I’ve been thinking recently about adding video to my blog to mix up the content and to make the blog more engaging. Check out a great example from Darren Rowse over at Problogger. I’m not quite there yet, but doing some early research into how I would go about adding video to this blog.

For some ideas, inspiration, check out this short video from Anil Dash at SixApart (the company behind TypePad, Vox etc). Anil talks about a mixed format of text with video and how this has been used effectivly by Google among others. He has some other great YouTube posts on the same subject, so have a look around after watching this one.

YouTube Direct

If anyone has any ideas, suggestions, recommendations or tips on getting started in video blogging, please get in touch.

I little while ago I mentioned that I’d received some interesting information from Microsoft about their adCenter product. The info was actually some analysis of the ongoing research data compiled by Nielson into the quality of search traffic. The emphasis was placed on the difference in traffic quality by looking at conversion and levels of engagement / stickiness.

Now clearly this needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but it did make some interesting reading. For the engagement figures, the analysis showed that on average people who clicked through from Live Search would spend 4 mins 7 secs on the site, compared to an industry average of 3 mins 4 secs, or for Yahoo 3:31 and Google 2:55.

In other words…

Live Searchers are 35% more engaged on destination sites than the average UK searcher

What does this tell you? Well, once you’ve paid for your click and the customer is on site, you have a slightly longer amount of time to convince them to buy.

In terms of conversion, Nielson was only able to track whether searchers had actually reached the secure area of a site, rather than actually making a purchase. This creates quite a weakness if you ask me, however, we’ll look at the results in any case.

For Live Search, 7% of searchers went to a secure page after clicking through. This is against a 4% industry average or 5.3% for Yahoo and 3.6% for Google.

This might lead you to believe that Live Search brings more quality traffic, or as Microsoft puts it:

Live Searchers are 77% more likely that the average UK searcher, nearly twice as likely as Google searchers… to convert

So what does this tell you?

Well, there are a lot of questions we’d need to ask Microsoft to really interrogate the data. However at a fairly simplistic level you’d have to say adCenter seems to offer a very credible alternative to other paid for search advertising. With both stickiness and conversion rates higher than the industry averages it’s perhaps time to take adCenter a little more seriously.

From personal experience I’ve already transferred one of my clients PPC campaigns from Google to MSN and noticed a slow down in clicks (and therefore lower costs) but with increased traction. In other words, once someone clicks on an ad they are more likely to download the eBook we are offering and then move further along the sales cycle. The slow down in clicks is clearly a result of Live Search attracting less traffic than Google.

I have to say, I’m also a big fan of the telephone support on offer from Microsoft, so much better than email support on offer from the competition.

Well, if you haven’t yet, give Live Search and adCenter a go and let me know how you get on.

It was brought to my attention recently that welovelocal.com, an online local business review site, had commissioned some research into the way in which people look up local businesses these days. In particular it asked about the relevance of printed directories, like the Yellow Pages, Thomson Local and others.

I thought you’d like to see the results as it’s a good bet many of you small business owners will be paying for print directory listings - after all, you’ve probably done so for years and picked up some good business along the way. In fact, it’s one of the most popular places for a small business to advertise, well, at least it used to be…

Now the research is very UK focussed, but I’d bet in most developed countries you’ll be facing a similar situation as here in Britain. So without further ado, here are my highlights of the research findings (or you can find the full wrap-up here):

• Over 50,000,000 directories are distributed each year in the UK, but 35% of adults would prefer not to receive them

• 70% of 18-34 year olds would prefer to use the internet to find local businesses

• In the last 6 months 51% of adults have used the internet to find a local business and only 24% a printed directory

I think you will agree these are some interesting stats. Essentially there’s a massive and not surprising trend towards using the internet for finding businesses.

First priority then, get yourself an online presence. There are no shortage of options for doing this - check out my previous posts for micro-businesses and the very small.

The next step then is to start encouraging other people to create an online presence for you. A great example is to look at Welovelocal.com and ensure your business is both listed and reviewed. If it hasn’t been reviewed yet, don’t be tempted to add your own false reviews, you’ll only get caught out. Try to encourage some locals to get you started, or maybe provide a discount code for those who write a review.

What then happens to the model of paying for directory listings.

Will this continue to add value? Should you still consider advertising in paper directories, or has the Yellow Pages had its day?

My answer to that one is simply, it depends. I know, you wanted a yes or no answer, but it really depends on who your audience is and what product you sell. If you sell products to less technically able customer groups then yes the yellow pages is probably still viable.

