Category Archives: Uncategorized

Social Media Emphasis on ORM at Search Marketing World 2009

Posted on by
Reply

Social Media engagement seemed to be the big winner at Search Marketing World this year.  The beauty and horror of these events is that you get to pick and choose the sections you can attend but invariably the ones you want to see clash.  The three that I was particularly struck with were the Brand and Reputation Management, Social Media -Redefining the customer and The Ad Industry and Online Marketing.  Too many learnings for this post so here I will deal with the Online Reputation Management one only.

Web Brand & Reputation Management

Brian Marin from Marin Software (not related believe it or not) began this session with an overview of the drop in levels of public trust from the Edelman Trust Barometer, where 83% of Irish people reported that they trusted brands less, before giving some examples of companies who have experienced bad karma online.  The are some really strong examples of where the negative online activity can really impact on brands.  Some of the ones he touched are worth reading and included:

TicketMaster is Evil and Must Die

Walmart Watch, which is a nationwide campaign to reval harmeful impact of Walmart

United Airline and customer compliants

Concast Sucks

Ryanair Sucks

Moben Kitchens – Destroys Your Health

Boycott De Beers

Alitalia Sucks

Countrywide Home Loans Sucks

Kentucky Fried Cruelty

I Hate Starbucks

Some of these are fully set up sites dedicated sites that have a damaging effect on the search engine traffic but the examples shown went beyond this to include facebook profiles that also mirrored above including

Acer Sucks

Comcast Sucks

Starbucks Sucks (interestingly there are a number in this category)

The main point coming from this was that a lot of negative commentary is taking place and that most companies are blissfully unaware of it.  Stage one being the obvious to establish resonable methodologies and automate the process of monitoring.  Some good aids here are Brandwatch, BrandsEye and Yasni (for people searching).  These can tell you a lot about trends but as Brian Marin pointed out you also need to watch downstream traffic using tools such as hitwise.  He pointed to an example where HSBC were seeing lots of traffic to their site from Facebook (positive you would think)  but when they tracked it back, it led to complaints by students about the bank.

All of this caught everyone interest but the pencils really started to scribble down notes when he covered actions you could take – some very ill advised –  some reasonable.  Most of the other sessions contained some element about the perils of trying to be more clever than the search engines so best to stick within the rules.

So what can you do if you are the recipient of negative online coverage especially when this pops up in search engine rankings before or after you company listing.

  • Google Tattling.  Basically looking for link buying by the site and telling Google in the hope they will take action against the site.
  • Google Bowling.  Not recommended but spamming the site with lots of links in the hope Google will act against them.
  • Denial of Service.  Again not recomended but overunning the site with so many requests that it become unaccessable.
  • Creating land pages or microsites.  Good in principle but the time and effort it takes to drive these up the search engine rankings (and out rank the negative commentary) makes it questionable about how useful they are.
  • Insulation.  Get some credited third party endorsement or positive coverage of your company or the story.   Basically floating the good stories to the top.

All of these are fairly dramatic efforts but the real ways to protect your brand comes back to a lot of the basics in PR including:

  • Participate in the discussion.
  • Communicate positively – early ideally and point to actions taken to address the problem.
  • Engage with the community.  You will get a fairer hearing if you are part of the community.
  • Treat the cause.  Get to the fundamental root of the problem.  Sounds obvious but many people still prefer to try cover up.
  • Build trust and attract advocates.  Nothing more powerful that other people coming to your rescue or balancing a debate rather than you defending the brand along.  General Motors got a reasonable amount of flack in social media (as you would expect with some many cars and owners) but decided to let the debate continue.  They were pleasantly suprised to see that members of the community came to their rescue with postive experiences.

These strategies are very positive news for the PR industry as the core skill set of communication is engrained in everything we do.  Again the Edelman Barometer but a 91% figure was reported in response to being asked how important “communicates frequently and honestly on the state of its business” was to the overall reputation of a company.

Brians summary was also useful but in brief:

  • Insulate search results
  • Monitor your brand online
  • Act fast and dont hide
  • Communicate frequently and honestly
  • Build trust and adovates
  • And finally dont over do it.  Make sure its natural.

Rob Shine from Cybercom had some additional gems to share.

The advent of Universal Search where other third party content is pulled high in search engine rankings, such as YouTube videos, is something people have seen but have not really thought about the implications.  The Taco Bell video of rats running through the restaurant at night was followed by a huge online and traditional media coverage including footage of the reaturant opening up the next day.   The Ryanair snoozing air hostess BBC coverage on YouTube also ranked high in Google.  Interestingly enough the anti blogger stance by Ryanair, which for most would have been a near disaster, actually resulted in higher bookings to the site (higher visits to the site was expected).  This sparked a debate about no PR being bad PR.

