I’m looking for a freelance PR person or small PR company to help to spread the word about the services we provide, the results we achieve and the good we can do.

What I DO want:

• someone who can write press releases, and will only do so when there’s a story / angle, no matter what I think
• someone with good relationships with journalists who will write good things about the Internet Marketing industry
• someone who can get me interviews with relevant publications, on and offline
• someone who can ensure that when an ‘Internet Marketing Expert’ is quote, that ‘expert’ is me
• someone who can be as passionate about the NikkiPilkington.com name as I am, and spot opportunities I may not see

What I don’t want:

• press releases that have no angle or story
• online press release submissions with no follow up / reasoning
• someone to send out random spam emails to publications on my behalf

A few things to consider:

• I live my life by email and instant message, so you need to communicate with me in this way – I’m not a phone person
• I don’t want to have to chase you up for every little thing, I need to know what is going on at all times
• I’m not buying purely on price
• I don’t care if you’ve not worked for a company similar to mine before, I do care that you show that you understand what I want and can tell me how you’re going to achieve it
• I want an open and honest billing structure, with details of what I’ll get for my money, and how you intend to report those things back to me

If you think you’d like to be a part of this ‘project’ (which I am sure will change and become bigger as we get to know eachother more), and can bring a few ideas of your own to the table then please feel free to drop me a line to nikki@nikkipilkington.com. (And of course, please email me if you have any questions)

BE AWARE: I will not take phone calls on this matter – whether to ask initial questions, or to follow up proposals. Everyone who submits a proposal will get a reply and will be considered. It’s up to you how detailed or short you make your proposal; just make it stand out!

Also please know that this process could take a couple of weeks due to other things going on in my life right now – I won’t be making an instant decision, but neither will I waste anyone’s time.

EDITED TO ADD:

This page has had a fair bit of interest, and a few responses – I just want to clarify a few things:

• When I said no phone calls, I really did mean it ….
• That includes emails saying ‘give me a call today and we’ll chat’
• If you want to come and ’see me in my office’ you haven’t done your research
• Those telling me that they can help ‘get my name out on the internet’ – you haven’t done yours either
• I’m not looking for SEO or Social Media help (sensing a theme here?)
  
• If you’ve sent me a price, and not asked any question or shown that you know anything about me, then I’m probably not going to be interested
• Much as I appreciate barter offers, I want to pay someone cold hard cash for this, so there are no grey areas. If you wnt to return that cash to me for my services, that’s up to you!

I’m not asking for all your ideas, which I will then steal and take to the lowest bidder, I’m asking for someone who can show that they know who I am, what I want, and can come up with some thoughts of their own.

I’m easy to find out about – even my mum knows what I’m up to through the powers of Facebook, Google and Twitter!

To find out more, I turned to one of my favourite sources of news, Mashable - who seem to be saying that it’s not so much the app itself that has a virus, but the emails and sites claiming to be able to fix it. Confused yet?

All I know is that until I removed the app, de-fanned it and detagged myself from all photos I was in, my Facebook friends feed was back to normal. Prior to that it was only showing old updates, and people were in the wrong categories.

So, I would suggest that if your feed is going screwy, you:

• Block the Facebook Fan Check application – you should be able to find it by searching for ‘fan check’ in the search box on your profile (or use this link http://www.facebook.com/fancheck?v=feed&story_fbid=231758205581&ref=mf )
• Remove yourself from the page’s fans list
• Visit any pictures that have tagged you and detag yourself
• Log out of Facebook
• Log back in

This worked for us, and the handful of clients who have asked for our help.

So, does the Facebook Fan Check application contain a virus? I honestly don’t know – I can’t see that it would have been accepted by Facebook if it had, but I guess stranger things have happened. All I know is that it does seem to affect the feed of people using it (unless the timing is a massive coincidence!) and removing it fixes that problem.

I’ll err on the safe side and stay away from it

UPDATE: It appears that people who have had nothing to do with Fan Check have had Facebook feed problems too, so the plot thickens – I’m keeping it blocked though

UPDATE 2: Here’s Snopes’ take on it: http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2009/09/14/about-that-alleged-fan-check-application-virus-on-facebook.htm

This month our newsletter will focus on Google Adwords help, and our September special offer, which is a Google Adwords Healthcheck for just £40.

One of the things that we find a lot of when doing these healthchecks is that people are often getting thousnds of clicks on their ads per month, but no sales from their site. Obviously this could be for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons we come across a lot is that thy simply haven’t thought their keyphrases through properly, and haven’t made sure that they’re not getting clicks that were meant for some other product or service.

