Focus Your PR and SEO Efforts for Ultimate Success May 22, 2013Expert BlogsOff

I just got off the phone with a potential new client. She wasn’t sure how to build buzz for her organization. And after months of jumping around with SEO, media pitching, press releases, and other activities, she needs my help. Nothing was working. Do you know why? She is not focusing on a specific goal.

How are you going to get there if you don’t know where you’re going? While it’s essential to take advantage of all the publicity and search-engine-optimization activities available to save time and money while building awareness, they won’t work unless you have an action plan. Now, it can be tempting to just jump in and start using the various social media applications, SEO tactics, press-release distribution services, and other cost-effective technologies to try to boost sales quickly. Instead, if you focus your efforts and develop an action plan, you’ll have much better results. And it doesn’t need to take a lot of time. Here are three quick steps to help you organize your activities:

1. Research.

Figure out whom you are trying to reach and where your target market hangs out. Do they use social media like Twitter®, FaceBook®, YouTube®, and others? Or does your audience stick to niche, industry publications? Make a list of the tops venues or sites to pursue and the results you hope to accomplish within a certain timeline.

2. Solve Your Customers Problems.



Next, use the appropriate venues you just discovered to offer solutions to your customers’ problems. Maybe you can write an article about a key topic for one of your targeted publications? Perhaps you can offer valuable information via blog entries on your site? The whole point is to focus on your customers and give them the information they need in the place they will most likely go to find it.

3. Get Help.



Now that you know what kind of information to provide your customers (and where to distribute it), get some help. Whether you hire an intern who can monitor your online buzz at no cost, a SEO expert who can save you time and effort with the appropriate Web coding or a publicist who can serve your organization’s specific needs, outsource some of this work to people who can help you stay on track with your action-plan goals. Then, you can focus on your core business activities and pleasing current customers. Rather than try different activities haphazardly to bring in sales, take the time to develop an action plan first. Then, monitor your progress. In the end, you’ll save time and money. But more importantly, you’ll be able to service your current customers while bringing in new ones quickly and cost-effectively.

By Melanie Rembrandt

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