• Are you getting closer to your hot prospects by inviting them to submit guest posts?
• Are you maximising the power of influencers by filming and interviewing them for a storming guest vlog?
• Are you linking up with your peers by positioning your blog as a ‘sharing and learning’ platform for them to get involved?

At Quest we love to celebrate the expertise of guest bloggers such as Gini Dietrich, Mickie Kennedy and Jon Buscall.

It’s also fantastic to be invited to spark debates on your peers’ blogs and meet more great people.

So get your guest bloggers planned into your blogging and vlogging calendars and enjoy the ‘win-win’ of:

1. Giving them a great opportunity to boost their profile
2. Giving yourself an opportunity to show them how awesome (and fun) it is to work with you
3. Enhancing your relationships with clients, prospects, peers and influencers
4. Boosting your SEO
5. Watching your blog become a magnet for generating ‘buzz’
6. Giving yourself a breather from your calendar to keep creating great content

Before you take off down this route – here’s a couple of excellent tips on what to do before you invite your guests. As More Google Traffic says ensure your blog is worthy of your visitors by having a respectable ranking and that it well prepared for them by looking good.

After all you wouldn’t invite anyone to dinner without getting dressed, setting the table and getting the shopping in – would you?!

For more information on how Quest PR can help you to build your profile through the power of blogging contact Sharon Cain on sharon@quest-pr.com or through Twitter @sharoncain or on LinkedIn.

They’re proud to be opinionated, they aren’t constrained by the politics of the newsroom or by journalistic creeds, and there are millions of them with more popping up every day – they are bloggers, and reporters are increasingly seeking them out as sources on every topic imaginable. If you’re a PR pro and you don’t have a blog, you may be missing out on interviews with print and broadcast media.

Blogging acts as a complement to a traditional media relations campaign, allowing you to reach out and connect directly with customers, peers, and journalists. When you target a journalist, you’ll be a more attractive source if she can check your blog and see that you have an established following and an engaging style.

Your clients, too, need blogs—unless they want to be left behind as their competitors are discovered through search engines and social media. Nearly anything a client is promoting can be promoted through a blog. Keep the following three tips in mind, whether you’re blogging about your own work in PR or helping a client create a blog:

1. The best blogs are tightly focused. Just like you would when writing a press release, start by finding an interesting angle. Look for a niche that isn’t too crowded. You don’t want to spend weeks on a blog only to find that you’ve got no hope of making it into the first page of Google search results for your topic, thanks to hundreds of competing blogs that are older than yours and already have an active, engaged audience.
2. Err on the side of more honesty, not less. Don’t worry about turning readers off by admitting that the author of the organic cat care blog you’re promoting is your client, who sells organic cat litter. Blog readers want to hear from experts and they’re smart enough to differentiate between content and a sales pitch. Furthermore, if you want your blog to get noticed by the media, showcasing your client’s experience in the blog’s niche can only help you.
3. Be discoverable. So you wrote a brilliant post featuring 25 case studies of companies who are succeeding in social media. What good is it to you if a journalist researching a story on that subject can’t find your blog? Learn about basic SEO, participate in the blogging community by leaving substantive comments on similar blogs, maintain a responsive Twitter account, and use resources like HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to reach reporters directly.

This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, the online leader in affordable press release distribution. Download your free copy of 7 Cheap PR Tactics for Success in Any Economy.

• How much time are you investing in social media?
• Do you have a social media strategy – and if so, is it aligned with your business plan?
• Are you reaping the benefits of corporate blogging?

I was delighted to read that almost 70 per cent of businesses plan to increase their social media marketing drive and 74 per cent will give their e-mail marketing campaigns more ‘wellie’ this year.  With 89 per cent of journalists using blogs for research and more businesses attracting new customers from social media, the term ‘Return on Investment’ has been replaced with ‘Return on Engagement’ – because it’s critical that we engage with our target audiences.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be posting a series of hints and tips to give your social media journey a kickstart.

In the meantime, we suggest you ‘listen before you launch’.

• Listen to what your customers and prospects and stakeholders are saying about you online
• Use Google’s blog search tool and type in your business name, products and competitors http://blogsearch.google.com
• Search who is linking to your website and discussing it http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
• Once you know who is talking about you and where your traffic is coming from, you can develop a plan on where to focus your online campaign.

How storming that an increasing number of our long-standing and new clients are harnessing the social media toolkit to define the best tools to drive their business goals and vision.

Before dipping your big toe into the more popular sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, or blogging, begin with the end in mind and establish their relevance in enabling you to engage with those who will boost your bottom line.

