A creative approach to link development will form an essential part of any successful SEO strategy. Using case study examples, Gary talks about how to effectively prioritise your keyword targets and then delves into how you can capture that keyword revenue potential, through a creative link development strategy. To watch the video you will have to register for a FREE account with SeminarStreams.com. The register process will start when you click on the play button. Read the rest of this entry...

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This month Propellernet will be exhibiting at Internet World from 27th – 29th April, where we are set to challenge people’s perceptions of Online PR. Our team will be sharing some of its valuable SEO, creative link development and online PR expertise with Internet World visitors, on-stand and at two talks by members of the team. We will invite people to ‘explore the vast galaxy of SEO-PR’ and challenge visitors on their perceptions of Online PR. Read the rest of this entry...

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"...Brands now have a need to consider every online touch-point and how they can influence purchase decisions beyond the virtual front door of their corporate website" Quote from the "The Search and Social Media Report" from the IAB and Microsoft Advertising In a social media obsessed industry the cold hard fact remains that search engines are still the most influential gatekeepers of links (that you can directly influence!) between your brand and consumers. The brilliance of search engine marketing is that behind every search query is a person that fits into a well defined segment based on their motivation to search at that time. As a refresher it's good to think about the concept of the "intent" behind a search query. Read the rest of this entry...

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This week saw myself and Stu Bowker presenting on behalf of Propellernet at the MDHub 100 SEO & Google tools seminar, at the Sussex County Cricket ground. Our presentation gave a basic overview of SEO, exploring some link building tactics and the role good online PR can play. We also touched upon the power of conversion optimisation and detailed lots of free tools available to get you started. One of the key themes that came out of the session was that Google wants to provide the most relevant search results to users, offering the best user experience possible, encouraging searchers to come back time and time again. So how does Google decide who gets the top spot and ensure results stay relevant...? Well Google's search algorithm looks at a host of factors, but particularly important ones include good and relevant on page content mentioning the keywords you are targeting, as well as relevant and authoritative external links to that content. Read the rest of this entry...

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As a leading online and social marketing agency, customer insight is at the heart of everything we do.  Using our unique revenue potential model and persona insight tool as part of a strategic planning phase, we identify the most lucrative keyword areas and ensure we build a holistic view of our clients’ brand, their customers and their journey. How does this influence how we create an online PR campaign? Persona insight is a crucial part of our strategic planning phase and shapes our clients’ overall marketing strategy, but it also determines so much more in terms of online PR. Our online targets, the tone of voice we use, what content we create and what messages we put into a campaign are all determined by the results of the Persona Insight research.  So before we develop any content for online we always conduct a media audit and evaluate this back to our client objectives and targets.  This ensures the content we produce for online not only captures the attention and...

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Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, LinkedIn, whatever you or your clients subscribe to or depend upon, there is an increasing use of social networks for successful PR campaigns. Here at Propellernet, we manage social media campaigns to build relationships with the media and strengthen the overall communication strategy for clients. We recommend that your target market is identified first and then a strategy put in place to communicate with them. Over the past 18 months we noticed the media were often  writing about tweets they had seen and even having real-time debates on social networks that would appear in the press the next day. Also a whole new concept of writing was born when travel writer, Benji Lanyado, piloted the first TwiTrip – a travel adventure powered simply by twitter users recommendations. We already have clients with pages on Facebook and we use the likes of twitter for our own PR, but some clients have been fearful of joining social communities. They had seen...

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I recently told a friend of mine who is a journalist that I was doing online PR. “Ah”, she said, “you’ve become the enemy!” We had a good old giggle, but this illustrates perfectly the love-hate relationship journalists have with PRs and why it is such a challenge for us PRs to pitch to them. Just to explain how it all works, here is what I do. As a PR, it’s my job to ‘manage the flow of information between an organization (my client) and the public (target market)’. Just like with offline PR, I need to create personas, or target market segments, find out which publications they read (in my case websites) and then get their products onto these websites, for free. Some people think this means pushing out an offline press release on a news wire, but it is much more than that and with online PR particularly, the relationship with the journalist is key. Read the rest of this entry...

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We are increasingly aware of how customers are looking to get the best price for the best product, but how can us online marketers ensure that we reach these potential purchasers and get under the skin of what really motivates their buying habits? We need to go back to basics and forget about the traditional demographics which have influenced marketing campaigns for years. Of course age, sex, income and marital status are important but what you really need to think about is who are your target customers, what influences their spending decisions and which sites do they visit during their spending journey? Its time to get personal and the answer lies in creating personas... Personas are fictional characters. They take on identities and represent your customers by their buying trends and search habits. The persona will put a human face to data and create something that can seem real and familiar. Ideal online customers are no longer just ABC1’s, they are individuals sat in...

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Working within an industry that changes direction in real-time and advising our clients on the best route to take can be tough for us online marketers. Whether PPC is dying or traditional PR skills are history we're constantly being bombarded with the latest industry trends and everyone's views on it. What we do all need to do is to remember to stop, take stock and focus on the goal. I attended an E-Consultancy round table earlier this week discussing Online PR & Social Media and the outcome was interesting. It was also peppered with a lot of questions and statements such as; We need developed measurement, We must move our clients forward within Social Media, Should our clients use interactive games to communicate with their customers? Whose responsibility should it be to interact with customers through social network platforms? In my opinion, the answer to all of these questions should be considered with; What will meet my client's objectives and what is my client...

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As I'm sure Richard Branson would agree, social media can be a bit of a monster at times and a rather difficult beast to tame. The scope and speed offered by networks such as Twitter and Facebook, coupled with the ever expanding blogosphere, allows user-generated content to travel faster than a transatlantic flight to New York City. Whether it be a poor customer experience, a brand simply getting it wrong or rogue staff playing a prank - social media has given a voice and a platform to everyone with a keyboard and mouse: and they're certainly not afraid to use it! Here is a collection of some recent high profile examples of the staggering power of social media from the last few months, highlighting the potentially damaging effects it can have on big brands: Read the rest of this entry...

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