Web Ink Now

How to create awesome web content and achieve top search engine rankings

This blog post highlights a very successful marketer - Larry Waight of The Lodge at Chaa Creek, an eco-resort in Western Belize - who has achieved high search engine rankings for many important keywords. This content marketing effort generates a remarkable 80% of new business for the Lodge. This important case example is among the best I've seen if you want to learn how content drives business. This is brand journalism at its finest.

As anyone who has built a web site knows, there is much more to think about than just the content. Design, color, navigation, and appropriate technology are all important aspects of a good web site. Unfortunately, in many organizations these other concerns dominate. Why is that? I think it’s easier to focus on a site's design or technology than on its content.

One of my favorite examples of sites with poor content but big budget design and technology are the global hotel chains. Go to any hotel property from the majors: Hilton, Sheraton, Marriott, or any others from around the world. They all look the same! They have almost no original content about that property!

Yes, appearance and navigation are important. But the best sites focus primarily on content to pull together their various buyers, markets, media, and products in one comprehensive place where content is not only king, but president and Pope as well.

Content drives action

Contrast the vast majority of hotel sites with that of The Lodge at Chaa Creek. I had an opportunity to stay at Chaa Creek a few weeks ago and I interviewed Larry Waight about how he creates his awesome content.

Direct link to the video How to create awesome web content and achieve top search engine rankings on YouTube.

Larry researches what people are searching on such as Belize honeymoon and Belize all inclusive. He then created content on his site or Belize Travel Blog specifically for these phrases which are ranked highly in the search engines.

Solving buyers problem with content

Most interesting to me is how Larry creates content that is about Belize, not just about the hotel.

This is an essential element of Chaa Creek's marketing success. Search terms such as Belize winter solstice 2012 and bird watching in Belize drive people to the lodge who were searching on general travel information. Brilliant.

On his Belize Travel Blog, Larry also writes not about the lodge itself but about Belize travel such as Ten reasons why Belize makes for Honeymoon Bliss.

Brand Journalism

One of my favorite examples of this technique of writing about the things people are interested in is how Larry has created a bunch of content about the local Mayan sites nearby the hotel such as Xunantunich Maya Temples. And, get this, he even writes about the Tikal Mayan site - which is in Guatemala – another country! - about two hours from Chaa Creek.

All this content drives people to the hotel site and blog through the search engines and many people will then choose to stay at The Lodge at Chaa Creek. Indeed, some 80% of new bookings to the Lodge are from this content marketing effort.

This is one of the best examples of content marketing I've seen. If you want to learn more about how Larry creates content, do take the time to watch the video.

It was Larry's introductions that got me to Belize which shows the power of connecting with people via social media. Thanks Larry! I'm planning on returning, with my family next time.

Disclosure (updated September 12, 2012): I connected with Larry several years ago through both Facebook and Twitter. This year we communicated via Facebook about a visit to Belize. To facilitate that, Larry introduced me to the Director of the Belize Tourism Industry Association who invited me to speak in Belize at the Belize Marketing Summit. Because I was going to be in Belize anyway, Larry invited me extend my visit and stay to The Lodge at Chaa Creek for a few days, covering part (but not all) of the costs of my hotel stay. However, this blog post is in no way a paid endorsement. I chose to write this because I truly believe the Lodge at Chaa Creek is a terrific example of success.

Newsjacking a naked Prince Harry

Over the past week, I've noticed a bunch of people attempting to newsjack the stories of Prince Harry's Las Vegas romp. As you have likely heard many times by now, naked photos surfaced of the Prince cavorting with equally undressed women in a hotel suite.

While most newsjacking attempts went unnoticed, several were highly successful.

Newsjacking works when you have a tie to the story

The pattern is quite consistent – the more of a tie you have to the story, the better your success at newsjacking.

