What does it take to manage PR crisis successfully? (Image © sellingpix - Fotolia.com)

Almost every public relations professional will have a moment during her or his career where they have to deal with a crisis situation. Sometimes these crises are smaller—the firing of an employee or a change of company policy. Unfortunately, these crises can be much larger—such as inappropriate safety precautions leading to the death of an employee or a massive employee layoff. When these crises do occur, it is often up to public relations practitioners to solve the problem. Here are a few pointers.

Prepare ahead

You can’t anticipate even a percentage of the crises that may come your way, but that doesn’t mean you can’t prepare in advance. When preparing your crisis communication plan, try to anticipate problems that may come your way. For example, a mall or other public place might prepare a crisis communication plan for a shooting on their premises. Like any other communications plan, your crisis plan should take into account your key publics, their self-interests, and the objectives of your organization.

Having a crisis communications plan will help you to feel more confident when crises do arise. Knowing you have a plan in the filing cabinet for the situation you are facing (or a similar one) will reduce your panic level.

Consider the WHO

In any crisis situation, try to take into account who will be affected most or interested most in what your company has to say. This often will include your own employees (for example, in a layoff). Sometimes you will have time to actually write your thoughts down on each of these “key publics.” Other times, you will be forced to do this mentally on the spot.

Once you feel familiar with the needs of your key publics, jot down key messages for each of them. Again, sometimes you will be forced to do this on the spot. The less key messages you have the better. I would recommend that you have no more than five—even better if you can keep it to three. Don’t be afraid to use the message: “We don’t know. . . but we are investigating it.”

Stay calm

Perhaps the easiest piece of advice that can be given in any circumstance (from burning buildings to job interviews), yet this can be pretty tough. If you’ve prepared adequately, then you won’t have to be scrounging around on the spot. Both your consumers and the media can recognize when you’re nervous—and they often capitalize on this opportunity to throw you curve ball questions.

Don’t try to jump the gun when responding to a crisis. If a press conference is necessary, give yourself an hour or two to prepare yourself (and your CEO if necessary) for it. This may seem obvious, but don’t sacrifice your organization’s integrity for your desire to get information out immediately. Don’t speculate. Again, if you don’t know something, say, “I don’t know.” Make more information available as it becomes available. Even a disaster can turn into a positive PR opportunity, depending on how you handle it.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

How to Manage a Public Relations Crisis [Guest Post]

What do you have to do to build a successful blog? (Image © sellingpix - Fotolia.com)

Do you know that successful blogs share the same characteristics? Do you want to know the secret of a successful blog? How can it generate massive traffic and keep multiplying that traffic day after day? How can it generate massive profits to its owner? Here are 5 most important characteristics of a successful blog:

1) Successful Blog Entertains the Readers

If you have good and entertaining posts, you will have a successful blog because your readers will recognize your blog as an interesting place to visit. They will become your loyal readers and will be likely to recommend your blog to their friends.

As a blogger, you should be able to entertain your readers while helping your readers solve their problem. Whatever the reason the readers come to your blog, you must provide them with interesting and helpful contents. Use your own unique writing style in every post you write.

2) Successful Blog Informs the Readers Effectively

Even though you are not a teacher by general definition of “teacher”, you are teaching when you are blogging. You are giving tips and guidance for your readers regarding what they should do in a specific situation. You are giving step by step tutorial regarding what your readers need to know. You are sharing what you know with your readers. Basically, you are teaching your readers through your blog.

A successful blog informs the readers effectively, which means you transmit the information to your readers in the most effective and interesting way. A good blog will make the readers want to know more and make them curious to find out more.

3) Successful Blog Is a Community for Like-Minded People

Yes, you read it right. Successful blog is a community for like-minded people. Any successful blogger will respond to the readers’ feedbacks. He will communicate with the readers and build a good relationship with them. If the readers want further information regarding your post, they will likely post a comment. A good blogger will gladly answer any questions or concerns asked by the readers.

Successful blog is an active discussion platform where the readers actively participate in the discussion. This is what makes a successful blog different from a dead blog.

4) Successful Blog Has Compelling Posts

The most important ability for a successful blogger is an ability to write quality and persuasive content. Compelling posts will win the heart of the readers and will likely move them to buy what you are offering. A successful blog has great headlines and contents. It is structured solely to entice the readers to read more. They are willingly spending their valuable time reading your blog posts because they found your posts worth their time. So, this is the last characteristic of successful blog: it is compelling.

