Monika Maeckle: New Media Career Exemplified by Change Morphs to the Next Stage

November 15, 2011

by Monika Maeckle, Vice President of New Media

Today my career at Business Wire comes to an end and my first thought is that I will miss you, our clients, colleagues, webinar attendees and readers of the Business Wired blog.   I leave you in the able hands of our talented marketing team, who just picked up a fourth award from the Society of New Communications Research.

Change has been the only constant in my combined 16 years here.   When I joined the company the first time, in New York City in 1987, we considered the fax machine “new media” and the Internet was in its infancy, relegated to use by universities and computer geeks.   That was the year the domain www.apple.com came online, Microsoft gave us Works, and Compuserve (remember them?) introduced the GIF standard for images.  

Back then, Cathy Baron Tamraz managed the New York Region for Business Wire, Gregg Castano, who recruited me, served as New York City sales manager, and Phyllis Dantuono  was my fellow account executive.    This talented triumvirate now serves as Business Wire’s CEO, President and COO.    

We were the East Coast pioneers of Business Wire, planting the flag in Manhattan for founder Lorry Lokey’s budding California wire service empire.  I was sad to leave two years later, but family called me home to Texas in 1989.

Eight years later I reconnected with the New York crew when I read in Texas Monthly Magazine that the wire services were opening in Texas.   I called Cathy, and with the foresight worthy of a Berkshire Hathaway CEO, she dispatched the affable Tom Mulgrew (now Vice President of Agency Relations) to recruit me from the boutique PR agency I was running at the time.  Tom and I hit it off, and soon we opened an office in San Antonio.  Dallas and Houston followed shortly, and the rest is Business Wire history.
 
What a fun ride we’ve shared: opening offices in Texas and abroad, yanking marquis accounts from the grasp of our rivals, learning and launching new tools and technologies too numerous to name.   I’ll never forget staging a luncheon in San Antonio in the late 90s, encouraging clients to “join the webolution” and explaining ”Spam, it’s not just a meat product anymore.”  And then there was that major deal we did with Warren Buffett.  Berkshire Hathaway bought the company in 2005 and owns it to this day. 
 
The landscape keeps changing, and yet Business Wire remains constant, always out front.   
 
While it’s tempting to focus on the frustrations of the daily grind in this tough economy, I leave Business Wire proud to have been part of a team that in spite of any challenge, continues to set the pace, lead the way, and stage the industry for what comes next–whatever that is.  
 
For me, that will mean launching a strategic consulting and communications firm in 2012 with my talented former newspaper editor husband, Robert Rivard.  In the meantime, you’ll find me at the Texas Butterfly Ranch–a blog about the life cycle we all share.  Please stay in touch and feel free to subscribe.
 
Until we meet again, I wish each of you the best.
 

Leave a Comment » | Business Wire, new media, Public Relations, Small Business Marketing, social media, Web 2.0, Webinars | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Monika Maeckle

How to Write Good Quotes: Keeping it Real Makes Your Press Release More Effective

August 30, 2011

by Monika Maeckle, Vice President, New Media

Our friends over at Ragan wrote an enviable dispatch recently, 4 Ways to Improve Quotes in Press Releases.  Wish we had authored this one.

Quotes are a tradition in press releases and inject a human voice into the text.  The challenge of balancing executives’ bloated claims in quotation marks with saying something meaningful continues for writes of press releases.   Quotes riddled with jargon and buzzwords lose their meaning and leave the reader wondering, “Huh?”

Good QuotesRagan cited this bad example of a quote from  President and CEO John Johnson:

“I plan to continue this legacy of providing innovative products and services to our customers. With over 30 competing companies for our customers to choose from, we have some challenges ahead. I am confident that we can meet those challenges successfully. And the first step is the release of our new app.”

In such cases, better to paraphrase like this:

“President and CEO John Johnson believes the release of the new app will provide customers with the communications tools they need, setting XYZ Company apart from more than 30 competitors. “

Our own Andrew Guinn wrote about the grammar of quotation marks in press releases a few weeks ago–don’t you sometimes wonder where punctuation belongs?  We also touched on making your quotes more notable in a recent Press Release Basics webinar last week.

