Online PR: Should You Pitch or Ignore These 6 HARO Personas?

Ken McGaffin, August 20, 20140 Comments

HARO can be a great way to get coverage and links for your website – but it can also be a huge waste time with no results if you approach it in the wrong way. Understand these six personas and you’ll avoid wasting time and focus on the queries that could give you the media opportunity you’re looking for.

Online PR is an important part of any link-building strategy, but SEOs don’t always have the right skill sets to make it work for them. But one of the great things about HARO is that it can provide a great education at no cost – just dive in and keep at it!

HARO does have quality rules and the sites that pitch must have a certain score on Alexa. And the editors do scan the pitches and do refuse pitches that are not up to scratch.

Sign up at HelpAReporter.com and you’ll get three emails per day featuring queries from journalists who are looking for examples and good quotes to add color to their stories.

Scan through the queries (you’ll get between150 and 200 per day) and you’ll find that they fall into these types of personas.

Persona #1: Top-Notch

The BBC, Washington Post, ABC News, Fast Company, and many other top media outlets regularly pitch queries on HARO. These journalists use HARO to get quotes and add personal stories to their content.

This is one of the great advantages of HARO – it allows anyone who signs up to get access to top journalists.

Of course the payback can be tremendous, however for the top-notch journalists:

• You need to be exactly the type of person they’re looking for
• You’re going to face a lot of competition – lots of other people will be pitching
• You’ve got to have a great story and you’ve got to pitch it well – no mean task

If you can’t fulfill these criteria, then you’ll be wasting your time pitching.

And even if you do have a great story, that doesn’t necessarily, mean you’ll get a link. However, you can improve your chances (see 10 Ways to Increase the Odds of Getting Editorial Links).

Persona #2: General Business Sites

Probably the most common and possibly the most useful of the media outlets you’ll see on HARO. Most have good audiences and require a good standard of writing. These include sites like Open Forum from American Express, Entrepreneur Magazine, and BankRate.com.

Most of your online PR effort on HARO should go into sites like these.

They present a good opportunity because any business can respond, no matter what industry you come from.

The resulting articles are likely to be along the lines of "21 Small Business Owners Share Their Top Tips on…." That means you don’t really have a chance to stand out – the article will not be exclusively about you or your business.

There’s a high probability of getting a link because such sites understand the value exchange – give them a good quote and you get a link in return.

Of course others will see that too, so you’ll have lots of competition.

What is required is:

• Flexibility in being able to see how to make your business relevant to the subject of the article.
• A great sound bite – you need to write something original so that they can simply cut and paste into their article.

Persona #3: Niche Business Sites

These are queries from particular niches – lawyers, psychotherapists, dog trainers, and so on. You really have to be relevant to that niche – trying to twist your story to fit is a waste of time.

If you do fit the bill, you’re likely to get good editorial coverage and a decent link – but you must have a good story to tell.

The disadvantage is that any particular niche is not going to be featured that often and so your opportunities are limited.

Persona #4: Stingy Business Sites

Becoming a writer and posting queries to help you build content for your own site is a legitimate strategy (see Using HARO to Create Fresh, Compelling Content).

However, the value exchange mentioned earlier should be followed – any site that gets a good quote should give a link in return.

But "stingy" sites don’t follow this value exchange. They’re usually attached or related to a commercial business so they’re not strictly a non-partisan media opportunity. They’re often reluctant to give links because they want to sell their own good or services.

So choose very carefully before investing time in making pitches to these sites!

Persona #5: Authors Looking for Material for Future Books

These can be a mixed bunch. You may get some decent writers, with a publishing contract already in place, looking for interesting examples or case studies.

But you may also get a lot of people writing their first e-book who think they can fill it with material from HARO pitches. They still have to meet the Alexa threshold, but it‘s worth checking them out.

Remember:

• the book may never get published
• you’ll wait a long time for your publicity or link
• your contribution may be out of date by the time it’s published
,li>if the book does get published, it might bomb - no fame or fortune for you!

