How to deal with challenges of PR

The web is getting more and more “crowded” – according to Internet live stats more than 40% of the world population is on the Internet, and this number is rapidly increasing. Just to serve as a reminder, in 1995 less than 1% of the world population was using the Internet. That number sounds low, but when you translate that to real people and businesses, it’s huge.
The growing problem is distancing yourself from the competition. Staying ahead of the “targeting and attracting your customers” curve can prove it to be a true nightmare.
You don’t only want to increase your website’s traffic but in reality what you want is to get more targeted visitors coming to your website. The reasons are a lot and the ways to do it even more and this is what I will explain in this blog post.

So how do you increase the traffic on your website?

Increase readers and email subscribers
If you can manage to keep targeted visitors happy though your content and website experience then most probably they will visit again and also subscribe to your email list.

Increase social media shares
Targeted visitors will share something on their Facebook or twitter if they like it. I don’t have any statistics to back this assumption but it makes sense to LIKE something if it solves your problem (in case you are looking for answers) or satisfies a need (in case your are looking for products).

Focus on testing your:
Salescopy, especially your headline, benefits, guarantee and call to action
Order process, which needs to be simple enough for a novice web user to place an order
Opt-in offer, so you can determine if you’re successfully capturing your visitors’ contact information
Site navigation, so you can figure out how many clicks it takes to buy. Ideally it should take less than three.

Optimize your site for search engines
To make a parallel with offline business – if you own a shop, you must take care of the road people are using to come to the store. Same goes for search engines when talking about online businesses. Search engines represent the road to your website, and search engine optimization is a way to direct a passer-by to use this same road to come as quickly and as easily as possible to your website, without stopping by a different store on his way.

Get cheap traffic quickly with PPC advertising
Once you’ve tested your site with limited PPC traffic, the fastest way to ramp up traffic to your site is to roll out a PPC campaign on a larger scale. Obviously, you should start with Yahoo Search Marketing and Findwhat,

Mobile Traffic
While this is pretty much the same as search engine traffic explained above, it is worth noting that if you are after targeted traffic from mobile visitors you need to have a mobile friendly website otherwise you will not be able to reach users on mobile.

Content marketing

Last but not least, content marketing is the most effective way to gain targeted visitors. Actually without a proper content marketing strategy you cannot achieve anything with the above techniques.
Content marketing is what will drive search engine traffic from desktop and mobile, create more interaction in social media and convince mobile users to download the native apps on their devices.

A good way for you to expand the knowledge about your business’ niche and learn even more about current trends is to find discussion boards and lists discussing issues and challenges that can relate to your work. Be careful not to break the site’s rules about promoting yourself – most websites of this type will have a certain place reserved for promoting your business, most often in the email signature.

