Mainstream Media Embraces Bloggers

It may have taken more time for the mainstream media to learn that blogging and the people behind the words are here to stay. The impact this social group has is proven its staying power this week when the LA Times article titled “Newspapers, bloggers now engage on same page”. Even though this is in a Publicity Orange County section of the paper, it is nationwide.

Why has this old form of communication (newspapers) changed their outlook? My guess, they see the writing on the blogblogging and media wall. Whether it is local orange county media, or local publicity in orange county, newspaper editors, reporters all over are noticing their shrinking market. They also see that these amateurs are getting a lot more reading attention than their own bylines. But let’s not get too crazy with the papers embracing the bloggers. It is all attached to a financial reason.

If you read the LA Times article, you will see the story addresses the Washington Post has added a sponsored blog roll to its website, a directory of links to blogs that specialize in travel, technology and health, plus more. So as you see, it just took time for these money hungry papers to discover how they can get more revenue from their shrinking profits doing dailies, weeklies. To prove this point, the article mentions Caroline Little, chief executive at Washington Post Newsweek Interactive. She said most ad buyers don’t want to take the time to buy space on dozens of blog sites, and since their staff stories are not plentiful, they turned to blog rolls. This just means they don’t loose the dollars to other competitive bloggers, etc.

This proves again, if your pr marketing strategy, or pr agency isn’t including a blog site for your company, then it is time to re-think how to communicate. No, it doesn’t mean you stop your normal means of pr communicating that is now working, just means to enhance it with a blog program. Blogging is not a side job, nor a part-time assignment. To get noticed, you need to keep this activity daily. You need to have the RSS feeds, and all the optimization to your blog site in order to get noticed, ranked high and compete. Get into a blogging campaign now. Contact Carson Marketing, call George Carson for help. He can get your company noticed in the right places. Or if you wait, he may just be helping your competitors who will pass your by.

How To Extend Your Marketing

RSS is still a powerful marketing tool, check it out

There are many ways pr clients and publicity agencies can extend the reach into markets and drive traffic to their sites. By using RSS Feeds you can distribute time-sensitive information. And if done correctly, you can control how consumers find you and land on specific pages in your site to increase sales.

An article I read discusses the 10 different ways to use RSS in e-Commerce. I just mentioned one above. I’ll give you a few more.

• If you are an advertiser, pr client, or a manufacturer, consider advertising on content providers’ feeds. This can be done through FeedBurner and Pheedo.

• Another suggestion is to create channels for affiliate communications to distribute marketing content. When you use RSS, develop links that allow you to automatically push updates.

• You can extend your awareness by adding feeds from other sites and blogs. This is actually using syndicated information to supply related content on your site. Search engines like this.

That’s a few more suggestions. When used, you can then see the power RSS can provide your company and pr clients to gain more visibility and build traffic to your site.

RSS is trackable, and most pr clients do not realize this. This tracking does not identify the customer, but reports available through FeedBurner and SimpleFeed can give you detailed analytics. And don’t get disappointed at first if the results a small. Like everything, it takes time to get higher rankings, and time to build traffic.

So get RSS Feeds on your site. Or create a blog within your site and start talking about how great your company is.

See Also

Make Your PR Campaign Online Savvy

Create a good RSS Feed to get more attention and recognition

By now everyone is realizing the power of online marketing. Although our agency has been doing this for over five years, I am now seeing publicity agencies, pr clients and the traditional media getting more involved with the Internet.

getting your releases publishedWe know that blogging has helped jump this attention to become a useful marketing tool. Now we are seeing how RSS Feeds can further expand your exposure. Whether you are a sporting goods company, an auto dealership, a retail outlet, a snack food company, you should consider adding RSS Feeds to your current web site.

Plus, a "press room", or Newsroom should also be part of the web site. Why, because it is becoming a place where the media can learn quickly about your company, the products and services you offer.

When you send press releases, articles or other important materials to the publishers, editors, or freelance writers, they will want to know more about you. The web site is a perfect place for them to update themselves. So make sure your pressroom has current information.

See Also

Rich Media, Streaming Video and Podcasting

Use these new media tools for publicity

The Internet is no longer that slow machine that uses dial-up. Ok, some people are still in that Dark Age, but broadband is quickly becoming the norm.

It wasn’t even a year ago that people were downloading movies and TV shows illegally from non-approved sites.

Today, TV stations are "asking" you to download some of the hottest TV shows just after they air…literally after it airs. Shows like Desperate Housewives and Lost are among the two hottest shows you can get directly from the stations and approved sites.

What this is telling you is that rich media, pod casting and even streaming video (which has been around but is now catching on) are in high demand.

If you use your new marketing tools correctly, you can have video releases, or releases with images sent via mail faster and easier than traditional methods.

Reporters and editors are still holding off on using this technology at its fullest. That doesn’t mean they will not change, it just will become too much for them to handle when this media is more of mainstream for their access. The reporters will need to learn how to sift through the releases, pitch stories and submitted articles to find what is really important to them.

An article today by Jim Meskauskas talks about the use of Rich Media being the only media. He has some good points, and does a short walk down memory lane of how we went from 9600 or 14,000-baud rate to the broadband industry.

Jim reinforces my belief that we are moving at such a fast pace that in order to keep up, we need to use the new tools available. And that includes blogging, RSS feeds and Pod casting. So hold onto your computers, it’s going to be a wild ride these next two years.

See Also