Are you really prepared to take the chance?

Persona #6: Anonymous

You’ll also see queries that give neither the name of the writer nor their targeted publication. For some reason, the publication does not want to tell you who they are.

Perhaps they’ve got a guaranteed spot on Oprah Winfrey and don’t want to be inundated with hundreds of pitches?

Perhaps, but you shouldn’t count on it. Your time could be better spent on other opportunities.

These six personas cover most of the queries you’ll find on HARO. But before pitching, you need to do some further checks.

Simple Checks on Queries That Interest You

When you do find queries that seem to fit the bill, check out:

• Is the site a place where you’d really like to be featured?
• Does the site readily link to sites that are featured in published articles?
• Can you find articles that have already been written by the journalist behind the query?
• Are there other ways to pitch this journalist or media outlet? A guest post or a press release perhaps?

Handling the media is something that won’t come naturally to all SEOs (see Jon Ball on SEW, "The Future of Link Building").

However, if you think you’ve got an aptitude for working with the media, then HARO is a great place to start.

You will get editorial and often that will be accompanied by quality links. But perhaps more importantly you’ll get the opportunity to develop your skills by working with and building contacts within the media – and that could be very valuable indeed.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2361107/Online-PR-Should-You-Pitch-or-Ignore-These-6-HARO-Personas?utm_term=&utm_content=Online%20PR%3A%20Should%20You%20Pitch%20or%20Ignore%20These%206%20HARO%20Personas%3F&utm_campaign=08%2F20%2F14%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Daily

Designing Around Little Minds

September 29, 2013 

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In designing user interfaces, we aim to empower the “user” to understand and control the system at hand. Output via screens and speakers, with input from a keyboard, a touch screen or gestures. Between them, the “user” is understood to be our conscious “mind” – the logical bit of our brain that thinks it’s in charge.

This “mind” is actually not nearly as “in charge” as it thinks it is. In fact, our larger and often much more wise mind – the emotional, sub-conscious, parallel-processing, pattern recognizing part of our nervous system even manipulates and deceives our conscious mind. Articulated long ago as Dual Process Theory, Kahneman formalizes them as System 1 (this vast, quick and automatic aspect of thinking) and System 2 (the small “conscious” mind that logically considers and judges).

There is a basic fitness function to having our conscious mind feel confident, whether fighting, mating, or even making the small decisions that people make to get through a day. But the confidence we are building is with the small and logical part of our minds, deceiving ourselves that things are ok when another part of ourselves might know otherwise.

This is articulated in an experiment described by Trivers in which subjects are asked to listen to a series of voices, some of which are their own. Depending on the confidence of the subjects, some tended to attribute their voice to others … or conversely, mistake other voices as their own. The interesting thing was that the galvanic skin response that connects to our parasympathetic nervous systemalways reacted consistently to our own voices, even when our conscious minds were deceived. (Trivers 1985)

Whether it’s the decisions we make or the assessments of how we feel, we are consistently persuading ourselves that the world is organized and coherent, and that we understand what’s going on, most of the time. In fact, the world is complex and chaotic. Most of what goes on in the world -- and even in our own bodies -- is beyond the comprehension and (luckily) the control of our little minds.

Thus, good design communicates with the broader, faster, more emotional system. What we call the “flow state” or “in the zone” is just our little minds getting out of the way so that our bigger and more intuitive mind can run the show. Whether throwing a basketball or driving a car, if our logical minds were coordinating each step, it would be impossibly difficult to coordinate all of the steps. However, our little minds are “smart” enough to get out of the way when we have mastery and allow the rest of the system to dominate.

Why is it then that we seem to insist on building and assessing our systems based on what our little mind thinks? Think about the testing in schools that only measures local knowledge and logical skills, or designing user interfaces around what the user is focused on like pull-down menus and the mouse pointer.

I believe that we must focus much more on creating interfaces that send information to – and receive controls signals from – the rest of our system. This could apply to sensors for health, assistive robots, the Internet of things, thermostats, or future vehicles.

