"Will it blend?" : Online PR case Study

If you watch YouTube, you may have seen the video of a middle aged American promoting a blender from Blendtech. In case you hav'nt seen it...

This video has been seen 1.8 million times and was one the great 'memes' of the internet back in July 07. This Google trends graph shows how the phrase 'will it blend' has suddenly got popular.

Wikipedia does not actually have a page for 'online PR ' - which is interesting. It seems to lump it in with PR/Public relaitons, which I think is wrong.

Why? Because if the definition of PR is "a promotion intended to create goodwill for a person or institutions image.", then this wholly applies to search engine optimsation and promoting ideas and events to the myriad of internet properties out there. 

Read on for what you can do to be seen online...

Keyword competition

By working out how many sites are specifically targeting a search phrase, you can get some idea for how much work you have to do, in order to be seen on google search rankings and on the internet as a whole.

The idea is to find terms or ideas which are popular, but not competitive. Easier said than done of course.

The rest of the article gives you some tips on finding these subject areas.

One of the problems with movable type is finding good plugins.... so here is a good place to have a root around
http://mt-hacks.com/

I've been working on an enterprise level movabletype setup with a very good design company called studiolift. These were the plugins they used on a MT 3.4 install

I think online PR is as much about understanding the nature of the internet - the drivers that shape it. A core Driver is how humans have a need to share and find the truth on things that are important to them.

The Cluetrain Manifesto gives you a philosophical backdrop on this. It's like a business case. Its primary assertion is that markets are conversations. This simple principle is core to online PR and online marketing.

Instead of the usual PR blurb about sending out press releases and so on , I think its time to share a few secrets on how to get see on the internet. Whilst online PR sounds like traditional PR..its very different. In time to come I hope you find the ideas, insight and tips useful.