Forward thinking companies would do well to assess the SEO and social media readiness of their marketing and PR resources.  Is the current digital PR effort leveraging improved visibility through search engines? Do current PR and Marketing staff or vendors possess the digital PR tools they need to offer competitive consulting in a “PR 2.0” world? Consider the following questions to assess the SEO and social media readiness of your digital PR assets:

1. Is social media participation conducted without attention to SEO?
   According to the iPressroom Digital Readiness Report, social media adoption outranks organic SEO. Yet more than 82% of Internet users surveyed in “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers” (published by Tom Smith, one of the researchers of the Digital Readiness Report) stated search engines are the tools most frequently used to source information about products, brands and services. That disconnect reinforces the need for search engine optimization as a key digital marketing and PR tactic.
2. Do social media and SEO efforts work together?
   Some companies are indeed implementing social media and SEO programs, albeit separately. SEO and social media have a clear intersection, and if both are in place, they can work together to compound results. The outcome of many social media interactions and sharing is content. One of the most important concepts to grasp when exploring possibilities with search for PR is that, “If content can be searched on, it can be optimized for better performance.” Therefore, content creation should factor in search optimization whenever relevant. Social media marketing efforts that factor in keyword optimization of content can directly influence the discovery of communities and social content via search engines. Additionally, social content can boost links to your website, improving search traffic and Pull PR results. In other words, if you’re going to create it, why not optimize it?  Implementing social media and SEO as silos misses a significant opportunity.
3. Is a search and social media friendly website part of the digital PR strategy?
   The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer indicates that companies’ own websites are viewed as more credible sources of information than blogs, social networks or advertising.  The positive effects of frequently updated, quality content on search rankings present a strong case for investing in a search and social media friendly content strategy.  Whether PR professionals have influence over content creation on an entire web site or limited to an online newsroom, keyword optimization of news content creates entry points to stories through search for journalists, analysts and bloggers researching online.
4. Where does a blog fit within the social media content strategy?
   The highest-ranked digital skill for large organizations, according to the iPressroom Digital Readiness Report, is blogging.  Blog savvy PR efforts should include the ability to develop a blog content plan that not only publishes news that the company wants to distribute, but information of specific value to target audiences. Such a blog content plan might include a scheduled mix of posts on subjects relevant to an industry niche in formats that are journalist and/or blogger friendly. Now that every company that is promoting themselves online is in effect, a media company, it’s important to begin to think like one by leveraging an editorial plan and to package information that is useful to customers as well as journalists and other bloggers.   Search optimized and social media friendly blog content can extend the reach of company news to search engines as well as social media news and bookmarking sites.
5. Are target audiences profiled and what is the best way to reach them?
   Analyzing survey results is a great start to determine best practices, tools and tactics for a digital PR strategy. But it’s just that—a start. Profiling the target audience should be an early and integral part of the process. Who is the target audience? What are their preferences for types of social content? Which social media sites do they visit, and how often? What type of search do they use for story research?  Answers to these questions and more will make a digital PR effort that leverages both search optimization and social media participation more efficient.  A good model for understanding social behaviors is the Forrester Technographics report. If consumer social behaviors can be profiled, why not journalists and bloggers?
6. What is your PR firm’s true core competency: traditional or digital PR including social media and SEO?
   The demand for traditional PR skills by many accounts is slipping.  18% of respondents in the Digital Readiness Reports said they have no interest whatsoever in traditional PR.  For the vast majority of respondents, knowledge of social networks (80%), blogging, podcasting and RSS (87%), and micro-blogging (72%) is either important or very important when it comes to PR and marking hiring.

The big question for companies that want to stay ahead of the digital PR game is, “How do your online PR resources (in-house or agency) measure up?

Blogger relations is not a matter of media relations with a new type of media list. Bloggers are typically not reporters and don’t follow the same rules and practices within traditional journalism. Yet a single blogger can attract an audience on par with that of a small news organization.

As a blogger with over 15,000 subscribers, I’ve been on the sending and receiving end of blog pitches. Here are a few hard won insights for media relations professionals trying to make sense of the blogger audience.

• Be relevant. It seems so simple and obvious, yet it is the biggest mistake made when pitching bloggers. Look at the categories of the blog, tags and previous blog posts. Is your pitch REALLY relevant?

