Author Archives: Don Beehler

SEO a Must for Ad Agency News Releases

BurrellesLuce has some helpful tips for search engine optimization when writing a news release:

1. Treat your release like a mini web page. As always, a release needs to be crisp and meaningful. In today’s digital world, however, you should enhance a release with keywords, embedded links, and multimedia content.

2. Put your company name in the headline. If the release topic doesn’t lend itself to a headline mention, aim for the first paragraph or a subhead. These are also the best positions for placing relevant keywords or search terms.

3. Provide a hyperlink to the company’s website. Insert a hyperlink at the first mention of the company’s name, and in the release boilerplate.

4. Include additional search terms far up in the release. In the context of the entire release, however, keyword density should be limited to about two percent of total word count.

5. Add graphics, including your logo. Attractive graphics can help you stand out in a crowd. And use of your logo definitely heightens brand recognition.

6. Hyperlink key terms to related content on your site. Examples of key terms include a list of features, a product application note, or a product homepage.

7. Encourage distributors, user groups, and industry or professional associations to link to your release. Point out the value of your announcement for their customers and members. If your news is relevant enough, they may include the link. And the more links, the better the odds of moving up in search engine results.

8. Take advantage of the SEO enhancement features offered by your content distribution service. Among other benefits, those enhancements significantly extend the amount of time that your content can be found through a search.

9. Consider preparing twin releases. Not identical twins, but fraternal ones: a “just the facts” version for direct distribution to print editors, and an SEO version for web distribution, using the same core content.

10. Publish the release on your own website. Don’t forget this easy step, since your website is part of the media universe scoured by search engines.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Agencies Risk PR Fiasco When Using Executives in Ads

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. An advertising campaign themed “Strong Bank, Powerful Leaders” was created to demonstrate Associated Bank’s strength and security in uncertain economic times. The campaign blitzed the Milwaukee area with images of Lisa Binder, the bank’s president.

Unfortunately, the bank conveyed the exact opposite message when it abruptly announced that Ms. Binder was leaving for unspecified reasons, and then declined to answer questions about her departure.

While putting a face on a company can be an effective strategy, it also can backfire when that face suddenly disappears. Ms. Binder’s abrupt departure would have generated publicity anyway, but when coupled with her being prominently featured in an ad campaign the story became bigger – and reinforced the uncertainty of the times in which we live.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

 

Social Media Can Generate Qualified Leads for Ad Agencies and Their Clients

According to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report, nearly half of the marketers surveyed said social media generated qualified leads. Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook were listed as the top tools used, in that order.

The study, which surveyed about 900 marketers, also found that while 88 percent use some form of social media to market their businesses, 72 percent have either just started or have been using it only a few months.

“One in three marketers indicated identifying the best practices, measuring results and knowing where to begin as their top questions when marketing with social media,” the report said. No doubt many marketers will be looking to their ad agencies for answers to these questions.

To see the full report, visit: http://marketingwhitepapers.s3.amazonaws.com/smss09/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport.pdf

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Ad Agencies Can Use Social Media to Transform Their PR

To what extent is social media affecting the public relations industry? According to the Denver Business Journal, “in the past two years, social media has redefined the entire PR business.”

While I don’t think traditional print and broadcast journalists are going away anytime soon, it is true that social media such as blogs, Twitter and various networking sites have given PR professionals a whole new bag of tools to get their messages out to fragmented audiences.

With client budgets shrinking, using social media as part of your PR mix is a smart and cost-effective way to engage customers and prospects at a more personal level. And, as the article points out, creating online communities can lead to a surge in business, even in the midst of a recession.

To read the entire article, visit: http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2009/05/18/story6.html?b=1242619200^1829293&ana=e_vert

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Agency Blog Most Important Social Media Tool?

Newt Barrett with Content Marketing Strategies lists six reasons why your blog is your most important social media tool.

Reason number one: “To have meaningful social media impact, you must provide a critical mass of content that will position you and your organization as thought leaders within your market niche. Nothing works better than a blog to achieve that objective. Over time, your blog will contain an increasingly rich and relevant reservoir of information that serves as a Google magnet. Thus, you will become more and more findable by those customers you need to attract.”

Read the rest of his reasons at http://contentmarketingtoday.com/2009/05/01/6-reasons-why-your-blog-is-your-most-important-social-media-tool

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

How Ad Agencies and Their Clients Connect With Audiences

According to The Ammerman Experience, a national communications training firm, the way you connect with your audience has a lot more to do with how you say something and how you appear than the actual words you use:

• What you say – 7%
• How you say it – 38%
• How you appear – 55%

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Is a Blog Tour Right for Your Ad Agency?

How do you know if a blog tour is right for your agency to promote a book, product or service?  The Blog Tour Spot (www.blogtourspot.com) provides some helpful questions to consider before deciding whether it’s worth your time and effort:

1. What is your goal(s) for the blog tour?
What do you hope to accomplish by doing a blog tour? Think about this in both general and specific terms. Remember that your goals should be specific enough that you can define what achieving them looks like, whether through your gut feeling or with hard statistics. So far, our studies have shown blog tours to be ineffective at selling books in a measurable way. They seem to be effective at initiating relationships and building upon networks, which may eventually translate into sales, but don’t expect a blog tour to give an immediate boost to the sale of your book or product.

2. How does this fit into your overall marketing plan?
A blog tour should not make up your entire marketing plan; it’s only one small piece. Your blog tour should support your overall marketing goals and supplement the other activities you will conduct. Consider ways to leverage other pieces of your marketing plan to boost your blog tour and vice versa. For example, if you will be conducting a radio interview, consider mentioning your blog tour during the spot. Be sure to include the dates and times of your radio interviews within the blog tour information as well.

3. Why are you considering a blog tour?
This seems like an obvious question, but you really need to think through the answer. While a blog tour is cost effective because of limited overhead, it still requires dedicated time on your part. Designing and organizing the tour is definitely an investment of time if you want to do it well. Even if you hire someone to organize it for you, you still must be available for interviews, guest posting and making comments.

4. What are your expectations about the tour, how it’s run, how it’s designed?
Take a look at how other blog tours have run and decide what you like and dislike about their design. Think about your goals and consider the type of design that will best support them.  After thinking through these four questions, you should be in a better place to discern whether or not a blog tour should be a part of your marketing plan.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Ad Agency Tips for Web Page Usability

Dr. Jakob Nielsen, who has been called “one of the world’s foremost experts in Web usability” by Business Week magazine, says that people rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan a page and pick out individual words and sentences.

To make Web pages more readable through scannable text, Dr. Nielsen recommends writers use:

  • highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
  • meaningful sub-headings (not “clever” ones)
  • bulleted lists
  • one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
  • the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
  • half the word count (or less) than conventional writing

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Social Networking Provides Competitive Edge to Ad Agencies and Their Clients

With businesses increasingly turning to online social networking Web sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, ad agencies need to be a step ahead of their clients in understanding how these powerful communication tools can provide a competitive edge.

“Any business leader who wants to be successful in the future needs to become comfortable with social networking,” noted the chairman of a law firm in a South Florida Business Journal article about online social networking.

Read the article here: http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2009/04/27/focus1.html?b=1240804800^1815122&page=1

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Paid Bloggers Give Ad Agencies another Communication Tool

According to a Wall Street Journal article, there are nearly as many people making their living blogging as there are lawyers in the U.S.:   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124026415808636575.html

 “America’s Newest Profession,” as the article dubs those engaged in paid bloggers, is exploding.  Interestingly, the Journal notes “as bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined.”  Sounds like a trend worth watching.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.