Source: Online Marketing Indianapolis  / Reliablesoft  / Entrepreneur

Link building (alternative spellings include linkbuilding and link-building) refers to the process of getting external pages to link to a page on your website. It is one of the many tactics used in   search engine optimization   (SEO). Building links is a difficult, time-consuming process as not all links are created equal. A link from an authoratative website like the Wall Street Journal will make a greater impact on a SERP than a link from a newly built website, but high quality links are hard to come by. This guide will teach you how to build quality links. Link building is the most important (and challenging) SEO skill. Actually, it’s a culmination of several different skills: you need to master content creation, sales, programming, psychology, and good old-fashioned marketing if you want other people to consistently link to your site. Since the late 1990s search engines have treated links as votes for popularity and importance in the ongoing democratic opinion poll of the web. The engines themselves have refined the use of link data to a fine art, and use complex algorithms to perform nuanced evaluations of sites and pages based on this information. Link building is a byproduct of the collective efforts and initiatives that a brand/business implements to promote and make itself more known to its target audience/customers. Elements that impact link building positively may include the following: Product development Content and business assets USP and Online Branding Offline Branding (events) Relationships The Why Link building is important because it is a major factor in how Google ranks Web pages. Google notes on their site that: "In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages." Imagine that we own a site promoting wind turbine equipment that we sell. We're competing with another wind turbine equipment manufacturer. One of the ranking factors Google will look at in determining how to rank our respective pages is link popularity. While the above example provides a general visual understanding of how page rank works and why link building is important, it's very basic. It omits key factors such as: The trust and authority of the linking pages. The SEO and content optimization of the respective sites. The anchor text of the incoming links. For a more in-depth explanation of how PageRank is calculated, read through these resources: The original Google PageRank paper The Future of PageRank: 13 Experts on the Evolving PageRank Algorithm An in-depth discussion of the formula behind PageRank The Wikipedia page on the subject The most important concept to understand is that, as Google says, you're more likely to have your content rank higher for keywords you're targeting if you can get external websites to link to you. The future of link building It’s not going away anytime soon. As long as Google has an algorithm based off links, we will always be manually pursuing them, whether they’re in ways Google likes or ones they don’t. But for those who say all link building is black hat, know this: just because we’re actively pursuing links doesn’t mean they’re manipulative. Here’s an example. A colleague of mine was telling me about a client who has over 14,000 mentions of his name across the Web. What he’s trying to do is to reach out to those who mentioned them, and simply ask if they would link back to the guy’s personal website. You think that’s manipulative? Yeah, he might of earned those links by being influential and getting mentioned, but until someone went out and did the dirty work of buildingthem, they wouldn’t exist, and thus, he wouldn’t have gotten credit for them in the eyes of Google.

While many people equate public relations with publicity-or more generally, garnering media attention-the field is actually quite a bit broader. In addition to media relations, PR agents coordinate activities such as events, meetings, educational programs, speaking engagements, and other forms of communication. One of the objectives in PR is to use the media to reach the target market because, when mediated by a supposedly objective third party, the message will become more powerful.
Because of their role in generating media coverage, PR professionals are sometimes thought of as disingenuous, deceitful, hucksterish flacks trying simultaneously to pull the wool over the eyes of their clients and the public at large. That’s inaccurate. Most journalists and clients will only deal with people in PR who are known for being honest and straightforward, because to do otherwise could potentially hurt their own reputations. And the fact is, in today’s business world, every company, CEO, celebrity, and association wants to show the best possible face to the public, and all of them are using public relations to do so.

With many majors, graduates are given a range of options to choose from when they’re deciding on a career. One of the majors with a large spectrum is public relations. Students in this program end up in a variety of positions, from navigating the corporate world to giving journalism a spin. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular jobs for public relations managers.

Public Relations Specialists
Public relations specialists, sometimes referred to as media specialists or communication specialists, are hired by companies or clients to maintain a positive image in the press, represent them in all media, and address any questions posed to them by concerned consumers, members of the press, company investors, government agencies, and other public relations professionals. It is imperative that public relations specialists perform research on each party they correspond with in order to understand their stanch on particular issues to create harmonious business relationships. Some examples of job titles for public relations specialists include:
Communications Specialist
Public affairs Specialist
Gifts Specialist
Major Gifts Officer
Media Specialist
Public Relations Managers
Public relations managers often oversee public relations specialists to ensure that all aspects of public relations are consistent with the company’s or clients’ intended public image. They also help to evolve public images by considering current trends in social, political and economic forefronts in order to improve a client’s image accordingly. Finally, public relations managers may also be responsible for internal communication within a particular company, especially in larger firms where constant communication is essential for delivering a consistent public image. Managers often require several more years of work experience, training and education than specialists need to qualify for a position. Some examples of job titles for public relations managers include:
Director of Development
Communications Manager
Executive Director
Release Manager
Director of Community Relations

Salaries for Public Relations Careers
According to PayScale.com, median salaries for public relations-related careers as of January 2016 were:
Account executive – $48,984
Marketing assistant – $35,163
Event coordinator – $38,491
Public relations specialist – $45,270
Marketing coordinator – $40,528
Marketing manager – $61,253
Public relations manager – $61,193
Coursework in a Public Relations Program
Typical coursework for public relations majors focuses on such topics as media ethics and law, campaign planning, advertising, multimedia storytelling, public speaking, journalism, and public relations writing.
Writing courses are important because graduates usually hold jobs that require a great deal of writing. These positions may require employees to compose press releases, campaign speeches, newsletters, public service announcements and media alerts.

