As far as content marketing goes, the most popular types of content educate and help your audience make informed decisions. It’s not enough, however, to simply write a blog article and slap it on your company’s website. All content (great or otherwise) needs syndication of some sort. This could be through newsletters, via social media, or other avenues.

What some people miss, however, is the power inherent in publishing content written by company executives traveling to conferences educating attendees. There is a huge additional audience that may be unable to attend these conferences. In fact, some within the automotive industry estimate that just 5 percent of auto dealers have conference expenses in their budgets. If 95 percent of your audience isn’t attending the conference you are presenting at, how then are you planning on reaching them?

As social media reach continues to decrease and becomes more of a pay-to-play model, there is still one platform that is free - and actually increasing in popularity - LinkedIn. In the B2B world, there has never been a better platform for exposure and connections. Since LinkedIn has adopted a Facebook-style newsfeed and opened up its publishing platform to everyone, rather than just its top members, it has exploded for content marketers.

Daniel Roth, the Executive Editor at LinkedIn, shared in a recent article that LinkedIn now has over 1 million unique writers publishing more than 130,000 posts a week. In addition, he stated that about 45% of readers are in the upper ranks of their industries and the average post now reaches professionals in 21 industries and 9 countries.

Many companies have LinkedIn company pages. These pages are great for sharing relevant product announcements, press releases and other general news. The problem is that the reach is limited to how many followers your company has. Many start-ups, and even larger companies, don’t have significant follower bases. And, even when they do, not many are paying attention.

However, what DOES get attention is articles published under a company executive’s personal LinkedIn account. These aren’t filtered. These are shared. All of that executive’s contacts are notified that they published an article. I’d be willing to bet that most company executives have quite a few personal (or business) connections on LinkedIn. While that post on your company page may go unseen, the articles published by a company executive has a much better chance of being viewed - and not only by their connections. LinkedIn offers the ability to “tag” articles with up to three relevant categories. Think of this as LinkedIn’s version of a hashtag. This allows people to search out content relevant to their industries and provides increased reach. In addition, the way the articles are set up invites readers to comment and can be a catalyst for great discussions and interactions.

Keep in mind, however, that if the content being published strays too much into promotion, there is always a chance that the author gets tuned out. By maintaining some great strategies of content marketing and writing and publishing content that is industry relevant, educational and topical, LinkedIn has now proven to be a very viable platform on which to reach your audience.

According to a recent article in The Atlantic, soon reporters at two of the country’s leading newspapers will have access to the most basic type of digital analytics: They will be able to see web-traffic data for their own stories. That is, they will at least know how many people clicked on them, where they came from, and how long they lingered.
 

The Washington Post—in a concession to its reporters’ union—told journalists they would soon have access to this data, which they had long demanded. It also recently emerged that The New York Times would follow suit.

The crux of the argument was that the inability to view data on pieces they had previously written, prevented journalists from tailoring future content based on empirical data about the types of content their audience wanted. In addition, some suspected that the performance of their pieces could contribute to their compensation, future promotions and other job advancement opportunities.

Knowing your audience is key when making content decisions. Data is available on just about every content publishing platform. Google Analytics will tell you how many people read it. Facebook can tell you how many people interacted with it. LinkedIn can also tell you what content is popular. Each type of content will perform differently on different platforms. Some blog articles may see better performance as a published article on LinkedIn, rather than on your website. Facebook is also opening up its platform to publishers. I suspect that they will follow LinkedIn’s lead and allow content providers to publish directly on Facebook, similar to its recent push to get video content published natively to Facebook, rather than on competing video platforms.

Businesses frequently make the mistake of pushing content to their audience that they want their audience to see -- rather than content that their audience wants to see. The data and performance of your content will provide valuable evidence on the actual content your readership wants. You may not like the answer. However, the alternative is to keep pushing the content you want them to read – you could then end up with nobody reading it. The whole idea behind content marketing is to gain an audience and keep their attention through engaging and educational content. Making mistakes such as blatant self-promotion and egocentric articles will probably hurt you more than it will help.

