Samburg that hilarious Christmas song Andy wrote. Of course, such admitted claims beg the question of why Viacom would be suing YouTube if there is such potential to gain viewership.

Regardless, Internet has yet to conquer the complete entertainment spectrum. After all, is there any substitute to sitting in front of the television and being amused so effortlessly? In my opinion, clicking around on the computer screen is not an equivalent… yet. However, what clearly is in peril is the news business. Because while I enjoy watching my favorite TV shows the old fashioned way, I prefer reading my news online.

As PR people, we are keenly aware of this phenomenon. We have discussed it at length on this very blog. This week, I ran across another example of how print media can perhaps salvage itself by changing with the times.

A new free Boston weekly print publication, BostonNow, has started printing commentary submitted by local bloggers to its website. Editor, John Wilpers, felt this unique inclusion would spike interest in the newspaper by adding a distinct community feel.

In a CNET article, Wilpers explained, “It doesn't take a whole lot of smarts to look out at the Internet and see thousands writing on their communities, whether they be geographic or thematic." So why not include their thoughts in print?

In this exchange, Wilpers also hopes to generate fans for the bloggers as the bloggers are not paid for their submissions. Instead, it’s a form of free advertising. And with a circulation of 85,000, it’s not a terrible waste of time on the blogger’s behalf.

Another point worth noting is that the bloggers’ posts will be scanned by an editor so as to ensure similar standards that we have come to expect from news sources.

This notion is certainly interesting and we will have to see whether others adopt the convergence of blogs into the print world in quite this same way. Perhaps this trend will spark interest with the older generation to be more blogger-friendly and for the younger generation to be more newspaper-friendly.

For those of you who are wondering why anyone would even bother to create a new print publication, it is safe to say that print still has a pretty healthy pulse. As e-books are still in their infancy and Internet is inaccessible underground, for us urban commuters, print media is actually still very relevant.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  1 comments


The Irony of Advertising

Thursday, May 10, 2007

I find it ironic that the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) of all organizations is trying to challenge comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings on metrics when they themselves don't even distinguish paid search from the rest of online marketing. Can we even tell if industry forecasts for online marketing include search engine optimization? Not very often.

Yet, to us, SEO clearly falls under the realm of public relations. Our work influences the free editorial listings, the same way as we pitch news to newspaper and magazine editors. Honestly we'd be happy if the IAB ignored SEO altogether, but I don't forsee PRWeek or the PRSA picking up the slack. Unfortunately unless more people demand clarification, Google will shape the discussion in its own light by claiming their A/B ad testing tool is optimization… despite 10 years of history that has shown optimization to be clearly about influencing the natural unpaid results.

Paid search was pioneered by GoTo.com (a former Connors client, now Yahoo Search Marketing) and it made search engines immensely profitable. Ad agencies and their clients seem to know no bounds in their budgets. However, just as viewers watch TV for their favorite shows and not commercials, people go to search engines for the credible, organic results and not the advertising. There's little doubt that the long term benefits belong to SEO. After all, the web-savvy children who are growing up as Google loyalists often don't even notice the ads. Perhaps the greatest irony of all would be if future generations all used Google and not a single one clicked a text ad. You can bet that is one reason they acquired DoubleClick.

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posted by Adam Edwards  2 comments


Let’s Digg into it

Friday, May 04, 2007

Digg faced a Google-esque controversy this week when Chester Millisock, a 24 year old programmer, was banned from the Digg community for posting a quasi-known encryption on how to illegally copy high definition DVDs and then reregistered and bumped the code up for millions of viewers to take note. When Digg tried to intervene, users were outraged, citing freedom of speech as Millisock’s right - as well as their own - to post and view the information.

At first, I was proud of Digg for standing up to the big bad corporate giants. This ethical dilemma of technology cracking the entertainment industry is getting old. Yes, technology is moving forward, and yes, if you want your salaries to remain in the six figures, media moguls, you must move with and beyond it.

But then I found out that the information in question is apparently illegal to publish. BusinessWeek’s Catherine Holahan’s article on the issue, explains that this code has been circling for years and in 2000, publishing it was declared illegal in the Universal City Studios vs. Reimierds case. So, Digg is clearly breaking the law by displaying the information.

At 1pm on May 1st, Jay Adelson, Digg CEO, blogged to this point by stating, quite rationally, that whether users “agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law.” His common sense left users so unsatisfied that at 9pm on that same day, Kevin Rose, Digg Founder, presented an alternative stance, which was the clear favorite

"We hear you,” Kevin blogged, “and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."