To illustrate this, Mike came up with 2 cartoons – and we love them. The first one is below, as although it makes me (Nikki) giggle every time I look at it, I have the feeling that some of our more staid readers may not like to see it in their inbox

We’ll probably go with the other cartoon (sign up to the newsletter if you want to see it!) but I think the above one does a great job of showing just one of the mistakes you could be making with Adwords – it might be worth having a Google Adwords healthcheck to find out if you’re making more!

Mike from Flantoons exceeeded our expectations again with this fab cartoon – we hope you like it as much as we did!

Today I’ll share with you my ‘newsletter signup strategy’.

I get about 20-30 newsletter signups per day. They all get a lovely little ‘thanks’ message from the Aweber system that I use, which is clearly automated. In 4 years or so of using Aweber, I’ve never yet had one person come back to one of those automated thank yous with a response.

So, over the last couple of months I’ve set aside a little time to email new subscribers and thank them for signing up. I also ask if there’s anything I can help with. It takes me little time (yes it’s a cut and paste email, but personalised with their name) and has proved well worth it.

In that time I’ve had about 30 emails back that have resulted in dialogue, 6 people asking for more info on specifics of my service, and 2 people have become clients. When I asked the clients what tipped it for them, both said that the fact I’d bothered to email them when they signed up to my newsletter led them to believe I was more interested in them, and led them to finding out more bout me rather than just waiting for my newsletter.

So, why not pay more attention to your newsletter subscribers? It only takes a little time, but you could be reaping the rewards.

It’s a short explanation of the features and benefits of Social Bookmarking sites like Delicious.com.

I used Freemind, which is .. er, free, so if you want the mindmap and don’t have software to read it, download it and you can!

The MM has the steps from the original checklist included, as well as a couple of miscellaneous ones that weren’t on the original. It also has links included where you see the red arrows.

If anyone wants to tidy it up and make it look better, I’m happy to cobrand it with them

Click here for the mindmap

What is a guest blogger / author?

This bit’s easy   A guest author is simply someone who writes a (guest) post on someone else’s blog. (You have to be invited or allowed to do this, you can’t just randomly start putting posts on other peoples blogs!)

Usually the blog will have some relation to your industry or speciality, but this isn’t necessarily always the case.

What is involved in being a guest author?

Usually you will have been invited to be a guest author, but it’s possible that you may have approached the blog owner and been accepted.

All that is expected of you is that you write a guest post that is suitable, informative and of interest to the usual readers of the blog.

It is a kind of unwritten rule that in return for the exposure and links back to your own site, you will point your own readers, contacts, twitter followers etc to the blog.

If I’m writing for someone else, what’s in it for them?

If you own a blog, having Guest authors can do wonders.  Having a guest author can:

• Relieve you from having to post all the time
• Bring in new readers
• Increase traffic
• Show a balanced/varied viewpoint
• Increase links in to your site as your guest authors promote their participation.

In short, it’s a great way to keep a blog interesting and bring in extra, targeted trafic.

(Plus, if your guest author has any degree of « fame » in their industry or speciality, your « kudos » increases by osmosis!)

OK, So what’s in it for me?

So, why would you want to write great content, only to give it away ?

Writing for someone elses blog can:

• Give you backlinks to your own site/blog – these will send you trafic as well as possibly enhancing any SEO you have in place.
• Generate new readers/subscribers for your own blog/site.
• Help to flesh cut your « circle of credibility » – it’s another place that people can see you talking knowledgeably about your speciality.
• Reach people you may not ordinarily reach.

In summary, guest authoring on a blog is A Good Thing To Do.

We’ll shortly be launching a new site aimed at helping guest bloggers find blogs that want them,  and people with blogs find guest authors to contribute  – if you’d like to know more about this when it is launched, drop me a line at nikki@nikkipilkington.com

THE PDF DOWNLOAD IS HERE

Please feel free to share this list, as long as you give it away for free and keep both mine and Chris’s details intact.

You can download the social-media-marketing-checklist if you’re impatient – the rather long blog post below simply explains my reasonings behind each item. (Please note, these are MY thoughts, not Chris’s, so we might not 100% agree on the whys, even if we agree on some of the whats…)

