Our strategic partner, Louise Desmarais of Mud Creative always writes great and valuable blog posts and the latest is no exception, its all about effective online PR on a shoestring:

Why free press release sites may be all you need

Online press releases are perfect for an SEO tactic called “link building.” Link building is the process of creating inbound links to your site from other sites. The more inbound links your site has pointing to it, the more popular your site is perceived to be by the engines. And that bodes well for your rankings.

An online press release will offer readers a story that is newsworthy and have – at the very least – your site’s URL in it. Because your press release stays on the web for extended periods of time, that link is always working for you.

Readers of this blog know why I like PR Web for online press releases. I have also used www.marketwire.com and www.newswire.ca for releases that are geographically targeted with good results. But these are all paid services and for many small business owners, their rates can be a little out of reach. Plus, for best SEO results, online press releases should be issued on a regular basis – once a month or more frequently, which can really drive your costs up.

Start out free, and see what happens

If you’re just trying online PR for the first time or you have a tight budget, you can still get solid results by using free services. To find a good one, look for these characteristics:

• Free to use – or low cost for additional features
• Releases show up in Google and sometimes on Google News (Pick any release on the site, type the headline in the Google search bar, and see if it comes up.)
• The releases posted on the site are newsworthy, not sales focused. This is an indication that the site has editors who care about which releases they accept
• They allow at least one direct link to your site

There are gazillions of free press release distribution sites, (A Google search of “Free Press Release Sites” shows 70,900,000 results), but you can save yourself tons of time and still build inbound links with just three or four services, like these:

• www.prlog.org
• www.24-7pressrelease.com
• www.free-press-release-center.info
• www.onlineprnews.com

• For $12US, www.onlineprnews.com lets you add an image (could be your logo) and three anchor text links, gives you listing above the free releases, tweets the headline and guarantees inclusion in Google News. Not a bad deal.

Did it work?

While free services won’t provide a results report, it’s easy enough to see how successful your release was with these tricks:

• “Google it” – A day or two after your release, simply “Google” (or Yahoo) your company name, your targeted keyphrases, or even the entire headline of your release. Google will let you know which services, blogs, and industry publications picked it up.
• Google Alerts – Google Alerts is a time-saving feature that delivers results right to your inbox. Here’s how to set up Google Alerts.
• Google Analytics – Google Analytics are free, and easily added to your site. Your analytics will tell you where traffic came from and even which keyphrases were used to point them to your site.

If you’ve got news to share on the web, but you are avoiding press releases because of cost, give the free services a go. Online press releases just may be the extra boost you need to improve your rankings.

Thanks again Louise for letting me post this for my community too!

Welcome to 2010 and our first blog post of the new year.  I hope you had a great festive season and that you are raring to go in 2010.

2010 Predictions

I thought this would be a good opportunity to review our social media predictions for 2009 (to see how on the ball I was) and to make some new ones for 2010.  (Clips in red are from last year’s predictions).

Social Media

2009 was the year when social media really took off, Oprah helped take Twitter to the masses and everyone and their dog started using social media tools.  However, there is some disillusionment now as folks realize, after spinning their wheels for a while that, to be effective using social media, you have to have a strategy. 2010 will be the year that social media becomes an integral part of organisations’ marketing and business development strategies and not simply a stand alone tool.

According to Compete.com visitor counts to both Twitter and Friendfeed peaked in late summer (Friendfeed seing a rather drastic decline after announcing their acquisition by Facebook in August interestingly enough). I hope that 2010 brings added functionality to Twitter (that top layer I have been dreaming about that puts all that great content to better use and makes it more accessible).   Brightkite never really reached the heights I predicted but competitor Foursquare did (arriving in Vancouver in the summer).

Geo Based Networks

In 2010 geo based social networks like Foursquare will continue to grow in popularity but more importantly, these offerings will become more sophisticated allowing both business and users to benefit more from their use.

Also on the mobile front, watch out for more digital advertising.  In November I blogged about The Future Of Advertising, introducing offerings like ScanLife and Kooaba.  In 2010 we will see these being put to use more and the promotions will become more interactive.

Whilst smart phone sales continued to grow in 2009, I expect that the iPhone will be less dominant as the Android really takes off in 2010.  I got one last month (HTC) and LOVE it!

Apps

For 2009, I didn’t predict the growth of the smart phone app: the number of iPhone apps doubled in the first six months of the year.  With Android’s growth and open nature, this phenomenon will continue in 2010 and beyond.  So start thinking about using apps that can help you in business, or developing apps that can help you reach your audience.

