Category archives for

– Online Public Relations –

5 Ways to Measure Blogger Outreach ROI

by Stephanie Schwab · May 17, 2012

A friend of mine recently emailed me to say that she has a new client but they’re wary of doing a blogger outreach program, and do I have any metrics about outreach ROI, especially for driving sales?

I wrote back: You’re asking for the holy grail.

However, while linking ROI to blogger outreach is not simple, it’s also not impossible. Think about the decades (centuries?) of PR people who have gone before us. How did they determine ROI on media outreach when all they had was “impressions” (a very fuzzy number that was, and is: self-reported from print and broadcast media)?

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3 comments

The Decline of Blogs (and How PR Can Help Avoid It)

by Stephanie Schwab · March 9, 2012

I returned from the Blissdom blogger conference about 10 days ago and am off to Dad 2.0 Summit this week. There’s a lot of blogger love happening out there, and it’s wonderful to be in the middle of it, helping to connect brands and bloggers in creative and fruitful ways.

Lately, though, I’ve been coming home from parenting/lifestyle blogger conferences both inspired and dismayed. There are some really cool ways in which brands are engaging with these bloggers, and some of those efforts come through at blogger conferences. For example, at Blissdom, ConAgra launched their Child Hunger Ends Here campaign, encouraging bloggers to add the hashtag #childhunger to their tweets to donate one meal per tweet sent during the conference. The hashtag was flying and 20,000 meals were donated, with ConAgra matching to get to a total of 40,000 meals. Bloggers for a cause … I love it.

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37 comments

Want A Master’s Degree In Public Relations?

by Jason Falls · December 7, 2011

Big thanks and welcome to Full Sail University, a new sponsor here at SME. Their online master’s degree program for public relations professionals is just a click away. Hit their advertisement over there in the sidebar and sign up to get some free information about it.

Frankly, I was impressed by the course offerings for the degree. There’s a fair bit of new media and social media learning to be had there. If a master’s degree in PR is something you might be considering, it’s certainly worth a look-see.

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Socmetrics Offers Fast, Simple Influencer Identification

by Jason Falls · November 1, 2011

A new influencer identification tool has emerged that has quite a bit of promise. Socmetrics, a one-year-old company out of Boston, is similar to mBlast in that it looks at influencers through a topical filter. While Tom Webster may very well be influential in the worlds of social media marketing and market research, he is also an influential voice on wine. And mining his conversations and those around him shows that if you’re looking for it. Tools like Klout, which look at influence in more of a reach-based formula, don’t make topical distinctions very well. Socmetrics does.

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11 comments

The Social Side of Brand Management

by Jason Falls · October 15, 2011

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Matt Polsky, the  Social Media Manager as well as the Reputation Manager for Veterans United and VA Mortgage Center. 

The rise of social media and content creation has brought on new challenges for businesses of all shapes and sizes, especially when it comes to managing one’s reputation. Reputation isn’t a single stationary object, but an equation that includes many pieces, such as being known for quality products or services, being likeable, actively engaging customers, or the ability to offer valuable and relevant content.

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33 comments

Always Listening to the Customer is a Race to Mediocrity

by Eric Brown · September 27, 2011

As a business owner, do you care what people think about your business and the decisions you make? More specifically, do you care what your customers think? Perhaps the short answer is, “yes,” however is that holding you back? With the onslaught of social media and review sites, everyone has an opinion, and it is easier than ever to be a critic. The plethora of social media platforms has provided folks with a megaphone to chant their dislike about this or that. The adage of “The Customer Is Always Right” burrows into our fear factor and may stifle innovation and necessary change to your business model.

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35 comments

Traackr Makes Influencer Identification Easy, But Not Cheap

by Jason Falls · August 15, 2011

We’ve covered a number of tools that help marketers and brands identify influencers here. From Klout to mBlast and event the influencer identification tools in social media monitoring platforms, there exists a variety of methodologies, interfaces and price points to help you find the right bloggers and online voices to target with your company’s outreach.

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14 comments

Bloggers Are Promotional Partners, Which Is Bad For PR

by Stephanie Schwab · August 4, 2011

I’ve been ranting for some time about the disconnect between PR and social media, and particularly between PR and blogger outreach. In the evolution of social media, somehow blogger outreach became equated with public relations’ pitching to journalists, and so for years it’s been largely the domain of PR coordinators and account executives.

That’s seems wrong. I feel that PR should not be primarily responsible for blogger outreach. And likely not for other types of social media either.

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107 comments

What Motivates Bloggers?

by Stephanie Schwab · June 23, 2011

If you’re a public relations or communications person who works with bloggers, you’ve probably figured out by now that every blogger is unique. Pitching bloggers is not the same as pitching traditional journalists, because every blogger is motivated differently, whereas journalists are generally motivated to write because they’re being paid to do so and with a (usually) clear editorial direction.

Bloggers, on the other hand, work mainly for themselves. (For the purposes of this post, we’re talking about non-corporate bloggers – those that create and maintain blogs for their own personal use, or as a small business in and of itself.) So determining the motivation of an individual blogger is the key to pitching them successfully, because if you can address their needs, you can often get them to write about your product or service.

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