Daily Social Media Marketing Checklist

Twitter

1. Retweet 7 things – to my mind, retweeting is the life blood of Twitter, and sharing of information is key. But let’s not forget, retweeting someone’s tweets instils a sense of loyalty too, and they’re more likely to retweet your items in return. DON’T retweet willy nilly – before doing so think “Are my followers going to be interested in this?”
2. Reply to at least 5 people, with FULL replies – Twitter should be a 2 way thing – use it to build relationships, not as a broadcast medium. Don’t just reply with a ‘I agree’ or ‘Thanks’ – take the time to reply with a full message, a thought, a question.
3. Recommend 1 person you admire – bring their tweets to the attention of your followers – you’ve found your followers someone new to follow, and you never know, it might catch on and you’ll be the focus of the next recommendation. People like to be appreciated – if someone’s done something good for you, let the Twitterverse know!
4. Follow back at least 10 people - not following for the sake of following, but check out your new followers and see who’s worth following back. Chris and I both use an autofollow system (I cull the spammers, broadcasters and people of no interest to me regularly), but you could do this by hand if you have the time.
5. 10 minutes of polite chit chat goes far – it’s easy to ignore people who send you messages if you don’t know them, but spending a few minutes chatting might be the difference between them remembering and recommending you or just dumping you for being rude
6. Tweet 3 business related Tweets – these could be related to your industry, or links to your own blogs or products / services – people seeing your tweets will begin to align you with that industry in their mind. After all, a lot of us are using Twitter to promote our business.
7. Tweet 2 personally related Tweets – let people see the person behind the Twitter account. I’m not talking about ‘I had a cheese sandwich for lunch’, but the more people feel they know about you, the more they feel they’ve built up a relationship with you.
8. Ask at least one question that requires answers - asking questions and discussing the answers moves Twitter back into that 2 way medium, and who knows what nuggets of info you’ll find out? My favourite is to ask people what 3 words they think of when they see my name – the answers are illuminating (and sometimes a little bit odd!)

Facebook

1. Check in on Birthdays on the homepage - it takes 2 seconds to post a Happy Birthday message on someone’s wall, or drop them a Facebook message. Posting on someone’s wall means that all their friends get to see your message too. Chris recommends sending the Birthday Wishes by email for the surprise factor, which is also cool and maybe a little more personal!
2. Respond to any comments on your wall - it’s polite to respond to any comments on your wall, if they warrant a reply, so get into the habit of doing so before you forget!
3. Post at least one status message daily – keep people updated and keep you in their minds – don’t get over eager though and post all of your Twitter updates (including retweets and @ messages) into your Facebook status feed – it’s one of the quickest ways to find yourself ‘hidden’! Use the different parts of the status update – make a comment, share a video, share a link – promote conversation where possible!
4. Share at least 3 interesting updates you find - if someone posts an update you like, use the ’share’ button to post it to your profile – much like retweeting on Twitter it promotes the originator and allows you to share new things with your contacts.
5. Comment on at least 7 updates or status messages – it doesn’t take long to put a quick comment or ‘like’ on the status updates on your feed page – and people like to have comments; who knows, they may reciprocate Also remember that comments you post on people’s links or updates are available for all of their contacts to view.
6. Leave a message on 2 fan pages – spend a few seconds posting on a fan page – not only will you help the page out, you’ll reach people you’re not connected to
7. Leave a message on the walls of 2 people – not been in touch with someone for a while? A simple ‘hey, how are you doing’ message on their wall shows them you’re thinking of them and keeps you in touch without taking up loads of yours or their time.
8. Respond to event invitations – I respond to all event invitations by posting on their wall, whether I can attend or not. If I can’t I wish them well and apologise for not being able to make it. A link to my website mens they can find my details if they want to, and I’ve made many new contacts this way.
9. Recommend at least one person to your contacts – OK, you might not want to do this every day, but in the same way as you’d recommend someone on twitter, why not do the same on Facebook  you can do this in your status update and it doesn’t take long. I sometimes post details of pages I’ve become a fan of here.
10. Add at least one update to your group / fan page - I’m as guilty as anyone of not always doing this, but the worst thing you can do with a group / fan page / business page is leave it stagnant – update it daily even if you think no-one is reading!

LinkedIn

1. Accept any invitations it makes sense to accept – a minute or so each day accepting invitations means they don’t pile up and become unmanageable. If you don’t think it’s sensible to be connected, then by all means don’t accept.
2. Enter any business cards to invite them to LinkedIn – if you network offline it makes sense to connect to the people you’ve met on LinkedIn (and any other online networks they’re a part of)
3. Drop into Q&A and see if you can volunteer answers - showcase your expertise with a quick answer or two – I’ve gained business from this, and you neverknow what opportunities may arise.
4. Provide 1 recommendation every few days – if you’ve worked with someone or are happy to recommend them, then write an honest recommendation -  people like to be appreciated, and you’ll find that you get honest recommendations in return.
5. Update your status at least once a day – people seem to forget that there’s a status update facility on LinkedIn too, and it feeds into an ‘activity feed’ that is shown on your contacts’ LinkedIn home page.
6. Make at least one introduction - again this doesn’t need to be every day, but if you see someone needs or wants something and you know someone who can help – introduce them – it makes sense and makes all three of you happy!

