Live Blogging

Ways to Improve Blog or Site Outreach:

Guest virals = putting viral content on high profile sites on behalf on your brand and/or image. This is actually really easy to get big sites to host this (who wouldn’t want this kind of stuff) but ask for a link back to the client site – within embedded code


  • We’ve been successful with this on some of the biggest news sites on the web – they wouldn’t be interested in just a guest post (they have plenty of written content) but a well designed info graphic could work well.
  • Tip: reach out to people who have linked to / embedded / dugg etc your content and build a good relationship with them, these are invaluable for getting them to help you with follow up content
  • Track social success – analyze viral successes/failures to learn for the next time.

Having a pre-planned content strategy is very useful. Note: marketing messages don’t count! Think above and beyond and try and do engaging content above and beyond the norm.


    Align this with marketing calendars and PR initiatives
  • Find someone in your organisation that can speak like your customers do
  • Transparency. No-one wants to be a part of a community that’s not genuine. Allow feedback, talk/respond to people.
  • Monitor - Make a decision before you start on what you want to achieve Understand the correlation between activities and metrics Be wary of changing metrics halfway through a campaign – can cause issues (you end up changing your tactics) and also can alter transparency
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The UK Code of Non-Broadcast Advertising (CAP Code) means you can’t pose as non-client on social media sites


  • People think virals are excluded from this – they’re not! You have to disclose commercial intent from a legal standpoint
  • Example: Orlando Figues posted fake reviews on Amazon for his own academic books (he used his university name) – then got caught and tried to blame his wife!
  • The Proactive Approach is Best
  • have a plan, be ready with basic information and foress possible scenarios
  • saturate the search space for brand terms, products etc – so you are ready to capture people trying to find out more when a problem or opportunity happens suddenly
  • Be ready with draft PPC campaigns for unexpected / sudden events (eg ash cloud or others that can be predicted) – an airline should have a plan in place for what to do if a plane goes down, etc.
  • What assets do you have that you can take advantage of when
  • Think about what happens when people search for [your brand] + “bad service”
  • Example – Icelandic travel client of theirs is expecting a really good summer as a result of the focus on Iceland from the volcano – curious people!
  • A problem / threat is also an opportunity, look at what the opportunity could be from any threat
  • Re tools: Yahoo Analytics offers a lot more detail than Google Analytics in terms of who individual visitors are – worth sticking on your site as it’s free.