Seems to me when PR people have nothing really important to say or do, many of them can't shut up. When they are needed to clarify a situation, they can't find their voice… and they apparently don't hear the phone.

Here's a story from The New York Times via Gregg Keizer of Computerworld about Best Buy's problem with infected digital picture frames it sold during the holiday season. The story has more questions than answers. What kind of virus was it, how many customers were affected, how did it happen?

So naturally, the writer called the public relations team at Best Buy seeking comment. Given this chance to defend Best Buy's pre- and post-sale behavior or to clarify the current or past situation and to otherwise generally put Best Buy's best foot forward, what did the team have to say? Nothing. I guess that Best Buy's best foot forward got lodged in their mouths instead and they were unable to speak? Reports the writer:

Best Buy's public relations team did not respond to a call for comment.

Best practice? Well, let's see? The public has a concern related to your business. You're in public relations to relate things like your company's position on things to the public. Best Buy? It seems as far as the PR team goes, it's more like Good Bye. 

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Here's a news release out of New York today, over PRNewswire, about a survey of Chief Communications Officers at some of the most admired and some of the not-so-much admired companies in the Fortune 500. Turns out, CCOs who worry most about reputation management are more often in the Most Admired Company category. And, guess what? The survey forecasts that among this top group, social media will be a focus in 2008.

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PROVIDE QUALITY CONTENT – This is the most important thing of all. Some suggest having a minimum of 20 posts before you even begin to promote. I would say that it depends on the industry/depth of your posts, but you get the idea.

Post comments on other blogs, building your reputation as an expert on your given subject, and ALWAYS include a link back to your blog.

Place links to other blogs and websites that have content relevant to your readers (Some call this a Blogroll, but I recommend you include more sites than just blogs. Include other related industry links which will:

a. Build a relationship with other sites and bloggers who will return the favor by adding a reciprocating link back to your site on their blog.

b. Make a phenomenal difference in where your site ranks in search results. Understand that, besides your own site's content, two of the major factors in how a search engine ranks results are- what other sites your site links to that are other relevant results for the same search, and which of these sites link back to you.

c. Make your site "sticky" and keep people coming back. If you have the most relevant list of related links to the same topics, even when your site's own content hasn't been updated, others will still return to your site as a portal to other content on the same subject.

Also, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this:

WRONG WAY: Don't add another page of "links" or "favorites". This kills the gain with search engine results.

RIGHT WAY: You want that list of links to appears somewhere, usually on the right margin, on the SAME PAGE with your content.

Also, make use of sites like Digg, Google Blog Search, del.icio.us, reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, etc., and incorporate their links into the closure of each blog post so that users link you. Many subjects have networks or web-rings of sites on the same or similar subject matter. It is a form of banner exchange - you get to rotate in a banner spot on other websites that participate in the same web-ring. You reciprocate by placing the banner code on your own site too. Another handy way to easily promote your blog is to place a link to your site in the signature of your emails.

TRACK YOUR TRAFFIC! If your blog software provides site statistics, use them. If it doesn't or to augment the data provided, install the tracking code from one of any number of popular traffic-tracking services (personally, I augment my tracking data by also subscribing to Google Analytics and Clicky).

And once again, I cannot reemphasize enough: CONTENT IS KING.

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