Attempting to spotlight what its president Steve Koonin described as “one of the biggest success stories in television,” Turner Entertainment Networks held the first standalone upfront for TruTV on Tuesday evening. Pitching the ratings growth of original programming like Operation Repo and Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura, the media company gathered nearly 500 media buyers at Skylight for a brief presentation and a rousing performance by Kid Rock.

For the network’s executives, the decision to separate TruTV’s presentation from an event for sister channels TNT and TBS scheduled for May 19 was a significant and strategic move. The goal was not only to boost TruTV’s standing in the advertising community, but also to focus attention on the distinct character of its reality and documentary-style shows. In tandem with the Turner team—which included vice president of event marketing Janet Abbazia and the project’s manager, Margaret McAllister—marketing agency C2 Creative produced an immersive environment replete with brand colors and an intimate stage area.

To drive home its message and give the presentation portion some weight, the overall look of the event was straightforward. There was very little extraneous decor that didn’t speak to the network’s branding or style, which Marc Juris, executive vice president and general manager of TruTV, defined as “nothing silly or overly contrived.” Tall floral arrangements, throw pillows, and rugs in TruTV’s red, blue, and yellow hues provided a pop of color amid the all-white backdrop of white furniture, carpeting, and drapes.

Naturally, the focus of the design was on the stage. David Levy, Turner Broadcasting System’s president of sales, distribution, and sports, Linda Yaccarino, executive vice president and C.O.O. of Turner Entertainment ad sales/marketing and acquisitions, and Juris gave a snappy, 30-minute presentation. Mounted on tracks, wall-to-wall LED panels extended the scope of a central video screen and concealed speakers. Immediately following the speeches the panels slid aside, expanding the platform to reveal Kid Rock and his band Twisted Brown Trucker.

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Taste of Dublin, the capital’s most exciting outdoor food and drink festival, is gearing up for its 4th year from June 10th -13th. With 20 of the capital’s top restaurants, Michelin star chefs, and over 30,000 anticipated visitors- the glorious surroundings of the Iveagh Gardens will be THE outdoor restaurant this summer.

Taste of Dublin’s restaurant line up includes names such as Bon Appetit, Chapter One, Diep Le Shaker and L’Ecrivain, to name but a few, all serving their signature dishes in sample sizes to tempt the taste buds.

Irelands Michelin starred chefs will show off award winning culinary skills alongside top class international chefs and Taste of Dublin veterans- Ross Lewis and Derry Clarke.

The Chef Demonstration Theatre gives a stellar line up of Irish and international chefs running fabulous demonstrations and tastings, celebrating the very best of Irish and international cuisine.

The Wine & Beer Academy will offer visitors the opportunity to sample and sip with the experts.

In total over One hundred carefully selected food and drink exhibitors will be showcasing their products at Taste of Dublin, giving you the opportunity to sample the finest produce from all over Ireland. Taste of Dublin brings together a range of artisan producers all offering their best homemade, homegrown or home-reared food and ingredients.

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In excess of one million people have now registered their interest in London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic tickets.

Nearly all, 96%, of the one million registrations came from UK residents, with 32% coming from Greater London, 27% from the south east and 41% from the rest of the UK.

Data shows there has been an even spread across all Olympic and Paralympic sports too, with more than 400,000 people registering an interest in Paralympic sports and at least 100,000 expressions of interest for each of the 26 Olympic sports. 

Locog chairman Sebastian Coe and director of sport Debbie Jevans will today update the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) on London 2012’s progress, highlighting the success of its sign up programme.

“It should come as no surprise that the British public is so enthused by the prospect of world class sport coming to these shores, but it is pleasing to see that some of the lesser-known Olympic and Paralympic sports are also set to be well supported. I would urge people to continue to sign up and ensure they are in the front row for information between now and 2012,” said Coe.

Olympic tickets will go on sale in spring 2011 via an application process. 