The location of the Prince Harry photos was the luxurious Encore Wynn Hotel. The owner of the hotel, Steve Wynn publicly waived the tens of thousands of dollars hotel bill, which got the Wynn into, by Google News count, 3,657 stories. For example, this one from the UK’s Daily Mail Living like a king: Prince Harry's £30,000 hotel bill 'waived' by Vegas billionaire is essentially a huge, free advertisement for the luxury Encore Wynn Hotel complete with descriptions and photos of the property as well as the royal suite.

This is a perfect example of newsjacking success. For the price of waiving a few hotel nights, the Wynn gets mentioned in thousands of stories. This isn't the first time that the Wynn has newsjacked. Here's another example I wrote about a few years ago: Wynn Resorts real-time Paris Hilton PR triumph.

Another example of success was the $10 million offer made to Prince Harry by Steven Hirsch, CEO of Vivid Entertainment, to appear in a porn film titled The Trouble with Harry. The offer was shared with TMZ who wrote about it in a story titled Prince Harry Offered $10 Million to Bone on Film. If you click over to the story, you can see the actual written offer document, which makes for some fun reading. This story appeared in 642 mainstream media stories according to Google News.

Again, the Vivid Entertainment newsjack succeeded because the company produces pornographic films and Harry was caught in photos with his pants down. By sharing the actual offer with TMZ, the story was sure to be picked up in mainstream media.

Lessons from Prince Harry

The lesson learned here is if you want to newsjack successfully, you've got to have a legitimate tie to the story. If you do, and you put out there, journalists who are hungry for second paragraph content for their news reports may include you in their stories.

The other lesson, is you've got to be quick. Stories like this break in a matter of hours and if you dilly-dally, you won't be seen as reporters are writing their stories.

The real time business mindset

It's been nearly two years since the original edition of Real-Time Marketing & PR was published and reached #2 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Since then, I've published a new, revised paperback edition with some fresh stories of success.

I've delivered talks about real time marketing in more than a dozen countries (as I write this I am in Belize doing a session for the Belize Tourism Industry Association) as well as to many audiences in the U.S. People are intrigued by social media, but it's interesting to me that when I speak with executives around the world about social, many *still* push back and resist. They tell me about their kids' Facebook or talk about Twitter by saying what they had for lunch isn't important. They’ve already made up their minds that social is frivolous at best and a dangerous time-waster at worst.

Convincing the bosses

In order to scale social, I recommend that we not using the word "social" at all and instead substitute "real-time".

When I talk to the same executives about "real-time communications with customers" they lean forward and want to know more. These are the same people who dismiss Twitter.

I tell executives that an immensely powerful competitive advantage flows to organizations with people who understand the power of real-time information. What are people doing on your site right now? Has someone just praised you on Facebook? Panned you on Twitter? Published a how-to video about your product on YouTube?

Executives understand real-time and are eager to implement the ideas.

Conventional vs. Real-Time

The conventional business approach favors a campaign (note the war metaphor) that requires people to spend weeks or months planning to hit targets. Agencies must be consulted. Messaging strategies must be developed. Advertising space/time must be bought. Conference rooms and refreshments must be prepared for press conferences. Do you serve them sushi or sandwiches?

The real-time mind-set recognizes the importance of speed. It is an attitude to business (and to life) that emphasizes moving quickly when the time is right.

Developing a real-time mind-set is not an either/or proposition. I'm not saying you should abandon your current business-planning process. Nor do I advocate allowing your team to run off barking at every car that drives by. Focus and collaboration are essential.

Large Organizations Need to Work at It

The more people you have in an organization, the tougher it is to communicate in real time. In a command-and-control environment where no action can be taken without authority, without consultation, without due process, any individual who shows initiative can expect to be squashed.

The challenge is to develop a new balance that empowers employee initiative but offers real-time guidance when it's needed—like a hotline to higher authority.

In a real-time corporate culture everyone is recognized as a responsible adult.

If you're the leader, and you want to cultivate a real-time mind-set throughout your organization, tear down the command-and-control mentality. Recognize your employees as responsible adults. Empower them to take initiative.