If you’re a content producer, take time to analyze the performance of your published pieces. Which articles are your readers responding to? Which content are they ignoring? If your goal is to increase your businesses’ exposure and connect with your audience, all of your content questions will be answered with such a content analysis. Don’t discount it, trust it. It’s telling you what types of content you should be writing. And you should be listening to it.

Yes, there’s a place for articles and announcements about your company’s products, services, new features or other company related news… but that place is not on your blog. Separate blog articles from news articles into their own dedicated areas on your website. People that come to your website to see what’s new with your company will naturally gravitate towards that area. If your news is buried amongst a bunch of blog articles, however, they may never read it. The opposite also holds true. Readers who are coming to find tips, topical or educational articles, won’t necessarily want to see news articles.
 

Use analytical data to tailor content to your audience and you will find that it is better received, that it produces better results and that it gets more exposure with your desired audience.

According to a recent article in The Atlantic, soon reporters at two of the country’s leading newspapers will have access to the most basic type of digital analytics: They will be able to see web-traffic data for their own stories. That is, they will at least know how many people clicked on them, where they came from, and how long they lingered.
 

The Washington Post—in a concession to its reporters’ union—told journalists they would soon have access to this data, which they had long demanded. It also recently emerged that The New York Times would follow suit.

The crux of the argument was that the inability to view data on pieces they had previously written, prevented journalists from tailoring future content based on empirical data about the types of content their audience wanted. In addition, some suspected that the performance of their pieces could contribute to their compensation, future promotions and other job advancement opportunities.

Knowing your audience is key when making content decisions. Data is available on just about every content publishing platform. Google Analytics will tell you how many people read it. Facebook can tell you how many people interacted with it. LinkedIn can also tell you what content is popular. Each type of content will perform differently on different platforms. Some blog articles may see better performance as a published article on LinkedIn, rather than on your website. Facebook is also opening up its platform to publishers. I suspect that they will follow LinkedIn’s lead and allow content providers to publish directly on Facebook, similar to its recent push to get video content published natively to Facebook, rather than on competing video platforms.

Businesses frequently make the mistake of pushing content to their audience that they want their audience to see -- rather than content that their audience wants to see. The data and performance of your content will provide valuable evidence on the actual content your readership wants. You may not like the answer. However, the alternative is to keep pushing the content you want them to read – you could then end up with nobody reading it. The whole idea behind content marketing is to gain an audience and keep their attention through engaging and educational content. Making mistakes such as blatant self-promotion and egocentric articles will probably hurt you more than it will help.

If you’re a content producer, take time to analyze the performance of your published pieces. Which articles are your readers responding to? Which content are they ignoring? If your goal is to increase your businesses’ exposure and connect with your audience, all of your content questions will be answered with such a content analysis. Don’t discount it, trust it. It’s telling you what types of content you should be writing. And you should be listening to it.

Yes, there’s a place for articles and announcements about your company’s products, services, new features or other company related news… but that place is not on your blog. Separate blog articles from news articles into their own dedicated areas on your website. People that come to your website to see what’s new with your company will naturally gravitate towards that area. If your news is buried amongst a bunch of blog articles, however, they may never read it. The opposite also holds true. Readers who are coming to find tips, topical or educational articles, won’t necessarily want to see news articles.
 

Use analytical data to tailor content to your audience and you will find that it is better received, that it produces better results and that it gets more exposure with your desired audience.

The quick answer to the question is not so much anymore. These days press releases are branding, validation, and credibility tools for companies, not SEO tools.  Quite simply it means PR firms are shifting the focus of how they utilize press releases for their clients.

Companies have been utilizing press releases for over 100 years.  Initially a press release was a way to get information to the news media.  They were rarely seen by the public and were not created to be an advertisement. The point was to get the media’s attention about a story or news worthy event gets them to write about it. To accomplish this, organizations had to write a release that had real news value.

