Photo credit: Wikipedia

A lot of what we discuss in the online space surrounds the idea of building, maintaining, and, ultimately, protecting our online reputation. The same basic principles apply for both the individual and the brand. Whether we want to admit or not we ALL have some kind of online reputation to uphold. It might be a small business owner with his/her name attached to a company. It could be on someone as public-facing as a world-renowned athlete or someone who might be locally famous (or infamous for that matter) like a politician, pastor, teacher, mayor, etc. No matter the situation or the place the reputation of a person is very fragile and it can be destroyed at any time. Or can it? If you are even a modest follower of things political, there is a name that should at least ring an online reputation disaster bell in your head. The name is Anthony Weiner. Weiner is the once-disgraced congressman from New York who turned his Twitter account into a social media Weinerland both literally and figuratively. He committed a social faux pas so egregious that one had to wonder if he would ever be able to show his face in public again.

Well, that was so many Internet ages ago–2011. The Wikipedia entry for the “Anthony Weiner Sexting Scandal” fills us in with this retelling of the high points:

The Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, also dubbed Weinergate, began when Democratic U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner used the social media website Twitter to send a link to a sexually suggestive picture to a 21-year-old woman from Seattle, Washington. After several days of denying media reports that he had posted the image, he admitted to having sent a link to the photo, and also other sexually explicit photos and messages to women both before and during his marriage. He denied ever having met, or having had a physical relationship with any of the women. On June 16, 2011, Weiner announced his intention to resign from Congress with his official resignation occurring on June 23, 2011.

Ouch. Pretty tough to bounce back from, don’t ya think?

Well, it seems that while the world of social media is creating more and more opportunity for idiots to do idiotic things in a very public way it also may be creating incredibly short memories in all of us. You see, Mr. Weiner is preparing to put together a run to be mayor of New York City.

Let’s save the political bantering and jabbering for another time. Here we are looking at a pure online and offline reputation case study that could be making academics shake their heads for years to come.

It’s not so much that Mr. Weiner could actually run for mayor. That’s not the issue here. What is the issue is that if he does (and apparently he has hired a campaign manager, so you do the math) we have to seriously consider what depths we have plunged to in a society in the social age. He has to have SOME smarts to have maneuvered himself into the position of being a congressman. That said he must have at least SOME sense of what the public does or does not like or what it can or cannot take.

Assuming this knowledge, he actually thinks that the public is either that forgiving, that stupid or both.

This could be the ultimate case to show that there is little you can do to truly ruin your reputation short of something sinister like murder or something equally heinous. It’s interesting to see just how far the public will stretch its muscles in the area of forgiveness in the case of Anthony Weiner. Would there actually be a chance for him to seriously compete for the position of mayor in arguably the most dynamic and important city in the world?

Hey, why not. South Carolina put Mark Sanford back in office.

So the conclusion is this. Short of committing a capital crime it’s getting more and more difficult to trash a reputation in the online space these days. As marketers, this should be good news. But wait. Will consumers be as forgiving with brands and companies as they are with some people? I wouldn’t count on it. This quickly-evolving social media double-standard will be more lasting, because folks don’t want big companies to get away with major mistakes.

But wait. Have you seen cars getting gas at Exxon and BP stations recently? Bet you have.

Oh well, I guess it’s getting tougher to kill your reputation these days, so why all the hubbub over protecting it? No one really seems to care do they?

Be transparent. The fastest way for your guest post request to find an email trash folder is to act like you have no ulterior motive. Do not act like a fan of the blog that simply wants to write for the fun of it (unless that is true). Do not say that you are a new writer trying to build up your online visibility (unless that is true). Identify yourself and the company you plan to link to, either in the body of the blog post or the biography section at the bottom. Further explain why your company is a good fit for that particular blog and provide links to past guest blogger posts, ideally from blogs of the same industry or topic.