5) Successful Blog Gives You Inspiration

No matter what is your niche, you have to be able to inspire your readers. Without giving them inspiration with your content, your blog won’t be able to stick in their head. Successful blogger has an ability to craft a blog post that will inspire as well as educate their readers.

When you are able to insert those 5 most important characteristics of a successful blog to your blog, you will transform your blog into one of the most successful blog on the internet.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

5 Most Important Characteristics of a Successful Blog [Guest Post]

Businesses of all sizes know all too well how beneficial a press release can be. Not only are they a great way to spread the word about your company’s successes, they are also a quick and easy way to build traffic to your website.

They can also prove to be a big waste of time if not written correctly. There are a number of differences in writing press releases to your standard website copy. Take note of and utilise these methods, to guarantee a lasting impact with every press release.

Headlines

As with any online copywriting, an eye catching and interesting headline is the key to attracting readers. If someone is browsing a website for nothing in particular, you need to give them a reason to stop and read your press release.

Headlines should be kept brief and to the point. Include your keywords and company name as close to the beginning as possible. A headline in a press release should arouse curiosity whilst maintaining an objective tone.

Summary

The summary is a 3-4 sentence introduction to your press release. This should cover your main points, but still encourage people to read on. The summary doesn’t always appear on your press release. More often than not it is featured on the website landing page and is the first glimpse people will have of your information.

Include your keyword phrase and a HTML link to your website in the summary. This is beneficial in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO). If you’re a small business with little or no experience in this, it’s advisable to enlist the help of a seo company. They can help you with your keyword research and the best way to use keywords online.

Opening Paragraph and Body Copy

You don’t have to be a journalist to write engaging and exciting copy. Reintroduce your press release; even repeating the summary if you’re stuck for inspiration. Set a clear and objective tone to let the reader know exactly what they can gain from reading on.

The body of your press release should loosely cover all information, but don’t give too much away. You want readers to click your links and visit your website, so give them a reason to.  Remember also to speak in the third person and not sensationalise.

You are not writing a sales piece, it is an announcement of your achievements. Make sure any claims you make you can back up with factual evidence. Cover your main points and lead into a quote from an authority on the matter.

The Importance of Quotes and Evidence

Follow up your opening statement with a quote from yourself or a third party. Keep this as a short and effective sound bite. If you have more information, use quotes throughout the press release to support the points you make.

You should also support all of your points with fact based evidence. This can be a recent study or a third party authority. Keep these short and factual, don’t sensationalise – a press release focuses on a newsworthy event so bare this in mind when writing.

Press Release Ideas to Get You Started

If this has filled you with inspiration but you’re not sure where to get started here are a few subject ideas:
•    New website/member of staff/client/premises
•    An award you have won
•    Launch of a new product
•    ‘Piggybacking’ on current events as long as they relate to your business
•    Seasonal promotions

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

The Easy Way to Write a Press Release like a Pro [Guest Post]

A search for SOPA on Google displays such results. Google+ pages are displayed at the right - the place otherwise reserved for ads.

Even for more general terms, such as 'marketing' Google displays people and pages on Google+.

Some of the featured people and businesses on Google+ deserve to be there – these are prominent web personalities. However, the move is detrimental for small businesses and people, who are equally skilled as Seth Godin, for example, but not as popular with communities on any social networks. As a general rule, self promoters get a big popularity plus, while other marketing experts, who avoid the “me, me, me” approach to personal branding, are stuck in a loser scenario.

As much as popular people and communities deserve our accolades, is it fair for Google to push them in search results? You have to understand that Google doesn’t push these people and brands out of pure altruism, but to bait and hook more users to Google+.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

In Your Face: Google Promotes Google+ in Universal Search Results

Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

According to Google, the algorithm change will affect less than 1% sites globally, meaning that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page. The good news for publishers who have too many ads above the fold, is that Google does re-crawl sites that decide to comply with the new rules and update their pages to display content first. But:

If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Google Algorithm Change Takes Aim at Ads

Copy & Paste The Code Below

<br /> <a href="http://www.mezzmer.com/"><br /> <img src="http://i.imgur.com/RP7bz.jpg"/><br /> </a><br /> <br /> <small>Created by Mezzmer <a href="http://www.mezzmer.com/">Eyeglasses</a></small><br />
As you can see, those wondrous tools you use to stay connected can be a real pain in the neck, or worse, if used improperly. The good news is, slight adjustments in the way one operates smart devices can make all the difference. Now excuse me while I rub my own eyes.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Time for Common Sense Smart Device Use [Infographic]

1. Make it easy with visible social share button

Install social share button in your website and make it visible and inviting. It will make it easy for your visitors to share your website content. In fact, it will increase the chance for your content to be shared in social media platforms by your visitors. It is reasonable because if your website doesn’t have social sharing button, people will be too lazy to type your website URL just to share it to their social media friends.

