RunMarketing from Planet Content Ltd

At the recent Brighton SEO (search engine optimisation) conference the dominant emerging theme was that search professionals need to think like more like PRs. One of the speakers was Lucy Freeborn of digital marketing agency Leapfrogg, who argued that link building professionals can rival public relations professionals as they can illustrate their value online, whereas PR professionals cannot so easily justify their fees through ‘coverage’ alone.

As PR, SEO and social media continue to integrate, and changes to Google’s algorithms mean that compelling, engaging, shareable content is rewarded more highly by the world’s leading search engine, where does this leave search, PR and digital professionals? I discuss the topic with Lucy from Leapfrogg in this podcast. The key learning in Lucy’s own words: “SEO gives direction and strategic objective while PR interprets the direction and creates the roadmap. Moulding perfection!”

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There has been a lot of talk recently about how important it is for organisations and individuals to manage their online reputation, specifically our “web shadow” – essentially trails left by our online interactions: the things we publish online and what other people publish about us or our company.

To help us make sense of this subject RunMarketing caught up with Antony Mayfield, author of “Me and My Web Shadow", a book aimed at helping individuals and organisations to manage their online reputation and personal online brand.

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The popularity of podcasts among the general public is up, correlating with the rise in smartphones and iPods. As a marketing channel, companies can exploit podcasts – both as downloads and as packets of audio which can be played directly from a website – to help establish thought leadership and showcase their products and services.

To learn more about how to build the business case for podcasting as a marketing tool and to get top tips on how to create podcasts, RunMarketing caught up with podcaster and trainer Andy White of WireWorldMedia. Have a listen to this...

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Small businesses looking to promote their products and services at a local, trade and even national level have a number of public relations tools at their disposal. In this podcast, consumer PR specialist Karen Allen, co-founder of independent consultancy Rise PR, explains how small businesses can get started in promoting their business to the media.

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If you’ve been following my blog lately you’ll know that I’ve been really highlighting the priority businesses should be putting on search engine marketing.

To continue that theme in this podcast I speak with Martin Talks, CEO of digital consultancy Blue Barracuda, about what’s known as ‘long tail search’. Martin also tells us a bit about how his team has helped UK bookseller Blackwell improve its long tail search performance, so this podcast is especially relevant if your business sells products online.

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Public relations – or PR – is a key cog in any modern business. But with the continued growth of social media the very nature of PR is evolving rapidly away from the ‘traditional’ model of chiefly news dissemination to an environment where firms need to monitor and rapidly respond to what people are saying about their brand online. To understand how firms can best adapt their strategies to reach audiences on social platforms I caught up with Marshall Manson, EMEA head of digital for communications firm Edelman.

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Word of mouth has always been a crucial component in marketing. With the growth of social media, word of mouth marketing has become even more strategic and its impact more measureable. To learn more about how businesses could use word of mouth marketing I spoke to Cathy Pittham, managing director Europe of communications consultancy Racepoint Group.

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There is plenty of hype around about social media marketing for small businesses, but it’s key to remember that social media is not the Holy Grail for marketers, although when used correctly it can generate leads and help grow business.

One firm which has seen tangible benefits from social media engagement and marketing is Web usability specialist Webcredible. In this podcast, we talk to the company’s head of marketing, Claire Savage, about how the company has successfully exploited various social platforms, particularly Twitter, not only to generate leads but also for market research purposes.

[NB – audio quality is not the best but it is well worth listening to throughout, there are some great tips in this cast]

Further Reading

Useful Twitter tools: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/165191

More social tools: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/189800

Buzz monitoring tools: http://econsultancy.com/blog/3890-20-free-buzz-monitoring-tools

Further listening

Podcast: Social Media for Small Business

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Social media looks set to play a critical role in the UK General Election campaign trail in 2010. One of the most interesting social media campaigns out there right now is the InVinceCable programme, which aims to promote Vince Cable, the treasury spokesman of the UK’s third party the Liberal Democrats, to become Chancellor of the Exchequer in the case of a hung parliament.

In this podcast RunMarketing speaks to Philip Sheldrake, one of the social media consultants behind the campaign.

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Have you ever thought about using the online presentation site Slideshare.net as a lead and traffic generation tool? The site allows users to upload PowerPoint presentations and share them with visitors from around the world, effectively enabling you to showcase your company to potential customers and partners. It's probably better suited for business-to-business firms due to the demographic of Slideshare's users and in this podcast we talk toindependent online consultant Stephen Davies about Slideshare best practice. Stephen's presentations on Slideshare have received around 30,000 views in the last four years.

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