071105 online pr
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Online PR:A Primer In Reputation
ManagementNovember 5th 2007
Reputation Management
• What is being said about you?– Google
• SERP• PageRank
– Google alerts:• Ongoing monitoring
– Technorati:• RSS-fed buzz with authority meter
– Yahoo! Site Explorer:• Inbound links
Finding Online Influencers
• Ask peers, colleagues and particularly sales staff
• Look at influencers cited in the mainstream media
• Look at backlinks into existing web properties and competitor sites
• Technorati, Ice Rocket• Google blog search• Look at their authority• ‘Found’ influencers’ blogrolls• A number of companies will provide their own
methodology of finding the online influencers
Getting Favourable Coverage
• Values:– Honest– Open – Transparent– Available
• Have great content• Provide a provocative standpoint• Real news or a great story• Narrowcast rather than broadcast
Dealing with Unfavourable Coverage
• Acknowledge salient points within the coverage
• Offer to engage the author in person• Provide data points and external
references for any rebuttal• Plan ahead to push unfavourable
content down off the first 100 results on the SERPs and keep it off
IP Issues
• Give online users the opportunity to use your IP where relevant in a legitimate manner
• Image resource library and licence • Outline what ‘fair use’ means• Be clear in plain language what your
trademarks are• Be polite and unthreatening in your
communications with offenders• If you are still struggling with compliance go
direct to the ISP or platform owner• Don’t put anything in writing that you
wouldn’t want to see published
O’Reilly Publishing & Web 2.0
• CMP Media with the knowledge and approval of O’Reilly Media legaled NFP IT@Cork
• Hue and cry break outs in the blogosphere over the course of 3 days
• O’Reilly Media step in and pick up the phone to Tom Rafferty and agree that Rafferty can use the web 2.0 descriptor
Tools & Techniques for Online PR
• Online news sources & RSS:– Mainstream media– Personal blogs and sites
• Business blogs
• Podcasts and video
• Virtual worlds
• Social networks
• Micro media
Online News Sources & RSS
• Mainstream media:– Modify existing PR approach to match the new media that the
organisation is using – Expect more fluid deadlines– Do offer exclusives– Only think about stories in an appropriate media
• Personal bloggers:– Engage10-20 carefully picked blogs– Read these blogs– Plan ahead: establish relationships by commenting on their
blogs and linking to them– Don’t pitch them– Remember this isn’t likely to be their full-time job– Be inclusive– Make allowances on etiquette
Personal Blogs & Sites
• You already probably have staff who blog:– Empower them by putting together a set
of blogging guidelines:• Covers in simple language the obligations they
have under their contract of employment• Good etiquette• Conveyed in a tone-of-voice that fits with the
company
– See if you have any product or industry mavens
– Think about whether you want to provide them with a blogging platform
Business Blogs
• Don’t start a blog without a commitment to maintaining it
• Do have an understanding of the target audience and how they interact online
• Think about the tone of voice
Podcasts & Video
• Tends to be one-way rather than two-way communications
• Dynamic delivery
• Audio is portable and flexible to consume
• Video requires captive attention – need to be respectful of the audiences time
• Content needs to be: original, interesting, humourous
• Two’s company – have a sidekick
• Succinct
Curtis
Audio blogs
Q&A interviews
Executive speeches
Panel discussionsStorytelling
Self-guided product tour
Online learning
Virtual Worlds
• Virtual worlds, like all communities, have rules
• Activities within the community need to respect the rules
• Pick a community that your brand will fit in with and work with in the long term
• The most important thing is to think about engagement rather than generating coverage
Social Networks
• Think about your target group:– Their motivations– Their location– Where they are in their life– Be respectful of their personal space– Think about how you can add value– How do you engage beyond becoming a
friend
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Micro media
• Is what it says it is
• Not all communications needs to be long form: SMS
• Address cards
• Short messages
Maximise the Reach of Press Releases
• Brevity• Hyperlinks• Supporting content• RSS feeds (think about the
licence on the feeds)• Facilitate bookmarking and
‘curated’ web services:– Distribution
– Newswires (vertical and general)
– Company blog inbound links
Using PR to Achieve Search Traffic
Stakeholders (human & machine)
• Search as the gateway to the web
• A reputation engine• Stakeholders:
– General public– Shareholders– Peers– Prospective clients– Prospective employees– Regulators– Pressure groups and NGOs
How Algorithmic Search Works
1. Content acquisition– Visits webpage, reads it, and
crawls links to other pages up to 4 layers deep within the website
– Consumes RSS feeds that highlight new content and links
– Crawls a site map (sitemap.xml)– Directories (DMOZ, Yahoo!
Directory)
2. Index web pages– Everything the spider finds is
saved in the search engine’s index
3. Algorithmic categorisation: sorts through the Index and returns results based on mathematical calculations – Spam scoring– Relevance– freshness– Topological relationship to other
sites – Appropriate for vertical search?
Searching the Long Tail
Google, Live.com, Yahoo! and Ask algorithmic search
Social Search
Bookmarking Services
Q&A services
Trusted web
Local searchMaps
Yellow PagesMobile searchComparison
shopping
Mainstream Esoteric
Vertical search(Google Scholar, Krugle, Scirus etc)
Recommendations(Last.fm, Yahoo! Music)
TRANSACTIONAL
Specialists
SEM/SEO
•Traditional direct-response online marketing work•Direct response•Highly measurable•Very quantitative•Specialist field
•Content: relevance, freshness and quality•Provision for trusted web services• (digg, del.icio.us)•SEO for corporate and product •websites through collection of inlinks
BRAND
Content creation /BookmarkingSEO
REPUTATION
Trusted advisor
SEMContent creation
SEO
•Purchase ad spots to drive consumers to company site to communicate clients’ side of the story•Create content to flush ‘bad coverage’ off the first search page•SEO to maintain position
PR Agency
PR AND SEARCHThree Scenarios for Search and PR
Bibliography / Useful Links
• The Cluetrain Manifesto• Collected papers and essays by danah boyd• Guidelines on social media by CIPR• Notre Dame University: Fifteen-minutes of fame: The Dynamics of
Information Access on The Web (May 13, 2005) by Z. Dezso, E Almaas, A Lukacs, B Racz, I Szakadat and A Barabasi
• Yodel Anecdotal blog by Yahoo! Inc• The Thought Kitchen blog by Nau• Daily Thoughts by Innocent Drinks• SHIFT Communications social media release template• Official Google Blog• Micropersuasion by Steve Rubel• Fastlane blog by GM• http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/cipr/