Carson and Company

If you haven’t already heard, there is another new search engine, called “Cuil“. It is an Irish word meaning, Knowledge. PR Clients, as well as all publicity professionals, public relations agencies, even local orange county publicity professionals should keep an eye on this new SEO. Why? Because this could be a publicity opportunity for pr clients to gain recognition as this new SEO gets more attention.

Ok, let’s look at this new search engine to get a better understanding. The company was started by former Google engineers. Top notch people, not the sub-level engineers. eWeek article tells more about this.

Cuil feels they have listened to the users of search and decided to provide a better indexing of pages. Here is the catch. There are over 120 billion web pages. That’s a lot of pages to try and create a better search platform. Anyway, these engineers have the support of investors who poured over $33 million into the development. Already, since launch day on July 28, the site has had unexpected traffic causing it to lock up for a time.

What makes this search engine different…Cuil provides tabs to better clarify subjects, they organize the features better so that images are identified by topics with a search refining suggestion area. Is this a better mouse trap? Possibly, but it takes some time learning how to get the most use of this new search. TechCrunch states it is an overrated site and may not live up to what the former Google staffers think it really is.

In any case, publicity professionals should include this search engine as part of their pr clients marketing and publicity program. If you are unable to keep up with all the new search engine changes and need to get noticed, or ranked in the top, then give George Carson a call at 949-477-9400. Carson Marketing, Inc is a solid web marketing company that knows how to get your company noticed. Call today for a free consultation, and just maybe you will learn the secrets to being a top ranked web site.

PR Clients should use their web sites more often as a publicity tool. If you are a pr client and you have a publicity agency, then be sure to include web marketing into your pr marketing strategy campaign.

Why do publicity professionals choose to not use a pr clients web site in their publicity strategy just doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe publicity professionals are not secure with cyber marketing. Or they feel more in control doing traditional publicity such as press releases, articles, press conferences, or other promotions. These are great, but if a pr client has a web site, why not include that as part of the pr marketing strategy? Yes, it does take a lot of work, planning and coordinating the web marketing of a web site. But then again, like I said, many pr companies, or publicity professionals rather not go into areas unfamiliar because it takes more work than they want to do.

I’m not saying that all publicity firms do this or ignore a pr clients web site. It just seems common business sense to me to include cyber marketing to drive traffic to a site. This in turn will build awareness, increase sales, and will build branding for any pr client.

Ok, let’s get to some things you can easily do to market your web site as part of your publicity campaign.

First, are you a local company, such as a local Orange County, or Chicago business? If so, you can target regional customers by using Google’s “geographic box”. The Google algorithm has the smarts to determine the query calls for results that are local. If you have several locations across the US, this works for each area you have a location. An example would be if you type the words “Orange County Publicity Agency“, or “Chicago gyms”, you will see at least 10 results with maps showing these businesses.

Second would be do a series of press releases to reach specific local areas. This sounds like more work to write a main release, then custom tailor it to fit different geographic regions, but it works.

These are just two ways to do web marketing. There are many others, including, business blogging, article submissions, offering webinars on your web site, and more. Try these, if your publicity professional just isn’t ready to make this work for you, call me, George Carson. I’ll make sure you get noticed! Carson Marketing, Inc, 949-477-9400.

It may have taken more time for the mainstream media to learn that blogging and the people behind the words are here to stay. The impact this social group has is proven its staying power this week when the LA Times article titled “Newspapers, bloggers now engage on same page”. Even though this is in a Publicity Orange County section of the paper, it is nationwide.

Why has this old form of communication (newspapers) changed their outlook? My guess, they see the writing on the blog wall. Whether it is local orange county media, or local publicity in orange county, newspaper editors, reporters all over are noticing their shrinking market. They also see that these amateurs are getting a lot more reading attention than their own bylines. But let’s not get too crazy with the papers embracing the bloggers. It is all attached to a financial reason.

If you read the LA Times article, you will see the story addresses the Washington Post has added a sponsored blog roll to its website, a directory of links to blogs that specialize in travel, technology and health, plus more. So as you see, it just took time for these money hungry papers to discover how they can get more revenue from their shrinking profits doing dailies, weeklies. To prove this point, the article mentions Caroline Little, chief executive at Washington Post Newsweek Interactive. She said most ad buyers don’t want to take the time to buy space on dozens of blog sites, and since their staff stories are not plentiful, they turned to blog rolls. This just means they don’t loose the dollars to other competitive bloggers, etc.

This proves again, if your pr marketing strategy, or pr agency isn’t including a blog site for your company, then it is time to re-think how to communicate. No, it doesn’t mean you stop your normal means of pr communicating that is now working, just means to enhance it with a blog program. Blogging is not a side job, nor a part-time assignment. To get noticed, you need to keep this activity daily. You need to have the RSS feeds, and all the optimization to your blog site in order to get noticed, ranked high and compete. Get into a blogging campaign now. Contact Carson Marketing, call George Carson for help. He can get your company noticed in the right places. Or if you wait, he may just be helping your competitors who will pass your by.

