The internet is much more than just a channel of communication. In the present scenario, the internet has become the fastest and most convenient way to communicate and to spread the message to the public in a cost effective model. Often called Interactive PR, Online PR or Digital PR, this process is helpful for companies of any size as it is a two-way communication that aims to build better relationships. When compared to the traditional PR, this method helps organizations build reliability with the target audience directly.

VSS data shows that PR spending in the US grew by more than 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion. Also PR spending in America is predicted to go beyond $8 billion in 2013 with increased usage of corporate blogs and social media.

The important components of Interactive PR include: distributing press releases online with relevant keywords and optimizing for search engine rankings, news wire services, defining a new blogging strategy to engage prospects and customers in conversation about the products or services, effective podcasting, organizing webinars, starting discussions and following up in forums, creating news and events page in the website to cover the old and latest information about the company.

There is a greater demand for Interactive PR services than in previous years and firms of all sizes are looking at the ways they communicate with their prospects and customers. There are companies that do not practice PR on its own and may request help or outsource their needs for Online PR activities. This way they can build an ongoing relationship with the public and the media in a very cost effective manner.

The following are some of the benefits associated with Social Media Marketing, which include: Building exposure to businesses, higher rankings in search engines, increased traffic, qualified leads, new business development and relatively low expenditures. The top social media tools used commonly by marketers are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs.

Most companies are still trying to find the best ways to make use of social media platforms to market their products or services. An Omniture survey indicated that only 14% of businesses use mobile, video and social media marketing as part of their marketing programs. Recently, a number of companies have been outsourcing their social media marketing to specialized digital marketing agencies. Currently, about 25% of companies are outsourcing their social media programs in order to increase ROI and increase sales.

Charts from a CMO survey show that there is an increase of 60% in the overall social media marketing spending from 3.5% (August ’09) to 5.6% (February ’10). There has been significant growth in the field of social media marketing with a gradual increase in the budget allocation in recent years.

Blueliner Marketingis a full service internet marketing agency based in New York with offices in India and Bangladesh. Blueliner help clients place their products and services in front of their target audience through various social media marketing efforts that drive results.

This form of marketing is often referred to as Content Marketing, which is defined as “words and data to create unambiguous content that support meaningful, interactive experiences”, is now evolving as a new discipline. In addition to all your traditional marketing techniques, this form of marketing uses content to achieve higher sales through profitable actions from the customer and prospect sides.

What it takes, is an effective content strategy. Content development, delivery and administration are the three major points that need to be kept in mind when you define content strategy for any marketing plan. Rachel Lovinger explains more about content marketing in her article, Content Strategy – The Philosophy of Data.

Effective content can be a combination of both verbal and visual information that will have a greater impact among your prospects. Define your content strategy in a manner that can be tracked and results are measured by easy methods which plays an important role when it comes to continuous refining and managing content for future.

There are a variety of vehicles marketers can use to deliver content to prospects which include print and online newsletters, webinars, podcasts, websites, microsites, video portals, mobile content, gaming sites, interactive online forms, email campaigns, blogs and social media. Of all, social media forms a major component of content strategy now and content marketing is replacing certain traditional marketing strategies to achieve results in a cost-effective manner.

Research and survey reports conducted by Junta42 show that now 33% of total marketing budgets are  allocated to content marketing and the main area of focus being mobile and social media. Companies of all size are now taking the help of digital marketing companies to fulfill their content marketing needs.

Blueliner Marketing offers specialized services to clients who need a partner to transform their marketing goals to profitable results. Blueliner creates and administers valuable content marketing strategies to meet client needs and deliver higher ROI.

Considered one of the longest campaigns in American history, beginning nearly two years prior to the election day. The 2008 race for the White House is crowded and full of interactive PR, social media, new internet marketing, new avenues of media revenue and voter attraction.

Diverging from previous campaigns where a candidate was considered progressive if they had an online presence, in 2008 it is imperative for a candidate to have a focused online strategy. If a candidate lacks complex online marketing strategies and an army of social networking minions applying web 2.0 efforts they are behind the curve and if they don’t have an online presence they might as well concede the race.

Largely pioneered by Howard Dean in 2004, the battle for voters online has become a hotly contested one. Each of the major Democratic and Republican candidates has established a web presence and has made it a vital part of their campaign, garnering record online contributions to their campaigns (Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Barak Obama, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney).