On the defenive tactic side Pay per Click advertising supported by good content can help to push down negative mentions or at least point to your side of the debate.  One of the earlier presentations by Anthony Quigley pointed out that although many people ignore the ads on the side the paid for sponsored ads at the top of organic searches are frequently percieved as organic listings.  This involves buying the negative keywords that people are using to find the story and then using google adwords to link to some positive aspect such as a balancing statement on the story.

Influecing the blogging community was another tactic mentioned but can take a long time and is uncontrollable.

Two other tactics were also covered including

1. Push down the critical site by having more positive pages rank above it.  This covers optimised YouTube videos, optimised press releases, blog posts, social profiles etc and is well within the remit of PR companies.

2. De-legitimise the link in the eyes of the search engine.

You can always complain to Google through the editors of its Open Directory DMOZ.  To be effective the critical site needs to be out of compliance with the DMOZ rules and can theorically decrease the importance of the site.  However any action, if any, can be many months in actually taking place.

Rob finished up by highlighting the importance of establishing positive online PR as part of the marketing mix rather than waiting for negative commentary.  He pointed to their work with blogger Guy Kawasaki who they brought over to the store house to show him how to pour the perfect pint.  His subsequent blog posts on it resulted in 100,000 additional readers and an approximate 5% lift in visitors to the Guinness Store House site.  He also spoke about an joint initiative with Irish photo sharing site Pix.ie.  They realised the potential of tapping into the power of the thousands of amateur photos that are taken at the store everyday by creating a photo gallery on the site.  In promoting this they did some blogger outreach where they targeted a group of influential photo bloggers and after a tour of the facility got 70 blog posts that helped generate an additional 400,000 extra readers of the site.  Some of the photos that he showed were of an extremely high calibre and would have been difficult to achieve with a professionally contracted photo session.

Some of his summary tips were useful including:

  • Importance of establishling a framework to identify issues and influencers
  • Establishing proactive and reactive social media engagement teams
  • Monitoring and moderation of key review and comparison sites over a period of time is critical to getting an initial feel of how the brand is percieved over time – rather than one post or thread.

The final speaker was Krishna De.

She open up with some more online reputation horror stories such as Motrin negative experience with a minor revolt in the blogosphere and social media sites over an ad they ran.  Some users found the language and tone offensive (that interestingly was launched over a weekend) and resulted in a back peddling by the company.

She also pointed to an issue that blogger Emily Tully had with a mobile provider where the debate raged on IGO People.  Interestingly the competing providers had a presence on the site and gained judos by interacting on the issue.  It also made its way into main stream papers.

Krishna heavily endorsed using communications specialist to help decide the tone and nature of engagement when dealing with online reputation issues.  One of the really obviously things that is overlooked by companies mentioned was the - Online Reputation Management Plan.  We prepare these plans for clients for events in the real world but they are still very new for dealing with crisis and reputation issues in the online world especially with social media.

Krishna also pointed out the obvious step of making sure you own the url for high profile CEOs or management.   She pointed to an example with Fast Company whose the CEO Shel Israel was parodied on a website in his own name following a volley of criticism over a inteview he did.  This tactic also covers buying the domainname’sucks’.com address as this is a popular one for people who have an axe to grind with a company.

Another good practical measure, especially as brands are on the fence in relation to engaging with social media, was to at least claim ownership of the name.  While not exactly cybersquatting there are many examples of multiple unofficial versions of sites/profile/brands on Facebook and Twitter.  Apparently an Exxon Mobil Twitter account that was being lauded for being proactive was not officially part of the company.

In terms of engagement she also recommended getting in early rather than late and not necessarily staying until the bitter end.

Once again listening to the online conversation, understanding the medium and building relationship are key and should be done before a disaster strikes.

Overall some great learning and some new tricks.  If PR people ever needed a reason to get to grips with adwords then this is a really strong one.

UK Digital Brands Coming to Ireland

Posted on by
1

Net imperative ran an interesting event this week in Guinness Storehouse.  It was a pretty full house, wide range of understanding amongst the attendees, had a good line up and strangely enough was free.  Perhaps Piaras was right about the future being free.  As most of the speakers were sponsors it is probably safe to assume that they will be offering or looking to expand their services in Ireland.  Normally these type events are direct sales pitches but the balance was pretty good at this one.

