As I often do, I logged on to Facebook two nights ago to check in with my friends and family. As I observed the “Recent Activity”, one item caught my attention: 9 of my friends (most of whom do not know one another) had all “Liked” a page called Crock Pot Girls.

Out of curiosity, and because a busy mom like me is always looking for a good new crock pot recipe, I clicked on the page. It had about 253,000 fans. Impressive! But when I perused the Information page, I noticed this Facebook page was only ten days old. Really impressive! This Facebook page has gone viral.

The Crock Pot Girls Facebook Page has gone viral

However, with this kind of activity, visitors can’t always easily find posts they may have seen before unless they were willing to Like them or comment on them. For instance, if someone found a recipe on the “Wall” they liked and didn’t copy it right away, that recipe would quickly get pushed to the next page of the feed by the time the page was refreshed.

The three busy moms from Texas who started this Facebook page must have realized that the overwhelming activity on their page had quickly become unmanageable, because they also just launched a new blog for Crock Pot Girls.

The blog, which is brand new and clearly still working through some start-up issues, now houses the founders’ growing collection of crock pot recipes and tips. Nothing fancy; just the crock pot information their followers want.

Too often, when something goes viral on the web, the result is quite unpleasant. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. And more importantly, this viral success story underscores a message that we preach to our customers every day: simplicity is good.

The takeaway is never underestimate the value of a clear, targeted message. The Crock Pot Girls aren’t trying to be all things to many people; instead it has a singular focus, and it has effectively and rapidly engaged the interest of a huge number of enthusiastic fans, creating an online community . As we tell our clients, sharing your product or service offering with the right people, in a focused way, will generate the kind of interest you want and need to grow your business.

Coincidentally, as I work at my office desk today, there is a gorgeous roast slowly cooking in a crock pot on my countertop at home. It will provide a welcome dinner of Italian beef sandwiches for my family this evening. Oh, and the Crock Pot Girls? At the time of this post, just two days after I discovered them, have continued to grow their fans exponentially. The current fan base is 766,668.

Google handles nearly two-thirds of all web searches. And in February, it took steps to overcome many of the content farms and link farms that big companies used to artificially boost their own rankings, at the expense of web users’ interest in finding useful and well-written content.

If you have noticed that your search rankings are falling and you’d like some help figuring it out, give us a call or drop us a line.

It is surprising these people still have jobs after first awarding themselves bonuses for their safety record, then agreeing that that the decision was maybe not such a good idea, but only giving part of the bonuses back.

I agree with Fortune’s Colin Barr, they should be called ‘unsafety bonuses’.

While I applaud the full-court-press manner that Cision is applying to this effort, the idea that this service can save you thousands of dollars on annual press release distribution fees leaves a lot of questions out of their math.

Cision suggests that it can calculate an accurate savings estimate for your PR distribution fees simply by estimating the number of words in your average press release, plus the average number of announcements you distribute annually. It told me that I would save more than $6,000 using CisionWire.

Right.

Once you learn that this automated calculator is comparing rates to the published list prices of Cision’s top 3 US competitors for National Wire Distribution, you can throw everything else out. Because who actually selects ‘National Distribution’ for a press release any longer? Only people who don’t know what they are doing.

Your press release wire distribution service exists to feed the search engines. That’s it. And you can guarantee search engine pick-up by selecting any local distribution channel from a wire service, thereby saving yourself literally hundreds of dollars for each press release you put on the wires.

If you are counting on a wire service to get your news in the hands of the right contact at a key media outlet, then you’d better start praying for some divine intervention. Because the best and most affordable way to get in front of the right media contacts is by knowing where they are, how hey prefer to be contacted, and what kind of news they like to get. That sort of work is best left to a PR consultant that knows how to work with the media.

So next time you issue a press release, don’t forget that a wire service does have its place in the PR outreach process; it will give your SEO a nice shot in the arm thanks to the search engine pick-up it enables, but it won’t get your important news in front of the people who matter: the journalist that has become a trusted source of news to your prospects through years of covering your market.

http://bit.ly/prtools.

Well, how do you define big splash? Do you want to develop some print and/or broadcast ads? Not a bad idea to help create awareness.

What about a webinar to help define the business case for your new widget and put the spotlight on benefits experienced by early adopters? “Of course,” you say.

And direct marketing? Sure, you need to let your clients and prospects about your important news.

But don’t forget about the PR, which can help create buzz about your new product or service like nothing else.

For example, Microsoft is trying to promote the availability of its Windows Phone 7 smart phone. And the company has leveraged its PR arm to do so, but the PR message from Microsoft is designed to get people to think about bad phone behavior, not about its Windows Phone 7 smart phone.

Microsoft’s PR wonks hired Harris Interactive to help tell a story about bad phone etiquette, and to help its new customers to say NO to things like taking phone calls in public bathrooms and answering calls while at a funeral.

I love the idea, because the topic is obviously something everyone can relate to. Half of the people reading this probably saw their life flash before their eyes within the past week thanks to a distracted driver that was talking or texting instead of paying attention to the road.

PR should allow you to think outside the box and approach an idea from a different angle. This particular example also demonstrates how to effectively incorporate market research into your PR messages. Surveys can be your friend in PR.

While I won’t be rushing out to get a new Windows Phone 7 any time soon (my contract isn’t up for several months), I applaud Microsoft’s PR team for this idea and wish I saw more of it from business today.

And some of the experts she highlights in her piece are of the same mindset, though Seth Godin says it is more about finding the right approach, and then to keep experimenting with it to improve it.

But as they say, a picture tells a thousand words. And now Google wants to add a photo along with your business profile.

Check this out: http://bit.ly/d6dLgo