DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

It's great to see that the things that really work in any form of human interaction are the lasting traits for success online. That's according to an interesting post at Top Rank Online Marketing blog called "Let's revisit these 16 rules for social media optimisation (SMO) and see which are still relevant"

Different social media sites wax and wane, but a lot of the best practice tips come down to attending to the basics of good communications: listening and reacting appropriately, plus good ideas, clearly presented.

And there're lots of good tips too.

Labels: communications, online PR, SEO, social media, Top Rank Online Marketing

Caffeine is the codename for Google's new search engine. An early version has been released to web developers for testing and feedback.

Most of the clever stuff is under the bonnet so users will notice little obvious change, although results should be faster.

But what is it likely to do to your optimised web pages? The good news is that you don't need to be a pro to find out. A web developer has set up very neat solution: www.comparegoogle.com - a side-by-side comparison site of the top Google results for your nominated terms and your website.

I ran our clients' search terms on the comparitor. All of them had been performing well in the top 20 for some months on organic search alone. And all of them performed slightly better on the caffeinated version, so I'm looking forward to a pepped up Google.

Labels: on and offline PR, online PR, SEO

It's easy enough to find comment mentioning your business name or key search terms on websites, forums and in the news using Google plus their news alerts service.

But finding the most influential tweeters on Twitter in your sphere was a bit of a hit or miss using apps like Twollow. Not any longer. Have just discovered WeFollow on Twitter and I can recommend it. It is a directory and you can use it to find entrepreneurs, celebs etc.

But use it on a keyword search and it will dig out the people who are tweeting in your sector. The results come back ranking Tweeters numerically according to the number of followers they have attracted, which gives a fair indication of their influence.

And helps you see where you are in the pecking order. You do have to register to be placed, so it's not totally comprehensive, but I suspect most people wanting to be seen as a heavyweight in a subject area will be seriously tempted to sign up.

http://wefollow.com/

Labels: ecommerce, online PR, SEO, social media, Twitter, wefollow

As Simon Allen here at Shopfitter says, "Google loves blogs" and certainly the posts on blogs appear a lot faster online than many website updates. That means you'll get results much faster with blogs if you want more web traffic on your site.

If you want to know how to blog really effectively, online PR guru, *David Meerman Scott's Twitter page put up a link yesterday to a great set of tips about professional blogging. It's written by a professional blogger and self-confessed geek called Yehuda Berlinger. I reckon he outlines a pretty clear road from start-up to star of the blogosphere and I will be working to apply a lot of his tips, including having a massive cringe at all the blogs I set up in my initial experimental phase ("not professional" says Berlinger. I'm just glad he refers to a defunct blog himself, so I can stop beating myself up, but you don't have to fall into the same trap!).

You can track the effect of all your efforts on your website visitor statistics with the excellent free Google Analytics tools. You can even get free Google lessons and qualifications in all of this wizard stuff to enable you to boost your web traffic and increase your confidence at handling it all. Good on Google! And Berlinger for sharing his blogging tips.

David is the author of the excellent "New Rules of Marketing and PR" book which outlines how to reach buyers online directly. Highly recommended (and no, I don't get anything for that!).

Labels: blogging, David Meerman Scott, Google Analytics, online marketing, online PR, SEO, Yehuda Berlinger