Newsjacking controversy: MSNBC vs Ragan Communications

Yesterday, Alan Stamm wrote a very critical article about Newsjacking on the Ragan Communications site called Meet the advocates of 'newsjacking': As if PR needs another self-inflicted injury, this movement is a stain on the industry.

Unfortunately, Stamm wrote his article without even bothering to read my book Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Not reading the book didn't stop him from dismissing the ideas in it. I've got no problem with people criticizing my ideas, *if* they know what they are talking about. But to dismiss a book without reading it... ridiculous (and rude).

I commented on the post right away. It's ironic that the technique Stamm dislikes so much (following the news on Google and reacting quickly to provide information for reporters) is exactly how I found out about his article and why I commented immediately after it was posted. Lots of other people commented too.

Interestingly, in the same week that the Regan article came out, I was interviewed on MSNBC about Newsjacking. The reporter who interviewed me, JJ Ramberg from the MSNBC Your Business program, had nothing but praise for how newsjacking can benefit small businesses.

Direct link to MSNBC interview How to Generate Media Coverage on YouTube.

So here are the two varied takes on newsjacking:

Alan Stamm says in his Ragan article: "Grabbing brazenly for online attention via topic du jour opportunism positions the perpetrator as a bottom-feeder. It's the opposite of "earned media," PR jargon for company profiles, quotes in news-reaction roundups and other coverage obtained the old-fashioned way."

However, JJ Ramberg said to me on air after I explained newsjacking: "I love this because it is much more likely that [a reporter] will call upon you if you can fit into a story they’re doing than when you’re trying to make news yourself."

Who is correct?

I've found that people like Stamm who don't understand newsjacking and who have negative views are reacting to the seemingly "bad" connotation based on similar words like "carjacking" and "hijacking" which decidedly are bad. But they don't bother to learn what newsjacking really is by reading my book or having me explain what the technique is.

What's changed recently to make newsjacking possible is that Google now indexes in real-time. That allows a timely blog post to be seen by journalists as they search for more information on a topic. Real-time is the key here. Yet nearly all PR people are in campaign mode rather than real-time mode, so those like us who understand newsjacking have an advantage.

What do you think?

5 ideas for marketing and communications professors success in the classroom

Here in the United States, we’re just about to embark on a new academic year and therefore this is a good time for me to provide some ideas for instructors. If you know a professor who teaches marketing or communications (or a student taking a course in these areas), please pass this on.

It's exciting how far we've come in the area of marketing and public relations education at our colleges and universities worldwide. Just two years ago I found the state of university instruction generally so poor that I wrote a post titled Many marketing and communications professors are criminals. While I'm nowhere near as pessimistic as I was then, the academic world is very resistant to change (especially those with tenure), so there are definitely people who still resist teaching the new rules of marketing.

Here are some ideas I've learned from professors around the world that you might use in your classroom.

1. Care about your students

Take a look at this post from Bill Sledzik, Associate Professor, School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Kent State University: Why we teach: Reflections on 20 years in the classroom.

Bill is someone who understood very early that we're going through a change towards digital. Because he cares about students, he implemented the ideas in the classroom before almost anyone else.

Here's an interview I did with Bill to learn more about what he does so well.

Direct link to Bill Sledzik discuses modern Public Relations education on YouTube.

2. Show, don't tell

One of the best ways to get students active with social media is to use popular platforms as tools in class. For example, you can use a blog as the course syllabus. Twitter could be the way people ask questions outside of class (longer answers could be posted somewhere with a link). Other platforms that could be used include Slideshare for presentations and Pinterest for links.

3. Encourage students to get away from the CV and resume

One of the most important things you can do for students is prepare them for the real world of job search. Starting right from the first year, students need to find internships. Upon graduation, they need full time work. Sadly, the vast majority of marketing and communications students still focus exclusively on the boring old plain text CV.