Some interesting insights:

Christopher Bennett, Blyk gave some great insights into the youth market being knowledge driven, collaborative, socially fragmented, multichannelling and microconsuming.  These digital natives want innovation and are digitally aware, confident and looking for value.  In building his story toward the Blyk offering he outlined some of the mobile stats with

  • 3.3 billion mobile hand sets globally
  • Twice the number of TVs
  • Three times the number of PCs
  • and over 78,000 sold during the time of his presentation

Mobile phone usage was also a bit different than you would expect with the most popuar use of phones of the 16-24 age group reporting

  1. Calls
  2. Text messaging (no surprises here)
  3. Alarm clock (not me with blipping mails)
  4. Finally use of it as torch

Blyk provide sim cards and free calls in return for customers agreeing to receive up to 6 messages a day.  The service is invite only (similar to gmail early days) and they only target the 16-24 audience as its a traditionally hard group to reach (an hence very attractive to advertisers).  The real beauty of their service is that they get very detailed information about the users which means they can generate highly relevant ads.  This covers demographic detail, interest etc but also the handset details (so they can customise photos/videos etc).  So much so that the average response rate is 25% with 75% achieved for highly targeted campaigns.  Their firm belief is that with such a focus on the interest areas that advertising is percieved as a valuable service and not intrusive.  This blended in with his discussion on the power of marketing to one.

Chris did not outline plans for Ireland but his description of market places they are interested in has an uncanny resemblance to Ireland.  I imagine there will be lots of recession hit student ready to sell their personal details for free calls.

Adam Parker from RealWire discussed the changes that are taking place in the PR/media market place with a move from the paper based media to publishers such as Total Telecom, Hoovers to the growth of blogs (micro blogs, social media) and now UGC (User Generated Content).  His main points being that the new media is instant, far reaching and enduring and hence can be more powerful that traditional print media. 

So why would PR companies use his service or rather go online – the usual reasons

  • Ability to influence search rankings
  • Online conversations taking place anyway
  • Controlled brand message syndication

He pointed to some online review sites, that no one in audience had heard of, with high Alexa rankings as a examples of opportunities that are being missed with a focus on traditional media. 

On a positive note he reported that up to 70% of UK PR companies either do not report having a online PR service or blog or both.  This would correspond to Damien Mulleys blog on same in the Irish market.

Adman finished on a final note that in addition to the expected online virtues people online are active and looking for something while off line they are passive. 

Claira Jackson from Sony Music entertainment gave some good examples of how the music industry has changed as digital has grown.  Companies like Sony now offer much more value add for brand wishing to engage in music as control over the charts and music distribution has slipped away.  Collaborations with Intel and jamiroquai (access to JK, competitions), Xbox (Xbox live and video releases), Last Minute (access to celebrities and travel habits with 10 minute mini videos), Coke and iTunes.  Their insight team also carried out research and were able to give detailed pen pictures of AC DC fan.  They may not control the distribution as once before but certainly control access to musicans and official use of music by brands.  This supports the arguement by Andrew Keen that the actual music sales are the minority of the financial earnings for artists.

This presentation and the insights from Chris Bennett were of particular interest for Johnny Beirne from Download Music.ie who is offering a text based music download payment and fulfilment service.  Interesting company to watch and offer lots of opportunities for the PR industry who wish to leverage the independent artists in Ireland.

It will be interesting to see the follow up from the session.  I have already notices additional people following me on twitter from the event and some more LinkedIn follow on invites from the presenters.

Some likely changes to the PR industry!

Posted on by
2

I started this post as ‘the Future of PR companies’ but it was too broad and looked like an enormous post so I have distilled to some observations.

The public relations industry is posed to change enormously and at the same time set to remain the same.  Let me explain.  Changes in social media (and all the new skills it involves), a balancing of focus away from traditional media and all the new services mean a very welcome change in what PR companies do.  Much of the adoption will come from bottom up pressure and new entrants bringing new ‘native’ and purer online skills.  However the success of PR into the future is not only dependent on mastering new platforms but rather utilising and adapting the central communications and messaging skills.  The innate gut feel of what is a good story, understanding the temperature of the moment, know what to say and when to say it  and having ones finger on the pulse takes a long time to build up.  Largely this life time skill set can be limited by constricted outlets ie just dealing with traditional media.

So how will the emergence of new media change what future PR companies look like and how they work.  Some areas where i think we will see change include:

 

1. Collaboration

Collaboration between the industry is already growing through platforms such as Plaxo and Linked In.  Rapidly formed collaborative groups formed PR groups on Facebook, Linked In, Ning show a willingness to share that I have only previously witnessed with close colleagues in the past.  As people develop specialist skills this could easily evolve into PR practitioners utilising the collective skills to work on client projects.  This will be slow to happen with larger agencies but more likely with smaller niche players.  e.g. some looking to develop a Linked In strategy could utilised Krisna De or Social Networking could utilise Conor Lynch.  From a clients perspective the experience would be project managed to appear as one.

