Saturday, April 30, 2011

Traditional versus 2.0 media attention

by Sarah Santacroce

Kiss

On Friday I assisted a conference entitled “How to attract media attention”. It was lead by a journalist and there were 3 panel speakers. A tv journalist and two small business owners who testified their success by getting media attention.

It was an interesting morning, but…

what bothered me is that they never mentioned the new way of submitting press releases: online ! The whole discussion revolved around how to attract a journalist’s attention. But let’s face it: a small business or individual entrepreneur, which is not in a absolute trendy industry that everybody wants to read about (such as biodegradable shopping bags like the ones that one of the panelist’s company designed) or has a close friend who’s a journalist, has very little chance to be featured in the local newspaper or on tv.

That’s why I couldn’t resist and got up in front of close to a hundred people and mentioned that they should not forget to submit their press releases also ONLINE (of course I made a complete fool out of myself because I hate speaking in public and get very nervous, but that’s ok, I made my point :-)

So here is just a quick reminder of why you should submit your press releases online (even if you have little hope that a journalist will pick up your story):

Online Press Releases

  • reach a huge audience of potential clients who search for your company online
  • get excellent ranking on Google since they are a non-static part of your website
  • increase traffic to your website
  • create a back link, increasing your page ranking again
  • create “buzz” about your company

So don't forget: submit regular online Press Releases !

For more information about Press Release Marketing read my earlier post “Increase your Online Visibility with Press Release Marketing”.


Friday, April 8, 2011

Content Curation with Google Reader


by Sarah Santacroce

How do you stay informed ? How do you learn the latest news about your industry ?

If you are already know RSS feeds and how to aggregate them in to one single place to get your daily information boost then I suggest you skip the reading this time and go directly to the second video where Mari Smith gives you some more tips on content curation.

If you are new to RSS feeds and their aggregation, let me give me some more information on that subject.

What is a RSS feed ?

According to Wikipedia, RSS (most commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

Where do I find RSS feeds ?

Most websites or blogs with non-static, regularly updated content provide you with an RSS feed to get their content regularly. Just look for the orange RSS icon.
rss41

What can I do with these RSS feeds ?

RSS feeds are like news subscriptions. Every time your selected blog publishes a new post, it gets automatically sent to your feed reader.

What is a feed reader ?

According to Wikipedia, a feed reader is a is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline.” In other words it is a web application which gathers web content such as news headlines, blogs, and podcasts in a single location for easy viewing.

How does Google Reader work ?

In this post I am going to focus on Google Reader, since that’s the tool I chose for mine and my client’s feed aggregation.

Google Reader

Google Reader let’s you organize all your feeds into one place. You can create different folders, just as in Windows Explorer. It looks a bit overwhelming at the beginning, since the more feeds you have, the more content you will receive. But the nice thing is that you don’t have to read it all. You can just look at the titles, decide if it’s interesting to you and if not, keep on scrolling…

Watch this short video if you want to learn how to add your rss subscriptions to your Google Reader:

Still, it’s a lot of content, who has time to read it all ?

As I mentioned before, you only read the items that seem of interest to you. I usually read mine early in the morning, and one more time after dinner. And if you are travelling a lot, I also recommend the Google mobile apps for your phone. Information on the go… There is also a “star function”, the possibility to mark articles for later with a little yellow star.

“I thought I had to create my own content, so why do I have to spend all this time reading other people’s stuff ?”

Content = knowledge. The more you read about your industry, the more you learn. And the more you learn, the more you can then teach others. In order to be seen as an expert in your industry, you will want to stay informed about the latest trends and tendencies. You might also remember the 20/80 percent rule in Social Media: for 20% of your own content, share at least 80% of other information (blog posts, videos, whitepapers etc.).

If you are not a big fan of Google’s products, watch this video where Mari Smith shows 7 other tools for content curation.

Now it’s your turn ? Which tool are you using ? Do you have questions about content aggregation? Post them in the comment section below.
Oh, and please subscribe to my RSS here :-)