Remember, in this brave new business world it’s all about return on engagement as opposed to return on investment – and the more niche, customer-focused, and ethical you are , the more successful you are likely to be in weathering the economic storm.   

The ability to monitor your online reputation and find out who is saying what about your brand, can be accelerated by a number of listening tools as highlighted below. The trick is to listen and follow conversations about issues, news, people and organisations in your sector before making your social media debut. Enjoy he journey and the Quest team looks forward to blogging and tweeting with you!   

• whostalkin.com – A tool allowing you to search for conversations in social media on any topic or brand.
• socialmention.com – Searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news and video etc.
• google.com/alerts – Allows you to get email updates of the latest relevant google results on a name or topic.
• blogsearch.google.com – Follow what is being said about a specific person or topic in blogs.
• howsociable.com – Monitor mentions of your brand online.
• moreover.com – Keep up to date with all your industry news.
• digg.com – Track news about your business and the most popular news relating to your business.
• reddit.com – Like dig, allows you to track news about your business and the most popular news.
• technorati.com – Track what is being said about you on social media sites.
• blogpulse.com/conversation – Allows you to track who’s linking to a blog post about your company.   
• blogpulse.com/trends – Allows you to track the buzz on particular keywords. Useful for example, to monitor a competitor’s new product launch.
• delicious.com – Makes it easy to track whenever someone bookmarks a web page that includes mention of your company.
• video.google.com – Keep track of videos about you or your company.
• keotag.com – Track if someone tags a page using your company or product name.
• boardtracker.com – Keeps track if you are mentioned on popular forums and message boards.
• google.com/trends – Gives you an idea of which keywords are most searched.
• searchanalytics.compete.com – Allows you to enter a keyword and see which web sites are getting traffic for that keyword. Alternatively enter any domain name and see which keywords are driving traffic to that site.
• backtype.com – Monitor blog comments.
• 123people.com – Search for information on people.
• addictomatic.com – Provides a search interface that runs keyword queries against a load of important social, search and blog services.

With new media continuing to gain importance in today’s increasingly virtual era, I can’t help but wonder whether, by avoiding blogging, I have been missing out on an excellent platform to promote myself. Shamefully, I don’t blog, I don’t Tweet and I barely even touch Facebook now that the heady free days of student life are over.

So I was pleased when I was asked to write a blog post in my first week of work experience at Quest PR.  I have come to the conclusion that it can’t hurt to get involved, especially when you see companies like Quest using blogging to such great effect.  Like many other recent graduates, promoting myself has been one of my most time consuming activities since coming to the end of my degree last summer.  Anything that makes this particular task easier is fine by me.

According to press coverage in the last 6 months, 2009 graduates are in a real predicament when it comes to a finding job.  I certainly know how they feel.  Having applied myself diligently to every aspect of University life, I naively thought walking into my dream job would be a doddle.  Instead, I was one of thousands of graduates who were faced with the grim reality of recession: there aren’t enough jobs to go round. Never mind that after three years of hard work, this predicament felt monstrously unfair.  Life, as we are regularly reminded, isn’t fair.

It’s a frightening time for graduates, the realisation that getting your degree is only the beginning.  We have been encouraged to believe throughout our education, that this seemingly insignificant piece of paper ensures a job will land in your lap.   The truth is far less clear cut, leading to many graduates facing an uncertain future.

What’s more, only yesterday I read an article which said that 50,000 students would miss out on University places this year due to a surge in applications. So now not only is getting a job after University a challenge, getting there in the first place is becoming increasingly tough. From the point of view of an eager 18 year old, I can imagine this situation would be heartbreaking beyond belief.

There has long been muted whispers from varied sources that there needs to be a massive shift in emphasis: rather than glorifying the degree we must start encouraging good old fashioned hard work in all its many forms. I can’t help but wholeheartedly agree. The government target of getting 50% of school leavers to University is unrealistic at best and damaging to young people’s dreams and aspirations at worst.

Whether you are doing a vocational course in catering, a degree in History of Art or an apprenticeship in engineering, the merit of hard work should never be underestimated.  You can gain valuable skills and qualifications through a huge variety of routes and this definitely does not have to always include going to University.  My advice to any young people unsure of their next step would be, find something that really interests you and get grafting; hard work and persistence are extremely valuable weapons on your armoury.

So here I am practicing what I preach; writing to you from a desk in the Quest offices, in my first week of seven, already feeling very much as if I am learning a great deal.  Great thanks must go to Quest for offering such a valuable opportunity to a disillusioned graduate, we’d all have a far more positive outlook if more companies had Quest’s attitude.  Now if only the worldwide recession will abate, I’ll be sorted.