• Personalize. Getting an email pitch with no personal reference at all, or just a press release and no message is a sure trip to the trash folder. Take the time to research the blog, make comments and get involved. Be honest about who you are in the comments and provide thoughtful insight that is of value and relevant to the blog post.

• Make it easy. Most bloggers don’t write 600-1,000 word stories in response to a press release. Bloggers like to link to things. Provide a summary of the news release and a link to the full version. Many bloggers will copy and paste the summary, add commentary and a link to the full release. Popular bloggers are very busy, so make it easy for them.

• Be persistent. Don’t be offended or give up if a blogger doesn’t take your story the first time. Be courteous and smart about repeat attempts though. Watch to see if they really do pick up on your story before sending another pitch. ALWAYS follow up with a thank you email or comment when your story IS picked up. Courtesy goes a very long way in the blogosphere.

There’s plenty of advice on blogs about how to pitch blogs, but the bottom line is to be relevant, timely and persistent. Online PR efforts with blogs is not a numbers game. A little bit of relationship building will go a long way with the individual bloggers you’re working with as well as their readership. And so on and so on.

Moran’s tone is optimistic, and not at all condescending, which is a refreshing change from many speakers on this topic, who seem to want to tsk-tsk us for not having discovered social networking years ago. Oh, and they are eager to inform you that whichever social media platform you have succeeded in engaging was obsolete in 1999. Moran eschews alarmism to good effect.

PR types tend to view new media as a sort of death knell for Public Relations. Moran sees them as an opportunity. The new model allows Public Relations to deliver hard results where we know we are making an impact on behalf of our clients. We can target more closely, measure results more accurately, and respond more quickly to customer feedback.

He cites the example of B2B companies, many of whom were shut out of media relations in the past, for lack of cost effective avenues. This is a perfect example. A small widget manufacturer can now afford to earn media by targeting only those people who like to buy widgets. That’s an almost entirely new market. If you’re afraid of it, and afraid of the new ways to solve problems, well, you always dreamed of opening a wine bar one day, right?

If we believe Moran (I do), new media opportunities play to our strong suit. We are story-tellers by nature, or at least we should be if we are any good at this stuff. And bloggers need stories, and so do their readers. And you need their readers. So it all works out.
He follows up this point with a disastrous example, in which bloggers discovered that Kryptonite locks could be picked by Bic pens. Company officials refused to even acknowledge bloggers, and the story festered (all the way to the New York Times).

Dell, on the other hand, responded to blogger critiques, and tailored their own corporate blog to address the complaints they introduced. Is this really anything new? Is this 2.0? Not so, says Moran. Again, I have to agree. This is simple crisis communications. It’s customer relations. It’s earned media. For us, it should be second nature.

Okay, so he engages in a bit of alarmism. The head of marketing at FTD was fired for poor search results. That’s pretty alarmist, but reasonably so. There are plenty of people who have no problem embracing the new paradigm, so why wouldn’t companies find them?

But change is hard. Why is that so? According to Moran, it is because change requires sacrifice. There are only so many hours in a day, and choosing to pursue social media means TAKING TIME AWAY from that which has been our bread and butter. Outreach to a blogger means a trade journal might not get a phone call. An act as simple as registering for Twitter means you won’t have time to do something else.

But, like Duncan Wardle, Moran tasks PR professionals with figuring it out. This is our job. We don’t get paid to be comfortable. We get paid to be good. So let’s be good, okay?

Read Lee’s coverage of the Mike Moran Keynote over at Online Marketing Blog

• Don’t pitch irrelevant stories
• Don’t send emails to anonymous recipients. Use a name.
• Don’t send blanket solicitations to bloggers in the same general industry.
• Don’t embargo an announcement for more than a few days.
• Don’t demand to be covered as if you’re gods gift to the blogosphere.
• Don’t insult the blogger, even as a joke, especially if you don’t know them.
• Don’t lie or make promises you can’t keep.
• Don’t send story ideas that are about as exciting as mall music.
• Don’t send a regular pitch with a press release to a blogger.
• Don’t use traditional media relations tactics with bloggers, but rather, make an effort to connect with them individually.
• Don’t play bloggers like a numbers game.
• Don’t be rude and not thank the blogger for covering your news.

I’d be curious to know what other PR pros have found NOT to do when pitching bloggers?