Ask for topics. There is a fine line here because you don’t want to appear that you don’t know enough about the industry or blog to come up with your own ideas. Still, most companies and individual bloggers have an entire list of topics they would love to get around to writing. Find out which items on their blog wish lists are a good fit with your expertise and then suggest headlines. Some bloggers may prefer you bring all of your own material to the guest table but others may appreciate you relieving some of their work load.

Promote the post. Don’t leave it up to the home blog to drive traffic to your guest post. Post the link on your own social media accounts and those of your business. If you are a freelance writer and have a website, add the link to your portfolio. When you first approach a blog about allowing your guest posts, list your social media profiles and explain that you plan to promote your work just as aggressively as the home blog. Most bloggers allow guests to provide some variety and much-needed content; throw in the added benefit of cross promotion and the places you guest blog will be even more likely to invite you back.

Reference your post later on. The next time you write a blog for your own site, or perhaps even another outside spot, find a way to link to your guest posts from the past. Do not confuse this with link building in its basic format. This is simply a way to add value and support to the blogs that have welcomed you in the past.

Companies and individuals can be territorial of their blogs, particularly when it comes to third-party content. Reassure them through professionalism that you will be a benefit to their blog, and not a burden. Then follow through with that commitment.

What do guest bloggers do that impress you the most?

Image via CrunchBase

Search just ain’t what it used to be. Search engines used to be about helping customers find information. But new products like Google Now, Google Glass, and the redesigned Google Maps are beginning to flip the script, moving to an environment where information finds your customers instead. And “OK, Google,” unveiled at Google’s I/O developer conference offers a glimpse into another yet another interface your customers will use to interact with search. Coupled with the upcoming release of Penguin 2.0, these represent significant changes in the world of search. But what will this mean for your business? Let’s take a look.

The significant changes coming to the search landscape will likely change the way your customers find you. Here’s why:

1. Fewer search results. Thanks to Penguin forcing spammy sites out of the index, Google Now offering relevant details before your customers even search, and OK Google reading the “best” answer, your customers will receive fewer different links on each query. Note how much screen real estate the search engine results pages have already surrendered to maps, addresses, Google+ posts, paid ads, images, videos and all the other aspects of Google’s Universal Search results. Add the smaller screen sizes afforded by mobile devices limit the usable number of results. This trend doesn’t appear to be slowing down.
2. Increasing numbers of “search engines.” Forget Bing or Yahoo. Google’s biggest competitive threat comes from consumers using non-traditional search engines, primarily in the form of mobile apps, to accomplish their tasks. Tools like Yelp and TripAdvisor, Apple’s Maps and Siri, location-based services like Foursquare, social apps like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and vertical-focused apps like Hipmunk, Spotify, and Kindle offer consumers myriad ways to find the information they seek. And all without ever using Google.
3. The era of “peak search.” In an address to a group of travel marketers, Google’s UK head of travel Dan Robb, said this:
   

   “…travel sector searches are still in double digit growth although it has slowed but all the growth currently being seen is from mobile and tablet.”

   Now, desktop search volumes continue to grow across many verticals, but not all, as Robb’s comment illustrates (and, to be fair, the growth of mobile and tablet is significant). The fact remains that Google will look to ensure paid search, its largest source of revenue, grows regardless of the direction search volume takes.

Of course, it’s impossible to predict who’ll “win” as time goes on. Too many variables exist to say definitively which service or services will capture the hearts, minds, and wallets of consumers. For instance, despite the challenges outlined previously, Google’s continued innovations in search and its increasing market share with its mobile Android operating system position the search giant well for the future.

What’s more important is how well you’re positioned for the future. And it’s not too soon to start planning for that.

1. Build your email list and social connections. Bypass any intermediary and talk directly with your customers.
2. Explore alternative marketing channels. Evaluate channels in use by your customers and seek ways to help them accomplish their goals in those channels.
3. Learn from market leaders. A number of outstanding companies are using mobile to deepen their relationship with customers. Watch for best practices and look for opportunities to apply them to your business.

