PR and SEO 101. Insert Football games keyword here.

October 21, 2011 by 9 Comments

This is how the keyword strategy introductory lesson starts: “if you are already ranking well for some keywords, build on that”.

And, month after month, it never ceases to baffle me when “football games” appears towards the top of the best traffic-driving keywords list in our web analytics software. Sure, the first group and the long tail are dominated by reputation management, public relations, stakeholder engagement but “football games” is always up there with the best of them !

So, hey, what’s a poor blogger to do?

Augure hearts Football games

The culprit is undoubtedly our CEO, Michael Jaïs, and his addiction to football. Olivier, head of QA, Laurent, one of our historic consultants and Fabien, my VP Marketing boss aren’t helping much either. Not a day goes by without heated discussions and, since they all come from different regions of France and support different teams, a fair dose of teasing.

So, when we started this blog, we presented the team of bloggers and interviewed our CEO. His passion for that sport transpired and we’ve been receiving visits from football games ever since.

Coupe de la com de football indoor organisée par Augure

Some of the players in the 2011 edition of Augure's "Coupe de la Com"

Why am I telling you this, exactly? ;)

Two reasons. One is that Augure indeed love football. That’s a large part of the company culture. Quite a few employees, myself included, love and play golf, but football is dominant.

So much so that, every year, Augure organises an indoor football tournament with clients and partners. I’ll skip quickly over the results, enthusiasm apparently being the greatest of our qualities on the field, but I thought I’d share the information with you, so you’d get to know the company better.

SEO is important to manage your online reputation

Secondly, there’s a lesson behind this.

Today, SEO matters. A lot. It determines how people who don’t know you find information about you, your company, your core values. It determines how easily bad news, customer complaints or unpleasant word of mouth will stick to your reputation online.

So, how do you control SEO? Well, there are really three parts to the answer:

  • What you write on your digital properties – content – plays a major role. That’s why our corporate website is all about enterprise reputation management and the industries of our clients, not about football. It is why I mostly write about reputation management on this blog, why its name is reputation in action.
  • Just as important, maybe more, is what others write about you online. If all of Augure’s media coverage and inbound links were about football games, we’d likely stand a better chance of selling shorts and gloves than PR software.
  • Finally, what gets shared on social media about your story plays an increasingly large part in Google’s understanding of what a quality site is for a specific topic. The lesson here is that you shouldn’t forget to share your news on social media.

And the key takeaway is this: the more consistent all three aspects are, the better your ranking will be for the topics that matter to your business and its reputation.

Through this post, I am making sure that future visits to this blog originating from the Football games keyword see the story that Augure is a reputation management software editor that encourages sports, engagement with clients and partners and loves football. And when I publish it on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, it will be in the hope that other spread that story about us and that search engines see us in that light as well.

So, are you consistent throughout your PR workflow?

Filed under Augure News, Engagement, Industry debate, Team Tagged with , , , , , ,

Is social search impacting your reputation?

January 21, 2011 by 2 Comments

It has often been written that your reputation is what Google says it is. A fact supported by search statistics showing that over 2/3 of all internet searches transit via the Mountain View giant’s servers. However, that would be missing one major point: conversations between internet users are one of the highest sources of influence on buying decisions and reputation factors.

Flickr image by Lee Haywood

Google may not always dominate search

Social consumer are using their networks more and more to ask for and share recommendations about companies and their products. Much as the more traditional internet goers, they use traditional search (read Google, and sprinkle a pinch of Bing, if you don’t live in China) to find information. But once initial awareness of a product has been gained, much word of mouth is exchanged on forums, Facebook and other social networks. Quora seems poised to become a crucial actor in this field, for instance.

Of course, Google has added many social features to its social search and integrated social presence to its social search results. But Facebook sees things differently and, as the Palo Alto rival approaches the demographic limits of new user acquisition, its strategy for future expansion seems to suck discussions about the world’s brands onto its own turf. “Like” buttons and Fan page serve exactly this purpose and while some Fan pages have rapidly become enormous, some (many?) have not grown fast enough to compensate for the corresponding decline in traffic of corporate websites. That alone can constitute a threat to your reputation management efforts. But if Facebook succeeds in attracting the world’s brand-centric conversations, its search may well dethrone Google’s as purveyor of image and reputation.

Influencer engagement and social CRM

This interesting post discusses whether you should embark on the much hyped real-time route and, since social has gained so much momentum, the question is certainly valid for reputation management. The author argues that influencer engagement is a selective PR exercise, at the risk of seeming biased, while the latter requires a more profound transformation of the company, particularly if you wish to engage in interactions, not simply provide asynchronous responses to questions and issues.

For reputation management purposes, it makes sense to focus on influential stakeholders and on answering the most representative issues rather than engage in systematic real-time interactions (marketing and crisis management are different, of course).

