The Public Relations industry has not been the same since the advent of the internet. The first wave of change in the PR industry was the advent of corporate websites and the ability of the information on corporate websites to represent organisational opinion, a brand and make PR announcements. PR professionals had to adapt by adding and controlling content on the PR sections of corporate websites.

Online News

Managing PR content on corporate websites as a tactic was short-lived and not sufficient enough in the ever changing internet. With the sheer speed of information on the web through news sites, PR professionals had to figure out how to also grab attention from ‘authoritative’ old and new media news websites.

Online PR & SEO

The major seismal change for PR was the emergence of professional ‘online PR’ sites and Search Engine Optimisation. Online PR sites like PR Web & i-Newswire are the new ‘wire’ PR professionals send announcements through to in order to grab the attention of journalists, their industry and the web in general. PR professionals have had to figure out how to use these PR websites to their maximum capabilities. This is where the SEO/PR crossover has taken place.

As you know, Search Engine Optimisation is a collection of methodologies and processes aimed at improving the search engine rankings of websites. PR sites work well with the search engine optimisation process because they improve the link popularity of websites they promote. Because of this change, PR Professionals have had to either work with SEO professionals who undertake keyword research in order to discover popular, more commonly used keywords and help with link placements or have had to learn SEO themselves. I remember I used to provide our PR department with a set of keywords to use for press releases they sent through PR websites.

Blog

The next major wave to hit the PR industry was blogging. The advent of blogging empowered masses of people to have an opinion. The blog publishing industry tree has hundreds or perhaps thousands of branches of subjects and genres with loyal followers. Blogs have meant more specialisation on topics in the publishing industry. There are obvious quality issues in the blogosphere but there are also established authoritative blogs in every industry. PR professionals not only have to think about getting their brands out on Top notch blogs but also need to build somewhat authoritative blogs for their brands. Corporate blogs at the moment are the medium through which of PR departments can self-publicize the brands.

Twitter

Like blogging was not enough, micro-blogging has arrived. With roughly about 2.5 million users, Twitter is the defacto micro-blogging platform at the moment and is an area PR professionals and brand managers need to adapt to. It’s brevity is its strength and its potential to reach thousands of people must not be overlooked. Twitter can take your brand to another level if your PR strategy is well thought through. Business owners might have to look for Social media professionals to work with the public relations and marketing team to get the most out twitter. Its probably not the last platform PR professionals would have to adapt to but its certainly the current platform garnering huge attention at the moment. Social media in general should be watched really closely.

I will be blogging about tips on marketing on twitter and social media in general.

For further reading read…

The importance of Online PR (slideshow)

A Short Story About the Romance between Public Relations and the Internet…so far is a post from: Fuzz One Media

It’s been almost two weeks since Barack Obama’s epic US Presidential election victory. Although branding cannot take sole credit for the success of the his campaign, I think it played an important role in establishing a visual identity for both existing members and recruiting new members. An interesting observation on Barack Obama’s branding strategy is pointed out in this blog post – the consistency across all of his communications and the sharable/flexible brand enabled the ‘remix’ of the Obama brand while always retaining a consistent message.

I think one of the most critical aspects of the “Obama” brand campaign was the consistency of his theme “change you can believe in“; which the campaign never strayed from.

The images below are some of the several variants of his brand.

Further reading on Barack Obama’s marketing campaign

• How Better Marketing Elected Barack Obama [Business Week]
• Marketing lessons from the US election [Seth Godin]
• 6 Lessons to Learn From Barack Obama’s Online Marketing Strategy [Web Profits]

Branding in Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign is a post from: Fuzz One Media

This is the first of hopefully many posts on our blog. The core focus of this blog is marketing on the Internet. Our objective is to enable you better understand what we do as consultants and to enable you understand how the web can positively impact on developing your business.

The effects of web marketing would be largely dependent on the web marketing channels you utilise as well as type of business and sector your company belongs to.

The following categories have been created to give an idea of topics we would be covering:

• Increasing Search Engine Rankings
• Advertising on Search Engines (Pay Per Click)
• Email Marketing
• Lead Generation
• Business Blogging
• Social Media
• Media Buying
• Guerilla Marketing (Back to the Basics)

Web Marketing 101 is a post from: Fuzz One Media