Search engine marketing faces enormous changes in the coming months and years. But by focusing on your customers’ needs and how they find, browse, shop, and buy, you’ll position yourself for continued success no matter how they choose to find you.

If you listen to the NPR segment or watch the video, you’ll hopefully get me, feel me.

The first, most important, point I believe in Amanda Palmer’s TED talk has to do with asking for help, asking for what you want. And in that moment of vulnerability you accomplish four things: you build trust and intimacy, you become more human, and you may very well get what you want.

And building trust, intimacy, and becoming more human — and more accessible — is always a challenge for brands; and, keeping whatever trust, intimacy, human face, and accessibility as your brand scales can feel like an exercise in futility.

I have a feeling that the years of blog posts I have written have not remotely been able to convey the relationship we have with both our listeners, fans, customers, clients, prospects, and community — and it is intimate. And it is intimate even in situations you may not appreciate or even realize.

Years ago I attended a “church development” meeting in Rehoboth, Delaware, and our OD consultant told us that villagers feel way more attached to the local parish than their behavior suggests: though there is the core members: the Vestry, Clergy, and Choir, the daily and weekly congregants, the members, and the Christmas and Easter visitors, the reach goes much further. Who gets to claim the parish as “My Church” is not defined by the Priest but by the villager: even villagers who never attend — or have attended only once for a Funeral, Baptism, or Confirmation, or Wedding, often listen to the peeling of the morning bells and feel connected to it: that’s my church.

In my opinion, connecting intimately with your community online does not limit you to just the people who bring your band brownies (to show you their love), who get your music for free when they’re too poor or overpay when they’re passionate and flush, or even the people to whom pass out the extra brownies (because you can’t ever eat that many brownies) — they’re everyone else, too (even folks you may not appreciate or even realize).

But what’s important here is that the way you engage with your “apostolic core” — your sanctum sanctorum — ripples, echoes, and resonates outward, from your the folks who take you into their very own home when you’re in town to the “follow you everywhere” and “never miss a show” crowd to the folks who have ever been to a show, to the folks who listen to you and you only (but have never seen your face on anything but an album cover), to the “I have all her albums” crowd all the way through to someone who heard a song once and maybe likes it enough to find out who it was — and even further out, to the faintest tone of the church bell.

You don’t really need to become besties with all of your followers. You also don’t need to convert all of them to membership right away either. What you need to do is build as much connection as possible with the members you already have — those natural allies — and do it out in the open!

Personally, the level of devotion that Amanda Palmer’s fans have towards her makes me like her more — and I don’t even know her music! That her fans are willing to open up their homes to her, feed her, bring her brownies, and feel guilty about not being able to afford to pay for free music speaks volumes about her character and her willingness and ability to love.

It also says a lot about her. It makes me think about how trusting she is. Not a fool (I mean, she survived the streets) but that fearless person in the trust-building exercise who just closes her eyes and goes ahead and falls backwards into the arms of her co-workers without pleading and cajoling.

I know I promised to write about how to build lots and lots of followers on Twitter, etc, but I was so impressed by Amanda Palmer that I couldn’t wait. And, this is also a reminder that you can — and should — be able to maintain and grow your intimacy with your core group of followers while still being able to grow your general audience. And the better you nurture your social media family the more that public display of affection will ripple all the way to the most casual audience member.

Like I said, after a decade of blogging about just this issue, I must admit that Amanda Palmer has said it much better than I ever have.

