Traditional public relations is represented by the human-half of the Centaur. Mental strategy is needed in standard PR campaigns to understand how the news supports industry trends and why it is important to the audience of specific publications.

Seeing an article on your company in the business journal, the local daily, or an industry trade journal will have a powerful impact on your customers. They will understand that your business has achieved newsworthy accomplishments and that your company‘s expert opinion is a valued contribution to industry news and trends. Unlike biased advertising, the third party validation received with traditional public relations translates into credibility and trust for your company.

Optimized public relations is aptly represented by the animal-half of the Centaur. In order for news to gain visibility on the Web, a release needs the horsepower of optimized keywords that are picked-up by search engines and RSS feeds. In this way, the release will appear in Google and Yahoo search results and often will be seen and shared by thousands online.

Unless you have a rare company that is totally promoted through business and personal referrals, your customers (and even the media) are going to evaluate your company, its news and business accomplishments via your web presence. Also, they will find it more difficult to locate your site online unless it appears in the first few pages of Google results.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch states that companies that understand the changes that have occurred in the media and communications industry, adapt their strategies accordingly, and embrace the new technologies will be the companies that succeed.

Today’s breed of public relations combines brain and brawn – the strategy of traditional PR with the power of optimized PR. These hybrid campaigns offer the capabilities required to promote your business to customers and reporters in the real world and on the Web.

Unlike most public relations people, I have a past life of doing Web development. Although I only developed sites for about a year, I learned first-hand the power of keywords, search and content. My experiences created a fascination within me for observing the intersection of SEO and PR.

When I returned to public relations work and observed the media shift online, I realized that I could bring my PR clients the highest value by clearly understanding how to customize PR plans for them that would provide a blend of traditional public relations along with optimized PR. I remember the excitement of learning that search engine tactics when properly appplied will make press releases appear in top Google News, AOL News and Yahoo! News search results for about a month! I have used these tactics to help clients gain customers, develop association to a national news stories, introduce new blogs into online communities and expand brand recognition. I love creating double wins for our clients … garnering traditional media exposure in print publications and then gaining more mileage from the same release by syndicating it for exposure online to their target audiences through pick-up by search engines and RSS feeds. Frankly, I relish the efficiency of it!

From my viewpoint, one of our most important jobs at Accolades is to understand the array of tools for wire distribution, web syndication, and search optimization – to know their advantages, limitations, and cost effectiveness.

In this way, our team can gain recognition for our clients and optimize the releases and articles that we create for them with key words that will improve their prospects for being found by the right people on the Web. As the Internet is becoming a key factor for most companies in gaining new business, the ability to improve the traffic to a client’s corporate site for conversion into leads (and ultimately sales) is crucial.