That is a bold statement to make in a world where Viacom is suing Google for what some might argue is a similar complaint. Then again, can a company that relies so heavily on its users afford to take the opposite stance?

Digg lawyers thought so, but their advice was obviously not heeded.

Instead, Kevin rose – pun intended – to this PR crisis communications occasion by positioning Digg as strictly pro user. His risk implies that he has ample faith that the power of the people will prevail should – maybe more like when – Digg goes to court. Or maybe Kevin realized that he could not risk a boycott and that they need the audience Digg has built up to keep those ad dollars flowing. I wonder what investors Greylock and Omidyar have to say about this.

Will Diggers stand by their fearless leader or will the law prevail? We will have to stay tuned.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


A Company’s Virtual Voice

Thursday, April 12, 2007

“Google bombing” is personal online defamation, but can companies fall victim? This week’s BusinessWeek explores the topic in an article by Michelle Conlin titled, “Web Attack”.

The article cites various examples of big name corporations that have fallen victim to online badgering. Home Depot, for example, took the brunt of MSN Money columnist, Scott Burns.

In his column, Burns accused Home Depot of wasting its costumers’ time with poor service in the stores. The response he received from his column was unprecedented! Thousands upon thousands of angry Home Depot costumers concurred with his accusations and demanded change.

Instead of pretending it’s 1985 and there is no Internet, Home Depot CEO Francis S. Blake decided to respond timely and meaningfully. He posted an apology on the MSN message board stating that he is sorry for the inconveniences and promises to fix the problem by hiring more staff and training them properly. He also thanked Scott Burns for brining the problem to his attention and asked for costumers to voice their concerns “like Scott Burns did.”

For this, Blake received a thumbs up from customers and even Home Depot employees, on whose blog his letter received approval.

This story, amongst many others, teaches us that sometimes an admission of guilt and promise to change is all that is necessary to break the fall of a corporate giant. The lesson learned hits the point home: Don’t hide behind your computer screen; use it as your megaphone!

When describing the birth of the Web, Conlin jokes that it was perceived as “the new public-relations nirvana!” She then goes on to make the argument that now, after the negative potential of the message boards, blogs, and online news has been unleashed, the Internet has turned into a public relations nightmare.

We, the PR people, beg to differ. Hasn’t negative press, in its varying shapes and forms, been around since the beginning of time? The online world gives everyone a voice and it is up to companies to recognize theirs and implement public relations teams to deal with the space. In some cases, perhaps exclusively.

Dell, for example, has a blogger-in-chief, Lionel Menchaca, who gives Dell a voice in the industry and overall online community. When that inevitable crisis hits Dell, Lionel will be the front lines of defense. And people will listen, because he has established a relationship with the community (AKA his blog is not an ever-changing commercial for Dell).

A few years ago, companies were wondering whether they really needed a website. Now the question becomes, do we really need a blog? The answer is clear.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


Redefining Our Role

Friday, March 30, 2007

This week two magazines were laid to rest. On Monday, the announcement came from Time Inc that Life Magazine will have its last issue on April 20th. Then, on Wednesday, Meredith Corp. announced that it will no longer be printing Child Magazine.

As if to console both publications’ dwindling audiences, Time and Meredith promised to reincarnate the magazines online. The photo archive of Life magazine will live on in its new online format and Child will co-exist among American Baby, Family Circle and Parents in Meredith’s upcoming parenting-and-family portal.

The death of print is no longer a projection, it is upon us and so the ultimate question for us becomes: how do we practice our craft in a world without print?

Can we pitch a blogger in the way we have grown accustomed to pitching journalists?

Will there be a few authoritative news websites or will we each find our own preference for news and entertainment?

These questions can only be answered in time. However, while print may be dying, public relations is in store for a transformation.

During this period of flux, we have the power to sculpt our role and approach to this emerging online news world. Now is the time to cultivate relationships with influential bloggers and to follow sites like Digg and The Huffington Post.

It is also likely that traditional forms of media will live on in the online realm. The New York Times, USA Today and others may remain strong players in a space in which standalone blogs are not required to prescribe to journalistic ethics on which we have come to rely. However, Time has taught us that this logic does not always follow. Life Magazine is a journalistic icon. Who would have predicted its death in its heyday?

