Online PR (UK)

Here's a little look at some interesting articles the Online Media Relations team have read recently:

Why online PR and SEO go hand in hand
This is an interesting article explaining ways in which your online PR efforts will benefit your SEO.

A deeper look at Google's search quality efforts
More interesting stuff from searchengineland on how Google works and thinks.

How to use Social Media for keyword research
Search Engine Journal talks about studying keyword trends (BUZZ) through the todays top Social Media sites.

Enjoy!

I thought you might like to check out some of the books that have helped me get into the right mindset for Online PR. If you are interested in any of the books, I've included their amazon page and the most relevant site associated with the publication.


How Customers Think | Book site | Amazon
You can argue that marketing is about influence for commercial benefit and this book, whilst not specifically internet or PR focused goes into the mechanics of how the mind works in relation to your message. For instance, the idea that a memory of an advert is actually in a memory 'soup':
- with influences from your pre conceptions
- the circumstances you saw the ad in,
- the metaphors you use to associate with that product or service

By understanding a little more about how your brain works, you will get your message across more effectively


Connected Marketing | Book Site | Amazon
A collection of essays from 'savvy' marketers, where they analyze the connections between different media and they ways you can leverage them. It also goes into 'word of mouth marketing' and how this is so often neglected, yet is the commercial driver for so many businesses. If you're not familiar with the new frontiers of marketing, then this is well worth reading.




Cluetrain Manifesto | Book Site | Complete book (free)
Before there was web 2.0, there was Cluetrain. This book sets out a manifesto for how business should conduct its marketing in this new internet age. It's simple message: "markets are conversations". The idea of markets and conversations is played out is 1000's of blogs and forums, chat groups, review sites, where like minded people do something they have done for 1000's of years... give opinions.

And those opinions are listened to, hence the awesome commercial power of managing these conversations as well as possible. This piece of internet philosophy is a must read to all those who think has not really disrupted the old 'broadcast model' of marketing.

Unleashing the Ideavirus | Book Site | Amazon
A simple idea. Ideas are like viruses. The more easily they spread and the more momentum they have, the further they will travel and influence people. Its a lovely idea in principle, but in practice it takes a lot of skill and understanding to get this right. My view: Help people buy, don't sell, so customer is your king. Then you will come up with ideas which customers love, then ideas spead. Another term for an ideavirus is a 'meme' coined my Richard Dawkins.

Apart from being a great read, the book goes into how ideas 'memes' or 'ideaviruses' travel. There are several wonderfully crafted stories, but the big 'take away' point is that in life there are 'mavens' 'connectors' and 'salesmen' who behave like hubs or connection points in society. Grasping this idea is critical when you want to understand the power of certain web sites and bloggers online (I've done a post on meme tracking here)

Word of Mouth Marketing | Book Site | Amazon
Like the book title says, this about getting the word out and spreading it efficiently. It's a practical 'how to' book, going into the mechanics offline WOM. The relevant part for you is that good news can travel if you help it along. The downside: you have to have something people want... so doing a half hearted viral campaign or not having your customers real interests at heart will not wash. I thoroughly recommend it.

New rules of Marketing and PR | Book Site | Amazon
If you are a corporate and you are putting together a business case, then this book brings together a logical set of 'connections' between the myriad of online and offline places where your message could travel. It also re enforces the idea that if you speak honestly and compellingly, you will have the necessary credentials for this new PR landscape.

Herd | Book Site | Amazon
Humans are herd animals. On a deep level we reference each other and somewhere in our subconscious, we respond in combination with our environment and other humans. Hotmail, texting, Digg, Wikipedia, Facebook, 2nd Life are all examples of the herd mentality in us that follows the 'big idea' at any given time.

This notion does not exclude the importance of mavens, connectors and hubs, but it simply adds another dimension to our understanding of how ideas and activities can spread across the internet.


Naked Conversations | Book site | Amazon
Robert Scoble helped open Microsoft to its most important influencers ( Geeks) by allowing their engineers to share on their insights and progress on Channel9 a video pod casting blog funded by Microsoft.

He subsequently moved on and wrote this insightful book on how blogging can have a massively positive impact on a brand or a corporate entity. The subtext here is that people crave authenticity, finding it builds trust and that leads to stronger relationships between the provider and the customer. It's a close cousin to the Cluetrain Manifesto.

I've been to pubcon ! hooray ! that to the layperson is a 3 day 'geekfest' search marketing conference held in Las Vegas between the 4th and 7th of December 2007.

