Traditionally, public relations is about crafting strategic messages that communicate exactly what the organization wants people to hear.  Today, more and more businesses are creating their own content in the form of blogs, articles, “Tweets,” and white papers.

This user-generated content, like traditional PR, improves communications, generates publicity, builds awareness, and increases rankings in search engines. 

I don’t know about you, but I spend lots of time online – and I have to make myself focus on the task at hand because everybody and his brother is vying for my attention with, “Visit this site,” “Watch this video,” etc. One click is all it takes to jump from one topic to another, and everyone is competing to get that click.

Marketers must learn how to break through the noise and garner more clicks. Calls-to-action are the tools to make this happen. They have the power to grab people’s attention and direct it to new topics. They are everywhere you go.

Jim Caruso, CEO of MediaFirst, at the Atlanta Drupal User's Group

Overview of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), and Inbound Marketing

The content includes an overview of search engine optimization

Best Practices for Hosting Your Drupal Site - Panel Discussion - Moderator Tim Dorr

I offer a review of Drupal hosting and performance improvements, including OpCode cache, such as APC; standard Drupal caching via the Boost module, CDN - Content Distribution Networks, and MySQL optimization via InnoDB rather than MyISAM. Jim Caruso

Archive.org lists 110 downloads!

Be Active On LinkedIn

Add LinkedIn Groups

Complete Your LinkedIn Personal Profile

Leverage Professional Contacts Via The LinkedIn Social Network

LinkedIn has many tools beginning with a personal profile extending to a

Blogging is becoming a critical path to B2B Marketing success. Blogs let you speak directly to your audiences of prospective customers. B2B Social Media extends the reach of your blog across the industry via LinkedIn and Twitter. LinkedIn Groups provide a forum to publish your blog posts. These blog posts generate inquiries and sales leads.

B2B Marketing via B2B Article Marketing has two facets:

a.) The first is that more and more publications are accepting bylined articles from B2B Companies. In part, this reduces the cost of content for publishers, whether online, email newsletters, or print. magazines. This is part of B2B Media Relations and involves pitching a story idea to the editor, who assigns the story to you.

Tools Include Blog Marketing, Content Marketing, Media Relations & Social Media

B2B Branding begins with an understanding of the experience, Brand Experience, that you wish your customers to have when they do business with you.

I wrote a blog post about Google Chrome and how I like rapid response time and how I see speed as the ultimate differentiator online.

Here is an update on my thoughts:

Speed In Browsers Is Still King

It is almost two years later and it is still true that speed dominates. I think Windows lost its way with bloatware and carp ware, unwanted software that is loaded on new consumer PCs and with the poor compatibility and experience of users with Internet Explorer.

B2B Marketing is the complete package of marketing activities that creates awareness of your company in your B2B Market. A second step is to guide prospective customers to learn more about your firm and take steps, via a Marketing Lead Nurturing Program, to become customers or clients of your company.

In today's markets, it is increasingly necessary to cover all the bases of marketing, to implement a wider and more diverse set of marketing activities that together are reinforcing.

Social networking has forever changed the way businesses and consumers interact. Today’s consumer doesn’t want to be sold on a product. With immediate access to the opinions and recommendations of trusted sources such as friends and family, your target audience is far less likely to rely on you as their first and only source of authoritative information.

Today, I needed to craft some rules for a LinkedIn Group. Here they are shown below.

A primary source is these tips in a Downloadable Template from Patrick O'Keefe.

The group, Atlanta Soccer Friends, is on LinkedIn.

Marketing is all about pushing the company messages out to target audiences through a variety of channels, which can include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. However, social media is about engaging in conversations with your target audience, something that push marketers aren’t that skilled at. Try promoting your business on Twitter and Facebook, and you will lose followers. Social media is not specifically for lead generation (marketing) but more for raising brand awareness and thought leadership (PR).

Business Blogging, Blog Content, Blogger Relations, Blog Marketing, & Guest Blogging

Update: I promised an update on Business Blogging, Blog Content, Blogger Relations, Blog Marketing, & Guest Blogging.

It’s important to know when the highest percentage of your audience is eavesdropping on your social networks—so that when you share content you’ll get maximum exposure and achieve optimum results. This data is courtesy of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider for web-based businesses. I’ve provided data on e-mail marketing and blogging, too.

Smart executives hire public relations firms that have experience and expertise in their target markets, such as MediaFirst has expertise in the open source Drupal content management system, telecommunications, manufacturing, health care, IT, retail, and supply chain/logistics/transportation/warehousing.

PR can accelerate an exit strategy if executives are looking for that. Last year, we had 4 clients acquired by much bigger firms. We call that a success!

Here’s how PR can be used to accelerate an exit strategy: