Bloggers and journalists needed for annual Glide survey

For the last few years, Glide Technologies (purveyors of the well known Online Press Centre product) have conducted an annual journalist survey to delve into the nitty gritty of what kind of information journalists want and how they want to receive it.  The Glide surveys have tended to stand out from other similar, run of the mill research efforts in this area – they actually do seem to come up with some valuable insights.

The 2009 survey is now getting underway – the key difference this year is that Glide is looking for input from both journalists and bloggers (sorry, no PR folk required).  I realise most hacks would rather poke their own eyes out rather than spend time on yet another bloody survey – but if the thorough approach of recent years is replicated again this time around, I’d say it is 15 mins well spent.

As an added incentive, everyone who helps by completing a survey will be entitled to enter a prize draw and a chance to win 2 bottles of Champagne –  3 sets up for grabs – and of course, everyone who takes part will receive a full copy of the results (naturally).

So if you are a journalist or blogger, feel free to go here to complete the Glide Technologies 2009 Media Survey. Go on. You know you want to.

Filed under: Digital marketing, Media, Web/Tech, digital pr, online pr , Gilde Journalists Survey

How do you distribute and monitor social media guidelines?

More and more organisations are looking to draw up social media guidelines. As I’ve previously pointed out, many larger companies have already put in place policies relating to blogging and social network participation. However, it occurred to me there is not much discussion around the subject of distributing, monitoring and enforcing social media guidelines. Having a written social media usage policy is clearly a necessary first step. But how do you make sure people have seen these guidelines? More importantly, how do you know that they have actually read and understood them? And are aware of the consequences of failing to abide by them? (Take Cisco for example: “Please be aware that violation of this policy may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination.”)

Perhaps social media might be able to learn something from the world of IT security. There are already tools that allow businesses to readily distribute and monitor IT security policy, as well as educate employees. So why not for social media guidelines?

What do people think?

Filed under: Digital marketing, IT security, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr , social media policy

Does your PR agency really understand Page Rank? A client checklist.

Talking to various people over the last weeks, it is clear that a small but growing number of PR firms are attempting to use Page Rank as a metric for measuring the value of online media coverage.  However, it seems that some either don’t really understand what Page Rank is – or are misleading clients over the real Page Rank (and value) that their coverage has delivered.

For example, I’ve been told of a few firms who if they gain a piece of client coverage on, say, Computing’s web site, will claim that the value of the coverage is Page Rank 6.  However, what they really mean is that the Computing home page has a Page Rank of 6 – the actual page where the coverage appeared will almost certainly have a Page Rank of 0. That’s a mighty big difference.

In fact, almost all press coverage (or indeed any new web page) will have a Page Rank of 0 to begin with. Any new page added to a site will first have to be indexed by Google. And it takes Google time to take account of factors that will determine what Page Rank should be assigned. It is certainly possible to get Page Rank up to 1 0r 2 relatively quickly if people begin linking to the coverage  - but unless you get some very high Page Ranked backlinks rapidly, the chances that a piece of coverage will have gained a Page Rank of 5 or higher in the space of a few days is highly unlikely.

Traditionally, gaining a piece of coverage on a major site like the BBC would be cause for celebration. And I’m not saying it shouldn’t still be. However, we need to be honest about what value that might really deliver. And why we need to be careful about using Page Rank as a PR metric.

For example, the Guardian has a massive 3.8 million unique visitors and 130 million page views per month in the UK alone. Some PR firms might be tempted to say that getting coverage on The Guardian site provides an OTS (opportunity to see) of 3.8 Million. Of course, this is not exactly the case. The Guardian has roughly 20.3 million indexed pages – not of all of these are going to be editorial pages, but most will be. Fact is, not all pages are equal. Only the publishers themselves know the real data, but I’d hazard a guess that a smaller percentage of the total number of indexed pages gain the majority of site traffic. That’s the same for any website.  The challenge with using Page Rank as a PR metric is that it is an indirect measure of traffic. If you think about it, if Google determines that a page has a higher relative importance than another then it is likely to have more traffic. In which case, try randomly sampling some pages from the BBC and other major sites and you’ll probably find that the Page Rank is o.

Here is another example. This story was one of the Most Popular on the BBC site a few days ago. However, it has a Page Rank of 0. In spite of 49 backlinks, including backlinks from pages with rankings of 7. Now the Page Rank may change over time, but again, this is unlikely unless further interest is generated via additional backlinks.

That’s not to say that over time, an article might not be able to build a higher Page Rank. But how many PR firms do you know that would recommend and implement an ongoing “merchandising” strategy to try and generate more backlinks and comments to a piece of coverage in order to improve Page Rank? Or would be able to track changes in Page Rank over time and demonstrate what factors may have caused that change in Page Rank? And have a plan for using that change in Page Rank to generate further traffic to the client’s website? (Disclosure: this is a standard approach at escherman)

The traditional PR mindset is one that says once a piece of coverage has appeared, the job is pretty much done (other than to prepare a clippings book and invoice the client). Part of the opportunity with online PR is that generating the initial coverage can in fact be the start rather than the end of the process.

So beware of PR firms touting Page Rank as a metric. Here’s a handy quick checklist of things to ask them:

1. Explain what Page Rank is and why it is important. Hint: go here to find out for yourself.

2. If a PR firm claims a high Page Rank for a piece of coverage that has appeared in the last 2 days, ask them to explain what factors have caused this to be the case.

3. Ask them if they have a plan for potentially improving the Page Rank of a piece of coverage – and how they would track that over time

Filed under: Digital marketing, Technology PR, Web/Tech, digital pr, online pr, tech pr , Page Rank

UK interest in online PR will peak in September 2009: Google

Google has just announced an update to its Insight for Search tool which now includes predictions for future search volumes.

I thought I’d give it a quick test on a few relevant terms. First up, online PR.

According to Google, search volumes for “online PR” in the UK will reach a peak in September of this year. They will tail off dramatically in October, rise again a bit in November, fall off again at Christmas – and then reach another spike in March 2010 – but not as high as Sept 2009 (interesting to note that the graph has shown a recurring pattern over the last few years – what happens in September to spike interest in online PR? AdTech?)

As noted at the Google Research blog: “Having predictable trends for a search query or for a group of queries could have interesting ramifications. One could forecast the trends into the future, and use it as a “best guess” for various business decisions such as budget planning, marketing campaigns and resource allocations.”

For example, anyone in the business of selling online PR services may want to focus their efforts on September 2009 and March 2010.

There are also ramifications for PR content development. You might plan to develop specific content for the future based around predicted keyword search volumes.

Of course, as ever, this all hinges on the accuracy of the predictions. And as Google are quick to point out, they are only extrapolating from previous data. Still, better than nothing.

Filed under: Digital marketing, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr

Seth Godin’s Blog: When tactics drown out strategy

New media creates a blizzard of tactical opportunities for marketers, and many of them cost nothing but time, which means you don’t need as much approval and support to launch them.

As a result, marketers are like kids at Rita’s candy shoppe, gazing at all the pretty opportunities.

Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don’t feel confident outlining one unless we’re sure it’s going to work. And the ‘work’ part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, “I’m going to post this.” If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)

“Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best customers over time” is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience, people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy… and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that they never really embraced in the first place.

The next time you find yourself spending 8 hours on tactics and five minutes refining your strategy, you’ll understand what’s going on.

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via sethgodin.typepad.com

So true.

Filed under: Digital marketing, digital pr, marketing, online pr

The Real ROI of the Press Release | BNET (and some odd logic)

A year and a half ago, if you had tried to Google either the Next Level Wellness Center or its founder, Dr. Vasili Gatsinaris, you would have had to wade through 16 pages of search results to find the first mention of either one of them. Then in early 2008, the company’s publicist Donna St. Jean Conti began issuing monthly press releases for $200 each through PRWeb, a wire service that distributes releases to 30,000 online publishers. Total amount of press coverage the releases generated? One mention in a local magazine — but that’s not the point. When the press releases started popping up on page four of Google search results, Conti knew the investment had paid off. “Our primary goal was to make it onto Google,” she says.

via bnet.com

Let’s do the maths on the above. Assume early 2008 = January 2008, then Donna has spent around $3800 on press release distribution (this doesn’t take into account the money spent on writing the releases). It is stretching it a bit to say that getting to page 4 on Google is “the investment paying off”. Nobody looks at page 4 results. But if you look at what comes top for a search on “Vasili Gatsinaris”, it is indeed a PRWeb release. Then again, what about search volume on the terms mentioned? According to Google, broad match searches on “Vasili Gatsinaris” total one (1) per day. Perhaps that’s the company themselves checking to see where they are on Google? Search ranking without reference to search volume (or indeed the target audience) is a pretty fruitless exercise.