The problem is, individually and collectively, our little minds don’t like to give up control. We have to trick our minds to get out of the way sometimes. That’s where deception emerges as a design pattern.

In the late 1800s, James Naismith, a pastor and a physical education teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts realized that he needed a way to deal with young kids who would become restless and unruly during the harsh New England winters. He knew they needed the exercise, collaboration and competition they got the other nine months of the year.

So Naismith invented basketball, allowing kids to exercise indoors, to compete and collaborate, all through playing this fun new game. It worked swimmingly, and quickly spread through YMCAs and became the sport it is today. My bet is that if he had called it “social ball” or “don’t-beat-each-other-up ball” it probably wouldn’t have been nearly the hit that it was.

Was this subtle deception immoral? Was it effective? Which part of the mind was Naismith looking to address, and which part did he find ways to speak to?

Today, we spend so much time telling our conscious and self-deceived minds what we want it to do. What if we spent more time trying to induce our minds to get out of the way, through meditation, play, prayer ... or even deception. We need to think less like industrial designers (designing for the intentions of the conscious user) and more like game designers (designing for the desires and quick, “irrational” behavior of our mind.) We need to design our medical devices, computers, vehicles and communication tools to be influenced by what we really do and think. Not just what we tell ourselves we are doing or thinking.

--

Trivers, R. (1985). Social evolution. Menlo Park, Calif., Benjamin/Cummings Pub. Co.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130929185906-1391-designing-around-little-minds?trk=mp-details-rc

4 Reasons to Spend More on SEO

Adam Stetzer, September 8, 201339 Comments

•SEO Evolution: Sell, Discover, Deliver & Report on Highly Converting Keywords by Krista LaRiviere, gShift Labs

Google has made dramatic changes in 2013, with the May 22 Penguin update having the biggest impact for small business websites. After some severe reductions in traffic, some webmasters are at least seeing traffic increases in August due, in part, to a Panda softening from Google.

In response, many webmasters are making big shifts in SEO tactics. While long overdue, this is the right move.

Few businesses are looking to move to lower quality SEO services as they now fear Google more than ever. But small businesses run very close to the margin and traditionally resist increasing the SEO budget, regardless of the consequences. Here are four reasons why small business owners should reconsider.

1. Google Asked You To

While many will dismiss this as PR, Google has clearly communicated that they no longer will tolerate SEO tactics that used to work in 2008. Article spinning, keyword stuffing, excessive bookmarks, reborn domains, paid links, thin content, and duplicate content are all not OK.

Even if you haven't received an unnatural link warning, the writing is on the wall. Quality must increase for continued success in SEO. While this message is clearly self-serving for Google, it's important to respect their power in the industry.

2. Recovering From Google Updates is Expensive

There are plenty of websites that have partially recovered from Penguin downgrades, but each case is different. The level of returning traffic varies.

Technical issues on-site are the easiest to fix and should be addressed quickly using Webmaster Tools as the guide. Duplicate content needs to be removed immediately.

Keyword-stuffed titles need to be edited. Thin content, a favorite among many, should be replaced with real content marketing.

Off-site issues, such as bad link building, are particularly hard to fix. It is very ironic that firms now exist to send "link removal request" emails to other firms who were previously retained to build those links.

Small business needs to stop doing bad link building and embrace content marketing. They need to get creative and experiment with newsjacking.

All of these activities cost money. Smart business owners are thinking toward the future and deciding to spend more on SEO now (via higher quality services) to avoid repeating this activity in 2014.

3. SEO Has Merged With Marketing

Many small business webmasters were using a "set-it-and-forget-it" SEO strategy, believing that they need not worry about SEO after hiring a firm. This violates one of the major tenets of business process outsourcing, which is to outsource process and execution, but maintain strict performance monitoring and accountability.

It isn't surprising that many small businesses are feeling buyer's remorse, wishing they had done greater due-diligence in the vendor selection process and better understood the risks associated with SEO.