Newsletter Renaissance

In 2010 I predict we will see a newsletter renaissance as marketers realize that: a) email is still one of the best ways to reach their audience (you have their permission after all) and b) blogs don’t replace e-newsletters and are often aimed at completely different audiences.  I also think that we will continue to see blogs being used in ways other than for posting articles i.e. blog outreach, blog comments and community building.

Be More Social and Less “Me” Centric

Which leads me to one wish I have for 2010 with regard to social media.  So many companies and entrepreneurs are still using social media to push out information that is completely me centric ( i.e. links to their own websites and not others).  Wake up and smell the roses peeps!  This is not the 20th century when pushing out information was all you could do.  It is time for you to realise that the key to social media is in the name itself – being social.

In 2010 please interact with others more, build networks and relationships, reach out to new peeps, but most important of all, rather than taking a me centric view, change your focus to hone in on those you want to do business with: interact with these people, find ways to connect, to answer their questions and add value.  Then you will see the true benefit of using social media as part of your marketing or business development strategy.

Here’s to growth, prosperity and being social in 2010.  All the very best.

If you subscribe to Wired Magazine you may have noticed what they are hailing as the future of advertising – and they could be right (again).  A number of adverts contained in the publication are smart phone enabled using an application called Kooaba.  Once you’ve installed the Kooaba application on your smart phone you can take a photo of the ad, launch the app and it takes you to a specific landing page online.

The app is quick and easy to install but I did have to take 2 photos before the image was recognised.  I scanned the Glenfiddich ad and was taken to their landing page.  I had expected to be taken to a Wired specific landing page rather than the main page but with the approach still in its infancy and I guess that specific landing pages are yet to be built in.

Another example of smart advertising in use is at Metro News, the free newspaper,  where 2D bar codes appear on the print version of the paper allowing readers to scan using their smart phone and be taken to a mobile specific version of the article. To do this you have to go to their mobile site text GETMETRO or download the app and you are off to the races.

Here at Out-Smarts we are always keen to try out new technology so above you will find a 2D bar code allowing you to access this article on your phone. To scan it, download the Scanlife app for your phone, and scan using your smart phone to be taken to this blog on your phone. Neat huh? And it took only a few minutes to set up.

It can be a bit convoluted from the end user perspective but change is coming soon with the advent of NFC (near field communication) technology which promises to allow you to interact with print and TV ads in a highly streamlined way.

Making the user experience interactive and richer may be what will save traditional media, especially since they rely so heavily on advertising revenues.

Related articles:

NFC Enabled TV and Radio

Amid all the gloom and doom of the economic world its difficult to see the silver lining these days. However, we have discovered so many reasons to be cheerful this month that we may have another Reasons To Be Cheerful in mid November so that we can share them all with you.

Our number one reason to be cheerful is that amid all this turmoil and recession we know that Internet and Social media marketing will prevail. Why? Because its more effective, less expensive and easier to track than traditional marketing efforts.

Now to our new media reasons of the month:

Caught the Twitter bug? Then you’ll be interested in your Twitter statistics perhaps. TweetStats reveals your Twitter habits. I’ve been on Twitter (@outsmarts) since March 2007 and it interesting to see how my interest waned then waxed.

Another great tool discovered this month is Ping.fm. Ping lets you post once to any number of social networking tools (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and the list goes on). Very handy if you are trying to be everywhere at once.

Another most excellent discovery this month is the social advertising community AdHack – this is people powered advertising at its best.

Another great resource is HARO – Help A Reporter Out. Its a service that connects reporters with people who have content to share. Its a great way to share your material but watch out for email overload.

GivenGain is another site we came across this month. They facilitate giving. If you are a charity looking to set up a donations stream or if you are looking to give then check this out.

Lastly, WigglyWigglers - a fantastic example of how one company harnessed social media to the max.

Until next time – stay cheerful!

When considering an ad campaign whether on-line or in the real world, its very important to get it right. Proof read your work and have someone else do it too to make sure the message is right unlike these on Oddee.

I always encourage clients to consider Craigslist as a forum for free Internet advertising and also a good source of web site traffic but lately I am in two minds with the news that the site is being used to try to sell everything from sex to babies.

Yes babies – you read it right. Some unfortunate, mentally challenged parents in Vancouver were recently arrested for advertising their 7 day old baby on Craigslist for $10,000. When police popped in to investigate they claimed it was a hoax but that didn’t prevent their child from being taken into care.