Related articles

• You Don’t Know Either, Amanda Palmer (lineout.thestranger.com)
• Amanda Palmer: social technology soothsayer (pandodaily.com)
• Earbits and Amanda Palmer are teaming up for A Total Disruption (earbits.com)
• Watch Amanda Palmer’s Impressive TED Talk: The Art Of Asking (hypebot.com)
• How I fell in love with Amanda Palmer (lovebalancemind.wordpress.com)
• Amanda Palmer: Proof That Social Media Is The Future Of Business (forbes.com)
• Singer/Poet Amanda Palmer Doubles Down on Empathy for Bombing Suspects (breitbart.com)
• Amanda Palmer: social technology soothsayer (stuntspectacular.com)
• The Worst Lines From Amanda Palmer’s Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Poem Illustrated In Stock Photos (thegloss.com)
• Amanda Palmer: Is ‘A Poem for Dzhokhar’ Just in Bad Taste? (celebs.gather.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Matt Cutts and the rest of the Google webspam fighting team decided they’d give everyone in the industry a heart attack last week with Matt Cutts latest video. In this longer than average video, Cutts discusses some of things that Penguin 2.0 will be focusing on, which has caused SEOs, online marketers, webmasters, and many more to FREAK OUT. This happens with any release from Google or Matt Cutts, but this roar is particularly loud due to the encompassing nature of the Penguin updates, but here is why everyone should just take a deep breath and stop stressing about Penguin 2.0.

The Good Practices Haven’t Changed

Far from it in fact. Cutts clearly states in the video that Google does not want webmasters and practitioners of white hat SEO to have to change up what they’re doing to any large degree after Penguin 2.0 rolls out. Just like the Penguin updates of yore, this next one is set to target the spammers, the black hatters, and those that aim to manipulate Google’s SERPs in a dishonest manner. This means that all of the natural tactics that were working before will still work, and will start to work better than before after more of the filler gets dealt with by 2.o. It’s important to remember that Penguin focuses on spammy, low quality backlinks that have been built by SEOs and webmasters rather than earned. The fact of the matter is that ever since Penguin rolled out last year, we’ve known what not to do as far as link building is concerned, and if you’ve continued to follow through with black hat tactics and are worried about Penguin 2.0…well you’ve had plenty of time to.

Machines Have No Mercy

One reason why people are so freaked out about the upcoming Penguin update is that it is an algorithm change. Along with Panda (the other large algorithm change), Penguin targets sites on its own accord without humans feeding it data or filtering the results. Many people get confused between Penguin penalties and Unnatural Links penalties, and you can read more here, but the major difference is that Penguin is algorithm-based, and Unnatural Links penalties are manual. This means that if you receive an Unnatural Links penalty notification from Google’s webspam team a real person took the time to review your site’s backlinks and felt that they needed to be addressed. The benefit of this is that you can take the time and effort (usually a lot of time and effort) to address the issue and hopefully get the manual penalty removed.

This is not an option when it comes to Penguin. If you get hit  it can take a long time to recover if you ever do at all. Google’s disavow tool has gotten a lot of attention since it was released last October, but Penguin hasn’t had an update since that time so nobody knows whether or not disavowing problem links will help after a Penguin penalty. That being said, it’s understandable that people are nervous about Penguin 2.0 since algorithm changes can have sweeping consequences, but if you’re nervous, you probably have reason to be, which also means you have changes you can start making now.

A Better Web Experience

In all honesty, we should be excited for Penguin 2.0 –I know we are here at Page One Power because everything Matt Cutts says in his video points to a more natural, less spammy, and all around better web experience for users, SEOs, link builders, bloggers, and every other user on the web. Who truly likes spamming out thousands of emails, or spinning articles to send to low quality directories all day? These algorithm improvements by Google are only going to push the trend in to link earning over link building, and it will help to rank the sites that deserve to be on page one rather than sites who abuse links and search results.

In fact, just last week, Matt Cutts announced that Google had taken action against several thousand link sellers which means Penguin 2.0 may already have started rolling out. But once again, don’t freak out yet–unless you’ve used these kinds of link networks in the past.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The SEO process looks the same, for the most part, for any website owner. Small businesses and large businesses have the same goal–to improve their search engine presence in order to generate more visitors to the site. The process begins with industry and keyword research, then on site optimization, and then ongoing link building. Because enterprise organizations have more resources than smaller companies, it would seem as if an enterprise SEO campaign would be more successful. This isn’t always the case, especially since enterprise organizations often make mistakes that smaller companies do not. Here are 3 common mistakes that large corporations make during an SEO campaign.