Primary results aside, Congressman Ron Paul is leading the charge in this web 2.0 world: in two months, a user video for Paul caught 16,000 views, making it the sixth most popular of 2007; he’s got a Twitter feed and a Justin.tv lifecast; 5,589 fans on Facebook; and a staff that makes a clutter-less or seizure free MySpace page. Yes, Ron Paul has it all 2.0 and it’s translating into dollars. On Guy Fawkes Day, he set a record for one-day fund raising by a Republican, gathering $4.2 million from online sources. Six weeks later he hit $6 million in one day.

If we look at the other side of the coin. The Democratic Senator Obama raised $6.9 million—more than a quarter of his total—over the Internet from more than 50,000 online donors, a base of supporters his campaign hopes to cultivate into regular givers. Obama is also setting records because the campaign contributions that he is receiving are coming from small donations online and adding up to big dollars. His campaign said 90 percent of the online contributions were for $100 or less. Not to mention the user generated “Obama Girl” and the viral support it generated for him. Remember the Sopranos video spoof Hillary posted on her site that went totally viral? Some might argue it was a first of its kind and that it is more valuable than bigger budget TV ad’s.

In what is shaping up to be a huge year for youth turn out, having a strong online presence is vital to reaching possible like minded individuals. Perhaps the electoral college is proving necessary after all. With it being harder to get the attention of everyone, the candidates are having to reach further into the web 2.0 fabric to garner support.

I’m sure that in this age of information the other candidates are learning from each others campaigns, and they are trying to get as much influence in as they can before the Nominations in late August and early September. Which will finally bring closure to a marathon run for election day.

Paul or Obama may go the way of Dean, but their efforts illustrate two things: creative and serious investments in social media sites get seen and these online forays into social networking can provide major returns. Marketing Companies, SEO specialists and eCommerce capitalists looking to cue into the same markets should take a strategic long look at the ways these candidates are implementing web analytics and social marketing to gather up the support it will take to bring their parties nominations and a hopeful new address at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.

Seductive yet etherial, the voice of the “blogosphere” has been credited with swaying elections, driving success, or slaughtering careers. It is the foundation for Interactive PR, the branch of internet marketing that generates buzz through online media; and it is often the sole source for information on the latest cutting edge technological innovations (the SEO convention in mid-December, 2007, was a good example…see “Blogs are the New Trade Press”).

Assessing one’s reputation in the blogosphere, therefore is as vital as evaluating traditional PR. But, reading one or two blog posts, even 10 or 20, cannot begin to touch the scope and dimension of the information available in the global blogosphere (think 750 million and you’re on the right track).

One solution to the overwhelming volume of blog information available has been to follow the immensely successful path of top tier search engines by using algorithms and web crawlers to find data on a specific subject and organize it in such a way that it produces meaningful statistics and information. RelevantNoise, from interactive software company Zeta Interactive, is one such program. In the words of Zeta Interactive CEO Al DiGuido, “What Google does for content…RelevantNoise does…for the blogosphere. It lets you understand what people are saying based on keywords to denote a tone.”

Like Google, RelevantNoise relies on mathematical algorithms and programming to evaluate the information available in the blogosphere, providing more weight to more popular blogs and eliminating “splogs” (blog entries posted with the sole purpose of generating link-backs to specific sites with little original or even intelligible content). Unlike Google, RelevantNoise evaluates the overall tone of the blog entries it indexes and can provide meaningful information based on that data. For example, according to RelevantNoise, blog posts on GOP presidential hopeful Huckabee spiked during the week he partnered with Chuck Norris for the presidential run, but the overall positive tone of blog posts on Huckabee decreased from 82% to 77% after that week. Also, unlike Google, RelevantNoise makes its profit from liscencing fees rather than advertising, so it is a tool targeted towards large corporations, rather than small start-ups or mid-sized companies.

For companies with time, rather than money, to spend, Google’s blog searcher is a solid alternative tool. Searches can be limited to specific time periods, an RSS feed indexing all blog entries on a specific search topic can be added to a user’s iGoogle, or a user can sign up for automatic email alerts, which will send in any blog entries that pop up related to a specific topic or idea.

Whether you choose to use a free tool, like Google’s Blog Search, or liscenced software, from RelevantNoise, the vitality and influence of trends in the world of blogs cannot be ignored.

NOTE: An amusing aside – for all that RelevantNoise depends on the power of the blogosphere for its business, the company’s own blog is sadly outdated. Do not underestimate the power of a constantly updated, well designed blog, or, on the flip side, the potential damage that an outdated blog can cause.

Special thanks to the article, “Chuck Norris increases Mike Huckabee’s blog traffic: Zeta Interactive” from DMNews.