Initially I considered this to be one of the problems of the “free” future of business much touted by Chris Anderson of Long Tail and Wired Magazine fame: if everything is free then there’s no money to pay anyone to monitor the service. Then I realized that Chris is right and that this is a perfect example of crowdsourcing – using the people and collective to get things done “free”. Craigslist doesn’t need to pay someone to monitor the ads that people are posting because the people will do it for them. The parents who thought it would be funny to advertise their child for sale got caught because of a conscientious granny who read it, thought rightly that that was wrong and reported it to the police.

When I recommend Craigslist to clients in future, I will be sure to set appropriate expectations and some will no doubt choose not to associate their products with the likes of those aforementioned which sometimes get advertised on Craigslist but it does remain a valuable “free” advertising forum that shouldn’t be ignored.

Watch out for more on crowdsourcing later in the week in the form of Out-Smarts podcast #5 with Monica Hamburg – coming soon!

Just wanted to quickly follow up on me post a few days ago regarding Microsoft’s attempt to buy Yahoo.  News in today is that Yahoo is rejecting the bid as it “under values the organisation”.  The search engine and Internet advertising industries will remain on tenterhooks to see if Microsoft will up their $45b bid (as expected by analysts) or if a hostile take over is on the cards.  Yahoo’s share price dropped following the disclosure – no surprise there.

The Internet may never be the same again with the announcement today that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo. In its ongoing battle to thwart Google, the software giant is willing to put out $45 billion dollars for Yahoo, an aquisition that would potentially be the largest in tech history.

With rumours swirling lately of mass layoffs at Yahoo and its declining stock price, the Microsoft offer (which isn’t its first) could be a lifeline or a nail in the coffin of the search engine giant. It would also consolidate further the SEO arena with 2 giant behemoths facing up.

It will be interesting to see what happens but for us punters it can only mean one thing: a viable alternative to Google for on-line advertising. A shake up in Internet advertising can only be good given their monopolistic dominance.

1. Use Twitter to market to you audience (assuming your audience are Twits that is (or should that be Tweets?). It can be used for branding and networking effectively. Dosh dosh lists 17 more Twitter marketing applications and innovative Tweet uses.

2. Participate in the blogosphere. Find blogs pertaining to your industry or your target audience and get commenting. You would be amazed at how this can help spread the word.

3. Find out about new technologies that make it easier for people to do business with you – like Skype – the on-line phone service or that help you present your offering more effectively – like Flickr the photo site -  and make full use of them on your website.

4. Get creative with video clips about your company: make them quirky, funny or alternative and post on YouTube. You never know, this could be the next big meme.

5. If your not comfortable with writing blog comments or posts or are camera shy, why not consider a Podcasting your message. Its much easier than you think.

6. When you find interesting articles, pages or clips, share them with your others in your field. I Stumble but hear that Magnolia and Deli.cio.us are great for this too.

7. Join Facebook, MySpace or Linked In (or all three) and get networking. You know the old adage about a friend of a friend being your friend too: its so much easier to do business with people you’ve been referred to by a friend or colleague.

8. Use Internet advertising technologies such as AdWords or Facebook Social to reach and promote to the right audience.

9. Forums or chat rooms where your audience collaborate are great ways to get involved, join the conversation and establish expertise with a wider audience.

10. Get wiki with it. Join Wikipedia and share your knowledge (but be careful not to be blatantly corporate or your posts will just get deleted) with the global audience.

As you know, here at Out-Smarts we are champions of Internet advertising: in the main because it is more effective at reaching a highly targeted audience, but from an audience perspective Internet Ads can miss the mark or have a counter effect.

Ads are popping up all over Facebook these days and I’ve been interested in getting people’s view on these. In general most people I’ve talked to don’t mind the ads too much, some don’t even seem to notice they are there. However there has been negative comments: one Facebook user told me that a flashing pink ad on the screen was so abusive that he got a cracking headache and had to go and do something else – not likely to click through on that is he? I myself was offended by a series of ads for weight loss products (just because its the New Year and I am woman does not mean I am obsessed by my weight).

So advertisers beware, when creating ads test and try them and think about who your audience truly is and what will appeal to them rather than offending them with nonsense and rather than spread your net as wide as you can, hone in on those who really consitute your niche that way your campaigns are much more likely to succeed after all, the technology is available to let you do this effectively.