Another critical element is the way companies communicate with the public. Already, many CEOs are blogging. In the future, a company’s messaging will have to be even more dynamic. Crisis communications, for example, will account for a wider array of situations that previously may not have been relevant because of the time gap between a crisis and the news picking it up. With the internet, there is no time gap; news is delivered instantly.

Blogs -- and the many other resources that will undoubtedly surface -- become enormous assets for companies because they allow instant response. In addition, they provide companies with the opportunity to voice their messages consistently, making their reactions during a crisis more appropriate and meaningful.

While no one can be sure what media will look like in five or ten years, we can be certain that public relations will be a large piece of this shifting puzzle.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


Search is Just Another Medium

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

An article by Dave Pasternack today in DM News comments on the growth of search engine marketing. Yet for all of the cheery forecasts, one of his best points is that advertisers still downplay the importance of search. He mentions a journalist that recently said "paid placement search marketing is the dirty secret of online advertising".

Search engine optimization (SEO) gets talked about even less in PR circles, despite the fact it's the same value proposition -- influencing editorial content instead of paying for advertising. Nevermind that it's more cost-effective than advertising and builds a long term corporate asset. Unlike paid search advertising whose influence disappears the minute you stop paying, natural search results stick after SEO contracts end.

More PR firms and advertising agencies need to realize that search is another medium, just like print or broadcast. Oh, but search happens to be the first place people go to do their research... whether you are a reporter, an analyst, a potential consumer, or investor. No wonder ad agencies worry about Google selling advertising and don't want to separate SEM from online marketing budgets. Too bad they don't have much of a choice as Google moves into other media.

Google didn't have to move onto Madison Avenue to make an impact in New York. When will the world wake up and realize the future of advertising is in Silicon Alley instead?

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posted by Adam Edwards  0 comments


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...

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posted by Matthew Adelhock  0 comments


Ethical Corporate Blogging

Friday, November 10, 2006

Blogging ethically is pretty straightforward. Corporate blogging can be beneficial for companies and blog readers alike as long as it is done in a trustworthy fashion with information valuable to a target audience. If more businesses took this into consideration, the blogosphere would be better off.

Unfortunately some companies like McDonalds and Wal-Mart and their large agencies are creating high profile fake blogs (flogs) for shill marketing. Once again a great Internet creation has been tainted by big business, but there are better ways to utilize the power of blogs without being so misleading and disingenuous. Blogging has become an established means of communication and corporations can obviously see its benefit, but how does a company blog in a way that enhances the blog community instead of outraging it?

A blog needs to be started carefully and transparently. Corporate connections need to be mentioned and any biases need to be addressed. A key factor in creating a blog is realizing that this is first and foremost a resource for consumers and secondly a speaking platform for the company. It is an informal means of informing, creating a community, and offering opinions as an authority in a particular industry. If a post is written in the voice of a particular official in the company, the piece needs to be reviewed and edited by that individual so they are involved in the blogging process. Smart companies that do well by their customers have much to gain by joining in the discussion online, including search engine optimization benefits, reaching new markets, and a new platform to deliver company news.

If you think you're ready to start a blog but don't have the resources or aren't sure of the direction to take, give Connors a call. Our work is displayed proudly by our clients, not hidden in secrecy. We're a boutique PR firm that understands technology and the people behind it. We've been doing online outreach far before blogs -- in fact, even before the World Wide Web! What else would you expect from the firm that launched Amazon, Priceline, GoTo, Vonage, and RedRoller?

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


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.

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posted by Mike Levin 


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


Blogger Relations

But why is are blogger relations so vital in today's PR world and how does one go about wooing these new influential writers?

A lot of attention has been focused to blogger relations recently. Guy Kawasaki wrote a blog entry on how to suck up to bloggers, talking about building contacts before they are needed as well as paying attention to the helpful influence of schwag. BusinessWeek's Nichola Saminather also covered the topic in "Buttering up the Blogosphere." The idea that blogs and the Internet have changed the path of information dissemination is starting to sink in and go mainstream. Bloggers are important and we need to be paying attention because buzz is being generated by the blogosphere and spreading to more traditional media instead of the other way around.

Okay, so blogs are important, but how do you reach bloggers? Of course, one of the main lessons is that you have to read the blog, understand the blog, and write to that specific blogger as opposed to a mass email. This should be obvious. When you're sending out news and want it to get picked up, who exactly will a generic blast email work on? The next lesson is that if the news you're pitching is good, it will most likely get picked up. This is much the same as traditional PR outreach, just adapted for a new medium and a different type of news source.