The Internet, along with media channels, blogs and social networks, has changed the press release landscape.  Company branding, pushing content, infographics and press releases became a tool in the SEO arsenal. This shift led to a glut of releases that were no longer “real news,” but promotional content stuffed with keywords and hyperlinks to affiliated sites and networks designed to ‘game the system’ and put the content on page one of the search engines.

Google, the appointed keeper and indexer of web content had enough, and listed press releases as a link scheme, stating that a release is basically an advertisement.

As a PR specialist, it’s my job to keep up with the latest advice and best practices in order to optimize the value I can offer. While I’m certainly no SEO expert myself, I have assembled some best practices from SEO experts that I thought would be useful.

Here are a few tips that should help increase the effective reach and value of your press releases:

1. Use reputable press release distribution sites – When Google rolled out Panda, press release sites took a hit -- and none were hit harder than the many free press release sites in existence. The simple fact that they are free lead many companies to distribute press releases as an SEO strategy. The practice was to fill these releases with tons of backlinks to their websites, hoping for increased traffic. In the past this worked, but not anymore. While the new algorithm also hit reputable sites such as PR Newswire, they weren’t hit as hard. These sites also immediately worked with Google and revised site policies to prevent further damage. While free press release sites are tempting, I’d advise not to use them for distribution. Google has labeled many of them as spam. If you have a good news release that is worth getting out, spend the money and distribute it through a reputable site such as BusinessWire, PRNewswire or Marketwire.
    
2. Don’t rely solely on a newswire -- build your contact list – Public relations is by its very nature a relations business. There is so much news out there that if you just send it out on a newswire, unless it is very big news, the chances of it actually appearing in your target publications are really quite small.I was recently at a press conference at NADA with literally no one in attendance. A very green new PR person had spent about $1,200 to send out the press conference announcement on PR Newswire. But she had no one turn up at the press conference – why? At a very hot news time such as NADA, it can be very hard to get eyeballs on a newswire release, especially if it is not from a company that is known to the editors and reporters. It is therefore important to establish contacts with the editors of the key publications in your industry. Talk to them.Stay in regular contact with them so you know the type of news they are looking for. Send them your press releases with a personal note. And, if appropriate, follow up with a phone call. Also, editors can frequently change at publications, so make sure your list is up to date.
    
3. How many links can you put in a press release before triggering the “link police?”  One of the primary reasons that press release sites were penalized was that people were using them inappropriately. The general rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t include more than 2-3 links for every 500 words of text.
   
   Google does not give credit for links created by press release authors. Their algorithm is based on third-party endorsement links, what they call editorial links. Earned media had always been regarded as more valuable than owned or paid, precisely because it is third-party endorsement from a source that has no vested interest.
   
   Google only penalizes links that are there for the express purpose of juicing up the SEO values.  Write press releases with links that lead naturally to other content, making it beneficial to the reader– be it the public or the media.  Work with your IT team and learn what a “no-follow” link is.  Make all links in your releases no-follow to avoid being penalized by Google. PRNewswire already automatically tags all links in press releases with these tags. So, if you’re unclear on how to do this, you might consider using them. These links should be different and relevant. If you’re going to include multiple links, it’s acceptable to include one to your home page. But, if you are going to include more, make sure they are to relevant pages within your site, rather than to your home page. Ensure that any anchor text contains the keywords you are targeting in your release. And that the primary keyword target in your anchor text is the first link, as it carries the most weight.
   
   According to Google, “The best way to get other sites to create high-quality, relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can naturally gain popularity in the Internet community. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.”
    
4. Be newsworthy – Too many press releases are self-promotional and aren’t really newsworthy. Don’t use press releases simply to say “something,” if what you are saying has no value and would be of no interest to your audience. And please, please, please don’t send out your sales and marketing materials as a press release. By avoiding flooding the Internet with irrelevant press releases, chances are your target audience will pay more attention when they see your release. Post too many that are not newsworthy and you may cause a journalist or industry site to ignore future releases under the assumption they are simply self-promotional pieces.
    
