PR 20/20 Blog

Top 10 PR 20/20 Blog Posts of 2009

By Paul Roetzer | Posted Jan 4, 2010 | 1 Comment(s) | Filed in: Resources
The PR 20/20 blog generated more than 50,000 pageviews in 2009. While the overall top post in terms of pageviews was a December 2008 article — 10 Public Relations Trends That Will Change The Industry Forever — we published 52 new posts during the year focused on trends and resources in Website development, brand marketing, social media, content marketing, search marketing and public relations.

Here’s a look at the top 10 posts of 2009 in order of pageviews, starting with the Kanye Conspiracy:

1) Social Media Indicates the Power of a Publicity Stunt

Kanye West’s actions at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) on Sept. 13, 2009, and the days following, was nothing more than an elaborate publicity stunt that was genius in its execution. To support the theory, look no further than social media.

Published: Sept. 16, 2009
Author: Keith Moehring (@keithmoehring)

2) Top PR Firms Fail to Make the Grade Online

To get a true feel for how agencies are performing online, we ran PRWeek’s top PR firm list through Website Grader, and pulled scores for each agency. The results may surprise you . . .

Published: June 17, 2009
Author: Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer)

3) 10 Traits of an Emerging PR Pro

Emerging PR pros provide integrated solutions for PR, Web, SEO, advertising and branding that used to require multiple agencies and consultants.

Published: April 21, 2009
Author: Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer)

4) Does Inbound Marketing Really Work?

Is inbound marketing a fad, or is it fundamentally changing the way organizations think and market? And, more importantly, does it work?

Published: Oct. 26, 2009
Author: Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer)

5) Six Tips for Maximizing Your LinkedIn Profile

There’s much more to LinkedIn than just connecting with professionals. Members can create Business Groups to share industry articles and information, and open discussions on pertinent topics; utilize LinkedIn applications to monitor Twitter activity about their company and conduct market research from their professional audience; or use LinkedIn Answers to position themselves and their company as an expert in their field.

Published: April 29, 2009
Author: Lyndsey Frey (@LyndseyFrey)

6) Print Media Surrenders to Online Statistics

You’ll begin to see a lot of newspapers in the next year testing different survival strategies to “rethink and rebuild,” as the Detroit Media Partnership CEO Dave Hunke puts it. Newspapers have no choice; they are running out of options.

Published: Jan. 6, 2009
Author: Lyndsey Frey (@LyndseyFrey)

7) Getting Started on Facebook: Five Tips to Maximize your Company's Page

Facebook Pages can be used by businesses to connect with customers and potential customers. Here are five tips to maximize your company's Page.

Published: Aug. 14, 2009
Author: Lyndsey Frey (@LyndseyFrey)

8) 7 Tips for Event Social Media Marketing

To support our Senior PGA event marketing plan, we recommended launching a social media campaign to help generate awareness and build excitement. Based off this experience, we recommend keeping these seven tips in mind when launching your own event-based social media campaign.

Published: July 14, 2009
Author: Keith Moehring (@keithmoehring)

9) How to Determine Your Buyer Personas

Defining and building strategy around buyer personas helps target communications and content, and potentially increase efficiency and profitability.

Published: July 30, 2009
Author: Tracy DiMarino (@TracyDiMarino)

10) Recession-Themed Marketing: Three Lessons from Schooner Tuna

Three lessons from "Mr. Mom's" Schooner Tuna ads on gaining loyalty, retaining value and projecting sincerity in economy-based marketing campaigns.

Published: June 25, 2009
Author: Christina Capadona-Schmitz (@christinacs)

What Would You Like to See in 2010?

We’ve got big plans for the PR 20/20 blog in 2010, and we’d love to hear your thoughts on content ideas, and even requests for topics.

Leave your thoughts in the comments section, DM us on Twitter, or post on our Facebook Page.

Thanks for reading.
Paying Attention to Your Alexa Rankings?

By Laurel | Posted Apr 21, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Business, Internet Marketing, Resources, Technology
If you check your Website’s Alexa Ranking on a regular basis, chances are you noticed a change over the past week.

Whether your Alexa Ranking improved and you started patting yourself on the back for your SEO skills, or it weakened and left you scratching your head, you can rest assured that you (fortunately or unfortunately) most likely had little to do with it.

Thanks to the Internet marketing gurus at HubSpot, we know that the drastic change experienced by many sites occured because Alexa recently changed its algorithm. Here are the basics:
- Rankings now include more data sources.
- Alexa has improved the methodology behind its algorithm.
- The changes provide you, the one concerned about how your Website traffic stands up on the World Wide Web, with more accurate rankings.
Learn more about the new Alexa Rankings straight from the source.

Not sure what we’re talking about?