Those who sign up to tickets.london2012.com will receive newsletters about sport events between now and 2012 and will be among the first to find out when tickets go on sale.

Locog is also developing a Fans in Front programme to ensure knowledgeable sports fans are seated together at the Games to create the best atmosphere.

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Most companies and organisations need to organise events in one form or another to involve their people, clients and stakeholders in what’s going on. Events don’t just happen– they involve preparation and organisation and the first stage is read our Top 10 Tips.

 1. Look at the big picture. Before diving in it is worth taking time to explore the broader background. Are there other initiatives this event fits into? What’s the target audience? What outcomes are you looking for?

 2. Ah yes – budget! Whether you’re a cash-rich company, a public serviceorganisation, a charity – there should will always be a budget. This is important not only for financial control but organisational discipline, the ability to persuade and also to negotiate. So, know your figures.

 3. Measuring success. This needs to be considered and agreed during the preplanningstage and a method chosen e.g. evaluation forms, electronic feedback during the event.

 4. Let me check the diary. When the event is to take place could be influenced by anumber of factors : time sensitive launch, end of year, annual conference,requirement for consecutive roadshows, availability of key contributors. Again, this needs to be covered in the pre-planning.

 5. Venue. Your choice of venue is likely to be one of the largest expenditure items. Ifyour organisation has it’s own facilities – terrific! If not, you need to carefully source. Venue search services are a real time-saver and a free service. The good ones will know the venues they suggest, have visited and got feedback from previous clients.However, you should still visit a venue yourself before you make your final selection.

 6. Events can fail miserably if the pre-event administration is not robust. There are many options available these days with on-line registration very much the favourite for conferences and seminars. Do some research on off the shelf packages and service providers if you do not wish to create your own.

7. The power of the badge. Ensure the badging system works. The badge needs tobe large enough to include the information needed and for others to be able to read. You can also include for example, colours and numbers for syndicates and workshops.

 8. Ensure superb facilitation of the event. Good facilitators are like gold dust. If you have a star in your company that’s excellent news. If not, do some research to source an external facilitator.

 9. Sound and vision. People are often surprised how much sound bodies soak up. Unless it is a very small gathering you should consider a sound system. If people cannot hear or see properly they become irritated and pre-occupied. If you can include a professional technician in your budget – do it.

 10. Consider using the services of an event management company for all or part of the event. The savings made both in your time and getting it right first time are significant. Good luck with your next event.

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Search engine marketing involves keeping your content fresh, using keywords that put you at the top of the first page and obtaining as many links to your site from other websites as possible.

Pleasing the Search Engines

1. Search engines love updated content. Pay attention to which sites show on the first page and you will notice that among the sites in keyword competition, it is the sites with the most updated content that win out. Either write your own articles and upload your own graphics and photos or outsource the job to freelancers.

There are many freelancers who write for reasonable rates. With one good writer or writing team, you can improve your site’s rankings dramatically. Make sure the writer you choose understands SEO.

2. Keyword strategies include going for those people who instead of searching for ‘weight loss’ search for ‘how to lose 20 pounds fast’ and other more specific terms. Do not stuff your pages with keywords. The recommended density of keywords is between 2 and 3 percent of the text on your page.

Excessive keyword phrases are not only recognizable to search engines as ’stuffing’, they can ultimately affect the quality of the writing. This is where LSI comes in. LSI involves using phrases that are synonymous with your original keyword phrase. Learn about LSI!

3. The more relevant sites that link to your page, the better your rankings will be. For example, if you sell creative scrap booking products, try putting links about your self-designed scrap booking pages on sites that instruct people on how to scrap book. This is one way of ‘piggy backing’ on the keywords used by other sites.

Write your own articles or have a freelance writer write some for you. Submit them to article directories and allow other sites to use them providing they leave the resource box or by-line connected to the article. It is a ’scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ strategy and it works for both sides.

4. You can use your blog for more search engine marketing. If you update your blog daily and ping it with blog directories, you will see an increase in your blog’s search engine rankings. Link to your site from your blog. This is another means of piggy backing.