5. Format your releases correctly – According to PRNewsOnline, press releases should have catchy headlines that are under 22 characters and should contain 2-3 of your targeted keywords in the headline, subhead and first paragraph. They should be no more than about 750 words long. It is also a good practice to include your company’s logo in every release, as well as rich media such as pictures and video.
    
6. Don’t post them on your website – This one was a surprise to me but it is good to keep in mind and makes sense -- SEO authority Kissmetrics advises that businesses not post their press releases on their own websites. They explain that this action “denigrate(s) your content authenticity and page-score ranking with Google and other search engines.” They do, however, offer a solution and advise that businesses “write a unique teaser paragraph or two, then link out to the release on the host site that distributed it or one of the major media outlets that picked it up.”

Is there such a thing as a well optimized press release? Yes, but proceed with caution. An optimized release needs to be relevant, speak in a natural voice and avoid the keyword stuffing that triggers the Google red flags.   Maintain editorial integrity, keep content newsworthy, craft a headline with your targeted audience in mind, and put key phrases in the first paragraph, so they will be indexed properly. 

Press releases are still a very valuable way for businesses to gain brand exposure and share relevant company information with their target audiences. However, due to the changes in search engine algorithms, you should no longer think of press releases as a form of SEO, but rather as a means of sharing company news. When press releases are picked up by industry news sites and publications, those mentions, re-publications, links and citations do help your website and company through increased exposure.

While there are certainly more intricacies involved when it comes to the SEO value of press releases, I hope that abiding by these 6 tips helps you accomplish the main goal of all press releases – namely getting your message out to the people that need to hear it.

The quick answer to the question is not so much anymore. These days press releases are branding, validation, and credibility tools for companies, not SEO tools.  Quite simply it means PR firms are shifting the focus of how they utilize press releases for their clients.

Companies have been utilizing press releases for over 100 years.  Initially a press release was a way to get information to the news media.  They were rarely seen by the public and were not created to be an advertisement. The point was to get the media’s attention about a story or news worthy event gets them to write about it. To accomplish this, organizations had to write a release that had real news value.

The Internet, along with media channels, blogs and social networks, has changed the press release landscape.  Company branding, pushing content, infographics and press releases became a tool in the SEO arsenal. This shift led to a glut of releases that were no longer “real news,” but promotional content stuffed with keywords and hyperlinks to affiliated sites and networks designed to ‘game the system’ and put the content on page one of the search engines.

Google, the appointed keeper and indexer of web content had enough, and listed press releases as a link scheme, stating that a release is basically an advertisement.

As a PR specialist, it’s my job to keep up with the latest advice and best practices in order to optimize the value I can offer. While I’m certainly no SEO expert myself, I have assembled some best practices from SEO experts that I thought would be useful.

Here are a few tips that should help increase the effective reach and value of your press releases:

1. Use reputable press release distribution sites – When Google rolled out Panda, press release sites took a hit -- and none were hit harder than the many free press release sites in existence. The simple fact that they are free lead many companies to distribute press releases as an SEO strategy. The practice was to fill these releases with tons of backlinks to their websites, hoping for increased traffic. In the past this worked, but not anymore. While the new algorithm also hit reputable sites such as PR Newswire, they weren’t hit as hard. These sites also immediately worked with Google and revised site policies to prevent further damage. While free press release sites are tempting, I’d advise not to use them for distribution. Google has labeled many of them as spam. If you have a good news release that is worth getting out, spend the money and distribute it through a reputable site such as BusinessWire, PRNewswire or Marketwire.
    