Blogs

1. Reply to at least 5 comments on your blogs – if people have taken the time to comment on your blog, it’s polite to reply to at least a few of them where possible. It makes them more likely to reply again in future, and stimulates conversation on your blog.
2. Comment on a couple of your commentators’ blogs – follow the links your commentators leave, and have a quick read of their blogs. Repay their comments by leaving a few of your own. You get to make them happy and leave a link to your site. Win/win I say!
3. Stumble or Socially Bookmark your commenters’ blogs – if you like what they write, give them a bit of a traffic boost by Stumbling them – they might do the same for you.
4. Write the occasional blog post promoting another blog – not only is it an easy blog post to write, new content foryour blog / site, but it helps your readers find new blogs (so they love you) and the owner of the blog you’ve recommended will love you for ever more. (This may be a slight exaggeration).
5. Email a synopsis of recent posts at least once a month – I have to admit I’m a bit lax on this, but when I have done it regularly (to members of an opt in list of course) it has resulted inmore traffic, more comments, and ultimately more enquiries.
6. Find 2 new blogs to comment on every day – it’s easy to stick with the blogs you know, but new blogs are cropping up all the time – take a few minutes to find them and leave a couple of comments. You get to read new things, leave your ‘brand’ in new places, and help out a blog that might need comments.

Forums

I’ve generalised here as you could be a member of many forums, and they’re not all the same.

1. Reply to at least 2 threads every day – it’s easy to let your forums go when you’rebusy, but it really takes no time at all to scan through recent threads and drop in a couple of replies. You’re helping to keep the forum going, making sure people don’t forget about you, and people love people who reply to their threads.
2. Post one new thread – I admit this one sounds easier than it is, and it’s not great t post for posting’s sake – but if you have news, have read something in the news, or simply want to raise an issue, don’t wait for someone else to do it – start a thread yourself!
3. Make a point of thanking people who reply to you – a takes seconds to drop someone a line to say thanks – they’ll appreciate it more than you imagine.
4. Accept any connections that make sense – lots of forums allow you to ‘connect’ with other members – it’s worth accepting any connections that make sense to you, and maybe initiating a few too.
5. Recommend a member’s blog or website and say why – in the same way as you’d recommend someone on Twitter etc, a quick post saying why you like someone’s blog or website, especially if they’ve done work for you, goes a long way. Some forums have specific groups for this, so make sure you’re witin the rules. And granted, you wouldn’t do this every day, but there’s nothing to stop you from replying to someone’s posts on a thread with a quick ‘love your blog’ message.

I’ve left the Misc space for you to fill in yourselves – you’ll probably have your own ideas, and places that you go to that I haven’t mentioned, so feel free to mention anything you add in the comments below!

DID YOU MISS THE PDF CHECKLIST DOWNLOAD?

If you’ve read this far, award yourself a fun sized Mars Bar, and take with you my thanks

Also, a massive thank you to Chris Brogan for kicking me into finally putting this checklist together – it’s been on my to do list for months and without his blog post I wouldn’t have gotten around to it at all!

And don’t panic that all of the stuff on the checklist will take ages – you’ll soon have it down to the time it takes you to have a coffee and file your email on a morning!

But when I speak to people online, it amazes me how many of them think article marketing is a waste of time, isn’t for them, won’t do them any good, or simply haven’t heard of it!

I haven’t yet found a small business website that couldn’t be helped in some way with a targeted article marketing plan, so here’s my list of 5 ways that article marketing can work for you:

1) Article Marketing establishes you as An Expert. Writing knowledgeably about your services or industry shows that you know what you’re talking about, and encourages people to trust you.

2) Article Marketing spreads the word. By submitting your article to the best article websites, you can reach more readers and find people who wouldn’t normally have visited your website.

3) Article Marketing helps SEO – by including relevant and targeted links from your articles, you’re helping Google to not only find your site, but learn a little more how to categorise it. Anchor texted links from well thought of websites can help your SEO tenfold.

4) Article Marketing adds content to your website. Google loves content rich websites, and adding new pages gives you things to blog about, Tweet about and generally tell your contacts about.

5) Article Marketing gets you exposure. Journalists often refer to articles they have found online in order to find an expert for a comment or quote in articles they write.

There are many other reasons to carry out article marketing – see the following articles for more details:

• Become an Expert
• Top Ten Tips To Make Article Marketing Work for You

So if you’ve been thinking about Article Marketing, but not yet gotten around ot it, or you’re not sure it will work for you – give it a go!

If it’s submitting the articles in various places that’s wrrying you, check out our Article Marketing special offer - submission to the top 20 article websites, plus a whole lot more, for just £30!