media relations mistakes - how not to pitch a journalist

The Internet and social media have certainly made it easier to conduct media relations in a more efficient and less intrusive way.

At my first PR job I had to type in contact addresses from the hard-copy Bacon’s guide so we could mail merge and send out the press materials. Or stand over the fax machine feeding through one press release at at time.

Being required to do cold-call follow-ups as a junior employee was one of the main reasons I gravitated toward other forms of online marketing as soon as they started to emerge. [click to continue…]

up and down arrows

Your sites have been audited, improvements have been made and there is more to come in the road map. The technical, editorial and marketing teams are trained in SEO best practices and are integrating them into the daily workflow. Sounds good, but are your efforts working?

That’s where tracking and measurement comes in. When it comes to SEO publishers need to understand and effectively communicate progress and success.

SEO is a never-ending process and without good benchmarks, clear and realistic goals and solid reporting it is easy to lose momentum within the organization.

So what are the best ways to track and measure success? [click to continue…]

The Fastest and Slowest News Sites in 2012

April 24, 2012
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It has been a couple years now since page speed has been an official Google ranking factor and one year since the launch of PageSpeed Online, the Web-based version of Google’s tool for analyzing site performance. So I thought I’d check in on the PageSpeed scores for a selection of major news sites. Page speed [...]

MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook: Two-Year Growth Rates

April 10, 2012
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With a new baseball season underway I thought I’d check in on the 30 MLB teams on Twitter and Facebook. Which teams are seeing the most growth? I have not done a sports team comparison post in quite a while, mainly because the figures quickly become outdated and total reach is not all that important [...]

Pinterest Traffic to Magazine Sites Up 141% But Figures Still Modest

April 3, 2012
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Yes, this is indeed another post about Pinterest. But fear not, I come with real data to share albeit it in aggregated and anonymized format. It is well established that Pinterest offers great opportunities for lifestyle publishers but how well is it paying off in actual site traffic? To get a clearer picture I pulled [...]

Pew Study: Facebook Users Get 70% of News Links from Friends and Family, Not News Orgs

March 19, 2012
Pew Study - Facebook news links

The Pew Research Center’s The State of the News Media 2012 is out and the section on What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News makes for an interesting read. The figures on where users get their news links from is already being covered as a sign that Facebook and Twitter may not be as strong [...]

SEO and Social Media for Publishers: A Low-Rent Infographic

March 14, 2012
social media infographic

SEO and social media are now vital components of audience development for publishers of all shapes and sizes, but there are still huge opportunities for improvement. Since infographics are still (kind of) the rage I’ve been meaning to publish one here. But since I lack any artistic ability and I don’t have the time to [...]

8 Social Media Questions Publishers Should Be Asking Themselves

March 8, 2012
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For most publishers social media has earned itself a prominent seat at the audience development table. However many still face issues with strategy, execution and incorporating social into a cohesive program. This week I took part in an OPA Social Media Day panel on social media for audience development with Lisa Brewer from Time Inc. [...]

5 Good Ideas for News Media Facebook Pages

February 28, 2012
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What are news organizations doing to increase user activity and engagement on their Facebook pages? To be clear, a large part of any Facebook strategy focuses on newsfeed visibility and on-site promotion through tactics like EdgeRank optimization, frictionless sharing, like and subscribe buttons, Open Graph tags, Facebook Comments and other Facebook Social Plugins. However in [...]

StumbleUpon Channels: Which Media Brands Are Doing Well?

February 14, 2012
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It has been a couple months since StumbleUpon rolled out its Channel pages for all members so I thought I’d check in and see how media brands are doing. StumbleUpon Channels are a good opportunity for publishers (and any business involved in content marketing) because they create a direct pipeline to users that are specifically [...]