2. Location

Physical location is already reducing in importance in PR.  City Centre offices were alway the preferred location for a variety of historical reasons.  This included being close to media outlets.  The need for this diminished with the introduction of email.  Building on the collaborative theme PR practitioners could be based anywhere in the country with good broadband connections.  As the future PR practitioner will not be fully focused on national media and could be focused on social media, for example, then location is less important.

3. Skills Sets

Apart from the central communications skills from writing, developing messages etc a deeper computer literacy will be needed.  Consider first how the media is likely to change to help illustrate this.  Most traditional media have a website, most have blogs, some have started to incorporate PodCasting and some have Video Casting.  PR should be able to deliver content in these forms which means need hardware and software skills namely audio and video recorders and the related editing software from audacity to audition to premier pro.  Yes this can be outsourced but these skills are not just going to be needed for media relations.  Most social media demand multimedia content from videos, pictures to podcast material.  Turn around is important in having these skills.  If you organise a press conference and are uploading to YouTube, blog, Facebook etc then you will need to be able to do some basic edits and get it up fast for it to be relevant.  The era of corporate video costing many thousands of euro and taking months to develop has moved to shorter, faster, less higher quality (which will probably not be noticed on web platforms) but higher number of interactions.  One size no longer fits all.

3. Blogger Relations

There are load of guides to blogger relations from how to guides to codes of practice.  PR has received bad press to date here because people treat it the same way as bad traditional media relations.  Mainly this covers the write once and send to all practice.  Not good in traditional media relations but worse in blogger relations.  So what is the impact.  PR agencies work on a time based model.  Clients buy x amount of time at set rates.  The price of this service has largely remained static as PR companies got faster at syndicating press releases due to email and better word processors.  Problem is that blogger relations takes time.  Individual pitching, understanding the individual blog focus and the blogger themselves, commenting over time, tracking through RSS feeds, researching them through the various methods Damien Mulley mentions all takes time.  To short circut this some PR companies just added blogger email addresses to their BCC lists with poor reputation results.  The end result is that as blogger and journalists reach parity in terms of influence that PR may become more expensive.

 There are many more examples of how the future PR will look from Online Reputation Management to influencing social network but will hold for another post.

Eoin

Happy Christmas Videos

Posted on by
Reply

Last year we plunged into the 40 foot for our online Chritmas video greeting but this year we have gone with a more sedate theme of “the night before Christmas and not a Chritmas tree to be found.

 

This year is certainly the year of e-cards and have a total of three actual physical cards on my desk.  Expected to see YouTube populated with plenty of video greetings.  I enjoyed McConnells take on the Dancing Elf and Digital Audio Productions used a nice one from Jib Jab. Lauire Mannix from MKC did a Channel 6 naughty Christmas one.  Lewis PR did an good parody on Live Aid.  The UK Foods Standard Agency did an interesting one themed on food bugs and diarrhoea.

You Tube lists over 103,000 Merry Christmas videos, most of which are music video and not the rush of company greetings I expected to see this year.

It would be great to have a listing of the top ones.  Let me know of other you see.

Product Testing for the Brave

Posted on by
3

I signed up for Fuel My Blog a good while ago and effectively forgot about it until I received an alert from them on Friday for product reviewing.  The site is offering a new service where they build a profile database of bloggers, get a pile of product to review and then match the two (amongst other initiatives to help create more value and stickiness for your blog).  You dont get paid for the review but rather free stuff which this week ranges from

Some of the products already available to send out next week are multi-packs of delicious snack bars, a brand new range of razors, gifts, unique balloons..and many more..

Its an interesting concept and challenge for PR companies – do you turn your back on a potentially hiting a large audience in an easy to access manner or insist on the usual of interaction and “control” that helps to bring a good review through.  From the initial look the companies providing the product get a reasonable amount of control over who reviews what so it could help to minimise the risk.  The products currently on offer look like low value items which would make sense but if successful it could be an easy channel for bloggers to get increased respect as reviewers and access to product.  From a company point of view it would appear that it has been pitched at getting feedback (as positive or negative reviews dont seem to matter) and could be a pre-launch initiative to enhance their product testing.

It should be interesting to see how many snack bars are reviewed outside of food blogs.