Source: public relations tampa   / Forbes

Web design   is the process of creating websites. It encompasses several different aspects, including webpage layout, content production, and graphic design. While the terms web design and web development are often used interchangeably, web design is technically a subset of the broader category of web development. Often many individuals will work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all.[1] The term web design is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end (client side) design of a website including writing mark up. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and if their role involves creating mark up then they are also expected to be up to date with web accessibility guidelines. In other words, UX design is the process of designing (digital or physical) products that are useful, easy to use, and delightful to interact with. It’s about enhancing the experience that people have while interacting with your product, and making sure they find value in what you’re providing.The experience can be anything from the light sensitivity with car door, furniture design, product design etc. User experience design encompasses traditionalhuman–computer interaction (HCI) design, and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users. If UX is the experience that a user has while interacting with your product, then UX Design is, by definition, the process by which we determine what that experience will be. UX Design always happens. Whether it’s intentional or not, somebody makes the decisions about how the human and the product will interact. Good UX Design happens when we make these decisions in a way that understands and fulfills the needs of both our users and our business. User experience (abbreviated as UX) is how a person feels when interfacing with a system. The system could be a website, a web application or desktop software and, in modern contexts, is generally denoted by some form of human-computer interaction (HCI). Those who work on UX (called UX designers) study and evaluate how users feel about a system, looking at such things as ease of use, perception of the value of the system, utility, efficiency in performing tasks and so forth. UX designers also look at sub-systems and processes within a system. For example, they might study the checkout process of an e-commerce website to see whether users find the process of buying products from the website easy and pleasant. They could delve deeper by studying components of the sub-system, such as seeing how efficient and pleasant is the experience of users filling out input fields in a Web form. UX Design refers to the term User Experience Design, while UI Design stands forUser Interface Design. Both elements are crucial to a product and work closely together. But despite their professional relationship, the roles themselves are quite different, referring to very different parts of the process and the design discipline. Where UX Design is a more analytical and technical field, UI Design is closer to what we refer to as graphic design, though the responsibilities are somewhat more complex. “User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are some of the most confused and misused terms in our field. A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no paper mache on it. A great product experience starts with UX followed by UI. Both are essential for the product’s success.” The lesson to be learned here, is that if you’re interested in sociology, in cognitive science, in people and in great products, User Experience is a good place to be; but if you understand those principles and are more visually inclined, you might look at its brother-in-arms: User Interface Design.

In today’s socially connected world,   public relations   is more important than ever before. Today, a single tweet from the right Kardashian could be worth more than your entire advertising budget. Your consumers are looking up your business online, reading reviews, tweeting about products, and crowdsourcing their experience with your brand.
But too many companies are still wholly focused on the ROI of it all when it comes to public relations results. Currently, the U.S. public relations industry is comprised of more than 7,000 companies, bringing in an estimated annual revenue of $11 billion.
The field is growing, with 70% of companies offering diverse services from media relations to event management. With such a wide range of services and expertise, it makes sense that modern PR professionals have a hard time guaranteeing hard and fast ROI numbers.
In companies that doggedly measure nearly every business activity, the calls to quantify public relations’ value can seem never-ending. This is most prevalent in companies with a relentless eye for continuous improvement and return on investment. When it comes to public relations, the typical response from public relations pros is to fight any attempt to reduce our work to a simple spreadsheet. But given such an environment, in the long run it vastly benefits communicators to call a truce and make metrics work for — not against — you.
To develop and introduce a measurement plan for communications programs, public relations professionals must understand what return on investment (ROI) means. However, discussing ROI with executives and staff can be challenging. Puckett and Rockland discuss the key messages to get across about ROI, as well as provide answers to frequently asked questions agencies have about measuring the value of public relations programs.

In the beginning, ask “Why?”. One of the most important questions to ask when trying to figure out how to measure the success (or failure) of your campaign or initiative is, “Why?” Why” are you investing time and resources into a particular campaign? What do you hope to get out of it? Ultimately, your PR efforts should support your business objectives, so don’t stop asking, “Why?” until you get there.

