At this year’s PRSA 2008 International Conference, we will discuss real-life examples and techniques to get the most mileage from press releases, especially in the Web 2.0 world.
Greg will share some case studies of press releases that generated a measurable ROI. This includes optimized press releases that generated $200 million in qualified leads for Symmetricom’s chip-scale atomic clocks, more than $2.5 million in ticket sales for Southwest Airlines, and almost 1.3 million searches for “florists” on SuperPages.com. I’ll also explain how combining blog outreach with press release optimization generated a record 450,000 unique visitors to The Christian Science Monitor, more than 85,000 entries into Parents magazine’s cover kid photo contest, and a record 1,100 attendees to the Wharton Economic Summit.
Laura will present five ways to increase a press release’s “ROI” by:
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Conducting keyword research to find two to three relevant news search terms that your target audience is likely to use;
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Making sure your release actually includes your target terms — particularly in headline and first few sentences;
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Adding hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable;
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Using a press release distribution service crawled by Yahoo! News, AOL News and Google News;
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Measuring results of your campaign — whether your objective is to build brand awareness, increase Web site traffic, generate sales leads, or sell products online.
Finally, both of us will talk about the importance of working hand-in-hand with your Web team to see how visitors are getting to your site and moving through it. We’ll also show attendees how to use Web analytics for compiling, tracking and measuring activity deriving from the press release via the wires and elsewhere.
Co-authored by Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder, SEO-PR, is a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies conferences, Marketing Sherpa Summits, PRSA seminars, and Bulldog Reporter events. He is also the news search, blog search and public relations correspondent for the Search Engine Watch Blog. Greg is one of the successful online marketing gurus featured in Michael Miller’s book, “Online Marketing Heroes.” Greg has more than 25 years of experience in corporate communications, marketing, and search engine optimization at Lotus Development Corp., Ziff-Davis, and other companies.
Co-authored by Laura Sturaitis, senior vice president, media and product services, Business Wire, directs Business Wire’s U.S. Media Relations specialists, ExpertSource, Licensing & Online Content Development and Information Services teams. She also develops Business Wire’s New Media Products & Services offerings such as EON: Enhanced Online News, Smart News Release and the BusinessWired blog, and cultivates Business Wire’s products, services and partnerships with the leading online, social media and technology companies, in order to provide our members with the best tools to help them craft, deliver and measure their news message, and to identify and reach new audiences both via traditional and new media as well search engines, online sites, blogs and social media sites. Prior to joining Business Wire, Laura was vice president and general manager at International Business Chronicle and before that Circulation and marketing director at The South Florida Business Journal.
Join Jarboe for his teleseminar The Secrets of Search Engine Optimization: Get High Ranking Search Results That Can Lead to Sales and his session What’s the ROI on Your Press Release? at the PRSA 2009 International Conference: Delivering Value, November 7—10, in San Diego, CA.
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