Not sufficiently staffing for SEO work
The larger the organization is, the larger its website is (usually) since the website content needs to reflect every part of the business including all of the different departments or product or service offerings. There could be thousands of interior pages. The larger the website, the more SEO work there is to be done because best practice dictates that keyword research should be conducted for every page and each page needs to be optimized by incorporating these keywords naturally. It may seem like an enterprise organization should have the budget to hire multiple in-house SEO Specialists but that’s often not the case, and the existing marketing department is probably already maxed out on time. Hiring an SEO firm is often still a good choice for a large organization. It will take time to work through the SEO campaign, but at least the work will be getting done and not pushed to the side when other big projects come up.

Keeping SEO in a silo
In a smaller business, there is one marketing department and it may even only consist of one or two people. In a large corporation, each marketing specialty has a separate department, dedicated individual, or is outsourced to a firm. In addition to the SEO team or person, there is the PR team, the social media team, the content team, etc. SEO today needs to be integrated with all of these other strategies. When each is operated in a silo, opportunities are missed. The goals of each department are the same which is why everyone needs to be on the same page.

Too much red tape
The SEO process needs to be streamlined and keep moving in order to be effective. Because the SEO professionals might not be experts in the industry, there is an approval process. In a small organization there might be one or two “point people” that approve keywords, content changes, link opportunities, etc. In a larger organization it sometimes isn’t that easy and the approval process can be intense. The marketing managers, the content team, the PR team, and the department managers all want to have a say in how the site is optimized, meaning that any SEO content needs to be viewed by a lot of eyes. Obviously, this takes time. When there is too much red tape in place an SEO campaign can stall and it will take even longer to see results.

What mistakes are you trying to avoid? Sound off in the comments.

Image via CrunchBase

Too often, thoughts of content for content marketing start and end with the written word. If you broaden your view, though, you open up a world of ways to connect with your target audience. Here are a few ideas.

Video
First and foremost on your list should be video. From the Dollar Shave Club crew to Blendtec’s Will It Blend series to thousands of other videos that have achieved some level of viral success, it’s hard to argue against the effectiveness of video.

Note that we’re not suggesting that “going viral” be your goal or your yardstick for success. Chances are, it ain’t gonna happen. But people like video. It engages them in a way that copy alone often can’t. Taking advantage of that fact will help your overall content marketing not only on its own strengths, but by providing variety and a change of pace.

Yes it takes more effort and potentially more budget. But given the way it can expand your audience – and strengthen the relationship you have with your existing audience – it’s not hard to justify the expense. Especially since search engines love video. (And building a YouTube channel has some great SEO and audience-building value, as well.)

Infographics
Infographics, when done well, are a great way to present a lot of information – or complex data – in an easily digestible format. And, they’re fun.

Again, costs are typically higher for infographics than for copy alone, but if you have designers on staff, you may be able to absorb that cost fairly painlessly. If not, some advanced planning makes sense. (Like brainstorming a series of infographics, producing them at the same time, and using them over the course of a month, a quarter or a year.)

Creativity is key here. Typically, infographics require some cross-discipline collaboration. Your graphics team has to work closely with team members who know their stuff. Together, they can come up with compelling ways to present ideas and information that will be of interest to your audience. It can’t be just about the data or just about pretty presentation.

Webinars
One more frequently overlooked form of content that can be incredibly productive is the webinar. Webinars provide a platform for you to connect with your audience and establish your expertise at the same time. The webinar itself is a form of content, as is the slide deck you’ll most likely produce as part of your presentation. Both can be repurposed in many ways, helping you leverage the investment you’ll make in developing and promoting the webinar.

Remember that as elsewhere in content marketing selling in a webinar is a no-no; you’ll lose your audience – and your credibility – in a nanosecond.  But useful information, honestly presented, will win you respect, fans, subscribers and ultimately, business.

