McGovern PR is a full service Award winning public relations consultancy renowned for its professional creative and proactive approach to client handling that draws from our wide industry experience spanning 27 years. Set up by one of Ireland’s leading PR practitioners Mary McGovern, the company today is a division of Ambition Awards Ltd.
Our very own specialists will share their views and ideas on our blog and we invite professionals from all industries to join our discussions.
While blogs and user-generated content are powerful communications tools, a fact which PR companies are now cottoning onto – the question is how do you monitor what is being said about you, your brand or your company online? Offline the PR company uses media monitoring so how do you do this online for your clients> Tips from www.onlinepr.ie a sister company of McGovern PR on tracking your online reputation. Trackur This tool scours news sites, blogs, news sites, images, and videos so you can track your name, company brands, industry trends, or even news about your competitor. It lets you search for a keyword or keywords. Once the search has been customized, it can be saved and then subscribed to via an RSS feed or email. But its not free. Yes you get a 14 day free trial but after that you pay a subscription. From the PR’s point of view its worth it. Google Alerts – a free service it allows you search either all of Google’s properties, or you can specify that only News, Blogs, Web, Video, or Groups. Alert results can be emailed to you either as it happens, once a day, or once a week. There is also a page where you can edit the alerts once they are created or delete them when they are no longer in use. Technorati If you have a blog Technorati is a great free resource for tracking what’s being said about you in the blogosphere. It indexes posts as they are published . And there’s an RSS button you can use to subscribe to the search. When viewing the results, you can click between tabs to see just the Posts, Blogs, Photos, or Videos containing your search terms. More tips on the way.
www.onlinepr.ie provides blog management services for CEO’s and managers who are strapped for time or are too busy to manage a blog themselves. The company writes thought provoking posts about your business and manage comments as well as managing all aspects of blog search marketing. Is this ethical? Social Media experts will shout – NO you can’t do this. Yes you can. As long as you follow the rules. The content HAS to be real, reflect the actual views of the company and is written in an interesting, informative and professional manner.
We don’t just write the blog. Our team of professional journalists interview your company representative, write the content and give it to clients to review for advance approval. Then we upload it. For many social media experts they won’t like this. But the reality is that many managers simply don’t have the time to write accurately to reflect their views. The whole point about a blog is to portray an authentic voice to give target audiences a more personal connection to the company.
Isn’t that what the PR professional has been doing for years? Think of article marketing techniques we have been using for years with signed articles, press features, press releases – all of which are written by the PR advisor based on real interviews with their clients – based on their opinions and views? So what’s the difference then online?
Need to take control of your website content? Is your website becoming a more important communications tool for your business? Fed up outsourcing content to keep your site up to date? Are you becoming increasingly frustrated with your web design company to respond fast? Are they taking AGES to upload content important to your business? Time to take control now. http://www.digitalambition.ie a sister company of McGovern PR are running a series of intensive two day courses to help your business to build a very effective and intriguing Internet presence.
For businesses who want to manage their own website effectively this series of courses covering Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 will help your marketing team to design and manage and efficient Internet site in just a short period of time. The introduction to HTML and CSS Course will show you how to design, build, maintain and administer your organisation’s website in three easy courses.