2. Encourage visitors to share

It is important to remind your visitors to share your content. This is because most people will forget to share your content if you don’t mention it. Many successful bloggers do this method to encourage more people to share their content. And this method is often works. In fact, if you don’t remind your visitors to share your content, people will just leave your content after reading it.

3. Make it short and valuable

Social media users are in a rush every time. They want everything quick. At least, this should be acknowledged in your mind. Therefore, most people will not take the time to read your lengthy content in their social media platform. The only way to add more readers from social media platform is to make your content short and valuable. It means that you have to make your content worth reading so that your social media friends will at least take some time to read your content.

4. High quality content and catchy title

High quality content is the most important requirement to make your content worth sharing. Also, you should always write catchy titles so that your shared content will be read by the people in social media. Include a catchy title in your content so that people find your content interesting. In fact, the only content that will be shared by your website visitors is content with catchy title.

5. Give reward to those who share your content

This is probably the most effective way to motivate people to share your website content. By giving rewards to those who share your content, you will motivate people to do it. The rewards can be anything, depending on your website. If you are a blogger, you can offer your special report to them. If you have ecommerce website, you can enter them to drawings where they can win your prize. What you need to do is to make your reward interesting so that people will be motivated to share your content.

Those are some tips you can follow to encourage people to share your website content. If you apply those tips, you will be able to drive traffic from social media platforms even without any marketing effort on your part. Let your visitors do the marketing process.v

Do you want to get more information on the author? Karen contributes to SellMyCarSanDiego.com where you can also get some useful information on cash for my car in San Diego.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

How to Motivate Your Website Visitors to Share Your Website Content [Guest Post]

Lots of us look upon the idea of working from home with envy, yet it's not always a bed of roses and certainly doesn't suit everybody.

With the number of people working from home increasing every day this is a good time for VOIP providers. UK companies are only just beginning to recognize the benefits they get for allowing key members of staff to work from home several days a week.

When it’s successful, working from home can be ideal for both the worker and their employer, but it does mean that the individual needs to be strongly self-motivated and not afraid of their own company. If you want to make a success for working from home there are a few things you need to be able to deal with.

Social Interaction

If you are a very sociable person then you may miss the office gossip and having someone with whom you can go for coffee and lunch. The first few days or even weeks of working from home can be a novelty, but for some people that novelty eventually wears off and you are stuck with yourself. Some individuals are quite happy working alone day in and day out, while others find it more difficult.

Motivation

While individuals may be in regular contact with their team leader, something that’s possible because of VOIP providers, home workers may find it difficult to set their own work schedules. When you are working in an office with a group of other people and a team leader the motivation structure is there and you just get on with the job. When you work from home it is up to the individual how they structure their work day and apart from an instant message or Skype call, you have to motivate yourself.

Separating Work and Home Life

Making a division between work and home life is not easy. As soon as people realise you are going to be at home all day they want to use you as a parcel collecting service, dog walker and coffee provider. Unless you set strict guidelines around your work for yourself and everyone else, working from home will be difficult. If you are going to get the work done then you have to learn to discourage visitors and use an answer machine to screen phone calls.

Setting aside a designated workspace is important if you want to be successful at working from home. If you have a spare room that you can use that would be ideal because when work time is finished you can simply shut the door on it, just as you do when you leave the office.

Is Working from Home for You?

If you can adapt to setting your own schedule, getting on with the job and dealing with interruptions, then working from home might be a good choice for you. If you need social stimulation then go to the local coffee shop at lunch time to get your people fix. If you are happy with your own company and welcome the flexibility that working from home can provide then it just might work for you.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Working from Home – Is it All it’s Cracked up to Be [Guest Post]

Just like that lonesome tree falling in the woods, your website holds no significance without an audience. Savvy business owners turn to search engine optimization (SEO) for increased visibility and higher page rankings online. With large search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, continually raising the bar and changing search algorithms, online marketers need to stay current with SEO practices. While effective SEO will positively affect a website, making SEO mistakes can make a negative impact and even get a site banned from major search engines. Fortunately, you can easily avoid the most common SEO mistakes by following a few key concepts.