Eoin

Using blogs to maximise your sponsorship

Posted on by
Reply

I presented at the recent IIA Congress but as time keeper had a great chance to see the key note addresses. PodCast and Presentations are available from their website. There were lots of great speakers but as usual there was one stand out one amongst the giants that presented. Barry Meehan from Cycle World presented on how he has used social media to generate extra footfall to his store, increase traffic on the site and actuall sell a number of high spec bikes to customers overseas. His enthusiasm for what he does was infectious and what he has achieved on small budgets was impressive. Through the blog he has managed to create strong one on one relationships with people before they physically visit his store. Cyclists generally want to research online before making a visit to a store and through the content – from new designs to how to clean your bike tutorials – he found a very strong relationship between what gets sold and what he blogs about. Before custmers visit him they already feel that have a relationship with him and offers challenges on people arriving knowing his name and what he has been up to. One of the interesting areas that PR executives could learn from was how he uses the blog to maximise his return on sponsorships. He uploads the photos and results from these events – generally small events – and traffic spikes the following day with cyclists looking to check their times and photos. The blog platform allows him to deliver this with minimal effort. When quizzed about unhappy customers and posting online about it he was happy to accept that it was better that he knew the issues and saw it as offering more opportunities than threats.

While Dell, Bebo and PWC gave interesting overviews on the market, there was no replacement for an owner manager talking about his own experiences.

Campbell Scott, from IGOpeople.com presented his offering in harnessing online conversations and matching people and services and using social media to change/leverage/improve the services that are offered. Due for release after the summer it will be interesting to see how it takes off.

Online PR Presentation from Search Marketing World 2008

Posted on by
1

I finally managed to work out how to post presentations through slideshare. Great tool. The presentation below is one I gave at Search Marketing World 2007.

[slideshare id=354566&doc=search-marketing-world-2008-presentation-ek-1208276769815013-9&w=425]

Here are the notes to help make sense out of the slides.

My name is Eoin Kennedy and I am an Associate Director of Slattery Communications and a director of the Irish Internet Association. We would fall into the category of a traditional PR company but we have started to grow our online offering to blend in with the regular offline campaigns that we run.

Today I will talk about the experience of growing campaigns online:

What is holding back adoption?
Some of the reasons why companies have been slow to embrace the opportunities that online presents.

What PR has to offer
Building on this I will look at how well positioned Public Relations companies are to grow their offerings online.

Why the rush?
Online PR and digital media have been around for sometime but now with the growth of broadband and some really useful tools it is moving very fast and the landscape is changing quickly.

Tools you can use now
Despite some of the things that are causing delays in adoption there *are* some things that communications people can and should engage in immediately.

What is possible?
I will then look at some of the areas where, with some investment, PR companies can begin to work the online environment.

Case studies
I will then finish up by talking through some examples.

    QUESTIONS

    1. Fear of technology. Many PR people never really get beyond using word processors. Using audio and photo editing software needs new IT literacy skills and many do no invest. Although most software has become increasingly intuitive it still takes time to master rapidly evolving tools like blogs. Add the almost daily new applications that appear on facebook and you have a very different learning curve.

    2. Exposure. PR people are very comfortable with supplying content to journalists and even happier when the journalist uses their bi-line on the article. Not all are so happy when their names appear in print. Similarly we are happy to prep and push out spokespeople but less happy being on the front lines ourselves.

    3. Feedback. People rarely feedback on articles they read in the traditional media world. By the time they have found pen and paper, envelope, bought a stamp, the enthusiasm to reply has worn off. In addition written letters rarely get printed. Not so the blogging and social networking world. Instant and perhaps less thought out feedback is common. Many companies and PR people feel very uneasy about this.

    4. Time. Researching, monitoring and implementing online campaigns sinks a lot of hours. Few executives in PR companies sit idly at their desk and with pressure to record billable hours means that the value of online campaigns can be over looked and seen as unproductive use of time.

    5. Age profile. Most senior management in PR can be defined as digital emigrants at best. The emerging new class of younger PR excutives who have grown up in an exclusive online environment have very different skills and agility. Senior managers can feel very exposed and are sometimes negative about online PR as a result.

    6. Networking. Evening events and social events have always been the feeding ground for PR executives to hand out business cards and flaunt their expertise. Building online networks from Facebook to LinkedIn means spending equal amount of hours on a PC to ensure that you are connected to the new online influentials.

    7. Information Overload. I see on a daily basis busy PR executives struggling to even read the daily selection of newspapers. Add the countless blogs, twitter entries and flow of online news feeds and people stuggle to manage the information. Combine this with the huge number of user names and passwords and many just give up. Tools like FeedDemon help but are still underutilised.