5. Purchasing clicks on search engines is another strategy used in search engine marketing. This is how sites are placed in ’sponsored sites’ at the very top of the page and along the right hand side on Google. Depending on the keywords you use for this strategy, you will have to pay a few pennies to several dollars in order to beat out your competition.

Yahoo allows you to set a daily maximum amount of money for clicks. If your site is brand new, try the lowest amount of money for a week or so to test how many clicks you get and how many sales you make from those clicks.

6. Monitor your site traffic on at least a weekly basis. Note how much of your traffic is coming from regular search engine marketing. After a couple of weeks of tracking, make small changes to optimize your site’s search engine rankings. Continue looking for ways to improve on your site.

Gather all the information you can find on each of these strategies. Search engine marketing, as with all other forms of marketing, is constantly changing. Stay up to date on everything there is to know about search engine marketing and you will see your sales increase considerably!

About the Author: Karla Whitmore is a creative freelance writer dedicated to supplying fresh, original and SEO rich content and plr to online businesses, webmasters and affiliate marketers.

Drury, one of the top PR firms in the country has appointed Anne Marie Cullen as managing director. She takes over from Padraic McKeown who is stepping down from the job but who intends to stay with the firm.

Curran, who is 32, is an experienced public relations practitioner in corporate and financial communications and joined the firm in 2004 from rival agency Fleishman Hillard.

According to McKeon,”I have hugely enjoyed the challenge of managing Drury over the past six years, through both periods of growth and of retrenchment in the economy. As a business we are in excellent shape with a strong team and client portfolio. Today’s announcement is an important step in maintaining Drury’s commitment to effective management of our business, something that has served us and our clients well since our foundation in 1989″.

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Special Olympics Ireland

All Ireland Collection Day Friday 23^rd April 2010

On Friday April 23^rd we need thousands of people across the island of Ireland to help Special Olympics Ireland make their 2010 Collection Day the best yet.  Collections will be held in every town and city across the country.  We need collectors in shopping centers, bus stations, train stations, on the street and on the road.  There is a place for you in this extraordinary team of generous people.

To volunteer:

Text Collect 51444 (ROI) or 86112 (NI) followed by your Name and County to volunteer or e-mail collectionday@specialolympics.ie

There are over 35,000 people with an intellectual disability in Ireland but only 11,105 of them are athletes in Special Olympics Ireland. Money raised will go towards providing sports training and competition for these athletes and to reach out to those other people with an Intellectual Disability in Ireland not already involved.  It will also be used to recruit volunteers and to develop new clubs in communities throughout Ireland north and south.

Friday April 23^rd is the most important day in Special Olympics Ireland’s fundraising calendar and we would like to thank people in advance for their generosity of time and continued support.

1. Don’t hide your company/charity/organisation/blog’s light under a bushel. If you’ve got some good news, collaborate with the media and let your customers, suppliers and everyone else know how wonderful you are. Do you have an event planned, a new service to launch or an interesting story with a regional angle to tell? If so, let the local (or even national) media know about it through a press release.

2. Always date the release and include a contact name and number. Phone ahead and find out the name of the editor or the local business reporter, and their preferred method of delivery (email, fax or post). Importantly, find out their deadline, particularly if your story is time sensitive.

3. Newspapers receive hundreds of press releases every week, and only the ones that stand out will ever make it into print. Step into the shoes of the particular publication and its readers and ask the question ‘What is interesting and newsworthy about this announcement?’. The answer should form the angle for your press release.

4. The most important elements of a successful press release are its title and opening paragraph. If these fail to grab an editor’s attention, the chances of the release being used drop significantly. These should sum up the most important points of your message. If the release is to inform about a forthcoming event or launch, then the date, place and time should be included in the first paragraph.