The session most relevant you (Online PR person) was:

Reputation Monitoring and Management
If you are not talking with your customer base your customer base will be talking about you. This session will look at ways to monitor, manage, and influence your reputation within the blogosphere and press.

I won't go into all the specifics, but the must useful points were:

Use the right tools to monitor what is being said about you.

When something flares up (like a disgruntled customer ranting about you) get in there and do serious damage limitation.

When you want to spread a message, find the 'hub' sites and help them write about your product or service. Then if all goes well, these sites disseminate a story across the blogosphere and consequently your originating site will be ranked on the search engines.


The right tools:
(An extended list here: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/26-free-tools-for-buzz-monitoring.html)

Google blog search:
Does a great job indexing blogs and flagging up chatter about YOU

Google Alerts:
Same story, but to your inbox and it covers web, discussions, videos and of course blogs.

And then you have the more sophisticated tools like: this one from BlogPulse which tracks blog conversations between various blogs who link in between each other.

The pattern to look out for here is where you find one BIG blog talking about your story and then looking how other blogs respond to the story and link back.

It is in effect an 'eco system' similar to this kind of thing (left: a diagram of a social network with a famous (deceased) person at its hub.

As you see, there are core influencers who influence others to a greater or lesser extent. The big blob in the middle is our main man here.

 So to see this tool in action, you should have a look at these results:

Here is one for 'Pubcon'  and another for 'Paypal' (not much happening here!) and 'Facebook' - hmmmm....very busy!

and how about a normal 'corporate' like Dell - for me the intersting bit is this :

• 11/16/2007   Dell's XPS ONE now on sale (from: Engadget)
• 11/16/2007   Dell's XPS ONE now on sale (from: Toys & Gadgets)
• 11/16/2007   Dell's XPS ONE now on sale (from: Component Apple)
• 11/16/2007   Dell's XPS ONE now on sale (from: BlogJunkies)
• 11/16/2007   Dell's XPS ONE now on sale - Engadget (from: BWOne.com)
• 11/16/2007   XPS ONE from Dell now available for purchase (from: CrunchGear)
• 11/19/2007   XPS One: New Dell All-in-One PC (from: Direct2Dell)
• 11/20/2007   Todos aman a Mac (from: Reymond Blog)
• 11/22/2007   XPS One - Beauty! (from: Andrew Lark)

Engadget has blogged on the Dell XPS, and this has caught on with a number of other blogers.

How about this one for 'will it blend?' the you tube movies of a guy blending various things including an iphone.

• 11/25/2007   Guitar Hero: it shreds, and, yes, it blends (from: Engadget)
• 11/25/2007   Guitar Hero: it shreds, and, yes, it blends (from: Toys & Gadgets)
• 11/26/2007   Rock on, Ottawa-Gatineau! (from: Population of One)
• 11/27/2007   GNC-2007-11-27 #320 (from: Geek News Central Podcast)
• 12/03/2007   Blendtec (from: ANCPL's Blog)

(notice Engadget again ! )

 The Message here is clear: reach online influencers with a good 'viral' message and your message will travel.

There is whole lot more I can talk about in reference to Pubcon, but I'll save that for another post.

I've been working on some international search engine projects i.e. getting various sites across different languages and I found a very helpful set of guidelines from the Google's Matt Cutts.

The main point is that you can roll the duplicate content out across different countries (provided you jump through a few hoops) which obviously will save you on content provision costs.

Personally I'm not really into submitting content to PR websites because I don't really believe may people actually read them. I'm sure there are many arguments against this, but if I want the authority opinion on a given subject, I'll either go to google or some of my favorite blogs or forums.

Still, if you are really working hard to get the word out, then this list my interest you...

Movabletype has a facility where you can 'ping' various blog directories and search engines everytime you upload a new post. if youre doing Online PR, then letting the right istes know you have made another contribution to the blogosphere is important.

Instructions:

Coming from search engine optimisation, I am very used to working to clear goals, wether it's
- ranking for a particular keyword
- getting in web traffic focusing on a particular interest
- achieving conversions (i.e. selling things)

When I look around the online PR space, I see lots of talk about social networks, blogs, meme building - but not a whole lot on the combination of PR and deliverables.

Having spent some time crusing the blogosphere for other online PR sites, it's clear there is a disconnect between traditional PR people and online PR people.

The disconnect seems to be:
- No real understanding of the multiple routes to end users
- Failure to understand the utility of the internet i.e. users want immediacy
- No sense of 'internet is a conversation'
- Hanging on to the idea that broadcast messaging is somehow goingto work in the internet.
- And (for me) most importantly Online PR as a way to get ranked on search engines