2. Don’t rely solely on a newswire -- build your contact list – Public relations is by its very nature a relations business. There is so much news out there that if you just send it out on a newswire, unless it is very big news, the chances of it actually appearing in your target publications are really quite small.I was recently at a press conference at NADA with literally no one in attendance. A very green new PR person had spent about $1,200 to send out the press conference announcement on PR Newswire. But she had no one turn up at the press conference – why? At a very hot news time such as NADA, it can be very hard to get eyeballs on a newswire release, especially if it is not from a company that is known to the editors and reporters. It is therefore important to establish contacts with the editors of the key publications in your industry. Talk to them.Stay in regular contact with them so you know the type of news they are looking for. Send them your press releases with a personal note. And, if appropriate, follow up with a phone call. Also, editors can frequently change at publications, so make sure your list is up to date.
    
3. How many links can you put in a press release before triggering the “link police?”  One of the primary reasons that press release sites were penalized was that people were using them inappropriately. The general rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t include more than 2-3 links for every 500 words of text.
   
   Google does not give credit for links created by press release authors. Their algorithm is based on third-party endorsement links, what they call editorial links. Earned media had always been regarded as more valuable than owned or paid, precisely because it is third-party endorsement from a source that has no vested interest.
   
   Google only penalizes links that are there for the express purpose of juicing up the SEO values.  Write press releases with links that lead naturally to other content, making it beneficial to the reader– be it the public or the media.  Work with your IT team and learn what a “no-follow” link is.  Make all links in your releases no-follow to avoid being penalized by Google. PRNewswire already automatically tags all links in press releases with these tags. So, if you’re unclear on how to do this, you might consider using them. These links should be different and relevant. If you’re going to include multiple links, it’s acceptable to include one to your home page. But, if you are going to include more, make sure they are to relevant pages within your site, rather than to your home page. Ensure that any anchor text contains the keywords you are targeting in your release. And that the primary keyword target in your anchor text is the first link, as it carries the most weight.
   
   According to Google, “The best way to get other sites to create high-quality, relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can naturally gain popularity in the Internet community. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.”
    
4. Be newsworthy – Too many press releases are self-promotional and aren’t really newsworthy. Don’t use press releases simply to say “something,” if what you are saying has no value and would be of no interest to your audience. And please, please, please don’t send out your sales and marketing materials as a press release. By avoiding flooding the Internet with irrelevant press releases, chances are your target audience will pay more attention when they see your release. Post too many that are not newsworthy and you may cause a journalist or industry site to ignore future releases under the assumption they are simply self-promotional pieces.
    
5. Format your releases correctly – According to PRNewsOnline, press releases should have catchy headlines that are under 22 characters and should contain 2-3 of your targeted keywords in the headline, subhead and first paragraph. They should be no more than about 750 words long. It is also a good practice to include your company’s logo in every release, as well as rich media such as pictures and video.
    
6. Don’t post them on your website – This one was a surprise to me but it is good to keep in mind and makes sense -- SEO authority Kissmetrics advises that businesses not post their press releases on their own websites. They explain that this action “denigrate(s) your content authenticity and page-score ranking with Google and other search engines.” They do, however, offer a solution and advise that businesses “write a unique teaser paragraph or two, then link out to the release on the host site that distributed it or one of the major media outlets that picked it up.”

Is there such a thing as a well optimized press release? Yes, but proceed with caution. An optimized release needs to be relevant, speak in a natural voice and avoid the keyword stuffing that triggers the Google red flags.   Maintain editorial integrity, keep content newsworthy, craft a headline with your targeted audience in mind, and put key phrases in the first paragraph, so they will be indexed properly. 

Press releases are still a very valuable way for businesses to gain brand exposure and share relevant company information with their target audiences. However, due to the changes in search engine algorithms, you should no longer think of press releases as a form of SEO, but rather as a means of sharing company news. When press releases are picked up by industry news sites and publications, those mentions, re-publications, links and citations do help your website and company through increased exposure.

While there are certainly more intricacies involved when it comes to the SEO value of press releases, I hope that abiding by these 6 tips helps you accomplish the main goal of all press releases – namely getting your message out to the people that need to hear it.

If you’re in business, I’m sure you’ve been introduced to the concept of content marketing. Experts have advised businesses to produce content for quite some time now for search engine optimization, branding, lead generation and engagement, to name just a few of the many reasons.