    8. Fear and Ignorance. One of the most negative barriers to PR companies is the lack of understanding of the power of good online campaigns. Fear can be a double edge sword – for some it causes them to dismiss the opportunities but now that critical mass has been reached in terms of numbers online and the reliance on the search engines for finding information on companies, the fear is starting to drive action. With over 1 million registered Irish users of bebo and over 127,000 new Irish users on facebook in a 9 month period last year there is a growing feeling of an emerging tsumani of online users who will want their content presented in a different way than articles in the Irish Times.

    9. Definition. Traditional PR services differ hugely amongst communications companies. What one considers PR, others consider as promotion, hence the confusion in defining the job role of a public relations consultant. This gets even more confusing in the online world where the options are vast. In addition the parameters are being roughly draw up and are still vague at best. For example at a recent Ketchum Leadership conference I attended in London, one of the affiliates spoke about running campaigns on Facebook and the clear line between providing engaging content and infiltrating the community. Hiring online influentials to spread the word was seen as beyond acceptable behaviour.

    The list of reasons for not fully engaging goes on but what is clear is that if PR companies do not invest in their capabilities that someone else will appear and eat their lunch. The traditional media has constricted and those who do not change will find themselves in a shrinking and competitive market.

    Slide 3

    · Content – one of the areas that PR excel in is the generation of good quality content. This is usually very use focused, clear of marketing speak and engaging. This ranges from press releases, articles, speeches, newsletter, TV notes, briefing pack etc. Unfortunately much of this is aimed squarely aimed at traditional media and much resides on servers after it printed.

    · Engagement – whether its dealing with community groups, trade association, events or political entities pr campaigns aim to engage an audience. Online offers the potential to extend this level of engagement to new levels

    · Debate – PR is rarely one sided and seeing both sides and making judgement call is key to good pr

    · Dialogue – one of the crucial areas of PR is ensuring dialogue – either between a company and its publics and normally through the media

    · Monitoring – the days of paper monitoring has gone to online key word search

    · Ear to the ground – PR has always been excellent at taking the pulse of what is happening in the eco system.

    Why Rush?

    Changes in the traditional media environment have been relatively slow. The biggest changes have been media going online. Now the focus of power has changed with Citizen journalism and the control has started to become a fallacy. Lets look at some of the numbers:

    · Bebo claims over 1 million with 600k being a more accepted number. This is a lot of 16-24 year olds that are outside of a lot of traditional pr campaigns

    · Face book is around 131K users. This grew around 127K in 9 months last year.

    · Technoratti report over 112 M blogs and this is growing daily. Even if a fraction is relevant to your business it still a huge number and the search engines love then

    · You Tube has over 69m videos, most of which are in the 2-5 minute category and they are emerging as the most desired medium for Digital Natives.

    · We ran a viral video over Christmas which featured our staff putting themselves through torture in the name of charity and over a 2-3 week time frame we saw an increase of over 2,000 unique visitors to the site. More interesting was the number of places they visited after they watched the video.

    So why else should we take notice

    • The Traditional media as we know it is constricting. Titles are merging. The landscape is becoming more competitive

    • Some of the Channels we previously used are now not relevant to many new target groups. The search engines are the preferred medium for information search and often the places where we placed stories do not appear in these searches.

    • There is still plenty of scope for the trusted press release and photo but online users demand more Media Rich content and this is missing from the arsenal of pr companies

    • Finally these demands will be met and if not by the pr industry then by a growing number of more nimble niche players and believe me Others will eat our lunch

    What now

    · So what should PR companies be doing immediately. I am amazed by the number of companies who still do not post their press releases. This means that they are relatively invisible to the search engines. The search engine optimisation of press releases – ie posting them on one of the many online free news distribution services, hyperlinking keywords and optimising the words so that they are more attractive to the search engines is a must.

    · Setting up a blog takes roughly five minutes if you are slow. Once the rational and logic of the blog is thought through these provide an excellent medium for putting out messaging, never mind the engagement they great. They are also highly visible to search engines.

    · Photo sharing sites such as Flickr are being used more and more to present a more media rich view of an organisation from press launches or functions or creating a new use for expensive photography. Many of these sites have also incorporated social networking principles so you have the added advantage of creating new and exciting opportunities to communicate.

    · The new range of applications and the networking potential of social networking sites such as facebook, myspace and bebo are excellent opportunities for interaction. The events application with facebook (although abused by some) almost replicates the event management expertise that consumes a lot of executive hours.

