PR over Coffee

Big Thanks to our Sponsors!

Why PR over Coffee?

• Started in summer 2010

• Meet professionals & business owners

• Brainstorm PR & off-the-hook publicity stunts

• Small group focus

• Genuine Joe’s -> hence the name

New Year – New Directions

• New Monthly Speaker Series

Presentations from experienced professionals in PR, publishing, TV Practical tips to help you gain publicity for your business or non-profit 3rd Thursday of month (standing time & location TBD)

• New LinkedIn Group PR over Coffee Share PR & publicity ideas with smart people Join Today!

• New Twitter Account @PRoverCoffee Follow us, we follow back!!

New Year – New Look

Thanks go to Maria Orozova at The MOD Studio for our new Logo!

PR over

Coffee

February PR over Coffee

Speaker: Leslie Coons, Executive Producer, KEYE TV

Date: February 24

Time: TBD (toying with lunch, so stay tuned!)

Location: TBD

Great Ideas & Gifts Too!

Enjoy the great ideas BUT, stick around for the gifts our kind Sponsors brought with them!

Remember to drop your business card into the bowl!

Best Practices for Optimizing Press Releases

Joseph Miller

Product Manager

Business Wire

Joseph.miller@businesswire.com

me

About Me

Born in California

Grew up in Florida

Lived in Japan for 4 years

worked at ISP then web startup

In Austin for 3 years

2 years at Business Wire

Optimization Strategy

50%

40%10%

Write with audience of real readers and search engines in mind.

Add links, formatting and multimedia

Working top down, add your top 1-5 keywords (or synonyms) to your release with some repetition.

Optimization Flow & Process

Beyond Search: Where Releases Go

•Newsrooms•News sites•Search Engines•Blogs•Email Alerts•Micro Blogs•Fax lists•Mobile Apps•Financial Pages•RSS Feeds

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/365325243/

Optimizing Headlines

• Headline = Title Tag = SERP Listing• Best Chance to Grab Attention• Must Use AT LEAST ONE Top Keyword

Optimizing Headlines for Google News

• Keep your headline between 2 and 22 Words• Use your (client’s) company name• See http://blog.businesswire.com/2010/03/24/why-

your-release-might-not-make-it-in-to-google-news/

Optimizing Body

• Include keywords in first 100 words• First 200 characters used for META Description

• Always use your top three keywords• Include important links in parentheses.

Ex. Company (http://company.com) announces…

Optimizing Body for Google News

• Most rejected releases under 125 words• Over 1000 words usually go to Finance channels• First paragraph should be at least two sentences

(three sentences is better)

• Too many bullet points + short, one sentence paragraphs is bad

Why include Multimedia?

23% of Business Wire’s Top 500 releases in 2010 have multimedia (5% of all our releases have multimedia)

More Searchable Content = 70% More Reads

Increase Click through Rate

Indexing in Image search engines.

Reach News Outlet image sources

Optimizing Multimedia

• Simple, just add a unique description & filename for image or video with keywords

• Ex. Joseph Miller, EON Product Manager at Business Wire, reacts to receiving 10000 Berkshire Hathaway shares for his birthday

Multimedia Reach

•US Newspaper photo desks•AP PhotoExpress•Yahoo! Finance•Press Association•European Pressphoto Agency•DDP•Other US & Global Outlets

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/4506216150/

Rutgers PR Case Study

• Press release SEO– Goals were to drive

traffic to CMD’s website and generate leads

• Blog outreach– Goals were to drive

traffic to CMD’s website and generate leads

• Twitter outreach– Goals were to drive

traffic to press release and blog posts

Press release distributed Nov. 8

Source: Business Wire, Nov. 8, 2010

Business Wire: 1550 Release Reads

Source: NewsTrak Access Report Overview, Nov. 16, 2010

Blog Outreach - Search Engine Watch

Source: Search Engine Watch, Nov. 7, 2010

Blog post #1 in Google News

Source: Google News, Nov. 7, 2010

News #1 in Google

Source: Google, Nov. 7, 2010

#1 in Yahoo! News

Source: Yahoo! News, Nov. 8, 2010

Visits up 42%, target up 143%

Source: Google Analytics, Oct. 31 through Nov. 13, 2010

Target goal conversions up 106%

Source: Google Analytics, Oct. 31 through Nov. 13, 2010

…and a few more recent “hits”

Some Resources

• These slides: http://bizwire.pr/provercoffee• My Blog:

http://blog.businesswire.com/category/seo-tip-jar/• Great SEO Blogs: http://seomoz.org ,

http://seobook.com & http://sphinn.com

Thanks!

Any Questions?

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