Content marketing can be powerful, if done properly. It is more than simply broadcasting content. You may achieve some SEO benefits without a strategy, but that’s about it. Each piece of content should support your company’s message, but also help drive interest in your product or service. Without a proper strategy in place, you’re probably underachieving.

In a proper content marketing strategy, integration and support are the key ingredients. This strategy requires a meeting of the minds on a regular basis. It should include your marketing department, PR department, any content production team, as well as key management.  I find including key management to be invaluable for drawing out ideas and developments that should perhaps be better known. And having the entire team as part of the meeting tends to produce much better results as far as ideas that really work. Topics of discussion should be centered on the following:

• How the company should be branded
• The launch of any new products or services
• Any product updates that can be announced
• Any messages or content that supports overall marketing positioning
• Any news that should be disseminated – big new clients, company growth, new hires of note, company awards, etc.
• Any customer case studies that could be developed
• Any trade shows coming up that need a content strategy plan to increase booth visits
• Any white papers that can help explain, forward a particular message
• Article and blog topics

Content marketing includes marketing collateral, case studies, white papers, press releases, social media, blog articles and articles for trade magazines. It encompasses any conferences your company will be involved in, as well as product and service offerings now, and in the near future.

This is how a comprehensive content marketing strategy looks:

• Marketing – This content is your sales content. This type of content is your direct call-to-action and awareness, designed to generate interest and gain exposure for your product or service. It includes website content and marketing collateral/sales support materials.
• Press Releases – These are designed to spread the news and generate excitement and interest in a product, service or the company itself. They are tailored to attract media attention and reach industry influencers and your customers. They can also be used to better explain your competitive advantages and what it is that you do. In addition, they serve to keep you top of mind with editors and writers for any stories they may be developing.

• Blog articles – These are designed to be a soft-sell to your audience through education. They also help company executives gain visibility by becoming industry thought leaders and educators. These should not be pitchy but should support your company’s message.  The better ones can also start conversations on topics and engage your audience.

• Social media – Your social media properties should be used to push a variety of content that supports your message. Be sure to tailor your message to what your audience likes and don’t just sit there passively watching -- use your presence and interact with your followers. Social media allows your company to have a virtual personality and gives prospects an opportunity to get to know your company. Social media can also be used to create hyper-targeted ads that can generate awareness, branding or leads.

There are many articles out there on topics such as “Easy Ways to Generate Blog Ideas,” or “How to Get Engagement on Social Media.” While many have some great best practice tips and can be useful, content marketing works best with a fully integrated approach with all of the pieces in place. Develop a strategy. Include everyone. And execute on that strategy. With each piece of the puzzle in place working together, it should leads to more success while expending less effort.

If you’re in business, I’m sure you’ve been introduced to the concept of content marketing. Experts have advised businesses to produce content for quite some time now for search engine optimization, branding, lead generation and engagement, to name just a few of the many reasons.

Content marketing can be powerful, if done properly. It is more than simply broadcasting content. You may achieve some SEO benefits without a strategy, but that’s about it. Each piece of content should support your company’s message, but also help drive interest in your product or service. Without a proper strategy in place, you’re probably underachieving.

In a proper content marketing strategy, integration and support are the key ingredients. This strategy requires a meeting of the minds on a regular basis. It should include your marketing department, PR department, any content production team, as well as key management.  I find including key management to be invaluable for drawing out ideas and developments that should perhaps be better known. And having the entire team as part of the meeting tends to produce much better results as far as ideas that really work. Topics of discussion should be centered on the following:

• How the company should be branded
• The launch of any new products or services
• Any product updates that can be announced
• Any messages or content that supports overall marketing positioning
• Any news that should be disseminated – big new clients, company growth, new hires of note, company awards, etc.
• Any customer case studies that could be developed
• Any trade shows coming up that need a content strategy plan to increase booth visits
• Any white papers that can help explain, forward a particular message
• Article and blog topics

Content marketing includes marketing collateral, case studies, white papers, press releases, social media, blog articles and articles for trade magazines. It encompasses any conferences your company will be involved in, as well as product and service offerings now, and in the near future.