Level: Level 1
Introductory Course Duration: 2 Days Purpose: The purpose of this course is to create a solid internet foundation for the participant upon which to build a web framework. It is a practical, non technical introductory series of course. Who is it for? For those who will become responsible for your company’s website over the next 6 to 18 months. Or for marketing consultants who may want to provide the service to their clients. What you will learn Main elements of HTML and CSS coding languages Myriad of competing Internet Technologies How to establish the appropriate web presence for you organisation Working successfully within the whole internet framework
Course Leader: Webmaster Professional (Brendan Moran FCCA AITI ATII Certified Internet CIW professional) Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) Irish Internet Association (IIA) Associate Member of Institute of IT Trainers (AIITT)
Dates: October 2009: Tues & Wed 20th and 21st October
November 2009: Tues & Wed 3rd and 4th November Venue: The Regus Centre, 28-32 Upper Pembroke Street, Dublin 2
Number of Participants per course maximum of 12 Cost for two-day courses €695 per person excluding VAT Includes provision of laptops and course materials plus refreshments including light lunch
Register your interest now email info@ambitiontraining.ie or call 01 8666102/8666103
The fact is the Seach Engine Marketers got there first and routinely offer ‘Online PR’ as an added service including the production of online press releases. Ouch! They have managed to infiltrate the editorial agenda for company websites when this should really be in the PR remit. But the fact remains – the PR skillsets were not there in the first instance – at the right time.
Many clients just want their PR company to generate media coverage for them, setting up speaking engagements, devise sponsorships, create signed articles, organise press briefings, write press and brochure material. They don’t see PR as a lead generator and are quite happy, thank you very much, to leave that to their web designer. Or their online advertising buyer.
The internet has provided the PR industry with one of the most powerful communications tolls of all. Blogs, in particular, offer the quickest route to push news and information. So if PR is about two way communication and feedback then surely an online communications strategy needs to be part of any meaningful PR campaign today? If PR is about influencing opinion through the generation of news and information then it’s got to embrace online communications.
So where does offline PR and online PR cross over? Is it simply about search? Online PR is offered by many digital marketing agencies as a service. Usually linked to search engine marketing it is primarily about generating back links to increase traffic to a site. It’s all numbers. Or is it? Can the SEO
· Influence attitudes?
· Improve a company’s reputation?
· Deliver ‘sticky’ content?
· Create a positive image about a company through thought leadership?
· Manage a media crisis that spills over online?
Traditional PR still plays a vital role in marketing communications. In the past a company hired a PR firm, an advertising agency, a sales promotions company and, in many cases, a media buyer to help build the brand. They were meant to all work off each other strategically – but in reality they didn’t. The internet has put paid to that approach.
PR today must work hand in hand with Search to achieve brand visibility online. And offline PR must develop an online version of tactics if they are to do their job properly.
In the list of objectives set out in any PR plan for any client you must now include “attract online traffic to the company’s website” while target markets must now include “search engines”.
What’s the difference? Here are two examples
Offline: Press Releases (written with the print and broadcast media in mind)
Online: Online Press Releases are ‘key word’ optimised with search engines in mind. They need to be delivered in a content rich and creatuve way to attract immediate interest. And they can get you listed in the top ten results on search engines and news websites. Getting your press release onto news websites not only helps you reach thousands of internet users daily but the can create quality inbound links to your client’s website
Offline: Signed articles i.e. where CEO of a company writes an opinion piece about their industry as a whole – objective? To position the company as an expert in its field.
Online PR version: white papers – designed to position the company spokesperson as a thought leader, providing insight into an issue of concern to his/her target audience. It creates, instant affinity, with the reader by identifying with the readers concerns and providing a solution.
Either way Online PR is about generating trust, creating interest, engaging you’re your key target audiences as well as generating high quality web traffic. And the good news – it’s tangible. It can deliver a positive, demonstrable result that can be measured easily (via a web analytics package).
Coming up soon…. Samples of Online PR at Work
Did you know that you will never achieve your business goals if you don’t make marketing a priority?
Setting your business up is a very exciting, hard work and very challenging. Chances are you don’t have a budget to hire a professional PR or marketing firm to help launch your new product or service. Marketing your business to potential customers successfully will be vital to the success of building and growing your business.
www.digitalambition.ie in association with www.mcgovernpr.com are one of the sponsors at the forthcoming Sunday Business Post “Out On Your Own” Business Conference in Dublin on October 21st 2009.