    · Finally. The online chatter and rapid emergence of news, stories, scandal is almost instantaneous – both good and bad. We effectively monitor the newspaper and less so broadcast but how can we advise clients if we are a day late. The volume of information is endless but Google alerts and tools like Feeddemon mean we can reduce this manageable proportion and make it relevant to the people we represent.

    With some extra effort

    · By investing some extra resources – time and new skills the new areas that can be explored is immense. Podcasting requires some additional software and some new tools but is within the scope of pr practitioners and is a powerful medium to work our way through the clutter. Quite often we also find that in generating radio ads that bolting on a podcast when the studio time is booked is a very cost effective way of generating extra content.

    · Utilising stories and pushing them wider through social bookmarking and tagging through Digg and Delicious is also possible by investing time and energy and looking for new opportunities to increase the visibility and debate about stories

    · Finally you tube. Again new equipment needed and imagination but by looking into the range of tools we use there could be great scope for viral video, which can also be posted on company websites and blogs can create enriched perceptions of an organisation

    Casestudies

    One of the companies we represent is RedMere. They recently presented at CES and we ran a campaign around their attendance locally through in-depth pieces in the Sunday Business Post and the Irish Times. We also ran a more international programme through liasing with the key blogs and international online sites such as EE Times. In addition we utilised the business wire circuit to reach media that are beyond the normal scope of a Dublin based agency. Finally we also posted the release on, in this case Newswire Today. This was picked up by google within a few hours.

    One of the piece of coverage we received during this campaign was a piece in Silicon Republic which we pushed further through Digg.

    I mentioned the viral mail we did instead of Christmas gifts. Outside of the extra traffic it turned out to be a really good team building exercise for the company and we received more feedback from clients that we ever did from hours of picking the present that were not always appreciated. Not having to sign hundred of cards was also a relief.

    Measurement is always tricky business for PR campaigns but the level of detail that logs provide give you an instant picture of how a campaign worked. This is the log from traffic on our own site. The spikes are from when we sent out the link for the viral mail.

    One of our clients Bombay Sapphire ran an event with an internationally renowned design expert. We ran with our regular invites and follow up but also utilised the network that executives had on Facebook to present a more interactive and media rich experience of the event. It also acted as a great medium for post event follow up with people who attended and also a platform for feedback.

    Finally Repak is a producer responsibility scheme who run recycling awareness campaign in addition to other activities. We set up a blog for them to create more flexible means of communicating than their website. A lot of the content is reworking of content that we generate through campaign we run for them and supplement other activities such as conferences and newsletters. It has also enabled us to reuse photography that we have commissioned and an outlet for podcast material.

    We also organise the Repak Recycling Week that runs during the first week of October. The campaign always generated a load of column inches – last year alone we generated a huge number of newspaper clippings and broadcast interviews. We also run a school programme for them but felt that we needed to create a new level of engagement with younger recyclers. We had good contacts in bebo who were supportive of the campaign so we researched and build a bebo profile for the campaign. Bebo utilising a template model but there was load we could do once we matched the content, language and enough areas for interaction with the bebo community.

    We built our own skins, put a lot of energy into widening the friends network, organised competitions, polls, a survey which we have previously build for use in print media to see how good a recycler someone was. Part of the traditional campaign featured a material per day so we mirrored this on the site with news, facts and figures on the recycling of glass, aluminium, plastic – again reworking content that we had already created. We also organised for a college to Bling Bring banks that we positioned around Dublin (Grafton Street and other areas). One of the bring banks was themed around Tetras and the students generated a video simulating the Blinging process frame by frame. We hosted this and we also hosted the ad that Repak generated during for the week.

    So how did we get on.

    • 11,000 visitors over about 3-4 weeks.

    • 41 Entries to our competition. Some of the entries were pretty elaborate and you can play back how they drew them

    • Over 760 Friends which is now around 900

    • 200 Comments – some of which were one liners but some were queries, some were supportive

    • 307 Quizzes taken

    • Over 500 Polls

    • International hits – accidental but showed the international interest

    • Over 100 Views video

    • Unsolicited endorsement on an independent site praising the profile

    • 10 Entries on Blog

    • Media Coverage through national media

    So in summary online pr has come of age thanks to broadband penetration, the dominance of search engines and new online tools. The critical mass is now there to warrant investment. PR is well positioned to use these tools once we can over the mental and skills barriers.

    Blog Awards Attracts the Grey

    Posted on by
    Reply

    Blog Awards from back of the roomBlog Awards from back of the roomBlog Awards from back of the room

    Congrats to Damien for organising a great night at the Blog Awards. Nice spread of individuals and interest areas. Judging from the entries and demographics there will probably be even more grey surfers present at next years awards. The web savy but time poor Digital Natives may have a battle on their hands for the glass gong with the new Digital Immigrants who have plenty of time and disposable cash!

