Archive for the ‘Content’ Category
Will PRs and journalists own natural search?
July 23rd, 2008
You might say, “who cares?”, but for me this is a refreshing new angle on the ‘who owns online PR?’ discussion that has been going on within the social media industry for a while. Of course I’m going to like suggestions that PRs might be in line to own SEO, but setting my vested interests aside, this line of thought helps explain why it is crucial that journalists and PRs understand the long-term trends that are happening in natural search.
Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker made his own rather crude observations on the subject on Monday, in his overly optimised article, “Online POKER marketing could spell the NAKED end of VIAGRA journalism as we LOHAN know it.” He doesn’t say anything new - online headlines have always been important for driving traffic and natural links, and the only difference is that journalists are waking up to the impact optimised copy can have on their authority and popularity rankings - but the article drives home the SEO control that journalists have at their fingertips, should they choose to use it intelligently.
Similarly, Leon Bailey Green has today contributed a post to the E-Consultancy blog entitled: “Is the role of the SEO dead and should PRs own natural search?“, where he argues “off-site optimisation, link building or link baiting, should actually be in the domain of PR professionals”. He concludes “so if a web developer can build a search engine friendly website, a content writer knows how to write search engine friendly copy and an online PR guru can get blogs/websites/forums to link to that content, where does that leave an SEO?”
Regardless of who might own SEO in the future, or whether anyone will, it’s becoming more and more important for PRs and journalists to have a basic understanding of how relevancy, authority and quality of content will increasingly be the metrics used by search engines to rank sites. In addition, social networks are in some cases beginning to displace search, by creating trusted networks of relevant recommendations - which will make the role that PR plays even more important.
The tactics of PR and journalism don’t necessarily need to change, but individuals working in these sectors will have to be very good at what they do.
Natural search can appear very scientific, and I personally am on a mission to understand the techniques as well as I can…but ultimately, PR as an industry needs to focus on the quality of its output. There’s no place for fakers!
July 15th, 2008
As a big fan of the Nintendo Wii I just happened to spot an interesting headline on one of my RSS feeds:
GoNintendo live-blog - Nintendo E3 media briefing
Once I had clicked through, i was greeted by the following message: “This post will sit on the front page, inactive, until the show begins. As long as I can get a wireless signal, I will be providing updates to this post. If I cannot get a signal, Deux Michaels will handle this section. I will update you on the situation as the event nears its start.”
Two things, first:
I’m all for live blogging, instant comments and reaction to breaking news. Doing this puts your blog on the map and in pole position, it draws the crowd in and turns your site into a goto site for all the latest news.
Secondly:
Good on GoNintendo for trying a different approach to blogging and covering an all important media briefing, it’s certainly an approach I would recommend to our Liberate Media clients.
Brands are on their starting blocks for the Olympic social media dash
July 10th, 2008
Over the next few moths you are going to see massive amounts of online coverage of the Olympics, most of it associated with huge brands.
One brand quickly off the blocks is Lenovo, who has a blog site called Voices of the Olympic games. As the name suggests the blog content is made up with athletes’ commentary of what they are currently up to. They also have another pretty impressive site called Lenove Olympic podium powered by Google which offers a whole host of video footage, Google maps and other multimedia content. It’s kind of like a start page for the Olympics where you can drag and drop each section to have the page set up to how you want it.
Lenovo has also got on the Twitter gravy train and is promising updates throughout the Olympics - to follow them click here - they have currently not updated!
Hot on Lenovo’s heel is of course Coca-Cola who has produced a social media press release in English and Chinese. View the smpr here. The smpr introduces Coca-Cola’s integrated Olympic campaign. Some of the interesting stuff Coca-Cola is doing around the Olympics mentioned in the smpr are:
Coca-Cola Virtual Olympic Torch Relay
Coca-Cola Olympic Photo Montage
Design the World a Coke” Interactive Tool
To participate you need a good understanding of Chinese!
Just a taste of some of the big brands getting involved in the Olympics social media push. Watch this space for brands wanting to be associated with the wholesome feel good factor of the Olympics.
The timeline makes a timley come back!
July 7th, 2008
Timelines have been around for years but it seems just recently they have made a bit of a timely comeback, with a number of new timeline apps doing the start-up rounds. From a PR perspective, they can be a great way of telling a company story in a format that can be shared socially.
There used to be a time when to create a timeline you had to go through the rigmarole of setting-up Excel to crunch the numbers.
Here is a list of some of the better timeline applications out there:
Lifehaps - Simple to use drag and drop life timeline.
timetoast - Easy on the eye timeline that can be edited in minutes.
xtimeline - Make your timeline then add it to a group. E.g if your timeline was about Sony mobile phones then you could add it to the Mobile phones group.
viygo - Simple looking timeline with some excellent features, including your own Twitter timeline. Input your username and get a timeline of all your Tweets.
caplez - This has to be the best looking timeline interface, and it gives you the ability to add multi-media content to your timelines.
Dipity -Is another good addition with a great homepage that has its timelines in categories making them easy to search.
If the above is all a bit easy and you want to create a timeline the old skool way, you can always do it in Excel. Click here to find out how to do it.
Google’s Pirates vs Viacom’s Snoops
July 4th, 2008
No, i’m not talking about a sponsorship-crazed football match; I’m referring to the Google v Viacom lawsuit in the U.S., which, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, has stirred up a whole load of privacy and data issues for us all to argue about over the coming weeks and months.
However, for me, the issue is why request this data in the first place? What is Viacom trying to prove? According to the ruling, Viacom apparently needs access to the personal data of more than 100 million people to build a case against Google’s (YouTube) alleged piracy of various Viacom content, originating from the likes of MTV and Nickelodeon.
No matter how outrageous getting access to all that personal data to fight a court case is, do we really think Viacom has done this to conduct a detailed examination of the viewing habits of millions of people around the world, as some have suggested? Personally I doubt Viacom would be that obvious, but in the cold light of day, i’m struggling with the alternatives.
What can they do? Review all that data, win the case and disrupt the movement of content on the web just because they are fighting a losing battle against content sharing in the long term? Or, somehow use that data to gain advantage.
Seems very odd, especially when the data required to prove YouTube’s piracy, or not, is most likely available via other means.
Maybe Viacom is taking some sort of reverse privacy stand and showing us all how much data large web-based content providers hold on us all, and in fact succeeding where the U.S. Government failed in getting Google to hand over its data.
Maybe it’s just getting one over on Google.
Either way, Google is fighting to be allowed to clean the data of personal information. So we shall see.
Bobbie Johnson offers a good write-up of the story in the Guardian.