It should be clear at this point that SEO is no longer a technical exercise and is rapidly merging with marketing and public relations. Smart CEOs recognize the strategic importance of SEO in our digital world. For this reason, they find ways to amplify SEO in allmarketing activities. Ironically, many companies have SEO opportunities they don't harness.

For example, every employee should maintain a "work" Twitter account and share industry news, blog posts and company specials to help spread content. This type of integrated SEO marketing execution is the future, and will draw more budget dollars.

4. SEO ROI Remains High

The data suggests that SEO is still a great investment. This means that small business shouldn't necessarily shop for the cheapest SEO vendor, but consider the return they can make on their money if they spend more:

• SEO remains a very high ROI activity.
• The cost-per-lead for SEO is still very attractive.
• Google has significantly tightened the requirements for high-quality SEO.
• Integrated marketing strategies have big efficiencies.

Conclusions

All technologies and industries mature, and price-points typically change dramatically along the way. SEO is following the same playbook as most other young industries.

In the last few years we have seen SEO move from infancy to adolescence, with the Google algorithm updates as mileposts. While SEO will become more difficult and expensive to execute, the return on investment remains high for small business. In the end, ROI is more important than the absolute number of a budget line item.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2293316/4-Reasons-to-Spend-More-on-SEO

If you don't believe it's time for your company to get on board with social media you should read this:

September 03, 2013

Facing Dead Whale Or Lost Cargo, Maersk Line Turns to Social Media

BY MAREX

Who would have thought a container shipping firm could rally as many Facebook "likes" as a big brewer, find lost cargoes via Instagram or use Pinterest to limit the public relations setback of accidentally killing a whale?

Maersk Line is doing just that and the Danish company says its embrace of social media - more usual in consumer-oriented sectors like cars or fashion - has given it an edge in the normally low-profile business-to-business shipping sector.

The world's biggest container shipping company - part of A.P. Moller-Maersk - sees the Internet as a cheap way to boost its profile, making it a more likely choice for freight forwarders.

"There is a lot to gain from it, such as better press coverage, higher employee engagement and better brand awareness," said Jonathan Wichmann, its head of social media.

The strategy proved its worth when the ship Maersk Norwich hit a whale and arrived in Rotterdam harbour in June last year with the 12-metre animal lying dead across its bulbous bow.

Rather than play down the incident, Maersk posted pictures on Facebook and created an album "In Memory of the Maersk Norwich Whale" on Pinterest. Both were widely shared and the company says comments were mostly positive.

Maersk Line's new ships all have have a Web page and Maersk is present on most social media, including Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Vimeo, Flickr and Tumblr.

Its social media crew covered the two-year construction of its $185 million, "Triple E" container ship - the world's biggest vessel - and its arrival in Europe last month.

Maersk Line's corporate Facebook page has more than one million "likes". While that is far less than the 11 million likes accumulated by Daimler's Mercedes brand, it is in the same league as consumer brands such as Danish brewer Carlsberg's 1.3 million and more than Swedish carmaker Volvo's 675,000.

Swiss-based Mediterranean Shipping Company, the second-biggest container shipper, has just 4,500 "likes". The third-biggest, France's CMA CGM, has about 11,000.

FIRST SOCIAL MEDIA MOVER

"Maersk Line has been the first social media mover within the shipping industry. I'm convinced others will follow," said Frederik Preisler, partner at Danish advertising company Mensch.

Wichmann said that when Maersk Line publishes news on social media, it is often re-tweeted or shared, while fewer people take notice of its traditional advertising.

The company launched its social media strategy in October 2011 and spent around $100,000 in the first year - compared with millions needed for traditional media advertising. Wichmann declined to disclose the company's spending on advertising.

Now it plans to use social media to recruit help in tracking down lost containers. Its 550 ships on average lose some 18 containers a year and finding them is tough.

The project will allow people to photograph a container on a beach and upload the picture and serial number to Facebook or Instagram so that Maersk can retrieve it.

http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/Facing-Dead-Whale-Or-Lost-Cargo-Maersk-Line-Turns-to-Social-Media-2013-09-03/