Online Revealed topics are “pushing the envelope”

Richard Kunz of T4G (left) and William Bakker of Tourism BC represented Boomer Marketing 101 and Marketing 2.0 at the Online Revealed Conference in Niagara Falls.

NIAGARA FALLS, ON—There was a time when a good communications plan consisted of news releases created on an IBM typewriter, when “social media” meant a cocktail party. And customer relationship management?  Why, that was done on the phone, of course!
That was how Richard Kunz, principal consultant, Travel & Hospitality, for T4G described “Boomers Marketing 1.0” at the fourth annual Online Revealed Conference held in Niagara Falls April 13-15, 2009. 

Times have changed. The new marketing, which William Bakker, director of e-business for Tourism BC called, “Marketing 2.0”, has been around in the travel and tourism business for a few years now. The Internet is in full force, computers are in the palm of the hand, and there’s Facebook, MySpace and SMS (text messaging). “I’ve got callouses on my thumbs,” he said.

But the main message Kunz and Bakker had for the 300-strong audience of Online Revealed attendees is that both present opportunities in marketing to the 240 million North American boomers, X-ers and millennials who use the Internet—customers want elements of 1.0 and 2.0 combined.

“I was pushing the envelope” in coming up with speakers for Online Revealed, organizer Patricia Brusha of A Couple of Chicks e-marketing told CLN at the conference.  Sessions drilled deeply into topics like Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Maintaining Your Reputation Online in the Age of Web 2.0, Marketing with Social Media, Understanding Analytics, Everything Google and The Real Story on Twitter.  Alicia Whalen, the other co-founder of A Couple of Chicks, who calls herself an “active tweeter” addressed this last topic.

Do you think writing a news release hasn’t changed much since you took Marketing 101 in college? Think again! Melinda Van Patter explained how press releases have gone digital at Online Revealed last month.

Even the humble news release has gone digital—and that doesn’t mean organizations are just posting their news stories on the Web.

Melinda Van Patter, client relations manager for Marketwire, brought her audience up to date on how to optimize news releases. Her company provides press release distribution, newswire, public relations, investor relations, breaking news and media monitoring services.

Companies used to control the message in news releases, said Van Patter. The media acted as the gatekeeper and the conversation was top-down and one-way. These days, coversation is multi-directional, the gatekeepers are gone, and the audience is actively participating.

Optimizing a news release includes providing hyperlinks to specific landing pages, and writing text to match key words, phrases and embedded links.  Search engine optimization (SEO)—or creation of “findability” on the web—becomes very important.  Search engines look at the title tag of the press release, and the description or first 150 to 170 characters of text.  This first paragraph should be key-word rich.
 
The writer is now targetting consumers, not the media.  “Realize that you are now your own journalist,” Van Patter said.

The press release should be written keeping various social media in mind. Writers should highlight key facts in bullet form and include quotes from important people for those who are following them on Twitter.

Van Patter also talked about RSS (really simple syndication), a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. Users of RSS content use software programs called “feed readers” or “feed aggregators”. Each syndicated press release or article would have one or more links to selected pages on your website.

RSS content is vital for SEO as the syndication builds back links, Van Patter said.
But, in the end, just as in real estate it’s “location, location, location,” for the Internet, it’s all about “content, content, content.” Websites, blogs, content in RSS feeds, and online press releases are all content.

Is it funny? Is it interesting and valuable? Even the Google engineers acknowledge that tweaking your tags and on-page elements are not as important as having good content and a good reputation in your community.

One of the interesting innovations at the Online Revealed Conference was an ORC Online Yearbook for participants. Of the 300 people at the conference, 250 participated in the yearbook, which includes a photo and business card for each attendee. 
When they got their photos taken, participants were asked which online networks they used. For the record, here are the network usage stats: Facebook = 72 per cent; LinkedIn = 59 per cent; Twitter = 39 per cent; Plaxo = 12  per cent; MySpace = 10 per cent and other networks less than 10 per cent. Quite a wired bunch!