Comnicate Blog – Online Newsrooms

With more than 140 million Tweets sent everyday and millions of subscribers using Facebook at anytime, if your corporate website does not Tweet, Share, Like or Socialise than it is definitely behind the eight ball.

Here are 5 ways to make your website more social:

1. Ensure Social Icons are Easy to Find

By featuring your social links on your homepage, and placing them prominently it will encourage visitors to become fans of your pages.

2. Use Content-Sharing Buttons

Through the use of share buttons like Facebook sharing or Twitter retweeting your audience can help with the leg work of significantly spreading your message. Place share buttons on all articles, photos or videos, blog posts and press release for maximum social exposure.

3. Encourage Users to Login Through Social Networks

By allowing users to log in and interact with your site using certain plug-ins like Facebook Connect, their activity will be automatically published back to their social feed. This will encourage their friends and network to also visit your corporate website.

4. Enhance Engagement by Embedding Videos

Adding a YouTube or multimedia player to your website will not only give you visibility on their channel, (YouTube for example, is one of the worlds most used search engines) but will give you the ability of adding video content to your corporate website.

5. Incorporate your Blog

Integrating your blog with your website means beneficial traffic flow, because with every fresh blog post your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is increased, meaning better visibility for your website.

Getting your PR message out does not have be a struggle, nor does it have to be expensive. Check out these four economic and effective tips:

Generate Publicity with a Blog

Blogging is cheap, but certainly not free. It requires time and persistence and attention. On the upside a successful blog can cement your reputation and promote your business and products. Instead of trying to sell your services blatantly on your blog, use it as a platform to talk about how your business can solve problems for your potential customers. Quality and relevance is what will build the success of your blog.

Create a Press Release

Creating and distribution a press release is both easy and free. There a number of online platforms that makes getting your press release seen easier. For example, some PR companies offer access to media outlets and blogger for a minimal subscription fee. It is also worth your while to send your press release to specific and targeted editors. It is also important that your press release timing is spot on and that your content is interesting and intriguing.

Sponsor an Event

It might sound expensive but sponsoring an industry event can be a great way to publicise your organisation to a targeted audience. It is important that you are specific about the amount of products and services you are willing to offer and request that your logo is featured on all promotional material.

Build Social Media Relationships

Use Twitter and Facebook to your advantage and leverage relationships with customers and peers. It is imperative to actively promote your message among your existing relationships and ask them to spread the word. But be cautious not to over use this privilege; by choosing the right promotion and returning the favour, you will add to long-lasting relationships rather than break them. Try initiating conversations around your message when building your network, and spark interesting rather than preaching.

Feedback comes in a number of different forms and is important for a number of different reasons. If your blog is not getting the results you hoped for its difficult to understand why, if you are not getting enough feedback.

Feedback is imperative to letting you know what works and what does not, as well as how to fix any existing problems. If you are struggling to get the feedback ball rolling, here are a couple things to consider:

Read your existing comments

The posts that have the most comments, are those that have had the most effect on its readers. Take any suggestions from the comments on board. Or follow up any negative or confused comments.

Use Twitter or Facebook

Use Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms to build your blogging network. Advertise your need for blog feedback through these channels and encourage constructive criticism.

You might be pleasantly surprised with the response you get, especially from non-bloggers who are likely to represent the majority of your audience.

Find a blog buddy

It can feel a bit lonely venturing out into the blogosphere, especially if it is your first time. However finding a another blogger with which you can share and compare posts might just help your blog achieve what you want it to.

Improve your blog writing skills

There are a number of short, online courses out there that offer blog building and writing advice. It might be beneficial for your blog to have a better understanding of what readers what to read and polish your content writing skills.

It is likely that your blog network will grow through interacting with others in a similar situation.

Infographics are the cool kids on the PR block at the moment and if you are planning on creating one for your next press release or blog post, check out these free online tools to get you going.

Before you start, like anything, it is a good idea to have a clear idea of what you want to get across to you audiences. So here are some tips for designing your infographics:

• Decide on a colour scheme and stick to it.
• Keep it sleek and clean, without too much in one picture.
• Research some interesting and relevant facts and statistics to add.
• Remember; it is all about fitting a lot or complex information into a scannable image.
• Reference your facts in the infographic.
• Include your company name and website so people can be sure who made it.