Apart from injecting humanity into a press release, quotes are often featured as a “pull quote” drawing even more attention to their effectiveness–or lack of it.  Best to craft them carefully.

Leave a Comment » | All Things Press Release, Business Wire, Grammar, Press Release Tips, Webinars | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Monika Maeckle

Brave, Rude World: Intrusive Technologies Beg Etiquette Questions for PR Folks trying to Mind their Mobile Manners

June 28, 2011

by Monika Maeckle, Vice President of New Media

Is it ever OK to politely suggest someone not text in your presence?  What about tweeting during meetings and  conferences?

These and other frequently asked questions regarding the brave–some would say rude–world of mobile technologies were explored at a recent Business Wire webinar, Minding your Mobile Manners:  Etiquette Tips for the Digital Age.  The event featured author and etiquette expert Anna Post of the Emily Post Institute.

Cellphone etiquette dominated the discussion with polite pleas for direction on what is/isn’t acceptable in today’s constantly connected universe. Post cited a Feb. 2011 Intel survey which found that 75% of those polled say mobile manners are worse than just a year ago.  Our attending group of professional communicators are obviously not alone in their need for guidance.

Mobile Manners in Austin, Texas: Seen at the Whip-InABOVE:  Mobile Manners in Austin, Texas: Seen at the Whip-In

Some may think the answers to the questions above are obvious but as Anna Post pointed out, “It depends.  Each situation is different and it entirely depends on the context.”

Asking someone to not text in your presence–and how to frame such a request–depends entirely on the relationship between the people involved.  If in a professional situation a simple, “Monika, I really need your full attention here” might be appropriate.   Some companies have implemented a policy of having people drop their  iPhones and Blackberries at the door as they enter a conference room.  ”If your attention is really not that important at the meeting, perhaps you shouldn’t attend,” she noted.

And Twitter at conferences and meetings?

Post recommends that when live tweeting a small event like a local PRSA meeting, you should informally advise the organizer or speaker to avoid hurt feelings and the appearance you don’t care about the presentation.

As for large conferences like SXSW, or the National NIRI or PRSA gatherings, ubiquitous technologies are pervasive and even expected.  Many speakers appreciate the visibility afforded when the audience shares their talking points in online communities, resulting in more book sales, speaking gigs, or qualified business leads for the speaker.   No need to stop tweeting or even to advise the speaker in this situation.

Email etiquette was another hot topic.   Post recommends always using a salutation with the person’s name, rather than diving straight into the message.  Avoid emoticons and text-message speak at all times in any type of business communications, she advises.  It appears juvenile.

As communications professionals, we’re especially obliged to know how to get our messages across even as the tools and techniques for doing so change as fast as the weather.  Good mobile manners–like good grammar and spelling–increase the likelihood of successfully communicating.

If you missed our webinar, feel free to catch the replay on the Business Wire events page.    Also, we hope you’ll take our one-question PR Peeps Poll on minding your mobile manners: What’s your biggest digital pet peeve?

Please and thank you.

1 Comment | All Things Press Release, Business Wire, Mobile, PR Peeps Polls, social media, Webinars | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Monika Maeckle

Mayday! Mayday! Monthlong Focus on Press Release Measurement Aims to Answer Questions

May 4, 2011

May brings a focus on measurement at Business Wire,  with upgrades to our reporting tools and dashboard, a white paper on press release measurement, and a FREE May 18 webinar that explores clocking the ROI of your press release efforts.

Why the big focus on measurement?

Our clients demanded it.  Plenty of buzz but no consensus abounds on who has influence, what should be valued, and what’s working when it comes to press releases.  Our Mayday focus hopes to address your “measurement emergencies,” dispel some of the confusion and provide concrete tips on how to get the most out of your press releases.

Here’s resources we’ve lined up:

FREE White Paper  PR Measurement:  Creating the Return on Marketing Investment

FREE May 18 Webinar Clocking the Return on Marketing Investment of Your Press Releases

Overview Newstrak Report Improvements

PR Peeps Poll What press release metric do you most value?

