It’s easy to start a blog. Just ask authors of the 90 million blogs Technorati is tracking. However, it’s not so easy to be successful. For that, just ask the top 200 bloggers out of those 90+ million blogs. But what is success? Especially for a business blog?

As the primary author of one of those top 200 blogs (Online Marketing Blog) that has also been highly recognized by publications such as Advertising Age (AdAge Power150 #3) and well respected PR industry blogs such as in Edelman’s Social Media Index #13, I’ve found some of the measurable outcomes from business blogging include:

• Use of brand names in text, in links
• Number of comments
• Number of subscribers via RSS and RSS to email
• Media attention
• Speaking requests
• Customer loyalty
• Inbound links to the blog
• Search engine ranking for the corporate site
• Corporate website traffic
• Leads/sales initiated
• Volume of blog traffic
• Technorati and other credible rankings
• Search engine ranking for the blog
• Increased company visibility within the industry
• Increased media coverage
• Improved customer loyalty
• Increased sales leads/revenue/new customers

By Bill Arnovich, Media Relations Specialist

Most Public Relations Firms realize the abundance of issues in any industry work lends itself to PR client speaking opportunities at many available venues.

Speaking engagements are a uniquely effective strategic marketing and PR tool, IF a few important criteria are met. Effective public speaking builds your credibility and confidence in a particular subject matter, exuding competence and conviction to prospective customers. Here are several important considerations:

• Invitations to speak should be evaluated based on the opportunities they offer the organization to communicate with key audiences. Invitations, then, are prioritized and assigned to appropriate individuals in your organization, or declined if they appear to offer little value.

• Speaking opportunities are solicited before audiences upon whom the success of your organization depends.

• Recognize that every speaking opportunity is different.

• Every audience is different.

• Commit to prepare and practice all presentations.

The benefits to those executives or subject matter experts who speak and the companies they represent are many. Networking opportunities with the people who attend the presentation often leads directly or eventually to new clients. Another benefit is that press people are often in attendance at conferences or trade shows. They only target a select few so button holing to meet and attend the presentation before and after will be vital.

Mainstream media is losing it’s luster and PR firms are scrambling, fumbling in some cases, to reach out to the influential blogerati in the hopes to capture shifts in audience information consumption. OMB recently published a blogger relations guide as well as a long list of what not to do when pitching blogs. Here’s an exceprt:

• 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.

Steve Rubel recently made reference to a ranking of PR blogs in the form of a Social Media Index. The actual listing and ordering of blogs according to various criteria was posted at Edelman’s Europe CEO blog, SixtySecondView.

Our SEO firm’s blog, Online Marketing Blog was included in each permutation of the list using a wide variety of criteria. I have yet to see so many different criteria used in any other ranking of marketing or PR blogs. That includes the AdAge Power 150 and Onalytica’s ranking of the most influential blogs, both of which include TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.

Such lists always attract a bit of scrutiny and criticism, as they should. It keeps them honest or outs them as otherwise.

By Lee Odden

In a recent post by Steve Rubel, he points out the decline of traditional pitching and the upswing of social community participation. I sent this to Bill Arnovich in our PR office, who as a FT media relations guy, took somewhat of an issue with the notion that traditional pitching is dead. Bill conducts traditional pitching every day, 9-5 and he’s good at it. There’s no sign of a decline in his eyes (or mine from his pickup reports). He also continues to get positive feedback from the journalists he’s helped to find great ideas and companies (our clients) to write about.

I tend to hit the middle of the road when it comes to “this tactic is dead” types of posts. The “pitching is dead, long live participation” idea was no different, so I did a post at our Online Marketing Blog, “The Future of Online PR and Reputation Management” to dig a bit deeper into the continued need for traditional pitching in combination with the use of technology and social community/blogosphere involvement.

By Mike Yanke, Account Manager

I’ve just returned from my first major conference and business trip, and luckily, it was a great one.

I wanted to share an early lesson inspired by the session “Pitching and Working with Bloggers: Advice From the Top”, a panel featuring Josh Hallett, Phil Gomes & Patrick Hynes.

To communicate our client’s stories today, PR pros will have to rely not only on building professional relationships with the press, but friendships with industry bloggers.

Luckily, if this is done right, everything else will come naturally. After all, it’s easy to tell your friend a story because you know who they are, what they’re interested in, and most importantly, what they love.

So, for my introductory post, let me tell you what I love. I love everything about marketing and public relations. I love getting to know people in the industry, following the trends and seeing the rules of the game change daily, and trying to anticipate these changes.

What is it you love about what you do?

Today starts the 2007 Media Relations Summit in Washington D.C. and it should be a great event. Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations Summit is the largest media relations event in the world and Mike Yanke from our public relations firm is there today attending sessions and doing some inaugural blogging.

I will be flying in tonight and will be speaking on Monday afternoon in a session about integrating search engine optimization and social media to extend public relations efforts. My co-panelists will be Jamie O’Donnell from SEO PR and Sally Falkow from Expansion Plus. SEO and social media in the context of online PR is hot right now and I expect the session to be well attended.

I’ve written an outline of what I’ll be presenting on over at Online Marketing Blog in a post called, “Leveraging Social Media and SEO for Public Relations“.

By Bill Arnovich, Media Relations Specialist.

Everyone in public relations knows that good publicity is the best advertising. A well placed article, a positive radio show or the right interview on TV are all what good publicists and media relations people dream about. It’s what clients hire public relations firms for.

When pitching the media, it’s important that you know something about who you are calling. If it’s a magazine read, not simply page through, a couple different issues and if it’s a radio show, listen to it.

I know this sounds simple, like what they teach you in PR 101, but I wish I had a nickel for every time that a News Editor, Producer or Reporter thanked me for doing my homework. I consistently hear from the media that PR folks about media relations people who not only don’t know, but don’t care to know, and simply call to get their pitch out.

Nothing boils the blood of any journalist or beat editor more than unknowledgeable media relations people. You not only hurt your chances of securing media coverage for clients, but you also make it harder for the rest of us who actually prepare themselves before they engage any media pitching assignment. It pays in the long run, and it’s a good practice.

One of the interesting things about writing a modestly popular blog (Online Marketing Blog) that gets pitched daily and also working as a partner in a public relations firm is a view of both sides of the fence on blogger relations.

I just got off the phone with a rep from yet another big PR firm following up on an email pitch he sent yesterday about a company recently acquired by Google. I had not written about the news but here’s the insight I gave him that I think is probably true with other bloggers that also have successful day jobs.

Yes, I write a blog. Yes I am interested in story ideas. I’m also the CEO of a fast growing company. That means I have limited time to blog our own editorial schedule let alone pitched story ideas.

To make progress in such a situation, the PR professional must follow all the other rules of effective pitching such as being relevant, personal and timely, but it’s also important to make it as easy as possible for the blogger to quickly use the pitch in a blog post.

One of the comparisons we often make when describing the need for ongoing link acquisition for our Search Engine Optimization practice is with media relations.

For example. as long as an organization wants coverage in their industry’s media, they need an advocate (agency or in-house) reminding journalists of company news and story ideas or the publication will end up writing about someone else.

For link building, a company needs to allocate ongoing resources to the pitching and acquisition of links because they are a critical component to how search engines rank web pages. Without ongoing link building, the search engines will rank pages with more and better quality inbound links.

In both cases there is a steady stream of competition and to persist (with the exception of Fortune 50 brands) in top visibility within standard search engines, it will require persistence in promotion. Of course there are other variables in both cases, but it’s a good illustration for ongoing attention.