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What’s Inside‘Take It Personally,’ is Our Online PR Advice for 2008 Engage Online Readers with Interactive PDFs Milestones |
‘Take It Personally,’ is Our Online PR Advice for 2008By Douglass T. Davidoff, APR “The medium is the message,” Marshall McLuhan wrote 40 years ago in Understanding Media. Network television’s influence was peaking, bringing the age of mass media with it. It would be two decades before business noticed that the Internet was wiring the world together into what McLuhan predicted would be the “global village.” McLuhan identified the power of media to color our understanding of human experiences. Now consider the phrase: “The Internet is the great leveler.” We hunted without success to determine who originated the oft repeated remark. It occurred to us that if the Internet is leveling the communication of messages, then simply communicating in a standard fashion on the Internet is not a way to distinguish your business or organization. It’s merely the price of admission to the party. All of this was brought to mind by a conversation we had at a Caribou Coffee in the Loop a few days ago with one of Chicago’s recognized experts in online public relations, Barbara Rozgonyi founder of CoryWest Media in Glen Ellyn, Ill., and blogger behind the Wired PR Works blog. Ms. Rozgonyi is a national leader in using blogs and their power to drive search engine rankings to increase the presence of businesses and organizations on the Internet. Her perspective reframes public relations, and it is post-McLuhan. The medium isn’t the message. It’s just the platform for communication. The message is almost old-fashioned. It’s people building reputations and brands by helping people. In online public relations, journalists are no longer the gatekeepers. “It doesn't matter with online,” Ms. Rozgonyi said. “The beauty of it is that it's direct-to-consumer. If you want to go to journalists, they pick it up, too. “To me, how it gets online is a distribution service, which is different from you having a relationship with a reporter. At that point, your relationship is with search engines and spiders, getting top page ranks, having bloggers pick up your stories, being referenced on alternative sites.” Taking journalists out of the gatekeeper function is a blessing, in her view. The game is no longer about appealing to the known and unknown idiosyncrasies of reporters. Now the game is about crafting a solution that achieves a high page rank on search engines, which means the client’s announcement is being spread far and wide on the global Internet. “It’s much easier,” she said. “You can tell me you want a press release and 48 hours later you can be top ranked on Google News and Yahoo! News.” What hasn’t changed: The power of an important message. What you say has to be important. Moreover, your message needs to use keywords that can be used to attract attention from search engines. “There's something intuitive and sometimes surprising about zeroing in on keywords," she said. "I have one client who popped out at Number 5 out of 92,000 results -- overnight for a major keyword, not the smaller one we were aiming for." But this has changed: Your message is your brand. The competent, fun, interesting person devoted to his or her brand and devoted to building networks and helping other people is the person who will win in online public relations. “Who is my ideal client?” Ms. Rozgonyi said, repeating a question we posed. “My ideal client is somebody who wants attention and has a lot to say. Not just one idea. Would you call a landscaper and say I want a pack of petunias by my front door? No, you have to have a long vision for a lush garden. That's the difference between sending out one local press release a few times a year versus implementing an always-on online vibrant PR strategy." |
Engage Online Readers with Interactive PDFsBy adding embedded links, clickable buttons, and web-style navigation, you can turn an ordinary-looking PDF white paper into an experience that holds the reader’s attention and helps them read what’s most important to them. To see how it works on a basic level, download our latest report, The Whys, Whats, and Hows of White Papers. We set the document to open in full screen mode to emphasize its web-style side navigation, making it easy to see what's covered, and enabling the reader to jump to the sections of greatest interest. You'll also notice links to other websites and resources throughout the document. That's a reflection of our philosophy that content designed to generate leads should contain an abundance of links to other relevant content. Doing so increases the value of the document by providing access to educational information beyond your own organization. It's a good way to build trust, too. For another example, take a look at this guide (1.2 MB PDF) to training courses at Sterling Commerce. The guide is a completely clickable document that lets the reader maneuver through its 86-page bulk easily, quickly, and intuitively. Frankly, the guide is more useful on-screen than in printed form. Interactive PDFs can also play rich media like QuickTime movies, audio files, and 3-D graphics. They can launch other applications and run JavaScript. For more explanation and a variety of samples of interactive PDFs, click to view pages at BC Pictures, a firm that specializes in interactive documents and rich media. |
MilestonesPanasonic Factory Solutions Canright completed documentation for the latest version of Panasonic Factory Solutions Company of America’s electronics manufacturing software, PanaPRO v5.7c. Canright also developed a piece to market the release's new features to entice existing customers to upgrade. Blackman Kallick We produced two online ads highlighting its #9 ranking on the new Crain's Chicago Business list of largest accounting firms. One ad appears atop the Web page listing the largest accounting firms. The other ad appeared in a email sent out by Crain's to announce publication of the annual rankings. The ads emphasize Blackman Kallick's tagline, "We are Chicago" by integrating the firm's logo into an outline drawing of the Loop skyline. The firm is based in the Loop. NüMotional Canright’s graphics team developed a poster for a nutritional and emotional health consulting/training business. The poster is part of branding work for NüMotional. |
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