Social media and online public relations are about listening to and encouraging conversation about a product, brand or service – therefore it can be very difficult to evaluate your ROI or convert it into numerical value i.e. inbound links. The difficulty arises because you can’t put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, such things are just not quantifiable. Jason Falls has written an excellent blog post on just that point.
What is important is gauging the influence of the bloggers you plan to engage with. While an increased amount of inbound links is important for both Online PR and SEO, the influence of the blogger that is linking to you is more important. It is far more valuable to get a link from a highly relevant, respected and influential blogger than get many links from small news aggregation spam blogs that do not carry much weight.
When planning for blogger outreach, it’s vital to spend time researching which bloggers are most relevant to determine which could provide the highest quality of links. You can never estimate how many bloggers will write about you and include a link as a result of blogger outreach – this greatly depends on what the blogger outreach is focusing on and what the blogger could get out of it, as well as whether the blogger has time to write the news or finds it relevant to them. It should always be your top priority to treat blogger outreach as a conversation with a person. Not an automated distribution of a press release to a long list of nameless email addresses.
Online PR does not involve chasing a blogger up to find out if they got your email, this will always be seen as spam and will do more bad than good. Often, you may even get an extra mention from the blogger stating what a bad example of blogger outreach you are. You can never be sure that for example, if you give a product for review, this review will be positive. There is every chance that the review could be negative which would thus create a link that is detrimental to brand perception. However, by listening to this feedback,you can gain valuable insight into your products and how they can be developed.
While blogger outreach cannot immediately and directly change brand perception, a brand being active within social media, talking to customers, talking to advocates, thanking people for writing about them, giving support to those that have had a bad experience will help to greatly increase brand perception. People want brands to listen to what is being said about them and if they’re happy with your service, they will recommend you, which will in turn generate leads and sales.
The key is communication with your customers. Every complaint about customer service online is due to lack of communication between a brand and the customer. It always comes down to the customer not being satisfied by the response or actions of a brand as a result of not being able to talk to the brand. Being active in social media helps to facilitate this communication and in turn helps to improve brand perception and lead generation.
Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg
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