Agree on measurement goals upfront:The biggest challenge in measuring the ROI on PR is that some companies sometimes think of measurement as an afterthought. Good advice is to bring it front and center. In fact, don’t sign contracts until you and your client have agreed on the measurement goals you’re working towards.
Making the connection between spikes in PR coverage, website traffic and then conversions to leads/sales is a good practice, but it’s important to work closely with other areas of marketing, web and sales to have access to data that may not be readily available. When you break down the silos you can show a more accurate picture of ROI.
Use social media for a two-way dialogue. Today, we can poll audiences, ask people their preferences and see where they are going. It’s a much richer world for measuring results than back in the days when we had to hire a survey research firm for pre and post-telephone surveys. When brands need to measure sentiment or gauge whether opinions changed, they can simply ask.
Be patient. Moving the needle and making an impact requires a sustained commitment. However, many companies are looking for a one-time silver bullet to achieve their communication goals. If you think of communicating with your stakeholders in the same way you think about it with your spouse, you know it is not a process that you turn on and off at will or just give it your all every once in a while. Predictable, consistent and, of course, interesting communication is the key to building trust and relationships with your audiences.

Source: marketing agency tampa fl  / Duff Jason

When we're searching for a soul mate, we look for someone that's smart, funny, caring, all that stuff. But most of all? We look for someone that's dependable. If we're going to invest our lives in a person, we have to be able to depend on them, right? Falling in love with a brand isn't all that different. Brands lure us in with witty slogans and timely discounts, but it's a brand's dependability that makes us stick around. Think about it, inbound marketing is all about content and communication that people love. And love is rooted in lots of qualities, including consistency. Customers stay loyal to brands when they feel comfortable and in sync with them -- it becomes a relationship. The key to being your leads' and customers’ soul mate, then, is building a brand they can count on. But how? Sure, it may seem like that's a job for the services and support team, but marketing plays a role in this too ... because what’s at the heart of consistency is your brand’s message. All of your communications and marketing assets should tell your brand’s story. Your sweet spot is defined by something simple but vitally important. You need to know what your audience wants and demands (and is urgently seeking a solution to). The more you answer to that, the more you become relevant. And the more relevant, the more valuable. The more commonplace and average your offering, the less valuable. Your sweet spot is their pain point, their place where they are truly seeking a solution to something. It’s your job to find out what that something is, and then become the answer to solve that. The main thing I look for, besides value, when I read someone’s content is any similarity that we may have together. It could be something as simple as the way their personality shines through their writing, their words, or their slang, but it still helps me determine if I would like the company or brand going forward. It’s very important to create a tone of authenticity for your brand. To create a stellar brand identity, brand your personality (if it’s a nice one of course!). Branding your personality will attract your ideal audience. The people who love your brand will fall in love with your personality which in turn develops a love for your brand's personality. Brands that lack personality risk ruining the chance of an emotional connection with your target audience which is the foundation of customer loyalty. When you share your story, your experiences, your knowledge and expertise, use your tone and personality when you do so. Understanding the importance of these two elements will help you create a stellar brand identity. Experts (and doctors and lawyers often fall into this trap) think the more complex they make something, the better. Real experts know differently: real experts know that it’s in simplicity where true power to affect change exists and success awaits. Anyone trying to sell you how complex it all is is full of it. Don't make this faux-pas! Remember, no matter how complex the message you are trying to pupsh through is, the simpler the language, the bigger the effect. STAND FOR SOMETHING REAL. Vague ambiguous offerings are suspect. A cousin to simplicity above is authenticity, reality for something you really care about. Don’t follow trends just because they’re trends. Find out WHY those trends are coming into play and find the undelivered need that is driving all of that adoption. Then you can lead with something that is real and true.

Source
Online Marketing Indianapolis  /   Mashable   /   PR services Clearwater FL

Sadly, so many people think of “advertising” when they think of “marketing.” Marketing is about the Four Ps (Product, Price, Place and Promotion). Marketing agencies have spent the majority of their time focused on just the promotion part of those Four Ps. The world, because of technology and connectedness, is forcing marketing agencies back to the entire sphere that encompasses marketing.

