The TecBlast Blog

It’s flattering that the media has noticed your work - and you’d love the notoriety. But following that initial pride, your reaction might be (not necessarily in this order):

Fear.

Trepidation.

What if I blow it?

What if they ask me a hard question I can’t answer?

And, omigod, do I really need this headache when I have a business to run?

If this all sounds far too familiar, you’ve probably realized the need to be media prepared. That’s a good thing. After all, most people forget that a media interview is actually an opportunity - to say what you want to say. You just have to know how to take control.

You’ve probably noticed that some companies and spokespeople are successful with the media - and some are not. The reason? Some folks better understand how the media works and how best to work with the media.

So, what is the media interested in? news, news and more news. And what is news? Something that’s a first, a trend, unusual or unique, something populated with celebrities, kids or dogs, and oh, of course, something that has a lot of money associated with it. So, if you think like a reporter, your job becomes understanding your business in a way that you can communicate news to the media.

What do you need to know to be prepared? Well, first off, you really need to know your company, your product, your industry and your business’ success stories. Know the medium you’re talking to (TV is different from radio which is different from print and online). Know your audience. But, most of all, have three key messages. And make sure, no matter what, you communicate those three key messages.

Which group of people is a great role model when it comes to communicating key messages? Most would say “politicians.” Politicians know that no matter what they’re asked, they’re going to communicate their key messages - and consistency is the key to success in articulating their position.

What should you never do in an interview? Never say “no comment.” (sounds like you’re avoiding the issue); never repeat a negative question or phrase (that only reinforces the negative); never use industry jargon (people don’t understand it); never go “off the record” (nothing is ever off the record); never lie; and never attack competitors (you can always take the high road instead).

Here’s an interview checklist:

A. An interview is a basic tool of news gathering, not a conversation. Think of it as a formal debate

B. The reporter interviews a subject in search of news, not to further a company’s reputation

C. Do your homework. Read the reporter’s articles and his publication prior to the interview

D. Anticipate key questions

E. Prepare key answers

F. Identify your three key messages and make sure to deliver them no matter what!

G. Practice, practice, practice!

When should you respond to an interview? Keep in mind that media is deadline-driven, so when a reporter calls, it’s important to get back in a timely fashion. But if the reporter catches you unprepared, it’s perfectly acceptable to say you’re on the run and can you call back? Ask for the deadline and respond within the timeframe. Working with the media is all about relationship-building: once you create positive ones, you need to communicate on an ongoing basis, through good times and bad. But remember: sometimes you’ll want to participate in an interview and sometimes you won’t - and that’s OK.

So, what are the keys to a successful interview?

1. Develop and practice your three key messages

2. State your objective at the beginning of the interview

3. If asked an unrelated question, bridge to your key messages

4. Provide support for your objective

5. Summarize your thoughts

6. Stop talking!

It’s important to recognize that it takes time and experience to develop cogent and persuasive key messages. Each spokesperson needs to practice key messages continuously - that’s where media training can be extremely helpful. Getting the media interested in your message is an art, not a science. Developing helpful media contacts takes time. And developing messages is a process in and of itself.

Let’s go back to that original call from the media. Peter King (not his real name, of course) calls from the New York Times. What do you do?
Peter King: Hey, Joe, it’s Peter King from the Times. Got a minute?

Joe Canoli: Actually, Peter, you’ve caught me a bad time, I’m running out the door. What’s on your mind?

Peter King: I’m doing a trend story on successful small businesses and wanted to spotlight your company.

Joe Canoli: I’d love to talk with you, what’s your deadline?

Peter King: Sometime tomorrow would be fine.

Joe Canoli: Great, Peter. I’ll get my facts together and let’s talk at 11 a.m. tomorrow?

Peter King: Good, see you then.

Congratulations! You’ve made your first media friend! And 15 minutes can stretch into a lifetime.

David Landis is President of Landis Communications Inc. (http://www.landispr.com), a San Francisco-based public relations agency that provides a broad range of services, including: media training, public relations, media relations, community relations, special event services, positioning, messaging, media tours, promotions and internal communications.

I’m sure most of you have seen articles about how to set up a Pay-Per-Click campaign. The majority of such articles are written for novice webmasters who don’t receive much website traffic and have never done the comprehensive keyword research that is so critical for any successful internet effort. As I discovered recently, creating a PPC campaign for a mature website can differ greatly from a typical PPC campaign setup.

We recently built a PPC microsite for a client who possesses a very mature, content-rich, well-trafficked website that unfortunately had serious lead conversion problems. After analyzing the client’s log files in preparation for starting the PPC campaign, I realized that traditional keyword research wasn’t going to be a necessary step. In fact, the logs contained an absolute blizzard of mostly relevant keywords. I quickly determined that the Google AdWords tool and other similar tools that people use to flesh out PPC keyword lists would be redundant to this exercise.

So how did I set up this particular campaign?

1. Top Natural Search Keywords.. From this content rich website, I took the top 1,000 natural search keywords that brought our client traffic within the previous 12 months. I dropped them in a spreadsheet, alphabetized them, and evaluated each word in the list for its relevancy to client’s product / service offerings. Until search engine algorithms are perfected, a certain percentage of natural search traffic will always be mistargeted…therefore, I needed to make sure than that no irrelevant keyword strings made their way into the PPC campaign.
2. Divide Remaining Keywords Into Logical Categories.After a thorough analysis of a site’s top keywords, nine topical groupings of keywords became apparent to me. I placed the category names at the top of the spreadsheet and moved each keyword into its proper category. I created a huge, cumbersome spreadsheet, but this process was critical to insure that all the words in each category were very closely related. In order to maximize the PPC click-thru rate, the targeted keyword (or a close variant of it) needed to be placed in the title line of the ad (and perhaps repeated it in the body of the ad). Having a large number of categories in this PPC campaign made the setup quite slow…but I knew that adhering to this process will lead to an optimum click-thru rate for the client.
3. Clean Up Each Category. The first two steps were tedious and, unfortunately, step three is the most tedious of all…but still critical to the effort. I looked over the entire list of keywords again. For each listing, I asked myself the following question “Does this keyword map well to the website’s product / service offerings or should I slightly alter it to make it map better?”