Inkscape

Inkscape is the tool to use to help create your overall infographic. It is a free vector graphic software program which is available for many platforms, and is easy to use and intuitive. It is also simple to import and add other images or visuals to your creation.

Google Public Data

This tool lets you take public data and transform it into an infographic of your choice. The data is presented in colourful and simple graphics, perfect for inforgraphic integration.

Stat Planet

With Stat Planet you have access to tons of great data with which you can create amazing interactive visuals, which can be used as is or saved as static images. It is simple to use and can be downloaded it for free or used within your browser.

Creately

This great tool lets you make professional looking diagrams and flow charts which are also easy to collaborate into your infographic. You simply choose from a number of purpose-designed diagram types and add your data to make your own chart.

Wordle

Wordle will have you occupied for hours. It lets you create word clouds using a slab text you enter. There are a huge range of designs to choose from and you can enter whole books, short passages or see what other people have used.

Good blog posts and good media releases have a lot in common; both have a strong headline, both usually state the most important information first and both connect direct with their audience. Here are a few simple things you can do to rewrite your blog as a press release;

1. Ensure your press release is news worthy. While blog posts often provide advice, commentary or an opinion, a press release has to announce somehting.
2. Rewrite your post into third person. Instead of using we or I, use the name of the companu and use customers of clients instead of directly addressing your audience.
3. Format your headline. Your media release and blog headline should both include keywords, however press releases use a subhead to qualify their title. Press releases also use caps for their headline and title caps for their subhead.
4. Include important media release elements:

• Date line – follow the format of: CITY NAME, State abbreviation, (Date Month Year).
• Lead – your first sentence should includ the most important information; who, what, when, where, why and how.
• Quote – adding a direct quote gives your press release personality and creditbility, however it is not essential.
• Hashtag – the bottom of your media release should include a short paragraph abouth the company and its contact details. We also suggest adding a Twitter hashtag that others can use to tweet your news. See below for our example.

Comnicate explains how to turn your blog post into media releases #bloggingPR #comnicate

In the last post referring to corporate blogging, I asked the question; who is the author of your blog? Following this theme, here at Comnicate, we believe it is important to take a distinct approach to your blogging.

The following are 3 different examples you can apply to your corporate blog, including some of my favourite successful blogs.

Are You Experts in Your Field?

A lot of blogs aim to reach the status of being the go-to-blog. Your aim is to be on the same level as your customers and a recognised authority in your field. Well informed and colourful insights into how the industry works and where it is heading will help you reach this level. Furthermore keeping your posts focused, themed and relevant is the best approach to achieving a certain level of respect in the online community. Look at Intuit UK, the makers of QuickBooks, their small business blog and forum http://smallbusinessbritain.intuit.co.uk/ alternatively the OPI Nail Polish blog takes an expert approach to beauty while optimising there product; http://www.suzisbeautyblog.com/

Are You Looking For Feedback or Ideas?

I really like the Starbucks http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/ideaHome ideas sharing forum and blog. By encouraging customers to submit and share their ideas, you are engaging your customers and/or potential clients. It can be one of the most rewarding ways to spark news ideas. Often this is more successful for household-name companies or ones with a well-known reputation or product, but there are definitely aspects of their approach you can add to any corporate blog, especially if one of your goals is to encourage and promote discussion of your company within your readers.

Do You Want to Connect With Your Reader?

Many big name companies like Microsoft have used a personable individual within their company, not necessarily with a PR, marketing or skilled writing background to fuel their blog fire. Similarly a CEO written blog can be used to soften your corporate approach or adjust your reputation to being transparent, warm and customer focused. The key to the success of these blogs really relies on passion, commitment, knowledge and energy of the author. I love the fun and creative Sharpie blog http://blog.sharpie.com/ or the CEO of Marriott International, Bill Marriott and his bl0g http://www.blogs.marriott.com/

If you answer, yes yes yes to the above questions, don’t be afraid to incorporate all aspects into your blog, but be sure to stick to your concrete business plan as established in our previous post.