You should encourage students to start a personal blog as part of class. The blog will serve as a way to get them known to potential employers. For example, here's new Tufts graduate Lindsey Kirchoff's blog.

4. Pick a local nonprofit and do a pro-bono makeover of their online marketing

Having students work together to help a local organization is a good way to actually implement ideas. You can see the results in just one term and it will help a worthy cause.

5. Choose the right classroom materials

My book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, now in its third edition, is used in many hundreds of universities around the world. It's a primary or supplemental text in Marketing courses and Public Relations courses as well as MBA programs, entrepreneurial offerings and journalism classes.

My publishers, John Wiley & Sons, have put together a special resources page, which includes free instructor materials that you can use in class to supplement The New Rules of Marketing and PR. The materials are free, however, you need to register on the site to get access.

Are you a professor? What techniques do you use?

If you’re a student or recent graduate, what were some of the effective ways you were taught?

Porter Airlines email marketing trains customers to wait for a sale fare

Last month I travelled to Toronto to speak at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference and flew via Porter Airlines from Boston.

The Porter Airlines flight and service was excellent. I particularly loved flying into Toronto City Airport, which is located on an island right downtown. The travel time from the airport to downtown is significantly less than from the main international airport located outside Toronto.

I'd definitely fly Porter Airlines again. But, next time I would only book a fare that was on sale.

After I booked, I signed up for their email offers. I expected to be educated about Porter and the destinations they fly. I was not.

Instead, on a regular basis, all they’ve been sending me are fare sales. I must have gotten a dozen offers in the several months I've been on their email list.

It sort of annoyed me that I paid more for my flight than I should have. I couldn't switch because the fare sale emails say: "New bookings only".

I get what they are doing. They want to fill seats and it is a lazy marketers drug to run sales on a regular basis. It sort of reminds me of how some companies use Groupon, which I wrote about in this post: The dark side of Groupon.

Offering frequent fare sales trains customers to wait for a better price on Porter Airlines. It also annoys customers like me who (stupidly) paid too much.

Porter Airlines can do email marketing better

I keep waiting to see emails from Porter Airlines talking about their other destinations. Why not tell me about Moncton? Maybe I'd like to go but I don't know anything about it. Or maybe Porter could provide ideas on why I should return to Toronto with my family. Or they could introduce their people "This is Captain Smith." But they don't do anything like this. It's all about the sale.

Your email marketing should be used to build a long-term relationship with your customers. You should educate and entertain them.

There's a lot more to email marketing than pimping a sale price.

Confessions of a Media Manipulator

Last week, John Jantsch hosted an awesome video debate called Media Manipulation – fact or fiction – a frank conversation.

The discussion featured Ryan Holiday, author of Trust Me I'm Lying – Confessions of a Media Manipulator debating Peter Shankman, VP, Small Business Evangelist at Vocus (and founder of HARO). I was also on hand together with Shel Holtz to jump in now and then with comments and questions.

It was a very lively discussion!!

PR Stunts for fun and profit

Here's some backstory: Earlier this month Ryan released his book which received a great deal of coverage mainly because of the clever PR stunt he pulled to get attention. He used HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to respond to queries from journalists about such things as being an insomniac, a vinyl collector, a boating expert, and so forth, (none of which he actually was) and getting quoted by ABC News, CBS, The New York Times, and other news organizations.

Here is a good article on Poynter that provides background on the stunt: Telling the truth about media manipulator Ryan Holiday.

Here is our debate, which is well worth taking 45 minutes to watch.

Direct link to Media Manipulation – fact or fiction on YouTube.

In the debate, Peter was very critical of Ryan's use of HARO because he misused the service. In turn Ryan argued that HARO should vet the reporters and PR people who use HARO. I have to disagree with both Peter and Ryan. I think the way Ryan used the service certainly did prove a valuable lesson. However, having used HARO myself to find sources for stories I’ve written, of course I am going to vet the source. As I said in the debate, HARO shouldn’t get involved in fact checking its users any more than Monster.com should fact check the millions resumes on its platform.

