Morning folks!
For those who thought that I forgot about you and this blog - the answer is no! I am still here, it is just that something so unbelieveable happened to me these days, that I needed a couple of days to realise this was true and so now I am finally ready to share this with you. :)
Before I tell you what it was I have to start from the beginning. Long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...(should probably skip this part)...Maria (this is me in case you do not know) decided to start a blog. This blog. I have mentioned somewhere earlier why I did it and you can say I lack belief and confidence or whatever, but I have never expected it to become this successful, not at least within 3 weeks!With blogs I thought it takes a while for Google to index you, for Internet crawlers to notice you and for readers to start loving what you write. And it certainly does, but with me it all happened so quickly that I am still pleasantly shocked. :)
Here is what happened step-by-step.
1. Remember, my piece on Cision - huge media contacts' database and the best tool for every PR person? I wrote that post because I trully believed in the usefulness of this software and was absolutely amazed with what it offered. What happened within 3 days is that I started noticing unexpected amount of traffic coming to my blog. 'Woo-hoo! I blog like a pro' - that's the kind of though I had immediately. :) Not to say that I don't, but the fact is that Cision did make me a millioner, in digital sense.
2. It turned out that the company has recently introduced new software, called Content Marketing, and I was lucky enough to experience all the benefits of it for free.
[Just so you know, content marketing really is a big deal these days! According to one of the latest Econsultancy report, this is a key priority and, probably, the most significant digital trend for the following year. Thus, content marketing is a new king.]
So, what Cision has to offer in this context? Apparently, it it something even bigger than having all the media contacts in one place and send personalised press releases with one click. Again, the above mentioned Econsultancy not only names content marketing to be something all the marketers should keep their eye on, but distinguishes 'newsjacking' as a seperate valuable content marketing tool. Newsjacking means 'injecting your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business' (Scott, 2011). What Cision Content Marketing software does, it uses the term in a very straightforward way.
3. It literarly makes your news stories, press releases, blog posts appear in more than 60,000 key publishing websites (all over the world). Yes, we are talking The Times, CNN, Daily Mail and everything else you think is TOP. This is what happened to my blog post!!! Impressive, ha? Moreover, it really is different from simple advertising or paid content, because it does not look like a banner or cheap 'click on me' kind of thing. The stories look like part of the website content in a form of 'suggested news' or 'more related stories'.
4. What have all of this given me? Could I imagine being on Daily Mail or Mashable? No way, not at this point of my blogging life. I can go on about how I am deeply greatful to Cision for noticing my blog and how impressed I am with their new service, but let`s be more professional here. People who know staff about digital, marketing and PR should be able to see if the new Cision software works from the report I attach below.
I told you I was a millionaire! :)
For those who do not know:
Impressions: How many people/businesses have chosen to engage and go onto the page.
Clicks: How many people have clicked onto the article
Clicks: How many people have clicked onto the article
These are the sources that gave me traffic:
And finally, my weekly statistics (sociologists in me feels extremely happy about this):
As you can see, during the week with Cision Content Marketing I did not have less than 200.000 impressions daily.
Some concluding thoughts:
1. Yes, I am lucky.
2. Yes, I did earn my first million with Cision.
3. Again, I do not want to talk about the price, because I am not selling anything here but sharing the fantastic experience I had. I believe you can check the details and request other useful information here. The only thing I want to add in the end is that I see so many ways this new software can help PR practitioners. First of all, it is seems like an interesting facilitation for different campaigns, because it does give more distribution and raise awareness. On the other hand, (I do not really wish this to happen to anyone, but) imagine you have a disastrous campaign, your press releases just did not make it, no one wants to publish the story. No, it is not because you are bad, say, the client is weird and wants to make news form a story that has been already revelead years ago. Well, I can think of different reasons for the campaign to not be successful, and I am sure you can too. The fact is you should show the client what you have done, no matter what. I think that is a great solution to use your own blog or website to feature the story and than distribute it through Content Marketing to all the top news services. This is the 100% traffic-attraction effective tool.
Fuh, I feel so relieved, like I could not keep this information without sharing anymore! ;) So glad I did it!
I do hope you find this useful.
Sincerely yours,
M