5. Press releases should not read like a promotional brochure or be overloaded with information. Too much image building is not necessary, and will weigh down the message. Sentences should be short and snappy and the whole thing should be no longer than two sides of A4. Extra information, including company background, can be included in a section called ‘Notes for editors’.”

6. If you can create a picture opportunity to tempt local photographers from your chosen media, your story will be more attractive. A photocall is a managed event which might be a one-off or a part of a bigger event, such as a presentation or exhibition. An unusual location or the presence of a celebrity can help if it is relevant to the story. Plan ahead and have contingencies in place in case of adverse weather conditions or other eventualities. Issue a photocall notice to relevant media.

7. Build good relationships with journalists you speak to. Having good contacts in the media is key to a successful PR strategy. When you have a story printed, call or email to thank the writer and you’ll know who to contact next time you have an event that you want to publicise. They get a good story, your business gets good exposure. Always be polite to journalists as they have the power to decide what your customers read or hear about you – if anything at all.

8. Prepare a press pack (electronically or on paper) containing a company history, facts and figures, key contacts, pictures and examples of work. You probably already include this in your marketing literature and on your website, but it can be useful to send or give out to journalists to back up photocalls or other events. It’s also useful reference material if you are asked to answer questions on the spot.

9. Be prepared for follow-up calls and comments. Designate a spokesperson in your company to have a few paragraphs ready for journalists who call to follow up any kind of PR activity. You could also issue a statement or comment whenever there are any developments in your region or industry. Journalists are always on the lookout for a local perspective.

10. Keep press cuttings. This is not just a vanity exercise, but a good way to track your PR activities. Consider which stories attracted a lot of interest, and which did not, so you can better target your campaign in the future. Cuttings are useful to refer back to if you receive any further enquiries on the story or event.

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With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them.Some companies choose to hire a blog consultant, but others like to try things internally. For those “DIY” companies and individuals interested in practical tips for marketing and optimizing a business blog, try out the following list of blog marketing and optimization tips:

Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!

 Obtain and install customizable blog software – WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.

 Customize blog look and feel templates – aka design.

 Research keywords and develop a glossary – Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.

 Optimize the blog:

Template optimization – RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap

Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT

Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)

Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.

 Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.

 Setup a Google account for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.

 Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.

Format archived posts, related posts.

 Enable statistics for tracking – Google Analytics, ClickTracks.

 Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.

 Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.

 If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.

 Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs – Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.

 Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.

 Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.

 Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.

 Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.

Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.

 Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.

 Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.

 When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.

 Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.

 Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.

 If your blog’s goal is to promote you as an authority, interview other prominent bloggers in your industry. Your own credibility will improve by association.

 Build out your online networks through services such as MyBlogLog, Twitter and Facebook and leverage them to promote particularly useful content on your blog.

 Once your blog has 1000 or more subscribers, show your Feedburner badge

Host images with Flickr making sure to include an anchor text link in the image description back to the post where the image is used.

 Use your blog to gain press/media credentials at relevant industry conferences and use the event to create content, connections and increase your knowledge

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At the end of the year, many businesses start to think about redesigning their tired old website to breathe some new life into it. You may even be in the midst of a website redesign right now. If so, the first thing is to make sure you hire a design and development company that knows how to build the infrastructure of the website in a search engine crawler–friendly manner.

Beyond that, you need to address a number of additional SEO tactics before you get too deep into your redesign. The reason you need to keep SEO front and center during this time is twofold: so that you do not lose your previous traffic, but also so that you can gain additional targeted search engine visitors when the new site goes live.

Here are 6 SEO redesign secrets your developer may not know…ignore them at your peril!

1. Creating Your SEO’d Site Architecture

Search engines look explicitly at how all your pages are linked together in order to determine their place within the site. Pages that are linked from every other page will be given more weight than those that are only linked from a few others. This is all considered a form of internal link popularity, or in Google language, internal PageRank.

Recommendation: During your redesign, don’t bury too deeply within the site any content that was previously bringing targeted search engine traffic. Ensure that any informational content that will be focused on the more competitive keyword phrases (for example, product and service pages) is high up in your site hierarchy.