That reporters from A-list media like ABC News and the New York Times didn't do a simple Google search to learn that the "Ryan Holiday" who they were about to quote in a story wrote a book called Trust me I'm Lying is strange!

Trust Me I'm Lying

I've read some of Ryan’s book Trust me I'm Lying (but not all because I wanted to get this post out). I find the book to be a valuable resource for PR people and journalists alike because he has clearly found some details about how today’s media works that you should know.

If you're engaging in Newsjacking (and I hope you are) there are some insights in Ryan's book that will help. But note that unlike Ryan's techniques, Newsjacking does not rely on manipulation. It works because of a knowledge about how today’s real time media operates and that’s what Ryan outlines in his book.

However, I do not agree with Ryan's techniques. Lying about who you are just to prove a point is not appropriate for anyone who wants to do business in the future. Now and forever, whenever anyone Google’s Ryan Holiday, they will learn he is a liar. Would you hire him? Would you work for him?

Sometimes Ryan used a fake name and sometimes his real name to alert the media to stores, which he himself planted. All of this was to expose how online media really works and I think it was largely successful in proving his point and generating interesting anecdotes that we can learn from.

While he was pulling off his media manipulation that he talks about in the book, Ryan was director of marketing at American Apparel (where he still works today). American Apparel is a public company listed on the American Stock Exchange. When I asked Ryan if his employers had knowledge of his stunts, he said yes. I find this fascinating.

An aspect of his manipulation was that he not only seeded (sometimes false) stories to online media outlets, those outlets also carried his company’s advertising. It was a surprising revelation about the porous wall between the business side and the advertising side of online media.

Watch the 45-minute debate and if you want to learn more, read Ryan's book. Sure, there is a lot of manipulation going on here, but there are also lessons to learn for those of us who don’t lie.

What do you think?

Awesome near real-time AT&T television commercial breaks through Olympics ad clutter

In a world of boring advertising campaigns, real-time marketing & PR gets noticed.

I'm lacking sleep this week from watching the Olympic coverage here in the US on NBC because I'm staying up past my normal bedtime!

While I like checking out snippets of many events, I really love swimming. I swam on a club team as a kid, my daughter was a competitive swimmer for ten years and while she was swimming I was a national level swimming official.

I generally hate television advertising. The "campaign" mode of the typical TV commercial means the ads are shot way in advance. Because they typically involve big budget filming, the sponsor puts the same damned ad on again and again. Boring.

While most of AT&T's ads fall into the "not interested – fast forward" category for me, there have been two near real-time ads involving swimming that astonished me.

The ads showed a young person watching the actual footage of a world record swim from the day before on a mobile. You see the NBC clip of the world record finish and hear the actual commentary. Then you realize the young person is a swimmer and he or she is writing the new world record time with the word "goal" on a whiteboard at home.

Early in the week the AT&T ad was Ryan Lochte's world record 400 IM where he beat Michael Phelps. Here is the AT&T Ryan Lochte ad.

Last night the AT&T ad was even better because Rebecca Soni broke the 200 breaststroke world record the day before in the semi-finals. The near real-time ad ran the next day immediately after the finals which she won beating her own world record. Here's the AT&T Rebecca Soni ad.

Awesomeness!

Rea Ann Fera at Fast Company wrote an excellent article How AT&T integrated Olympic results into its ads so darn fast that explained the process of how the ads were created by agency BBDO.

Here's how it was done as reporteed by Fera: Three sports were selected as the campaign’s focus--swimming, gymnastics, and track and field. BBDO then created six versions of the commercial in advance, two for each sport alternately featuring a male or female athlete, with hundreds of different endings to account for a predicted range of winning times. AT&T worked with longtime broadcasting partner NBC to arrange for access to the footage within unusually quick turnaround times so that they could create a campaign that would stand out from the hailstorm of sponsored messages. Once one of the athletes pegged as likely to win is competing, a team from BBDO sits in London and waits. If the athlete performs well, it’s go time. A winning result means that footage has to be selected, sent to London-based post house Absolute for integration, the pre-canned shot with the winning time has to be selected and edited together. It’s then sent to NBC and the USOC for approvals and on air within 24 hours of the win. It’s a cycle AT&T is able to repeat up to five times for five winning athletes.

