Alan Weinkrantz PR Web Log

A Conversation with Social Media Consultant, & Book Author, Dave Evans

Dave Evans has just written a very good and very practical book that I just started reading.

Dave's Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day will introduce you to the basics, demonstrate how to manage details and describe how you can track results.  In my conversation with Dave you will see that he's very practical and very pragmatic in approaching a business like approach to social media.

Celebrity Spotting in San Antonio! Hanging out with Kami, Geoff, Bruce and Rob

OK, maybe the headline is a bit dramatic, but here in the quiet little town of San Antonio (we're only the 9th largest city by population in the U.S.) it's not often that the A-list of Social Media experts come to town.

Yesterday, my pal, Kami Watson Huyse organized a pow-wow get together in San Antonio where i had a chance to meet Facebook pal, Geoff Livingston. 

It's amazing when you are "friends" with someone virtually and you meet them in real live person.  Geoff is also the author of Now is Gone - A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs.

Others at the pow-wow included Bruce Hughes and Robert La Gesse and some other members of his team from Rackspace.

General Consensus: America's economic crisis could be a great window of opportunity for those of us in the Social Media / PR space.

Instead of cutting back on marketing budgets, I see budgets being re-aligned with innovation, customer engagement, conversation, measurement and accountability.  While the economy may slow down a bit, marketers still need to.....market.

Re-think, re-align and re-focus your messages and your budgets for 2009.  This could be a good time to disrupt your competition, gain market share, and expand- rather than contract your business.

What are you doing to re-align your marketing and PR initiatives for 2009? 

Save the Date: September 16 for My First Live Seminar on Blogging & PR

Save the date:on September 16 / 11 AM CST (9 AM PST / 11 AM MST / 1 PM EST / 7 PM Israel time) I will be conducting a free online seminar which will be broadcast on UStream.TV.  BlogCatalog is sponsoring the event.

I'll be posting more information about this event later this week.

How Social Media Can Help Humanize Your Company (And Much More)

Today, I gave a presentation InnoTech in San Antonio, entitled, Strategies for Leveraging Social Media & Web 2.0 Technologies.  I joined Giovanni Galucci, who lead the discussion.  You can read more about today's event in today's story in our local paper, the San Antonio Express News.

I focused on the notion that Social Media can help humanize your company.  By that, I mean it can put a real voice, a real face, and if you will - some personality on your company and your brand.

I also demonstrated how, through my this blog, and my other, 3Screens.net can really impact organic search results.

If you have any questions about the presentation, don't hesitate to contact me via email at: alan at weinkrantz dot com.

You may download the presentation here:

Download innotech_presentation.pdf

BusinessWire's Blog Says That Shorter Headlines Lead to Better Google Juice

Over at BusinessWired, the BusinessWire blog, there is a very good post advising on the principle getting better rankings with shorter headlines on your news releases.

According to the post, Google alerted BusinessWire that press release headlines should not exceed 22 words.

Read more about it here. 

Worth Reading

How This Blog Impacts Our Client's Coverage - And Extends the Conversation

When I blog, I am creating fresh content.

Search engines and spiders look for what's new.

So when I write about our clients, the search engines - and more specifically the blog search engines like Technorati and Google Blog Search will bring up results about our clients in my blog. 

Case in point:  here's a trackback from a post I did citing a news release for client, Alsbridge.  As you can see, China Law Blog posted an observation about the news release we issued based on my blog post. 

In this case, they missed a key point that was in the news release, so I had a chance to extend the conversation by posting a comment on their blog.

I also know that in my other blog, 3Screens, I will, in some case outrank AT&T in their rankings on specific subject matter. 

All this to say is that an unexpected benefit of my blogging about our clients helps them more in 'being found."

According to Chris, Tags Are Your New Website

Chris Brogan says, "Tags are your new website."

By that, he postulates that following the conversation created by people not inside your organization is far more important than creating pretty flash pages and dazzling product descriptions on a site that you still have to push people to visit.

Read his post here.  And then read it again.  And then one more time.

PR Newswire Offers Search Visiblity Services

Last week, our rep from PR Newswire, Jennifer Miller, and her compadre Cyndi Baumgartner came by our offices to update us on 'waz up with her company. 

They are now offering a news service called "Search Engine Visibility" (SEV), will Jennifer says will give you the ability to see exactly what phrases Web users use to arrive at customers' news releases. 

These reports, generated by their partner, icrossing, will help can help you tailor future messages by providing relevant feedback on the most- used keywords and actions taken by Web users viewing the news release.

"One of the biggest challenges facing PR professionals and marketers in the Internet age is, 'How do customers and influencers find my news release online?'  This service not only helps to place PR Newswire members' news releases in higher rankings on leading search engines, it also tells them how much traffic they are receiving from these engines, and reports on which search phrases were entered.

We'll be testing the service this fall.

Look for updates on my take on this.

Photo of me on a glacier in Iceland trying to 'search.'  (c) Alan Weinkrantz - 2005 All Rights Reserved.