Social media is not a fad. It keeps growing and now savvy marketers can target specific age groups and genders.

If you are a local pr client that does Publicity locally in Orange County, or a national company, marketers can now reach their target age customers with social media. It used to be restricted to the younger teens and those who were in college. Sites like MySpace and Facebook were the main arteries to this limited age audience. But now there are many new social media sites that are catering to various age groups. Such as “www.econs.com”. It isn’t surprising that this site was established, because it reaches the 50+ age who are very internet savvy.

According to a study by Pew Internet & American Life Project, they estimate over 70 percent of Americans aged 50 to 64 use the web. And econs.com is one of the sites they frequent most often.

If your pr marketing strategy is to target the generation between Baby Boomers and Generation X (born in the mid-50s to mid-60s) then check out BOOMj.com. This social networking site will get your pr campaign noticed with them.

Another new site called lavalife.com is a narrow niche targeting women in the mature age of 45 and up. This is still a beta site, but as you can see, social networking is expanding. It is helping local companies like those in Orange County, or New York City, to specifically reach a selected audience. To get more niche, other sites are popping up. These include SisterWoman.com, and CafeMom.com. The later is identified with moms raising kids while SisterWoman is a social network for women to chat and connect with girlfriends.

Make sure your pr marketing strategy plan includes these social networks as well as a solid blogging campaign. This is another way to increase the branding awareness and build a solid branding company. To get your pr marketing plan on target, give Carson Marketing Inc a call.

The goals for any pr client is to get local publicity first, then get as much pr attention as you can later. Why is that important? Because without achieving local recognition, you allow any competitor to take control of your back yard. So what are the secrets to getting local publicity? For example, if you are a pr client in Orange County, you want to begin by getting involved with community programs, or local events.

If you are working with a local publicity agency, such as CarsonPR, or one of our divisions (Carson and Company or Carson Marketing, Inc.), make sure you notify the pr agency of any activities, events, community programs that your company becomes involved in. In turn, think about getting more visible by lecturing at different events, or sponsoring small programs, such as the YMCA.

Other ideas to get noticed are: Press releases. These are always a good suggestion. When your company hires an executive person, or contracts with a new client, or moves to different offices, it is always newsworthy. It might not get complete publishing in all the local newspapers, or local magazines, but your name becomes familiar with the media. The next step is to hold a press conference. This isn’t as easy, but when you have something of value to your industry, or the community, get the press to know about it. Another great publicity method to get noticed is to submit articles. These can be company related. In other words, don’t sell yourself or the company, but write an article about the industry you are in and provide information, or suggestions on how to improve that industry. Publishers, editors like these types of articles. It attracts readers to their media, and you might just become an expert in you market that the media will turn to for information.

There are many other easy publicity techniques to get noticed. If you still need more suggestions, give us a call. We’ll be pleased to show you how to get your publicity campaign noticed locally, then nationally.

Wow, stop the presses, finally the marketing B2B people are discovering something new…Web 2.0! Well, not to make these slow learners feel bad, but Web 2.0 has been around awhile. It just seems funny how this is big news in publications like BtoB magazine. I like the publication; they are only telling what is happening to the companies who are finally getting smart.

Ok, so what is Web 2.0? It is the new medium of Blogs, RSS feeds, Podcasts, Videocasts, Social Networks, and more.

These are all the pr strategies and publicity tips I have been preaching for over a year to marketers. I guess I was just too excited at the time to not realize that other PR Clients, and local Orange County Publicity firms were not ready to implement these new pr marketing tools. Why, because they just did not appreciate the value it was offering. Now that the “news” is out, will there be over saturation? No. Just means that you need to be smarter, one step ahead of the competition. You need to have a savvy pr marketing professional, like Carson PR, on your side. I’m not bragging, ok, maybe a little, but it needs to be said that if you can’t see the trends or ignore them, then you as a pr client or publicity agency or even an advertising agency, will fall behind. And in this industry, falling behind isn’t that easy to get caught up.

If you have been reading my blogs for a while, then you know that we mentioned all the social networks long before they became “superbrands”. Places like Facebook, once only a college school network, now is a major competitor to MySpace. There are other social networks that pr clients and pr marketing agencies should consider in their overall marketing strategies. If you have been keeping up with these trends, it is now the podcasts, and videocastings that are becoming the “new” social media. These forms of communication are helping small companies as well as talented artists get recognized and become successful. If your a pr client, or have a publicity agency, give George Carson a call to learn how to be part of this growing media. Then maybe, just maybe, you will be the superbrand that others are trying to imitate.