PS Mr Gatsinaris’ LinkedIn profile could do with beefing up http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/vasili/gatsinaris

Filed under: Digital marketing, digital pr, marketing, online pr

Get Shorty – The Elevator Pitch is Dead | Integrated Marketing and Media | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert

Understand that the Elevator Pitch is Dead. You remember the elevator pitch. The notion that you should be able to describe what your company does in the length of time consumed by the average elevator ride. I’m here to tell you, that’s way too long these days. Elevator rides seem interminable.

Instead, I humbly suggest that you develop a 120-character pitch for your business. Today. Not the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter, but an even tighter 120 characters to allow for re-tweets, and the inevitable next round of brevity.

I realize that 120 characters sounds like the linguistic equivalent of Gary Coleman, but it’s not as short as it seems.

(in fact, the previous sentence is exactly 119 characters)

Go ahead, try it. Leave your elevator pitch in the comments. Maybe you’ll meet a new friend or customer.

Here’s mine: Social media strategic counsel for mid-sized companies & PR firms. Plus, invigorating social media speeches & training. (119)

and you?

via convinceandconvert.com

Filed under: online pr

Just Being There Isn’t Enough | Convince & Convert

This pretty much sums up why brands like Ad Age are missing an opportunity on Twitter. They ignore any conversation, they NEVER respond to comments or inquiries. And they break the most common rules of etiquette for the community. This isn’t surprising considering they represent both the print media (who clearly doesn’t understand how to exist online) and advertising’s Old Guard (who desperately want to remain relevant but usually can’t wrap their head around it).

A typical post is represented by an example like this one: Brink’s Set to Unveil $120 Million Rebranding Effort: NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — At a time when awareness of its br.. http://tinyurl.com/nt623f

They ignore the 140 character limit completely, clearly copying and pasting from an article. Doing this demonstrates that they don’t care about the way information is exchanged on a specific channel (in this case Twitter). Even worse, it has that old media stench, the “WE will tell YOU what is important and you will read every last word”. Using the full character count with a wasted segment of an introductory line also keeps the piece from being re-tweeted. (see another example of AdAge Social Media Blindness)

In this forum, it would be be best to rewrite the headline or summary of the piece to fit the forum. It would also help with engagement if they would add some posts asking for reader opinion or feedback, or by occasionally responding to a tweet in their direction.

Social site users aren’t there to talk about your brand, even though they may occasionally indulge you. They are there to share experiences. To participate in a conversation that they might not have offline. That’s why you should be there too.

via convinceandconvert.com

Filed under: online pr

Hype springs eternal in the human breast. – Broadstuff

One observation I would make is that many of the main hype merchants today in this sector are Gen Y, but maybe Generation Y are also just better inured against their own hype, as they apparently are with all other forms of advertising, and its the older generation that don’t have the antihype antibodies?

via broadstuff.com

Filed under: online pr

Will zero friction ecosystems destroy value? – Broadstuff

The online world is the best friction reducing agent known to man. Implications are fairly “interesting”:

– The more your industry can go online, the lower the overall margins
– The lower the margins, the more it resolves to players who have massive scale and/or those operating at subsistence costs (did someone say User Generated Content)
– In a global market, those with the least friction lose – anyone with true “free trade” will be hollowed out by those with a few barriers.

This has some implications on ‘Net policy for countries, as it is clear that being a bit more frictitious than your trading partners may help – and it looks like we may have to build the Internet with a bit of friction included, if it is actually going to create rather than continually destroy value. One to watch…..

via broadstuff.com

Also has implications for PR and journalism…..

Filed under: online pr