You've got to see the ads. Here are links to the ads on the NBC site:

Congratulations Ryan Lochte
Congratulations Rebecca Soni

Real-Time is a Mindset.

Twitter Political Index

Yesterday, Twitter launched its Twitter Political Index to track enthusiasm for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in the run-up to the November US Presidential election.

The Twitter Political Index is a daily measurement that evaluates the sentiment of Twitter users feelings about the candidates based on an estimated two million Twitter mentions of the candidates in a given week relative to more than 400 million tweets sent about other topics each day.

This is a great example of Crowdsourcing, which involves taking a task usually performed by one or a few people (in this case doing political research) and distributing among a crowd of people—outsourcing it to a crowd—via online social networks.

Tapping the crowd to learn about buyers (and voters)

I'll be particularly interested to see how the Twitter Political Index changes when one or the other candidate has a success (a great speech for example) or a public gaffe. And it will be fascinating to learn on election day if global Twitter users are a good proxy for the American electorate.

The techniques used by the Twitter Political Index are available to companies using products like those from Radian6 to gauge the sentiment around products and companies. It is a fascinating way for marketers and PR pros to mine a huge amount of data.

For more information on the Twitter Political Index, USA Today has a good analysis Twitter index tracks sentiment on Obama, Romney.

In our digital world analog communications breaks through the clutter

As more and more people use social networks to communicate and companies use online channels to market, its important to remember good old analog.

When we get hundreds of email messages a day, taking the time to hand write a thank you note and put it in an envelope with a stamp and mail it shows you care.

When everyone says "your business is important to us" and then puts you into phone tree hell when you call, a personally answered telephone is a surprising bonus.

I've been thinking about how quickly digital communications has become a dominate medium and how, sometimes, the good old analog approach works.

The best companies seem to have a combination of both excellent online and offline marketing and communications.

It's not just marketing either. With the rise of Electronic Dance Music, a combination of new EDM techniques with good old analog music makes for an great tunes.

Earlier this month I attended the terrific Gathering of the Vibes music festival and say the analog and digital music worlds collide in some fascinating ways. I wrote about it for the Huffington Post: Electronic Dance Music and Jam Bands Tap the Same Fan Vibe.

One musician who sits squarely in the middle of digital and analog music is Mickey Hart, percussionist for the Grateful Dead from 1967 until the band stopped touring upon Jerry Garcia's death in 1995. He brought his Mickey Hart Band to Gathering of the Vibes. His newest album, Mysterium Tremendum, fuses elements of the jam band scene he lived in for decades with today's electronic music.

"I live in two worlds," Mickey told me. "One, the archaic world of drums and drumming -- I'm strongly embedded in it, I love striking a membrane and hearing its report and playing real rhythm. And I have one foot firmly planted in the digital domain. This is such a wonderful time where science and art are now handshaking and becoming one. I am embedding the electronic worlds in which I feel comfortable into my music. I'm into pulsing and throbbing. What you're seeing now is a wonderful groundswell of binary and acoustic information coming together into new music."

You can see Mickey riffing on this theme for me in this video. He had just finished his set and was quite animated, speaking for four nonstop minutes on my question of digital vs. analog music. You might notice beer bottles around Mickey. He had set up 70 beer bottles for Jerry Garcia's 70th birthday and had been playing them with his drumsticks.

Direct link to Mickey Hart on fusing percussion and digital to make music on YouTube.

Like Mickey Hart and his fusing of analog and digital music, how are you fusing analog and digital marketing and communications?

Photo: STS9 at Gathering of the Vibes, July 21. 2012. Credit: Richard Gastwirt