Find out more about Alexa, a free online tool that ranks your Website traffic and how it compares to other sites on the Web – including those of your competitors.
Talking Management with Jason Fried, 37signals

By Paul | Posted Dec 30, 2007 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Business, Management, Resources, Technology
If you aren't familiar yet with 37signals, and its founder, Jason Fried, do yourself a favor and check out this video from Crain's Chicago Business. Founded in 1999, the company designs web-based software for individuals and businesses. 37signals estimates that more than 1 million people use its products. To date, Jeff Bezos of Amazon is its only outside investor. Their products are simple and affordable, and as their Web site says, "they do everything you need and nothing you don't." Here are a few outtakes from the Crain's video, Talking Management: Leadership Lessons from Jason Fried. He offers an interesting perspective as the leader of a high-growth technology company that has become a media darling, and is sought after by investors:
- "We're not big into increasing our headcount. We're big on increasing our influence."
- "Interruption is the biggest enemy of productivity that there is."
- "We have free versions of all of our products. And that's actually the best way to get someone to pay for something."
- "We're focused on building things that provide way more value than they cost."
- "People are always willing to pay for something they find valuable."
- "I love the idea of building simple tools that work really well."
- "I don't think you need to be a big company anymore to do big things."
Screenshot from Basecamp, 37signals' project management and collaboration platform.
Corporate Blogging Resource

By Paul | Posted Dec 30, 2007 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Marketing, Public Relations, Resources, Social Media
Corporate blogging is changing the public relations industry, and the business world, at an astonishing pace. Odds are that blogging is already impacting your business whether you know it or not.

Technorati, a leading blog search engine widely known for its quarterly State of the Blogosphere reports, is now tracking more than 70 million weblogs, and is seeing about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day. That's about 1.4 blogs created every second of every day.

This is the first of many posts to come about corporate blogging. At PR 20/20, we are constantly adapting our model and service offering to meet the growing demand from clients for blog consultation, services and resources.

Check out this excellent posting from blogger Robert Scoble for organizations looking to launch corporate blogs: The Corporate Weblog Manifesto

If you haven't considered how blogs are impacting your business, now is as good a time as any to get started!
15 Things I Learned from the 4-Hour Workweek

By Paul | Posted Dec 30, 2007 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Business, Resources
Eric Clemens, president of Acroment Technologies, and IT consultant extraordinaire, recently sent me a copy of The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris.

I have to admit that I was highly skeptical of the title at first, but after devouring the book earlier this week on a trip to Vegas, I am pleased to report it has changed the way I look at success, and given me valuable insight into ways to increase the efficiency and productivity of our PR and marketing agency.

Some of the concepts are a bit far-fetched for service-based businesses like PR 20/20, but there are lessons to be learned for every professional, especially entrepreneurs.

Check out 15 of my favorite excerpts, and then grab a copy for yourself. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised:
1. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” - Mark Twain
2. “I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.” - Herbert Bayard Swope, American editor & journalist; first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize
3. “Having an unusually larger goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal.”
4. “It is easy to get lost in minutiae, and the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually lack of priorities.”
5. “The end product of a shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.”
6. “Don’t ever arrive at the office or in front of your computer without a clear list of priorities.”
7. “If you prioritize properly, there is no need to multitask. . . . Divided attention will result in more frequent interruptions, lapses in concentration, poorer net results and less gratification.”
8. “Stop asking for opinions and start proposing solutions.”
9. “An interruption is anything that prevents the start-to-finish completion of a critical task, and there are three principal offenders: time wasters (those things that can be ignored with little or no consequence), time consumers (repetitive tasks or requests that need to be completed but often interrupt high-level work) and empowerment failures (instances where someone needs approval to make something small happened).”
10. “There is a psychological switching of gears that can require up to 45 minutes to resume a major task that has been interrupted.”
11. “For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.”
12. “If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.” - Frank Wilczek, 2004 Nobel Prize winner in physics
13. “Life is too short to waste, but it is also too long to be a pessimist or nihilist.”
14. “Surround yourself with smiling, positive people. . .”
15. [This one is my personal favorite] “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose.” - Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement, 2005
Affordable Online Press Release Distribution Services

By Paul | Posted Dec 30, 2007 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Public Relations, Resources
Traditional PR that only targets mainstream media is a thing of the past. You now have to consider how to increase the reach and impact of your news by publishing to online distribution sites, such as PRzoom.com, PRWeb.com and PR.com.

These sites optimize the effectiveness of your press releases by distributing them to search engines and news sites, which generate links and traffic to your Website.

Getting Started

Major wire services, such as PRNewswire.com and BusinessWire.com offer online distribution as part of their packages, but there are also more affordable, and sometimes free, services available. From the endless resources of Mashable.com, comes the
"20+ Free Press Release Distribution Sites."