Welcome to Marketwire’s collection of the some of the most interesting articles of June and July.  My top PR, SEO, and social media articles will surely get your mind going 100 miles an hour.

PR Articles:

1. PR Readers’ Choice Finalists and Winners
By: Arik Hanson

Arik publicly recognizes the top PR blogs in his second annual PR Readers’ Choice Awards.  Don’t just skip over to the winners, but take a look at the finalists.  There are a lot of gems in there as well.

Marketwire Advice: I recommend you subscribe to these blogs and follow them on Twitter.  It’s a great way to connect with thought leaders in the PR industry.

2. PR More Vital Than Ever to Business
By: Hollie Shaw of The Vancouver Sun

“It’s not about publicity, it’s about communication.”  The article delves into BP’s environmental disaster and the PR nightmare encountered by the oil giant.  In essence, BP is a model of how NOT to do corporate communications.

Marketwire Advice: I know what you’re thinking: Another article about BP.  Although it talks about BP, it also discusses the differences between “earned media” and “paid media.”  It offers a different point of view than your everyday BP article.

3. 10 Reasons Why PR Should Embrace Twitter
By March Communications

Are you in the PR industry?  Are you still hesitant about using Twitter?  Read this.  Two notable points were made: (1) Twitter can open opportunities and (2) Twitter provides real-time news.

Marketwire Advice: Twitter is a must-have tool for any company’s public relations department. If highly regulated industries, like banks, are using Twitter, then certainly there’s room for PR professionals to consider using Twitter as a tool.

4. 10 PR Trends That Are Always in Vogue
By Susan Young

The 10 trends that will always stay in style:

• A good ‘ole fashioned “thank you”
• Knowing your pitch
• Communicating a succinct message
• The human factor
• Respecting the clock
• Loving your story
• Building rapport
• Offering an exclusive
• Delivering on your promise
• Making yourself available

Marketwire Advice: With all the talk about social media and how it will revolutionize PR, this article reminds you of what’s really important.

SEO articles

1. Quality Links to Your Site
By Google Webmaster Blog

Read about best practices for organic link-building from Google.  Some of the valuable tips that Google provides are:

• Get involved in the community around your topic
• Contribute to forums and blogs
• Think of issues or problems your users might consider and create a short tutorial
• Consider making linking to your site as easy as possible

Marketwire Advice: Link-building is a commitment and long-term strategy. You can’t go wrong by following Google’s advice. Last time I checked, Google is a pretty big search engine.

2.  Facebook SEO Ranking Factors, 2010 Study Results
By Marty Weintraub

This insightful article reviews the Facebook SEO ranking factors.  It goes over the “suggest” ranking factors, “all results” ranking factors, “pages,” “groups,” “events,” and “web” results.

Marketwire Advice: Worth a read, but the conclusion you’ll come away with will be, “oh, that’s nice” instead of “oh, I better try that.”  Facebook SEO is fairly nonexistent at this time.  They focus on people first, products second.  In addition, the results pages are highly affected by a user’s personalization, so search results can vary from one user to the next.

3. Want More Link Juice? Here’s an Easy Way to Do It
By Ken Lyons of WordStream

Ken takes a look at an often overlooked aspect of one’s SEO strategy: the internal linking strategy.  I know many of us can take Ken’s advice and work diligently to improve SEO.  This article will slap you in the face and make you say, “Duh! Why haven’t I been doing this?”

Marketwire Advice: I suggest reading this article and implementing these link-building strategies.  Take some time to evaluate your own website and you’ll realize that your own SEO strategy isn’t fully optimized.

4. How to Optimize Your Videos for SEO
By Garry Przyklenk

Title says it all.

Marketwire Advice: It’s time to look at your own videos (especially for you businesses) and take advantage of YouTube’s large search engine database.  It’s important to remember that the algorithms of Google search and YouTube search are different, so take Garry’s advice and optimize your videos.

Social Media articles

1.  Social Networking Affects Brains Like Falling in Love
By Fast Company

This is an unscientific study by a neuroeconomist on how social networking increased a person’s oxytocin levels in his brain, heightening feelings of trust, empathy, and generosity.  According to this test, social networking reduces stress hormones because the “brain interpreted tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for”.

Marketwire Advice: Don’t Just read this article — it’s fascinating!

2.  Copywriting for Social Media
By Jason Falls

Jason takes a deeper look into copywriting for social media by discussing a few key points including: know SEO, think in 140 characters and keep in mind that messages are two-way conversations.

Marketwire Advice: First learn how to write for SEO, then apply those skills and adopt it for social media.

3.  52 Cool Facts About Social Media
By Danny Brown

Fifty-two cool facts that will want to make you retweet 52 times.

Marketwire Advice: Facts + stats = WHOA. Enjoy.

4.  7 Steps For a Successful Social Media Strategy
By Nick Shin

In this article, I talk about creating a social media strategy for your business.

Marketwire Advice: If you are planning to use social media for your business, it’s important to create a strategy.  Read this article and (re)evaluate your strategy to make the most of your time in the social space.

Did we miss one? Let us know if you have or know of articles or blogs that we should add to this list.

Related posts:

Tags: top pr articles, top social media articles

This entry was posted on Monday, August 9th, 2010 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Public Relations, SEO, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.