The main difference is the role that PR plays. In traditional media, there is a symbiotic relationship between PR professionals and journalists. The relationship isn't always easy, but at least there is some mutual respect. PR agents need journalists to get coverage for clients and journalists needed PR people to make their jobs easier and to help them find news, trends, interviews, and research for their stories. Bloggers don’t have the same deadlines or need to post “new” news. They can break a story or take a break and comment on other stories going on at the moment. They don’t need the constant flow of information from you and other bias sources and would often prefer to find it themselves. So, while PR people have something to offer in the way of interviews and a heads up on news, it is often viewed with skepticism and mistrust. That brings us back to why Kawasaki's emphasis on building up the relationships with bloggers before you need their help and how this is of vital importance.

When a blogger recognizes you as an interested reader, sees a link you've given to the blog or insightful comment you've left, that is when you can begin a dialog. Engaging one influential blog that focuses specifically in the area of your client's news will get you more targeted, worthwhile coverage than a massive campaign to get the news to everyone. If they don't hear about it all, it won't get covered, but if they do find out and it's not from you, the buzz will be louder. And that's the key to the blogosphere.

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posted by Jessica Ek 


High Tech Public Relations Savvy

Monday, September 18, 2006

I made a post on the HitTail site about high tech public relations savvy, and thought it appropriate to cross-link it here. Excerpt:

This technique can be quickly activated on your old system today, so you get all that traffic in the meantime that you would otherwise be leaving on the table. We're a PR firm that can discuss your Web strategies down to that level of detail. We have employees on staff who have programmed entire enterprise systems.

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posted by Mike Levin  0 comments


Pharmaceutical Companies, Public Relations & Search

Saturday, August 19, 2006

One major feature driving the growing popularity of public relations for marketing is its ability to live within limitations and restrictions set by law. The rules governing pharmaceutical industries come to mind. Everybody has noticed change in drug commercial TV-spots resulting from the FDA's truth in advertising laws. But when your publicity is being driven through word-of-mouth and matter-of-fact editorial coverage, you don't have such restrictions. Editorial gets a "get out of jail free" card when it comes to garnering publicity. It's exposure in mainstream media, but it's just not advertising.

Public relations is made to order for drug companies. In addition to developing strategies to get your message out, public relations is uniquely suited to deal with damaging news stories, preferably diffusing the story before it even hits the press. And with today's real-time blogging, sometime it is even beneficial to monitor the mention of drug names online in real time. The danger is that un-tended, just about any blogger with a horror story and axe to grind has a decent ability grab that first page of search results on the drug's name. The ability of single individuals to impact the viability of entire product lines is constantly on the rise. PR firms know how to manage this. Managing your Web and "search engine presence" is now firmly in the realm of public relations, so you can get a complete and very strategic alternative marketing campaign from a single company.

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posted by Mike Levin  0 comments


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


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.

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posted by Mike Levin  2 comments


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek  1 comments


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


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.

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posted by Mike Levin  0 comments


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.

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posted by Mike Levin  1 comments


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.

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posted by Mike Levin  1 comments


PR Firm NYC

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

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. :)

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


Writing for Public Relations

Okay, when was the last time that you read an article and wondered where some of the messaging came from? There's a whole lot of work that goes into drafting email pitches, press releases, and briefing documents. The most successful PR writing is never seen because it is the pitch that entices a reporter to focus on a product story. This writing is succinct, interesting, attention-grabbing, and personalized.

The key in writing pitches is to get right to the point and make it interesting. Spending a lot of time on the title is valuable since the message needs to stand out from the spam in order to get opened. Then, the message must be more than a stock pitch to get the reporter’s attention and get our message across.

Press releases must be carefully crafted to get all the important information across. This is where reporters will be picking up quotes and facts. Now that they are being posted on the web, it is also a place where the public can come and get their news directly. Press releases can be picked up in part or whole by bloggers and the news may spread to people who were not on the outreach list. While this is great for the news, it means that the press release needs to include the whole story.

Finally, once interviews are secured, the briefing document will prepare clients for the reporter. This will include possible topics of interest, sample questions, and past articles. This way, each interview results in the best possible coverage.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


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.

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posted by Adam Edwards  0 comments


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek  1 comments


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.

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posted by Jessica Ek