Don’t Forget Your Goals
With all of these forms of content, don’t forget the marketing side of the content marketing equation. Overt selling is, as I said, a serious no-no. But putting content out there for free without it being a part of a larger marketing plan is called publishing, and that’s a tough business to be in at the moment, even if you’re not giving your content away for free.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Yesterday, Jennifer Evans Cario of SugarSpun Marketing presented our latest Biznology® Webinar about how to use Pinterest as one of your marketing strategies.  Been following all the hype about Pinterest but not quite sure how it applies to your business? Maybe you’ve even taken the time to set up a Pinterest page, but never got past your first few pins.

In this Webinar, you’ll learn to leverage Pinterest for your business and target audience. You’ll learn to use Pinterest as a consumer research channel and how the knowledge gleaned from the site can bolster your content marketing efforts. You’ll better understand the types of content that perform well on Pinterest and how it can fit into your existing content and social media marketing efforts.

In this free 30-minute Biznology® Webinar, Jennifer talks about how Pinterest differs from other popular social media channels and when and why it’s worthwhile to consider it as part of your own social media strategy. She explores the difference between content creation and content curation, and looks at how brands are leveraging pinboards as a better way to micro-target valuable segments of their customer base. Finally, she takes a quick look at Pinterest’s newly introduced native analytics and how they can be used as a launch point to better understand what our customers are looking for from our brands.

Thanks to all our sponsors:

Yes, we might be heroes to a few people in our lives — our moms, namely, and maybe our dads, partners, children, if we’re lucky, and maybe a couple-few people who either have deep crushes or are gunning for our jobs.

Don’t worry.

Just because you were BMOC or BWOC in high school or college doesn’t much matter in social.

Actually, being a big muckety-muck right now, no matter how much you’re worth or how much your local paper adores you, doesn’t guarantee social media celebrity, (actually, my advice to people with more money than charisma, creativity, writing skills, or passion for social is to either spend that money on me to do it for him or just dump it into Google contextual advertising).

So, there are three strategies that you’ll need to pursue if you’re interested in harvesting some ROI from your social media marketing campaign, be it in the form of content marketing, digital PR, or using social as part of a multichannel sales strategy — and I will only go into two of them in this post. If you don’t have any followers, speaking about activation and conversion is stupid: convert who, right?

You need more followers

You need more followers!

The more followers you have, the more likely that there will be someone paying attention to your messaging when you share your content, your announcement, your promotion.

It also heightens the probability of someone sharing, resharing, or actually clicking through to your content or your brand. A secondary benefit is that people respect numbers, no matter how authentic or real or true these followers are.

It’s a sad truth.

And, finally, you can’t build a following unless you have a following. It’s very difficult to grow your followership with only the right people if you’re also not willing to collect everyone else. I am not going into how to do this right now because that’s going to be next week’s article but you need more followers by hook or by crook — even, alas, if you need to buy them (if it comes to that). It’s easier to get rid of spammy followers than it is to develop a real following. I call it a social media bootcamp.

You need to work on things that are kind of bullshit but seem to be important to people: follower numbers (be it Twitter or Facebook) and your Klout score. The too cool for school crowd is preparing hateful comments right now but it’s true: Klout scores and pure number of followers matter.

I mean, according to SocialBaker’s Fake Followers app, my president, Barack Obama, only has 46% “real” followers on Twitter. 35% of his followers are “fake” and 19% are what’re called “inactive.” All that follower-buying and yet the president of the US is still the number-4 most-followed Twitter handle on the planet, right?

So, even though follow-back schemes, Twitter’s promoted “who to follow” list, and full-on buying hundred, thousands, hundred-thousands, or even millions of Twitter followers, cash-on-the-barrel. You need to start somewhere.

I guess when it comes to Twitter, at least, and also Facebook and Pinterest, fake it ’til you make it seems to be a pretty great way to kickstart your Twitter empire. How else can you explain the shadow-obsession with applications like TweetAdder and Twiends?

