Inbound links are basically votes that are cast for your website.  Each inbound link is a vote for you and your content, and in this democratized world of SEO the more quality votes you have, the more likely your site will turn up in search results.  Here are 5 tips to help you get more quality inbound links to your site. Read it all..

Photo courtesy of Pratheepps via Wikipedia

One of the most common questions PR professionals ask me is how to deal with criticism of their brands on the social Web. Books, blogs and conferences have been covering the topic of “social media crisis communications” for 2 to 3 years now, and the advice doesn’t seem to change much: listen, respond quickly, apologize and fix it.

As more companies have attempted social outreach online, the general level of anxiety about these swells of contempt toward brands seems to grow amongst communications professionals. Read it all..

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Leigh via Flickr

One of the many things The Jetsons got wrong about the future of American life when the show first aired in 1963 was that advances in technology would lead to fewer tasks for workers. (I am also still waiting for my flying car.) George Jetson’s job as a “digital index operator” requires him to push a single button for 3 hours a day, 3 days a week.

To be fair, here in the year 2010 we are only about halfway from 1963 to the setting of The Jetsons, which takes place in the year 2062. But while communications technology is making our lives more productive and, in the case of public relations professionals, broadening our reach to new audiences, at the same time it is requiring us to push more buttons than ever before. Or at least, that’s how it feels. Read it all..

Mediaweek recently reported that Conde Nast is scrambling to keep pace with initiatives from other publishing companies such as Hearst, Time Inc. and Hachette by introducing ideas branching beyond the pages of a magazine. One specific idea mentioned was keeping the brand names alive of shuttered magazines such as Gourmet and Domino by branding them on products like kitchen appliances. Read it all..

Photo of Chelsea Football Club Stadium courtesy of Ben Sutherland via Flickr

The world of sports is an interesting place to explore the old public relations adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and whether that’s true on the social Web.

In sports, if your team is doing well, it will attract the ire of your competitors and their fans, leading to negative comments about you on blogs and social sites.  Since all those detractors will probably still watch your games (if not buy your merchandise), presumably it’s more desirable in pro sports to be the talented team that some people love to bash, as opposed to being any other brand that some people love to bash.

But is that true in both the National Football League and Premier League football (soccer) in the UK? Read it all..

Photo courtesy of United Nations Development Programme via Flickr

With the Haitian earthquake last week, Twitter became not only a source for news updates, but also an opportunity for victims to reach out for help.

I was reminded of the days following September 11, when people frantically rushed into downtown Manhattan with fliers displaying pictures of their loved ones. They stood in front of news cameras pleading for any information about people who were almost certainly lost in the attack.

Read it all..

This post was written by Annette Arno, Research Director for Evaluation Services at Cision.

Gut feelings and anecdotes may be telling you that reporters are relying increasingly on social media for story ideas and research. After all, social media is about sharing information, just in a different way than before. But wouldn’t it be nice if you had some actual facts and figures to confirm your suspicions?

Well, now you do; in a recent online, nationwide study conducted by Cision and The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, we found that editors and journalists utilize social media in a big way. Eighty-nine percent said they use blogs to research their stories. Sixty-five percent reported using social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, and over half (52%) use microblogging sites such as Twitter to do online research. Just over half (56%) said social media has become “important” or “somewhat important” for reporting and producing the stories they write. Read it all..

Photo courtesy of Bohman via Flickr

Back in November we discussed how applications like Google Social Search could change the game of search engine optimization (SEO) for communications professionals. SEO has long seemed to many PR pros like something of a parlor trick: add a metatag here, an oft-searched keyword there, stick the phrase “top 10″ in the headline and, shazam! Like magic, your blog post or news release will rise to the first page of a Google search for a particular phrase.

Some of these tricks still work, but the rise of social search is one of a number of factors that could turn SEO into a more organic, human-centric process.   Read it all..

Photo of Yangshuo County, China courtesy of adrileb via Flickr

Over the holidays, I read Tom Friedman’s excellent book on the convergence of climate change, globalization and overpopulation, “Hot, Flat and Crowded“. It was particularly impactful to read while visiting my wife’s parents in the UK, where fuel-efficient cars and homes are, as Friedman says, “the norm, not the news”. But the part of the book that got me thinking about the future of public relations had to do with the greening of China. Read it all..

It’s the equivalent of doing a “clip show” on a sitcom, but we thought we’d share with you the 5 most popular Cision blog posts of 2009.  Happy New Year everyone!

1. Top 100 Social Media & Internet Marketing Bloggers
2. 5 best practices for creating a corporate social media policy
3. Top 10 Companies Most Discussed on Twitter at South by Southwest
4. Twitter hashtags: Finding your community within a community
5. Top 10 Newspaper Blog Networks