Leave a Comment » | Business Wire, Measurement, Press Release Tips, Webinars | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Monika Maeckle

Importance of Writing Good Headlines Magnified as Attention Spans and Space Decrease

February 3, 2011
Free “How to Write A Good Headline” Webinar to Offer Headline Writing Tips
by Monika Maeckle, Vice President, New Media

Gawker rolled out its redesign this week, provoking an echo chamber of speculation on what it means for blogs, Twitter and new media in general, and the blogosphere in particular.

One theme was constant in the online nattering:  headlines have never been more important.

With our miniscule attention spans, a firehose of content, and search engines that systematically weigh the first 70 characters of any content page, headlines today carry an unprecedented burden to deliver readers.   And with Twitter and Facebook referring so many pageviews, we no longer enjoy the luxury of the lead paragraph to tell our stories.

The headline stands alone.

“Headlines on websites—particularly those found on news websites with content heavy homepages—carry a very heavy load,” wrote Jake Brooks, Chief Strategist and Project Director of Hazan+Company, in a February 1 blogpost. “For these types of sites, the difference between 10,000 pageviews can rest entirely on the quality of the headline and how well it sells a story.”

No kidding.  And when it comes to press releases, a great headline can make the difference between your carefully crafted news release flying high or detouring to the delete heap.

If you can use some help with headline writing, please join us February 16 for a FREE educational webinar on How to Write  a Good Headline.  Registration is free.

We’ll look at headlines from both sides of the aisle–from the perspectives of readers and robots.   Our guests will be veteran journalist Terry Scott Bertling, niche/products editor at the San Antonio Express-News; and SEO-meister  Greg Jarboe, President of SEO-PR.

Hope to “see” you there.

How to Write A Good Headline
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
10 AM Pacific/ Noon Central/ 1 PM Eastern
FREE
Register Now

 

 

4 Comments | All Things Press Release, Business Wire, Business Wire Events, Education, new media, Press Release Tips, social media, Webinars | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Monika Maeckle

Upcoming Event: Best Practices for Online Press Releases

January 3, 2011

Upcoming Business Wire Events

Start the new year right — sign up for our upcoming webinar, “A Successful Online Press Release: From Start to Finish.”

Join Market Motive Online PR Professor Greg Jarboe and Business Wire Product Manager Joseph Miller to learn cutting-edge practices for the modern optimized press release. This workshop will cover current best practices of the online PR process: creation, distribution, and measurement. You’ll learn headline creation techniques, SEO, strategy, and multimedia best practices. Then you’ll be shown step-by step wire distribution processes and timing, and finally explore how you can measure success of your online PR campaigns. Online press releases are a powerful and often-misunderstood marketing channel for getting the word out and the links in. Join us on January 11th to learn more and keep your skills up to date.

The hourlong webinar will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 11 at 11am ET/8am PT. Go here to register.

For more upcoming local Business Wire events or to see what’s coming up in our award-winning webinar series, visit http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/business-wire-events.

Follow Business Wire events on Twitter! Hash tag #bwevents

2 Comments | Business Wire Events, EON: Enhanced Online News, Press Release Optimization, Press Release Tips, Webinars | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Phil Dennison, Senior Marketing Specialist, Business Wire

SEO 104: Press Release SEO Final Exam

September 20, 2010

Welcome to the final edition (for now) of our SEO Q&A mini-series.  If you haven’t yet, I recommend taking a few minutes and reading through the previous posts: SEO 101, SEO 102 and SEO 103.

If you’re the impatient type, feel free to go straight to the Final Exam.  Otherwise, continue on to our final batch of Q&A culled from our free webinar series.

Should we host the full text of our press releases on our website or simply link to wire release?

Many of our clients host a copy or version of their release on their own website along with distributing over the wire and I don’t see anything wrong with doing so.  However, I would recommend publishing your release on your site at the same time as you distribute over the wire.  This can be easily accomplished using an online newsroom.

Also, some SEO savvy companies have experimented with publishing significantly different versions of their releases on their site in order to provide search engines with varied content to digest and perhaps be relevant for different searches.  You could try changing headlines, keywords, writing style, release length or a combination of all of the above and see how your releases perform.