This is how a comprehensive content marketing strategy looks:

• Marketing – This content is your sales content. This type of content is your direct call-to-action and awareness, designed to generate interest and gain exposure for your product or service. It includes website content and marketing collateral/sales support materials.
• Press Releases – These are designed to spread the news and generate excitement and interest in a product, service or the company itself. They are tailored to attract media attention and reach industry influencers and your customers. They can also be used to better explain your competitive advantages and what it is that you do. In addition, they serve to keep you top of mind with editors and writers for any stories they may be developing.

• Blog articles – These are designed to be a soft-sell to your audience through education. They also help company executives gain visibility by becoming industry thought leaders and educators. These should not be pitchy but should support your company’s message.  The better ones can also start conversations on topics and engage your audience.

• Social media – Your social media properties should be used to push a variety of content that supports your message. Be sure to tailor your message to what your audience likes and don’t just sit there passively watching -- use your presence and interact with your followers. Social media allows your company to have a virtual personality and gives prospects an opportunity to get to know your company. Social media can also be used to create hyper-targeted ads that can generate awareness, branding or leads.

There are many articles out there on topics such as “Easy Ways to Generate Blog Ideas,” or “How to Get Engagement on Social Media.” While many have some great best practice tips and can be useful, content marketing works best with a fully integrated approach with all of the pieces in place. Develop a strategy. Include everyone. And execute on that strategy. With each piece of the puzzle in place working together, it should leads to more success while expending less effort.

Part of the allure of social media is seeing all of the fun and creative content that your friends have discovered and shared. For brands, it’s a never-ending process concocting that perfect content that engages consumers while delivering a brand message. There are many brands, communities and media pages on Facebook – all vying for your attention. However, the last competitor that you’d expect to join the race would be a police department.

Most police departments have numerous activities they participate in as part of a community outreach effort. Police departments are not, however, typically known for having engaging Facebook pages. That’s not the case in Kentucky.

Due to some particularly cold weather, a police department in Kentucky decided to combine humor and the uber-popular ice queen from the Disney movie, Frozen, to have a little fun. Simply put, they blamed Elsa for the weather and proceeded to issue an arrest warrant for her -- posting the announcement on both their Facebook page and Twitter account:

A brief glance at their Facebook page shows engagement for their other posts to date far below normal – they tend to range in the 1 percent for posts. As you can see, as of 3/24, this post has received 10,500 likes, 1,218 comments and a whopping 17,524 shares. Seems as if a sense of humor combined with a little Disney magic worked well for them.

About a week later, a police department in Hanahan, South Carolina took this to the next level when they actually apprehended and arrested the fugitive ice queen after being spotted freezing a fountain outside their City Hall. Elsa was presented before a judge,  but was released for lack of evidence after the fountain thawed out.

At least one other police department in Kansas has followed the lead of the previous two.

This just goes to show that you don’t have to be a sexy brand with tons of devoted fans to engage with your audience. I’m fairly certain that the success of this content exceeded the wildest expectations of any of the police departments involved. Brands will ultimately find that with a little creativity and thought, they don’t have to have large budgets or big ad agencies creating campaigns. All they need is to have a little fun.

Part of the allure of social media is seeing all of the fun and creative content that your friends have discovered and shared. For brands, it’s a never-ending process concocting that perfect content that engages consumers while delivering a brand message. There are many brands, communities and media pages on Facebook – all vying for your attention. However, the last competitor that you’d expect to join the race would be a police department.

Most police departments have numerous activities they participate in as part of a community outreach effort. Police departments are not, however, typically known for having engaging Facebook pages. That’s not the case in Kentucky.