In addition, all content contained in a specific category should be cross-linked via some sort of sub-navigation within that section.

2. Categorization and Avoiding Duplicate Content

When people are seeking information from a search engine, they usually have a question, a problem, or a need for specific information. The search queries they use at Google and the other engines reflect this. The more ways you can categorize your content for the various target markets you serve, the better.

Recommendation: Be sure that all top-level pages answer the potential searcher’s (your potential customers’) questions, and that it’s clear that your products and services can solve their problem. In addition, you also have to ensure that regardless of how someone found any piece of content on your site, they always end up at the same URL to avoid PageRank splitting and duplicate content issues.

For example, if a specific product can be classified as both a product and a service, it makes sense that it might be listed under both categories. However, the page (URL) that the potential customer eventually lands on, regardless of which category they started in, should always be the same.

3. New Content Management System and Changing URLS

If URLs must change in the redesign due to a new content management system or back-end coding, search engines may take some time to index the new URLs as well as give them the same weighting they gave the previous URLs due to URL age factors.

Recommendation: It’s critical to 301-redirect all old URLs to their relative counterpart within the newly designed website. This will pass the link popularity of the old URLs to the new ones quickly, as well as ensure that site visitors don’t receive 404-not-found errors.

This will be easier if the new URL naming is similar to the old one, because you can use automated methods. If URLs must change completely with no correlation to the names of the old URLs, and hand-redirects are required, you’ll want to at least redirect all the top-level pages, as well as those that you’re sure receive keyword traffic from search engines. But, ideally, every URL should be redirected if at all possible.

4. Coding of Navigation Menus

Links contained within the navigation of your website should be coded in a search engine–friendly manner so that they are visible and crawlable. Some DHTML and Flash menus are invisible to search engines, which causes the pages linked within them to not receive the internal link popularity they should receive.

Recommendation: Make sure all navigational menus are coded with CSS that is visible to search engines. In addition, avoid drop-down box links as the main form of navigation (CSS mouseovers are fine). You’ll also want to ensure that all content can be reached by hard-coded links – don’t force the user to go through any kind of search box menu because those are traditionally search engine unfriendly.

5. Custom HTML Elements

While some level of automation for titles, metas, headers, URLs, and alt attributes for images can be helpful, it’s critical that your new website’s content management system allow you to create custom descriptions for these as well.

Recommendation: Make sure the content management system has fields for custom title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, etc. There should be no limit to the number of characters allowed in these fields either, because every page may need a different number of words and characters.

6. Session IDs and Other Tracking Links

It’s best not to use session IDs to track visitors, but if your system must use them, you’ll only need to feed the “clean” URLs to the search engine spiders – otherwise, they may get caught in an infinite loop, indexing the same content under multiple URLs.

You’ll also want to avoid any sort of campaign tracking links appended to URLs because these can split your link popularity by causing your content to be indexed under multiple URLs.

Recommendation: If this type of tracking is inherent in your system, use the canonical link element to maintain one URL for every page of content.

Don’t be surprised if your developer isn’t happy to receive some of these “secrets.” He or she may feel that their authority is being usurped or their creativity is being hindered. Just remember that it’s your website that you’re paying them to create in a way that will make you the most money possible. Let your developer know up-front that these things are non-negotiable. If they tell you that they can’t do any of the above, start looking around for a new developer – ASAP!

While there will always be a few unexpected bugs to work out when your site goes live, you won’t have to be afraid of losing your search engine visitors as long as you know what you’re doing. We’ve successfully helped many companies through this transition without any glitches. At the end of the process, there’s nothing like the feeling of having your beautiful new website launched. But more than that, there’s great comfort in knowing that the people looking for what you provide will continue to be able to easily find you in the search engines.

About The Author
Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings and co-founder of SEMNE, has been performing SEO services since 1995. Jill is the host of the High Rankings Advisor newsletter and the High Rankings SEO forum.