When optimizing our releases, should we focus on more commonly used (and competitive) keywords or focus more specific keywords that may see more targeted searches?

This is a difficult question to consider in a vacuum.  To truly answer it, you will probably need to coordinate with other people, departments or agencies that you work with and see if you can come together to gauge the relative value of different keywords to your business.

For instance, you can look at your web analytics or search marketing tools to see which keywords drive the most conversions.

Or you can look at reputation or brand related keywords and use SEO analysis tools to determine roughly how much work you’d need to do to make a dent in the rankings.

You could use tools to guestimate which keywords are sending traffic to competitors and try to catch up with their rankings.  You could even see which articles and blog posts are consistently cited by journalists covering your field and see if you can outperform them with fresher or better data.

The trouble is, you’ll probably want to work with whoever you need to in order to do or some of these tasks, weigh the apples against oranges, consider your goals and take a direction based on you or your team’s own judgement…but that’s the fun of it!

Our press releases often open with a standard company introduction.  Is this bad for SEO performance?

Possibly.  Conventional SEO wisdom dictates that search engines give greater consideration to text higher than text further down.  The first 100 words are of particular importance and can possibly be used as your meta description, even if one is already provided.

I would recommend moving your company introduction down to the company profile or About section of your releases.

Should I always include my company name in the headline?

Press releases distributed over the wire are sent through various platforms such as the AP, Dow Jones and Bloomberg which automatically scan headlines for company name mentions, so if you are concerned at all with being properly classified and indexed across the board you should definitely incorporate your company name into all your release headlines.

That doesn’t mean your headline must start with your company name though.  The first words of your headline are arguably the most valuable keyword real estate in your release, so consider incorporating your most important keywords here if you can.

Okay, you’ve made it through the entire course.  Now it’s time for your final exam (no cheating!).  Please let us know how you did in the comments.

Leave a Comment » | Business Wire, seo, SEO Tip Jar, Webinars | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Joseph Miller, EON Product Manager

Twitter Tips Result from our What to Expect When You Tweet Your Press Release Webinar

August 20, 2010

We often post a recap of our webinars, hoping to offer the wisdom shared to those who couldn’t make it.  On Wednesday,  we staged What to Expect When You Tweet Your Press Release, and explored the ups and downs of using Twitter to supplement press release efforts.

Then we got lucky.  Our friends over at 451 Marketing in Boston did a fantasic recap of the webinar in their blogpost, Tips for Promoting Your News Via Twitter.   For that, we say thank you, Team 451, you saved us some work!

For those who want to access the webinar in its entirety or check out a PDF of the presentation, both are available in our webinar archive.

Leave a Comment » | All Things Press Release, Business Wire, Business Wire Events, Press Release Tips, Public Relations, social media, Social Media Release, Webinars | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Monika Maeckle

SEO 103: Advanced Press Release SEO Questions From Our Webinars

August 12, 2010


Welcome to the third edition of our webinar Q&A series.  If you missed the first two posts, please take a moment to read SEO 101 and SEO 102 so you’ll be prepared for the final exam at the end of SEO 104.

Ready?  Here’s the third selection of questions straight from attendees of our press release optimization webinars.

Since your broad company keywords are not always the same as specific keywords for a particular press release (such as a product release) – which should you include?

Like many strategic questions, there’s really no right answer for this.  Every organization or agency crafting press releases or any other content on the web needs to weigh short term  vs. long term goals to determine their ideal mix.  If the short term campaign is the main focus, I’d recommend focusing keywords in the headline and top of release, while optimizing your company boilerplate to ensure your long term keywords are always present in your releases.

SEO is more a marathon than a sprint. Commitment is key if you want to win in the long term.

Is it possible for optimized releases to rank higher than another company or website that is currently “buying” a specific keyword through Google AdWords?

Sadly, it’s a common and strangely persistent misconception that advertising on Google AdWords has an effect on “organic” SEO rankings.  It’s simply not true.  Here’s a direct quote from a high level Google employee dispelling this myth.

