Now I understand that there are a ton of bloggers out there posting innocuous crappy content, but let’s keep this conversation in the mindset of business blogging.

First off – in business blogging you better be blogging about what you know about, or don’t even come to the party. Can we all agree on that?

The real conflict is in the need to “filter” employee blog content. Most companies should have a blogging policy about disclosure, offensive content and profanity to set the parameters for blogging under the corporate banner. Can we all agree on that?

Now the crux becomes letting go and not reviewing every post before it goes live out of fear of what employees are going to say. A company MUST embrace the fact that employees are humans, who operate on emotion and from time-to-time might post something that’s not totally in agreement with management.

In social media conversations, it is very apparent when someone’s content has been cleansed by “corporate message handlers”. How do we know this? The same way we know politicians are lying to us. It’s too crafted, there’s zero real emotion, no personal experience, no point of view that calls out a position on the topic matter that someone is willing to be accountable for.

So here’s my plea to businesses considering blogging – if you live in fear of what your employees might say – if your messaging is cleansed and reviewed by legal – then please, please, please don’t blog.

Read Wired’s recent article The See-Through CEO on Radical Transparency. Use that as a basis for considering if you want to enter the online conversation. If it freaks you out, go back to sending out press releases as your official means of communications.

Nothing like a hard deadline to drive a project through to completion. In our case, it’s a guest speaking appearance at the Public Relations Society of America tomorrow morning in Denver. It should be good fun watching my business partner stand in front of our PR friends and explain why his white paper, “Fire Your PR Firm“, is front and
center on our home page. Ironically, the paper was actually written in part to help PR practitioners. When you
peel back the controversial title, you’ll see it’s all good.

The very concept of writing and distributing a press release is to let the world know what you are doing, and more specifically to let the press know so they can tell the world.

With the explosion of news hubs such as Google News and Yahoo! News most people looking to find, or reference, timely information on a specific topic will first conduct an online search and seek results from the news hubs.

For the press its better defined: 98 percent go online daily, 92 percent for article research, 81 percent for search, 72 percent to find new expert sources and 73 percent for press releases.

The idea behind the creation of these news hubs is to provide the most current and relevant information on a specific subject or keyword. Being current is a pivotal algorithm to these hubs. Normally it takes a search engine up to 30 days to index new page content, with the news hubs, it’s available the same day. Therefore the importance of posting and releasing news on a frequent basis becomes critical to an organization’s ability to maintain its leadership as a known and current subject matter expert.

7 Tips for Writing a Search Engine Optimized Press Release:

1. Determine a keyword phrase that relates to your product or service that people actually search for. For instance you may be offering mentoring services for teens, but find that most people originate their search with “teen in crises”. Research keywords yourself with NicheBot.
2. Create a headline to include the top two, possibly three, search terms.
3. Expand on keywords in the subhead, first paragraph and outline of the document. Target to repeat the top keywords at least three times outside of the main headline.
4. Write relevant copy to align with your keyword selection. If you can’t do this then you are off message with your target audience. They are not going to be picking up what you are laying down.
5. Clearly call out a link “http://www.checkthisout.com” to your web site within the text of the release.
6. Use generic descriptions of you product or service in place of, or in association with the proper product name. For instance use “homeland security software” in association with, or in place of, HomeSECURE.
7. Distribute the release, RSS the content and have it syndicated to news. We actually offer RSS content syndication services, and you can view the full syndication program at our website.

The Benefits of a Search Engine Optimized Release Include:

• Increases search engine exposure in the News sections and natural search results driving traffic to your site.
• In bound links to your web site from high page rank sites such as PR Newswire and BusinessWire and Google will increase your site ranking.
• Syndication through RSS will spread your message virally to those interested in the topic.