A company or brand in search of a marketing agency partner, must first comprehend the many different types of agencies.

Certainly the size of the program or project, category, geography and budget will dictate the type or types of marketing agency partners that can most effectively and efficiently serve the marketing requirements. Typically, larger, or multinational companies will use multiple agencies, while smaller clients tend to work with fewer, or even a single agency for all marketing needs. There are several types of marketing agencies, but most common are advertising agencies, medai planning agencies, promotion and PR agencies and marketing service agencies.

Promotion Agency   are the next largest portion of agencies, typically working with retail and package-goods clients for promotional campaigns that include advertising, coupons, sweepstakes, contests, loyalty programs, merchandising displays, packaging and related; today many promotion agencies are hybrids that will do all other types of marketing.

Public Relations (PR)   Agencies offer a variety of services such are media relations, investor relations, and crisis communications. Traditional PR activities include news announcements, article writing and placement, and press conferences or events. PR firms often engage in event marketing, new product launches, website development, social media, and educational initiatives. Also, advertising or marketing agencies often provide PR services.

Media Planning/Buying Agency/Service   – often part of an ad agency, media agencies specialize in all aspects of strategy, research, planning, buying, and placement of all types of media including TV, newspaper, magazines, radio, outdoor, and online. Like other agency types, media agencies often engage in other types of marketing, most notably, advertising development and market research. Large media agencies are critically important to large advertisers, due to negotiation leverage and multi-national networks.

Advertising Agencies   are the oldest and most common type of agencies; from Mad Men to the largest holding companies and agency networks, ad agencies were the only game in town until the first web browser was launched, in 1996. The largest ad agencies and their advertising holding companies diversified but the core service from ad agencies remains advertising.

Marketing Services Agency   is next evolutionary step for many advertising agencies, typically providing a variety of services that could be offered by other specialist agencies listed here. Often marketing/marketing services agencies refer to themselves as full-service agencies and provide advertising, PR, strategy and planning, direct, Internet, branding, photography and video, and other types of marketing.

For such a long time marketing agencies have been the executors of what marketingdepartments of their clients have envisioned, but now things are changing. The digital channels have definitely intensified the need for agencies to evolve. How people connect to traditional channels like TV, print, radio and out-of-home has changed from their intended purpose of interrupting consumers with a message during content consumption. Social media pushed this even further by forcing brands to engage with consumers — one-on-one — for the public to see, in a very human voice. Mobile, too, is offering ways to connect with consumers who now wield tremendous power in the palm of their hands. Everyone is curious about how big data is going to play out, what’s next for wearable technology and what the screen of the future will look like — and how consumers will interact with it. Despite these arguments, the main role of the agencies remains more or less the same: help a brand increase their sales and loyalty. That remains a constant since agencies first appeared.

Source:   Marketing Agency Tampa FL   /   Wikipedia

Some businesses sell products, others sell services and the remainder sell products and services.   Marketing   a service is very different from marketing a good, mostly due to the fact that services are intangible.You cannot touch, taste, see, hear nor feel it.  So a service context creates its own series of challenges for the marketing manager since he or she must communicate the benefits of a service by drawing parallels with imagery and ideas that are more tangible.Nearly all products are a bundle of goods and services. When a customer buys a car, he’s also buying a warranty. Nonetheless, there are products, such as cleaning, that are almost pure services. Services marketing offers unique challenges to the marketing professionals, and they have smart solutions.

Services marketing is a sub-field of marketing, which can be divided into the two main areas of goods marketing (which includes the marketing of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and durables) and services marketing. Services marketing commonly refers to both business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) services, and includes marketing of services such as telecommunications services, financial services, all types of hospitality services, car rental services, air travel, health care services and professional services.Let's focus on B2B marketing services. What do they include?

Search Engine Optimization   -  Boost your online visibility and put your brand in front of the right audience, on the right channel, at the right point in their purchasing journey with SEO services. Content Marketing - Your online content impacts the way your prospects and customers find, think, and feel about your brand. Creative, innovative content combined with Search Engine Optimization and Social Media best practices is a killer combination that makes your business easy to find and attracts, then engages the targeted audience.