“The most common misconception is that you have to pay Google to get listed in the organic listings.  Not true.  Google crawls web sites for free.  Another misconception is that the [AdWords] listings will help your organic search engine rankings.  Not true.  PPC has no affect on your “editorial search results.””

-Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer at Google, speaking with USA Today.

How do subheads factor into releases? Are they seen as headlines or body text?

Subheads are not included in the title tag and are thus seen more as body text within the release. That said, they are a great location to incorporate keyword phrases you can’t squeeze into your headline.

Do embedded images help with SEO?

Absolutely.  Optimizing images is a great opportunity to increase the reach of your news release.  Google Images receives a massive amount of traffic and users typically dig deeper into results to find what they are looking for, since image results can often be much more subjective than standard search results.

To optimize an image, make sure it has a clear file name which accurately describes the image and  incorporates a keyword as well.  Add a unique description for your image as well.  For more information, here’s a video from a Google Product Manager discussing some Image SEO best practices.

We currently host our press releases as PDF files. Is this bad strategy for search engine performance?

Without a doubt, I would recommend never hosting press releases solely as PDF files on your website.  While search engines are usually able to digest the text within PDF files, they typically rank very poorly in search results.  I believe that this is because search engines are constantly trying to provide the best experience and most useful information to all users, and different browsers and operating systems all handle PDF files in different ways.  That is confusing for the end user.  For instance, Internet Explorer may show PDFs in the browser, while Firefox might open up Acrobat, and Chrome might download it.

If you are required to provide PDFs of your press releases, please host a text version of your release as well or link to the wire version.  If you use our services, you can link to the EON hosted press release and know it will be online for the long term.

That wraps up SEO 103.  I hope you’ve been taking notes, because there will be a test at the end of the next post.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email or Twitter.

1 Comment | Business Wire, seo, SEO Tip Jar, Web 2.0, Webinars | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Joseph Miller, EON Product Manager

SEO 102: More Press Release Optimization Questions from our Webinars

August 2, 2010


This is the second edition in my mini-series on SEO basics based on questions we’ve received in our ongoing webinar series on press release SEO.  In this post I address five questions that are a bit more advanced than those I answered in SEO 101, the first post in the series.

Should we embed a hyperlink in a press release distributed through wire services or put the URL in parentheses?

For wire releases on services like Business Wire, releases can be pushed to a wide range of syndicating sites using a variety of methods and technologies on all ends of the process.  Because of this, it’s often recommended to include both a hyperlink and URL in parentheses to ensure maximum reach across all audiences.  Don’t just take my word for it though, check out this Hubspot study on press releases that recommends following that link strategy.

Should keywords used throughout the release be linked to the target webpage every time within the release or just the first time?

Only Google really knows the answer to this one, but it’s widely regarded that the first link from a keyword to webpage on a page carries the vast majority of importance with search engines.    As long as you don’t go overboard multiple links within a release is not a bad thing, but it’s not necessary.

If you link too many times it might even look suspicious to the search engines.

Is it bad to use bullet points in the first paragraph of a release?

I recommend not using bullet points in or as the first paragraph of a release if at all possible, especially if getting into Google News is a priority.  Too many bullet points may cause the Google News robots to flag your release and reject it from the index.

Can I optimize my company boilerplate?

Absolutely.   Your boilerplate is part of your release’s body text in the many eyes of search engines.  Periodically optimizing your boilerplate with one or two strategic hyperlinks to key pages on your site is a great way to squeeze a little more performance out of all of your releases.

Should I use common misspellings or typos as keywords?

Using misspellings as keywords is quite popular in PPC advertising such as Google AdWords, but when it comes it press releases with their intersection of journalist, news and general consumer audiences, typos are typically frowned upon and eliminated by editorial staff.

In addition, search engines are continually getting smarter about spotting and correcting typos and the effectiveness of exploiting typos at all will probably wane over time.

That’s all for SEO 102.  You’ll be getting your diploma soon, but in the meantime please let me know via comments, e-mail or Twitter if there’s any questions you’d like answered.

5 Comments | Business Wire, search, seo, SEO Tip Jar, Web 2.0, Webinars | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Joseph Miller, EON Product Manager

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 15,594 other followers