Have you heard of Pinterest? Do you know how can it help your marketing and SEO?

Great review of Pinterest and why it's becoming so popular here: What is Pinterest?

If you haven't heard of it yet, Pinterest is a new social network (yes, another one!) where you "pin" photos you like to your board. It is a very visually compelling site that plays to the internet's love of pictures. From a public relations and marketing perspective, it should motivate you to use more creative imagery on your website, especially in your blog posts, giving your posts more of a chance to be pinned in Pinterest and discovered by more people. Another benefit is that when something is pinned, a backlink is pinned along with it to your website. Pinterest has a page rank of six which gives that "follow" backlink a lot of juice when it comes to improving your results in the search engines!

Best Holiday light show I've seen yet (from my favorite gym)

What's the different between Google+ Pages and Facebook pages? One major detail...

Google recently announced the introduction of Google+ pages. One of the most significant differences is the ability to follow fans back! 

This new feature of Google+ allows businesses to create their own page in order to target and follow customers.  The second feature is one of the biggest differences between Google+ and its largest competitor; while fans of a page on Facebook can follow a business, there is no corresponding feature that allows the business to follow its fans.  Google+ on the other hand, facilitates and encourages businesses to follow fans, setting up new opportunity for marketing campaigns.

Read how to set up your Google+ business page on Nashville PR blog: Google+ Adds Pages 

Should your company have a Wikipedia page? There are a few things to consider first...

As I stated on a recent blog post, there are a few issues a company should consider before embracing a Wikipedia page. The PROs of course are that Wikipedia listings generally show up in the top results of major search engines, providing more exposure and potential credibility for an organization when searched. This can help build trust and legitimacy among individuals searching for information about a certain company. Because they almost always appear near the top of the search results, Wikipedia pages also push down other listings and can help reduce the amount of unwanted results such as negative news articles or reviews, if they exist. But what about the CONS? Read more on our Nashville PR blog under: Should My Company Have a Wikipedia Page?

Are You Ready for Timeline on Facebook?

Are you ready for Facebook's new Timeline? With all the complaints people usually have for Facebook's changes, this is one I believe Facebook users will really enjoy. It seems to be a simple interface allowing you to take in your whole life (since joining and updating Facebook at least) with a scroll down the timeline. And according to Facebook, it will be easy to hide content that you see on your timeline with a simple click of a button. This may actually make it easier to locate and hide inappropriate content that you may have forgotten was lurking in the depth of your Facebook history. According to this infographic from Reppler.com, 69% of employers have rejected a job candidate due to content they found on the candidate's social network!

Reports were showing that Facebook would launch their new Timeline this week although it seems to have been delayed. If you are ready, you can go ahead and launch your timeline now following the instructions from this Nashville PR firm's blog post on Business2Community: Facebook Timeline Rolls Out Tomorrow

Should PR Firms Be Learning SEO?

The search engines, especially Google, are a major way that people search for information online and discover their news. But are public relations agencies tackling that front? In a post written on the Nashville PR firm where I work, I go into this question in a little more detail but here is the basic idea. Backlinks are the currency of the web when it comes to high rankings in the search engines. The more you have, the higher you rank. So search engine optimizers are always working hard to increase the amount of backlinks that point to their client's website. Therefore, SEO is all about securing content and backlinks on somebody else's property (blogs, websites, articles, etc). Now here is something that PR experts are already good at, although they are not looking to secure backlinks so much as their client's information in the story. 

So if you work in PR, you are probably already an expert at getting information onto major news websites and blogs where SEO experts would love to secure backlinks. You need to ensure, as all public relations firms do, you at least know the basics of SEO so that you are taking advantage of keywords, backlinks, and anchor texting in order to not only increase awareness of your client in the news, but also get them a boost in the search results.

Why Acquire NoFollow Links?

Did you ever wonder why search engine optimization strategies include creating backlinks on services such as Yahoo! questions, Twitter streams, or major blog comment feeds? Those backlinks are NoFollows right? So they don't count towards your Google juice right? Wrong! (well...sort of).

While it is true that NoFollow links are not "followed" to the final destination, they are indexed. And the reason you want NoFollow links indexed as a part of your SEO efforts is that it makes your link building look more natural to the search engines. After all, if some new website started generating a bunch of new backlinks that were only follow, it would be obvious to the search engines that the backlinks were being created specifically for better search results, and not because of natural linking due to great website content.

So if you want to get on google, don't forget about NoFollow opportunities when seeking out backlinks around the web. As always, ensure you are providing relevant and unique content to go along with your links as nobody likes a spammer!

iPhone 5 Concept Features, wow!

Cicadas invade Nashville

Hanging out at Halcyon Bike Shop where the Cicadas have taken over.

IMG_1079.MOV Watch on Posterous

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Scott McIntosh
www.Lovell.com
o 615.297.7766
c 615.707.0239