Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

After enhancing their Google+ profiles, the businesses increased the instances in which they ranked in the top seven local positions by 179 percent, in the top two positions by 399 percent, and in the third through fifth positions by 97 percent.

The opportunity to boost local rankings and visibility by focusing local SEO tactics on Google+ continues to prove itself out as a winning strategy that can pay big dividends, according to a new aggregate case study from SIM Partners (disclosure: I work for SIM Partners), "How Your Competition is Beating You With Google+ Local Optimization".

Keep in mind just how local consumers' use of Google has become; according to a report from MDG Advertising:

-  59 percent of consumers use Google every month to find a reputable, local business.

-  50 percent of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results, and

-  61 percent of those searches result in a purchase....

There are literally hundreds of social networks to choose from. We all know the big players: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Snapchat... oh, well, that list can go on for awhile, too. How can anyone actively engage in all of the social networks, even just sticking to the main players? The truth is, you can't. 

 Every business has to determine which social networks are most valuable to them. Where is your target audience engaging? Which network is most friendly to your type of business? Which offers you the best reach? Not all social networks are equal, and a network that does great for one business might be a bust for another. 

I usually tell businesses that are just starting out in social media to choose one network at a time. Build that up sufficiently before jumping into another network. By focusing on one network initially, your efforts will be far more effective (we only have so many hours in the day!) and you'll more quickly be able to determine if your efforts there are producing fruit....

Companies rely on PR firms for a variety of services and consulting ranging from strategy and message development to media relations and social media outreach to monitoring and reporting. Product launches, press conferences, event management and promotion, reputation and crisis management, media training, investor relations and of course content creation are all services provided by different PR agencies.

Press releases are most often at the top of the list of public relations content along with reports, white papers, newsletters, case studies, corporate website pages, newsrooms, blog posts, short form social media content and media from images to audio to video. To suggest that overly optimized press releases and other content will bring down the PR industry is simply a sensational headline.

It’s true, there are a lot of changes happening in the PR world right now and one area in particular that’s worth exploring risks and rewards involves the shift to native ads or as Google calls it, “commerce journalism”. I talked with Cara Posey about this recently and will likely post more about it here. But back to this business of optimized press releases killing PR agencies. Really?...

Effective content marketing should leverage tools and technologies that track and make actionable data relating to your audience (target vs. actual), content (forms and stories), and points of distribution (devices, sites, context)....

...So what are the keys to effective content marketing? It turns out there are three – the "who," "what," and "where."...