The Inaugural Sunday Business Post Entrepreneurs and Small Business Conference Out On Your Own 2009 aims to prepare new and emerging businesses with a platform for sustained growth. Hear from leading entrepreneurs and distinguished Sunday Business Post journalists such as Richard Curran, presenter of The Dragon’s Den, at this new conference on how to get your business up and running, grow it and sustain that growth in not only the current economic downturn but also how to be prepared for when the economy begins its growth cycle.
The Concept and the Prize
This new cutting edge event will not only be an interactive sharing of ideas but also an excellent networking opportunity to learn from others. Furthermore, to make this an even more interesting concept to new and emerging businesses, The Sunday Business Post will award the best new business idea €20,000 worth of advertising in The Sunday Business Post, a proven marketing tool.
Also, a professional website will be designed for the winners by www.digitalambition.ie together with professional digital marketing mentoring worth €5,000.
An impressive line-up of speakers, visionary leaders, national and international experts – all professionally involved in small business and entrepreneurship, who will deliver succinct presentations, allowing time at the end of each session for an open forum to discuss the issues participants find most important.
Delegates to this conference will come away with a fresh outlook on business, a better understanding of the economy, a revitalized vision of how to succeed and most importantly, the motivation to go for it with a can-do attitude
Blogs are the new way for consumers to hear more about your brand in a targeted environment. So what are you waiting for?
McGovern PR and its sister arm www.onlinepr.ie are launching a series of branded blogs that encourage your target customers to share views, connect with other people with similar interest and provide an ideal breathing ground to encourage real conversations in a consumer branded environment.
The link between brands and bloggers
Brands can become an important part of bloggers’ online conversations. Research shows that four in five bloggers post product reviews, and chatter about brands they love or hate. It even goes as far as customer care. While somewhat slow at first, companies and brands are already reaching out to a growing blog community. Over the new few years in Ireland, at least one-third of bloggers will be the main focus of PR targets, instead of traditional editorial media. And they will be approached to become publishers and brand advocates.
Bloggers are most open to receiving marketing messages from other blogs. But not necessarily from your company directly. This might be seen as ‘suspect’. So you have to be careful when you consider blog relations. Yet we believe that traditional media sources will be dropped in favour of bloggers as targets for branded consumer information.
While they are online, bloggers take part in an average of five “Web 2.0” activities such as RSS and Twitter. Bloggers are important to watch, as they are generally the first ones to use new web applications and tend to be in the age 18-35 year old category.
Most marketers know, by now, the benefits for getting to grips with digital marketing.We know that it can transform sales, increase branding and build customer relations.We know the opportunities that social media marketing can provide.We know search is vital to spread the word.
But stop right there! It would be foolish to think that any meaningful advertising and marketing campaign in Ireland right now will provide all the deliverables online at the expense of offline..
In Ireland, traditional advertising, sales promotions, PR and digital marketing need to be ‘mashed up and blended together’ if the brand is to benefit properly. While interactive advertising and online PR are beginning to gain momentum in Ireland – we still have about three years left before we see a massive shift in the media landscape. We are about three-four years behind the UK, in my view, when it comes to adapting brands and sales messages across digital platforms.
A digital skills gap means that many Irish companies, right now, lack the essential elements needed to build their brand online. They tend to hand over budgets to well meaning digital marketers who, by their very nature, ignore traditional media as part of the full marketing solution. While this is understandable I totally disagree with this approach in the Irish market at this point in time.
As the pace of digital technology races ahead, the challenge for Irish business owners and marketers is to understand, however, that the basic rules of branding still apply online albeit in a different way. In short, digital and traditional marketing communications now need to blend together to meet business goals. Many people believe that internet marketing is a technical issue – it’s not. It’s a marketing one!
It worries me to see budgets being thrown into SEM without any strategic thinking in place. It is also worth noting that if traditional players such as advertising, PR, sales and marketing promotions agencies don’t embrace digital then they will lose out to SEM agencies and a rapidly evolving new breed of digital marketers.
Advice from www.mcgovernpr.com
