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PR for Pirates

Ideas, Startups, Social Media, PR, SEO, Austin

Here’s a diagram I’ve been using internally to explain the strategies and tactics related to SEO, broken down in three major layers: the foundation, on-page, and off-page factors, and couched in terms of a network layer model.

A network stack is a helpful way of thinking about this because it implies that each layer builds upon the other, and is dependent on the layer below it. As marketers, we are the architects and optimizers of this stack, and it’s helpful to start thinking about how our decisions at each layer affect (and in some cases marry us) to choices higher on the stack.

A model for SEO that adopts the network-layer model

On more thought, as I’ve stated, I predict that traditional SEO as a distinct discipline is going to merge with PR. That’s mostly correct, however some aspects are going to migrate to Product Management in my view. I’ll expand on that in a later post.

The Coming Merger of SEO and Public RelationsOctober 6

I spent 8 years doing my own SEO while growing the site I co-founded, ApartmentRatings.com, from absolutely nothing into one of the top apartment-hunting sites. I eventually reached the conclusion that my best SEO strategy was PR because it just seemed to work. Now, I think this may apply to many more (all?) companies and point to a merger between PR and SEO in the near future.

Steve Rubel and Katrina French (by way of Jason Falls’s blog) got me thinking about my experience and that, thanks to Google, SEO and PR are ultimately becoming the same activity. Same strategies, same tactics, same metrics. Steve writes, “Google Page Rank is the ultimate way to measure online influence“, and Katrina says, “search and social are…intrinsically linked.”

So if you believe that the goal of PR is to get influencers to bring attention to your client or company, and Google PageRank is the ultimate measure of influence (and since we know that PageRank flows from one party to another vis-a-vis links), then a central goal of PR should be to acquire valuable, PageRank-passing links.

If you apply this to

So You’re A Blogger? No. Where Can I Learn More? Our Blog.September 27

The Buzzstream Team, Paul our CEO, Randy our CTO, and I hit the TechCrunch party Thursday night at Pangae. It was great to see so many friends and the number of cool ventures, many of whom are way under the radar, starting up in Austin. Erick hit the nail on the head with regard to the investment climate in Austin driving companies to figure out how to grow by scaling a profitable business model. I was glad he picked up on that. And Paul made the video explaining the subtlety of not being a blogger but having a blog. Funny stuff.

TechCrunch50 versus DEMO by the NumbersSeptember 11

Image via Wikipedia

Now that the launch conference Ultimate Smack Down — TechCrunch50 v. DEMO– is over, I figured I’d take a few minutes (now going on few hours) to look at which conference’s presenting companies were more successful in generating press this week, based on a little Google News and Blogs research. And here are the results:

Rethinking the DEMO, TechCrunch 50 MegalaunchSeptember 9

Wow. The blogosphere has erupted into a near riot after Robert Scoble’s “companies launching at DEMO suck” series of blog posts. The discussion has understandably been emotion-filled, but other than some really good link-bait, I’m not sure much value is coming out of it.

What I’ve been thinking about a lot though is how the “big conference launch” fits into our plans here at BuzzStream. We’re a micro-financed business, so we look long and hard before undertaking a big expense like a conference launch. I think the beat down that some of the DEMO companies took occurred because their approach to launch marketing doesn’t match the economics of their business. There’s been a lot of talk about how the economics of building a product have changed. The economics have never been better for starting a business and the way that companies get funded and