Social Media Marketing - Your audience is key to your brand’s success in social media and you want to ensure good website traffic, brand buzz and search engine rankings. Reputation Management - Reputation Management has become a progressively necessary service in this world of

technological rivalry between competitors. If you work on aggregating reviews from various sites, generate new reviews, manage negative reviews, distribute best reviews to social media your end result will be having more word-of-mouth referrals, leads and repeat customers.

Influencer Marketing - Achieving a unique approach to influencer marketing can help you reach your target audience by building relationships with influencers who already have industry authority and credibility. Search and Social Ads - Online advertising allows brands to spread out and reach beyond their existing networks, to tap into new, highly targeted audiences via search, social or display ads. Investing in social advertising through strategic planning, quality ad campaigns, and ongoing campaign measurement and optimization really pays off.

Analytics & Conversion Rate Optimization - Understanding the path from discovery to conversion of your customers is key in determining what changes you can make to convert more customers. Data-driven approach will help you determine which metrics are most important for your company and what actions to take in order to  convert more customers. Furthermore, in order to measure your marketing activities against overarching business goals you must analyze the quantity of the data you already have. This data will help you identify successes or inefficiencies, as well as drive future content and planning for website improvements. Email Marketing - If you’re looking to add email marketing to part of your integrated online marketing program, you will need a team of results-driven professionals that can work with you to deliver a customer- centric program geared at converting and retaining customers. May seem like another investment, but it does pay off.

 

Source:   Marketing Agency Tampa FL   - True Blue Communications

Today millions of websites are powered by WordPress software and there’s good a reason for that. WordPress is the most developer-friendly content management system , so you can essentially do anything you want with it. Unfortunately, that means it has some downsides as well. First of all, WordPress is now completely customizable and can be used for almost anything. A WordPress website is not limited to writing text, you can also use images, audio, and video content, and even embed Tweets, YouTube videos, Instagram photos and much more.

It is an Open Source project, the source code of the software can be freely used, changed, and shared by anyone. Because it is community software, everyone can contribute by writing helpful reviews, create themes, help test existing plugins, report bugs, etc. Peoplefrom all over the world continue building upon WordPress. You do not even need to be an experienced programmer or designer to do it. You can also get support from other community members. WordPress powers over 18.9 percent of all websites, which amounts to more than 74 million sites total.

And once open-source software becomes the most widely used content management system on the Internet, it also becomes a target for hackers. Because of that, the platform has received quite a bit of negative attention recently for its security vulnerabilities. If the proper steps are taken, however, WordPress can be just as safe as other CMS systems. There are various preventive measures you can take in order to minimize the risk of getting your website hacked. To begin with, securing a   WordPress   site means to make sure that it hasn’t been compromised already. Many business owners never visit their site and may be unaware that an attack has taken place. So, it depends on how often your website gets updated, but I would suggest at least a weekly backup.

There are many WordPress plugins that can help you with that, which you would happily pay to be able to restore your hacked website in five minutes. It is important to know that WordPress can be a very safe environment, but it needs to be managed. The open-source developers are very diligent and patch the code as soon as any vulnerabilities are found. The problem is when a site doesn’t update to a new version. Fortunately, today, you can set up your WordPress site to automatically check and update itself. I woke up this morning with a bunch of email messages from my sites letting me know they had been updated.

Whether your site uses WordPress or another   CMS , server security is necessary to make sure hackers don’t get access to your system files. If you installed WordPress through your hosting company’s site, you are probably safe when it comes to file permissions. However, if you or someone else installed WordPress manually, you may want to review WordPress suggestions on file permissions to ensure you aren’t leaving your site open to malevolent activity. Also, bare in mind never to use“admin” as your username because most hackers try to get your password by trying to bruteforce your admin username. If you change your username to something else, that will protect your website immediately.

In the end it’s important to keep one truth in mind: The Internet and all our connected technology is, together, a living beast. Nothing is totaly safe.You must update regularly because there are bad guys out there. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a Web environment like WordPress or an app from the Play Store, everything is a target, everything has some level of vulnerability, and everything needs to be updated constantly.