I hate to say it here but when it comes to celebrity, the more popular you become the more popular you are and the more popular you become.

When it comes to celebrity, however, you cannot choose who adores you! Who wants your autograph!

Who sends you fan letter, naughty selfies, or entire ears! And, when it comes to celebrity, who even knows how much of all that is real grass root obsession or is the combined simulacrum of a dozen agencies and publicists?

Me? I think over the course of the last 6 years, 4 months, and 1 week I have been on Twitter, I have tried loads of things. I am sure I bought Twitter followers at a time when I found a good source through my team whenever my team bought Twitter followers for clients and all that.

That said, I am lean: of my 42,688 followers on Twitter, only 1% are fake, 1% are inactive, and 98% are good — but it isn’t always that way, I am sure — I spend a lot of time trimming, mowing, and pruning my own Twitter lawn. Tweetscaping, I guess I would call it.

OK, now that I have burnt all of my bridges and told you a little too much, and now that I will probably be drummed out of the Twitterati by everyone except possibly Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki (my shameless Patron Saints of Twitter), let me continue.

You need the right followers

I guarantee you that you’re much more likely to attract the right people once you have a certain amount of gravitas, and online that gravitas is defined by: who you are, of course; who you work for; what you’ve done; what you say; who you’re associated with (those are the old reliable); but also how many followers you have, the ratio of number of followers to number you follow (you need way more people following you than you follow to be a cool kid), your Klout score, and simple things like your bio, if you have a profile photo, if you have a nice background image, or if you’ve been on Twitter for a long time.

We people are a little like chickens: if a couple hens are really into a particular rooster then all the hens will be into him.

And, if you spend all the hard work in finding the right people to follow, you can’t make any of these “right people” follow you back, can you? You can surely ask, implore, and demand, but you cannot make.

I guess, at the end of the day, we’re simple creatures — and hella superficial at that!

You need to be interesting, popular, successful, relevant, powerful, connected or influential enough to make that follow-back worthwhile, especially when people want to keep their ratio as “cool” as possible by only following back high-Klout, high-influence, and high-caste individuals (thereby benefiting from the friend and Klout association — what a racket)

To quote Tony Montana: “In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.” And, the corollary, “On social media, first you get the followers, then you get the influence, then you get the business.”

In next week’s post, I will go into greater depth on how you can go about doing this — getting the followership going — maybe offer you a suggested step-by-step guide. And I will warn you that you’re probably going to break a few eggs, make a few enemies, step on a few toes, and turn off a few Twitter- and Facebook-purists.

Maybe you should let me know in the comments if you’re actually interested in learning how the Twitter- and Facebook-sausage is made. I would appreciate it — what do you want to know?

Related articles

• Gain Additional Clout on Klout When You Play For No Pay? (inventorspot.com)
• Social deep dive turns up hookers and gold (catublog.com)
• Social Media Popularity Contest: CEO Version (nismonline.org)
• Expand Your Influence with Klout Experts (corp.klout.com)
• Knowing your score: Klout (jamiemshelton.wordpress.com)
• Silicon Alley Insider: SOCIAL MEDIA INSIGHTS: American Airlines Invites High Klout Scorers To Their VIP Clubs (businessinsider.com)
• American Airlines Invites High Klout Scorers To Their VIP Clubs (embargozone.com)
• Klout Plans To Become A Social Network (socialmediatoday.com)
• Facebook Rolling Out Video Ads to News Feeds, and Other Marketing Stories of the Week (rehavapress.com)
• Microsoft adds Facebook features and Klout Expert answers to Bing (techtonicguides.com)

Photo credit: lierne

When blogs and social media rose to prominence about a decade ago, pundits were quick to declare that these innovations would likely spell the end of the news media. After all, the word “media” literally refers to being an intermediary (note the word “media” embedded in “intermediary”). If newsmakers could now reach their audiences directly via the Internet, what use would there be for intermediaries to carry the news? The news media, it was believed, would be one of the first industries to be “disintermediated,” a multisyllabic word for “cutting out the middleman.”