Keyword Stuffing

Keywords play a critical role in SEO. When used properly and in moderation, keywords capture the attention of search engines, leading to higher page rankings for your website. The keyword in this scenario: Moderation. Cramming keywords into the content of a website sacrifices the quality of that site, making a negative impression on readers and search engines. To avoid slipping shamefully down the pages of search engine results, use keywords sparingly and strategically. Keywords should appear two to three times for every 100 words and flow naturally with the text. Make sure the keywords appear in the title, sub-title, first paragraph, and last paragraph of online content. While catchy titles draw readers in, titles with keywords get picked up by search engines and attract internet users when displayed under search results.

Keyword Selection

Some online marketers put too little emphasis on the selection process of keywords for web pages. Rather than trying to promote a business or describe a site, base keywords on searches done by internet users. Tap into the minds of your audience and explore multiple ways to search for products or ideas your website has to offer. This will lead you to effective keywords.

Complacency

After earning a top spot on search pages of Google, Yahoo, or Bing, continue SEO pursuits by updating content and searching for backlinks. Successful SEO is an ongoing battle, requiring marketers to follow the changes of search engine algorithms and maintain their sites accordingly. Always check out your competitors and never expect a ranking to stay high without hard work.

Link Farming

Link farming, connecting a group of webpages with hyperlinks, is considered a form of spamming and carries harsh consequences from large search engines. Though extensive hyperlinks improved site visibility back in the early days of SEO, search engines now penalize sites for link farming. Rather than employing this dated form of SEO, participate in online communities where you can share links to quality web pages. These links help you appeal to search engines and network with peers online. When it comes to backlinks for your site – always choose quality over quantity. Think of it as exchanging business cards with people offline. You wouldn’t want to trade cards with a trenchcoat-clad “Rolex” salesman in a dark alley, would you? Use the same type of discretion when swapping links with other sites and avoid any websites that may reflect negatively on you.

Don’t treat SEO like a get-clicks-quick scheme or a way to communicate directly to search engines. Focus your efforts on a human audience and draw readers with relevant and quality content. The extra time you spend on perfecting your site and following SEO trends will pay off with a rise in page rankings and visitors.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them [Guest Post]

No matter how creative or lucrative your business ideas are, finding the financing to back your brilliance is never easy. Researching the methods necessary to present an authentic business plan will support your ideas with concrete organization and show your investors you have the business mind to get your idea of the ground. Countless companies have intelligent ideas that would potentially appeal to businesses.  You can boost your chances of appealing to investors and lenders by highlighting how you will back your idea with solid business practices. With simple planning and some business research, you can appeal to investors who could potentially help your ideas grow into realities and success.

Check out these simple guidelines and you will be able to develop a business plan that lenders are sure to support. (Image © N-Media-Images - Fotolia.com)

Plan a Budget

It’s difficult to approach lenders with an idea if you have no clue as to what your venture will cost. Begin researching the different aspects of your potential business in order to come off with a definitive budget to show investors that you have done your homework. Some examples to be included in the budget are the office lease, computers or electronics, inventory, licenses or permits and insurance. In addition to showing lenders that you have researched your ideas, establishing a budget will also give you a better idea of what you need and how you should approach such loans.

Detail Your Business Approach

Planning even the minute details of your business shows lenders that you have thought through your ideas very carefully rather than jumping at any idea prematurely. Research and plan your business’s objectives, marketing, budgets and coinciding help from other businesses or partners. Will you have a physical location or will you begin your venture with commerce that will take place on the World Wide Web? Look into your various options and make a substantiated plan about every detail. Approaching potential investors without a business plan is like making a complicated dish without a recipe; it is destined for failure.

Research and Try Different Financial Options

Don’t get discouraged if your plans are turned down by some of the investors you approach. Instead, think outside of the box when it comes to where you will get the funding necessary to grow your ideas into a substantial business. If you continue to have a difficult time finding the necessary finances to back your business venture, look into tweaking your ideas or business plan in order to make it more attractive to potential lenders.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Success Story: How to Develop a Great Business Plan [Guest Post]