Due to some particularly cold weather, a police department in Kentucky decided to combine humor and the uber-popular ice queen from the Disney movie, Frozen, to have a little fun. Simply put, they blamed Elsa for the weather and proceeded to issue an arrest warrant for her -- posting the announcement on both their Facebook page and Twitter account:

A brief glance at their Facebook page shows engagement for their other posts to date far below normal – they tend to range in the 1 percent for posts. As you can see, as of 3/24, this post has received 10,500 likes, 1,218 comments and a whopping 17,524 shares. Seems as if a sense of humor combined with a little Disney magic worked well for them.

About a week later, a police department in Hanahan, South Carolina took this to the next level when they actually apprehended and arrested the fugitive ice queen after being spotted freezing a fountain outside their City Hall. Elsa was presented before a judge,  but was released for lack of evidence after the fountain thawed out.

At least one other police department in Kansas has followed the lead of the previous two.

This just goes to show that you don’t have to be a sexy brand with tons of devoted fans to engage with your audience. I’m fairly certain that the success of this content exceeded the wildest expectations of any of the police departments involved. Brands will ultimately find that with a little creativity and thought, they don’t have to have large budgets or big ad agencies creating campaigns. All they need is to have a little fun.

It seems as if every big event nowadays is live tweeted by brands seeking to gain free marketing on the back of these popular events. This last Super Bowl saw brands literally setting up war rooms filled with social media professionals, graphic designers and even lawyers, simply to post content in reaction to real-time events. For most events targeted by brands in this fashion, guerrilla-style social media marketing is more than likely less expensive than a 30-second TV commercial. And, if the team is creative enough, it could have more reach.

Oreo has won wide-spread infamy for starting this trend with its creative response to the Super Bowl blackout that occurred 2 years ago. It featured a cameo by Audi crashing the Mercedes-Benz Superdome’s big day.

Many brands are now trying to one-up the other and gain exposure by spending money on live social media activities, rather than ponying up for traditional advertising (thus the term “guerrilla” social media).

This trend has caused social media platforms to make it even easier for their advertisers to utilize these platforms to insert themselves into conversations happening around real-time events. Twitter advertisers have long had the ability to target events through phrases and hashtags. Now Facebook is joining the party with the recent rollout of a new feature allowing brands to pay to promote ads specifically tied to real-time events. While this is certainly a great new revenue stream for the social media platforms, users need to ensure they use it correctly

At least two brands recently experienced severe mess ups in their social media marketing efforts. One brand – Totino’s -- makers of pizza rolls – decided to get into the “live-tweeting” game during the Super Bowl, but it was very poorly executed. Apparently, someone on their social media team scheduled tweets so that it appeared they were live tweeting when, in fact, they were just pre-scheduled posts. The problem was that they were actually scheduled to be sent the day before the Super Bowl, assumedly by mistake.

Another recent social media faux-pas was Coca-Cola’s automated tweeting campaign which encouraged tweeters to find negative tweets and retweet them with the hashtag #MakeItHappy. Coca-Cola’s Twitter account was set to transform the tweets into pretty text art. The problem was that someone realized it was automated and tricked Coca-Cola’s Twitter account into tweeting out passages from Mein Kampf. Of course, Coca-Cola had to shut down that campaign.

While brands are experimenting with increased social media content marketing, attempting to engage their audience through real-time interactions, automated campaigns or scheduled posts, they are also experiencing the growing pains associated with this. Mistakes are being made and companies are experiencing the type of exposure that they don’t wish to create – negative.

Social media is all about human interactions. Fans of brands who engage them imagine a real person sitting behind a desk (or at the event) interacting with them. If they figure out that is not the case (which they will), those brands will accomplish the exact opposite of what they set out to do. Instead of joining the conversation, they will find they are escorted out of the party. Large-scale social media campaigns such as real-time live tweeting are hard work and can be fragile endeavors. Brands who can pull it off can win the day. But it only takes one slip to ruin the whole adventure for the brand.

Take care when deciding to embark on these types of voyages as, at least from a public relations perspective, it only takes one distraction to sink the whole ship.