    Different to other awards and seemed to contain a lot of people who did not know each other but had one thing in common.

    This is the view from the back of the hall and Adams head.

    Why are PR people sitting on the fence with Web 2.0?

    Posted on by
    1

    I will be presenting at the Search Marketing World conference in Dublin in April on the experiences of integrating “traditional” campaigns into the online world. One of the areas I have been pondering has been the reluctance of PR companies to full engage in the great opportunities that exist with online opportunities such as facebook, bebo and areas like social bookmarking and SEO of press releases. Many companies risk missing the boat as advertising agencies suck up the budget.

    Online PR, PR 2.0, Digital PR, EPR or whatever term people use has a lot of agencies scratching their heads and paying lip service. On one side PR companies are perfectly positioned. They generate large amounts of interesting content from photography, press releases, articles, presentations, speeches etc. Unfortunately much of this content lies dormant on a company’s servers once its been printed through traditional media. So why are they so slow? Here are some possible reasons:

    1. Fear of technology.
    Many PR people never really get beyond using word processors. Using audio and photo editing software needs new IT literacy skills and many do no invest. Although most software has become increasingly intuitive it still takes time to master rapidly evolving tools like blogs. Add the almost daily new applications that appear on facebook and you have a very different learning curve.

    2. Exposure.
    PR people are very comfortable with suppling content to journalists and even happier when the journalist uses their bi-line on the article. Not all are so happy when their names appear in print. Similarly we are happy to prep and push out spokespeople but less happy being on the front lines ourselves.

    3. Feedback.
    People rarely feedback on articles they read in the traditional media world. By the time they have found pen and paper, envelope, bought a stamp, the enthusiasm to reply has worn off. In addition written letters rarely get printed. Not so the blogging and social networking world. Instant and perhaps less thought out feedback is common. Many companies and PR people feel very uneasy about this.

    4. Time.
    Researching, monitoring and implementing online campaigns sinks a lot of hours. Few executives in PR companies sit idly at their desk and with pressure to record billable hours means that the value of online campaigns can be over looked and seen as unproductive use of time.

    5. Age profile.
    Most senior management in PR can be defined as digital emigrants at best. The emerging new class of younger PR excutives who have grown up in an exclusive online environment have very different skills and agility. Senior managers can feel very exposed and are sometimes negative about online PR as a result.

    6. Networking.
    Evening events and social events have always been the feeding ground for PR executives to hand out business cards and flaunt their expertise. Building online networks from Facebook to LinkedIn means spending equal amount of hours on a PC to ensure that you are connected to the new online influentials.

    7. Information Overload.
    I see on a daily basis busy PR executives struggling to even read the daily selection of newspapers. Add the countless blogs, twitter entries and flow of online news feeds and people stuggle to manage the information. Combine this with the huge number of user names and passwords and many just give up. Tools like FeedDemon help but are still underutilised.

    8. Fear and Ignorance.
    One of the most negative barriers to PR companies is the lack of understanding of the power of good online campaigns. Fear can be a double edge sword – for some it causes them to dismiss the opportunities but now that critical mass has been reached in terms of numbers online and the reliance on the search engines for finding information on companies, the fear is starting to drive action. With over 1 million registered Irish users of bebo and over 127,000 new Irish users on facebook in a 9 month period last year there is a growing feeling of an emerging tsumani of online users who will want their content presented in a different way than articles in the Irish Times.

    9. Definitinon.
    Traditional PR services differ hugely amongst communications companies. What one considers PR, others consider as promotion, hence the confusion in defining the job role of a public relations consultant. This gets even more confusing in the online world where the options are vast. In addition the parameters are being roughly draw up and are still vague at best. For example at a recent Ketchum Leadership conference I attended in London, one of the affiliates spoke about running campaigns on Facebook and the clear line between providing engaging content and infiltrating the community. Hiring online influentials to spread the word was seen as beyond acceptable behaviour.

    The list of reasons for not fully engaging goes on but what is clear is that if PR companies do not invest in their capabilities that someone else will appear and eat their lunch. The traditional media has constricted and those who do not change will find themselves in a skrinking and competitive market.

    Time will tell!!

    Sceal hits the shelves

    Posted on by
    4

    Hi all,

    After about three or four different blogs which were normally short lived and developed for specific purposes (my wedding for example) I have finally settled on a name and rationale for blogging.

    Sceal is the Irish for story and so this blog is just some of the stories that I stumble on in daily life in public relations.

    Eoin