For everyone else, move on my friends, move on. Do something different and maybe think about how you can work with the new online review sites like the fantastic Welovelocal. I refer you back to the old quote

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got

As a blogger and a PR consultant, I’m in an interesting position. I can see how useful it is for companies to have relevant and targeted bloggers writing about their company and products. At the same time as a blogger, it’s really great to receive interesting information from PRs that will help me to write posts that add real value for my readers.

But like David Meerman Scott over at MarcomProfessional I’m a big believer that blogger relations has to be done well to work effectively. Bloggers aren’t like journalists - we are a lot more independent, don’t have set deadlines, write about what ever we like and importantly, we don’t all have a lot of resources.

As a PR professional then, what should you be doing to work effectively with bloggers. Does the standard press release work?

What about as a small business owner, how can you work with bloggers to drive a little traffic to your site, or build a little coverage, interest or awareness of something newsworthy you’ve been doing?

Step 1 - get to know your blogs.

This may seem an obvious point, but it’s strange how many people miss this step. For example, I write about marketing, blogging and web 2.0 stuff mostly, but last year I was approached by a company wanting me to trial a mobile phone and write about it on my blog. First of all, I doubt I’m reaching the right audience and secondly, when are you going to take the phone back, it’s been on my desk for almost 5 months. Had the PR read my blog, they would see that technology reviews are not really my specialism and saved themselves some time and effort. I haven’t even taken the phone out of the box.

On the other hand, a chap from Microsoft sent me some stats about the value of advertising on AdCentre versus Google AdWords which I will be writing about soon. Weloveloval also sent me the results of some research they conducted recently about the value for small businesses of advertising online vs in print. Again, perfect for me and my audience - expect to see that published soon as well.

Step 2 - identify and prioritise

Once you’ve found a handful of blogs writing on your subject area, start to prioritise those which are likely to add the most value to your PR campaign. How do you do that? have a think about:

> PageRank - this is Google’s own score for the importance / relevance of a website. It looks at a number of factors including how many other websites link to the blog - the more of these there are the more likely it will be a valuable blog. The score is available in the Google Tool Bar and goes from 0 to 10 - although there are very few sites on 10.

> Alexa Rank - this is a score that ranks roughly how much traffic websites attract. The lower the Alexa score the more traffic. As an example the BBC has an Alexa Rank of 64 which means it is the 64th most popular website on the (Google comes in at number 38). You can see then that the lower the score the more likely it is the blog gets a lot of traffic. More traffic generally equals more influence.

> Technorati - head to Technorati and search for a blog by name. You will then be able to find a score for the blogs authority - another measure of how many backlinks a blog has, again the higher the score the better.

> Participation - actually head to the site and start to look through the content. Look out for the number and quality of comments the blog receives and how engaged the blogger is with the comments. Consider whether the writing is generally positive or critical and identify if there are adverts on the site other than Google AdWords? Is there a RSS feed published and if so how many people have subscribed?

All of these factors will give you clues as to how popular and influential the blog is.

For some more ideas, head over to Brendan Cooper’s blog and read his excellent post on quick and dirty blog analysis.

Step 3 - participate

Bloggers write to air their opinions, express their feelings and often to make money. The lifeblood of a good blog is the content and the participation it drives with readers.

Once you have identified your top 10 or 20 blogs to work with, start to actually read the content. Add some comments, sign up to the blogs RSS feed, look for flickr streams and twitter feeds from the blogger and start to understand what drives them to write. This will give you a real helping hand for the next step.

Step 4 - engagement

Contact the blogger, have a conversation with them, identify if they are interested in receiving information from you and if so in what format. This doesn’t have to be particularly onerous, a quick email would probably be a good place to start, something like..

Hi Blogger,

I just read your post about the use of chocolate for making a good chilli. I had no idea you could use chocolate in such a way.

I’m working with Cadbury’s and would be really interested in hearing some more about your ideas for using chocolate in innovative recipes. Would you be happy to have a chat at some stage? I would really like to keep you up to date with the latest chocolate ingredients we’re making..?

Or something along those lines…

If you are a small business, you might even offer to write a couple of posts for the blog. This is of course a little more than PR, but I for one would be happy to add a couple of guest writers to my blog every now and again.

And there you have it, a really simple explanation of how to manage blog PR / outreach programmes. Remember, the most popular blogs may not always be the easiest to influence. You really should consider reaching out to a mix of blogs, perhaps tiering them based on the factors above. Given that people read blogs in different ways to journals, newspapers or other print materials, you don’t necessarily have to reach out to the biggest blogs to make a difference. TechCrunch would be great, but a handful of other smaller blogs may make an equally impressive impact.

Of course, if you need a more robust programme, have some budget and tougher targets to reach, you could always engage a new media PR professional. Check out Grapevine Consulting or Shiny Red.