From MarketingExperiments.com:

PR Campaign Delivers Greater Return on Investment Than Pay-Per-Click Advertising, MEC Labs finds

Atlantic Beach, FL (PRWEB) September 28, 2005 — A new research brief released today by MarketingExperiments.com (MEC) announced that public relations campaigns can cost less and deliver better returns on investment (ROI) than pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns.

The research brief is currently available for free in the Marketing Experiments Journal (http://www.marketingexperiments.com/pr.asp)…

Over a six-month period of time, MEC tested nine news releases covering various topics that were sent out over professional and free newswire services. MEC tracked the direct incoming traffic and backlinks on its site as well as the interview opportunities that resulted from each press release. It also compared the average cost per visit associated with each news release versus both the cost per visit associated with its average optimized PPC campaign and the cost per click for relevant targeted keywords in Google.

Results showed that the cost per click of the public relations efforts was less than the cost to drive traffic to the site through purchasing keywords in a PPC campaign. They also demonstrated that the news releases created significant spikes in site traffic and helped to create a five-fold increase in the number of incoming links to MEC’s site…

While most of my clients use paid news release distribution services such as Business Wire or PR Newswire, I would add that, for a low-cost campaign to drive traffic, free news release services such as PR Leap and PRZOOM can be very effective.

From DMNews: “Blogs and Bling Bling: Companies See More Sales, Improve Search Position“

What is your company waiting for?

B.L. Ochman, who I am coming to love for her pull-no-punches PR commentary, today has sounded off on the topic of “ghost-blogging,” the ghostwriting of blogs.

Her take:

A well-known conservative political and religious blogger is offering to ghost write corporate blogs, a service that I find disturbing. The point of blogging is to chronicle the original thoughts, opinions and knowledge of the writer, and to have that writer engage in conversation with readers. There’s no room in that equation for a ghost writer.

A ghost writer, by definition, writes under someone else’s name. That starts the blog on a dishonest premise.

The ghost-blogger in question is La Shawn Barber.

I don’t necessarily agree with B.L. on this one. I think ghostwriting is dishonest under certain circumstances; for example, if the named author has very little to do with the conceptualization and content of the work.

However, if the named author simply needs a ghost to help convert his or her ideas into words, I don’t see any problem. A good ghost writes as the named author would, incorporating not only the author’s ideas but also his or her personality. Without ghosting, the great majority of celebrity and CEO autobiographies you find at the bookstore simply would not exist.

So it’s not the worst thing in the world, B.L. Really.

From AP: “‘Intelligent Design’ Court Battle Begins.”

This one makes me go ape-#$%@! — not only because we’re still debating a topic that scientists put to rest 100 years ago, but because I’m afraid I will throw something at my TV and break it when I see how the brainless 24-hour news channels debate the undebatable.

There’s a difference between fact-based objectivity and giving equal time to competing idealogues. But 24-hour cable shows don’t want to be confused with the facts; it’s much easier for the producer to book two combatants and let them go at it, the host acting as referee.

How would this courageous media approach have worked at different times during history, I wonder…

Why don’t we hop in our time machine and find out?

—
The time…circa mid-1930s

Anderson Cooper: Mr. Goering, there are many people in the U.S. who believe your policies toward the Jews are cruel and unfair.

Hermann Goering: Jews are responsible for virtually every social ill in Germany; this is documented fact. We are simply protecting our country, which was on the verge of collapse before the Nazi Party came to power.

Cooper: Mr. Bonhoeffer, you have a different perspective?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Goering and his Nazi Party are making scapegoats of the Jews. Jews represent a tiny percentage of the German population; how can they possibly be responsible for all of the country’s problems? The Nazis have a hateful agenda that will ultimately consume us all.

Goering: This man is lying, which is especially shameful because he claims to be a man of God. He knows that the Jews controlled the Social Democratic Party, and this is exactly the kind of disproportionate, harmful influence that the Nazi Party was formed to combat.

Bonhoeffer: Yes, I AM a man of God, and your party has forced our church undergrou…

Cooper: I’m sorry, that’s all the time we have. Thank you both for sharing your opinions here tonight.
—

Speaking of Goering, he said this at the Nuremberg Trials:

Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

We never learn, do we? And in our loud-mouthed, media-sanctioned tit-for-tat that passes for intelligent debate today, we never will.

Here’s a funny bit from John Woestendiek of the Baltimore Sun.

(Via Romenesko.)