As you know, the news media is not dead. Besides the hundreds of channels on cable TV, newsstands are still crammed with magazines and the radio in my car still picks up dozens of stations.

Even the metropolitan print newspaper, thought to be the most likely media to disappear, continues to exist, getting a recent vote of confidence from no less than Warren Buffett, who thinks enough of the newspaper business that he recently bought his home town newspaper and expects his newspaper unit to generate 10% annual profits for the foreseeable future.

But one quick glance at your computer screen or smartphone will tell you that the news media has changed enormously in the last 10 years. What began as two separate worlds – “ traditional media” and “online media” – is now thoroughly and completely transformed into one seamless media landscape that continues to morph and change as new technologies come online and users discover new ways to engage.

At the same time, the public relations tactics needed to sweet talk editors and writers into covering your news have remained surprisingly constant. What’s changed more than anything are the pitching targets and pitchable opportunities.

Here are five things that haven’t changed about media relations, and then five things that have:

• There are still hundreds of pitching targets: While the mainstream media sector has shrunk, online-only media and blogs have risen up to fill much of the void.
• Breaking through the noise is still the biggest challenge: It has never been easier to make initial contact with journalists, and that means lots of people are pitching them. Getting through and having a real opportunity to pitch your story remains the single biggest challenge in media relations.
• Personal relationships still make a big difference: The best way to break through the clutter is to have an existing relationship with your pitching target. You just need to do a good job maintaining your media database, updating it when people switch jobs or assignments, and making the effort to get to know them.
• Writers and editors still want your help telling interesting stories with details you can’t find other places: Telling a good story that is of interest to a wide audience and isn’t just a veiled ad for your business is still the essence of PR and content marketing.
• Being accessible and meeting the deadline needs of journalists still helps your cause: Immediacy counts, perhaps now more than ever. So being responsive when approached, or being super-cooperative when working on a story with a journalist, will still earn you much more coverage than companies and PR people who are hard to reach or hard to work with.

And here are five things that have definitely changed:

• There are fewer reporters and less space in traditional media outlets, whether online or offline: The easiest journalists to find and pitch are those working for long-established media outlets, but there are fewer and fewer of them as these outlets lose audience share to newer media outlets. Those that are left are being bombarded with pitches, while their editors are telling them to ignore pitches and use their time to cover only the biggest and most important news.
• Everyone is doing everything: The ease of creating online content extends to journalists, who are now routinely writing articles, blogging and tweeting on the side, as well as creating videos and infographics. That translates into more pitching opportunities for those who take the time to learn the needs of today’s journalists and provide the information that they can use across several platforms.
• Online-only professional media has emerged as a force: In many cases, working with them is very different from working with traditional newsrooms, making media relations more challenging and data-intensive. Now more than ever, you’ve got to do your homework.
• Niche bloggers are wearing multiple hats, making them iffy pitching targets: It’s often hard to tell whether an online journalist is trying to make a living as a content creator,  or whether the content is a front door for consulting gigs or other non-journalistic activities. This doesn’t mean their blog isn’t important and isn’t potentially pitchable, but it does mean that their point of view may play a big role in whether your story gets covered.
• The rise of brand journalism: Corporations are spending big bucks on in-house journalism, whether in the form of industry blogs or industry news sites. This is the essence of cutting-out-the-middleman, and it makes these sometimes influential outlets all but impossible to pitch if you don’t have strong ties to the sponsoring organization.

Finally, here’s something that definitely hasn’t changed: Businesses of all sizes are still eager to hire and employ communications and marketing professionals who know how to do media relations and generate story placements that can be leveraged across the web. In fact, demand for such services is only increasing, as companies realize that it is now taking more and more specialized skill to do media relations effectively.

I was inspired to write this post by my recent pitching forays for an interesting tech client that is moving mainframe software to the cloud.  How is media relations changing – for better or worse – in your sector?