   An example:

   I sell “Green Widgets”. “Green Widgets Florida” appears in my website logs. However, I sell green widgets everywhere…so, there isn’t any special reason to keep “Green Widgets Florida” in my keyword list so long as “Green Widgets” already appears. Similarly, if “Widgets” appears in the logs and I only sell “Green Widgets”, I want to make sure to delete “Widgets” since it is too broad and includes products that I don’t sell.
   

   Each keyword string remaining in my campaign should not to be either too specific (so as to exclude relevant searches) or too general (mapping to keyword possibilities that don’t fit the business).

4. Use the Budget Optimizer As A Final Check. Most campaigns have a spending limit, and especially, with a new PPC effort, testing the waters is a wise strategy before jumping in with both feet. Plugging the keyword list into one of the budget estimator tools will determine how well the campaign budget maps to desired keywords. Some of the listings will like be too expensive for the budget and must be removed…particularly “generic” words that are relevant to bidders in multiple industries. Once the keyword list is finalized, input your spending limits, create the ads and run the campaign.

Remember my client that I was telling you about? Their new PPC microsite is converting 20% of all PPC traffic into leads at a ridiculously low cost per lead…and I believe that much of their success relates to the keyword “depth” present in their campaign. When I suggested to the client that they double their PPC spend, they responded that they have more good leads than they can assimilate into their sales pipeline. Most businesses likely wish they had such problems.

About Cube Management:

Cube Management provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results.

Google is the most popular internet search engine and even if we have to admit the popularity of such tools as yahoo, msn and altavista - google is the leader nowadays. If you would like to trick google - the answer is - it is virtually impossible, however it is possible to get high rank on yahoo or altavista. We got our top position in our specialization: Great Plains Dexterity on all the three: google, Yahoo and altavista, so, if you don’t mind let me share our experience.

• Information versus commercial sites. If you are enthusiast of something and you do not do it for profit - chances are that google will sponsor your activity by ranking your website higher than commercial sites, trying to make money on your subject

• Links. Google seems to be voting machine - the more links you have the better your rank is. However be sure that signing thousand of guest books per day will not contribute as much as you would like to expect, read the next paragraph.

• Expertise Ranking. This is the most funny part of the secret, and I wonder how google handles such a volume of information, gathered by its web-spiders. If you want to be ranked high in stuffed animals sections - you need to get thousand of links back to you from the sites, who are experts in stuffed animals in the eyes of google

• Google dance. Well - do not be discouraged if suddenly your rank drops - google uses to reshuffle its ranking on the daily basis. If you keep sticking to the links generation - your site will be back on the top

• Google Trivia. Well - if you look back on the internet ranking classic publications then you should get these ideas: if your URL is www.stuffedanimals.com then more likely you will get higher rank than somebody who is trying to place stuffed animals into the keywords. And this is understandable - if you pay register.com for your web site name - more likely you are dedicated to the subject.

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, Florida, Canada, UK, Australia, South Africa and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

Google developed a prime product, Adsense. Marketing your website through key words, brand performance, and Adsense is an entirely new means of promoting your focus. As the rest of the world wonders what happened, those with an understanding of the particulars, in this case, KEYWORDS, trump the market.

Traffic to your site requires keyword rich content that will not only get the reader there, but keep them there, and bring them back, frequently. The trailer of this market is a resounding thud against equality, and packs a punch recognizable due to strategic style and market abundance. Where do you get your traffic?

What keyword wraps your business website in functional traffic building content? Recently, I started focusing my interests on keyword profiles and optimal qualifiers. This process moves my articles, my websites, and my work into the forefront of marketing, bringing more traffic to my site. By branding my site, and my work with keywords, the content become rich and recognizable by web crawlers bringing even more traffic.

The depth of focus brought to my sites at this point in time, means my plan is working. More clicks equals more bucks in my pocket.

So, what’s in it for you, my reader?

More clicks. By reading and understanding how to work the system to improve your visibility through marketing keywords and content rich information, your site gains traffic and you earn more money.

Strategy:

1. Have a website oriented to market your product with keyword rich content relating to your product and your market.

2. Promote your focus with keyword rich articles written specifically for your market niche.

3. Promote link back capabilities with the articles you write.

4. Develop traffic promotionals that bring back your client time and time again, encourage them to send friends to your site, and provide content interesting to new clients.

5. Be recognizable. Have brand recognition by narrowing your scope to a specific niche of the market.

Capitalize on the market available to your niche by using relative keywords focused specifically to your content and product. This brings readers who are interested in your product to your site, and helps narrow the lineup, while promoting your product to more of those who are interested in more information. A focused customer with a specific interest in your product and service is far more likely to hang around and purchase something off your site than one who accidentally came across your site while surfing the net looking for something unrelated.

Select your keywords with care, to bring in specific people to the site. This helps focus your readers, and your articles to better serve the common good of your web design. Broad scopes just don’t work. Get a niche and stay in it.

Copyright © 2005 - Jan Verhoeff

Build on what you know. Become an expert about the one thing that interests you most. Let us help you focus your advertising needs with information from our blog Make Money Online. Jan Verhoeff has the experience you need to focus your business site and make it profitable.