So how do you manage your reputation in a social world?

First, integrate offline, online and social in your monitoring plan. Social may be the new buzz-king, leading surveys (see for instance Edelman’s 2010 Trust Barometer) indicate that top influencers are industry experts, who do not express their views through a “XXX sucks” Facebook update.

Second, use engagement best practises to identify stakeholder groups and their respective issues.

Third, feed your social CRM with reports of your interactions to enrich it as you go and create a priceless engagement repository that will let your plan campaigns with far greater accuracy and confidence.

SO, is social search impacting your reputation, and how are you addressing that? Please describe your experience in comments.

Filed under Industry debate Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

8 ways to write better Press Releases

November 5, 2010 by Leave a comment

As highlighted in previous posts, the rise of social media use in public relations and the misuse of more traditional tools has led some to relegate the latter (including email and press releases) to the museum of dust. Yet, an optimized press release is still the most potent ways to get your message seen on search engine page 1.

But what does the “optimized” attribute really mean?

Here are simple guidelines for writing a press release that ranks well. In essence, think search engine optimization (SEO):

  1. Keep the title short. Google will only display 70 characters (23 words for Google News). Not too short, or you won’t convey meaning and keywords. Not too long or you will bore, get cropped and loose SEO effect. Goldilocks titles rule.
  2. Search and use keywords. When you’re writing a press release, you need to use the exact words your targeted audience will search for. You can use Google’s AdWords search tool for this or one of several available commercial tools such as WordTracker, SEMRush, Wordze … The picture above shows results for “Press Release” and the number of searches for each.
  3. Write for humans. Press release free. Free press release. Writing a press release. Press release how to. Hmmm, not very engaging, is it ? ;o) Besides, Google will punish you for cramming too many keywords into a text. But hey, I got 4 keywords in ;o)
  4. Keep the text short. Mail, mobile and social media may have gotten us closer than ever before, they have also slashed the attention span we devote to individual items. Free press release aside (see, I did it again ;o) most distribution services charge a fixed amount up to a certain size then more and more as the text gets longer. Also, two 400 word press releases are way more efficient SEO-wise than one containing 800.
  5. Include links. You will keep your text short by providing more information on your website. When your press release is read and passed along, people will click to documents hosted in your virtual press room. Every click adds traffic. And if journalists or bloggers include these links in what they write about you, your ranking will greatly benefit from these inbound links. Name your links. Google reads link names. “Click here” doesn’t rank as well as “Augure’s virtual press room”).
  6. Follow the Inverted Pyramid writing style. Place the most important information first. Also place at least one important link in this first part. Google only display a few lines of text, make sure the first link is in there.
  7. Get rid of jargon and buzzwords. Your competitors use them as well, so you’re not making a difference. Or they’re not, and they’re actually sending out meaningful information to your client base. They rank very badly in search engines. Your readers don’t have a single clue what they mean. Really. This tag cloud of most overused buzzwords is revealing. Also read David Meerman Scott’s Top Gobbledygook phrases.
  8. Provide contact info, not just a link to a contact form. Humans will be reading this and might want to get in touch personally.

Will this post rank #1 for the search keyword “Press Release”? Definitely not. There are much older and better known PR blogs out there that have discussed similar subjects. But it will certainly rank way better than if the rules hadn’t been followed. Press releases have much lower competition and yours can easily rank at the top.

If you have other tips and guidelines, please share them in the comments.

Filed under Industry debate Tagged with , , , , , ,

7 reasons email still rocks PR and 3 rules to use it well (2)

October 20, 2010 by 1 Comment

In the previous post, I wrote about 7 reasons why email wasn’t being pushed out of the PR scene by social media . As I tweeted about it, the following tweet caught my eye: a French minister addressing the police force via a telegram.

Proof enough that not everyone is using social media to communicate ;o) So, why the big buzz?

One major (unformulated) appeal is the high degree of connection between social media users. The degrees of separation (the number of intermediaries needed to communicate a message from any person to any other) on social media is lower than in the rest of the world: 5.7 on average for Facebook, 4.7 on twitter against 6.6 via email world. However, this somewhat mitigated by the low propagation of messages observed on these networks: on average, only one in 318 tweets are being retweeted. And, thanks to Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm, only one update in 500 is actually seen by a company’s fans.
One real reason social networks see more engagement is because their content is often more … engaging. A tweet is short and sweet, as is a Facebook update. Tweets can be repeated at regular intervals to reach most of your followers. Social updates also feel more fun and personal compared to much more ponderous newsletters having the potential to bore the wits out of most of their subscribers.

Engaging content, engaging strategy

Professional bloggers devote a large part of their time writing good headlines. And maybe as much again writing a compelling first paragraph. Whereas some newsletters make you want to chew your brains in despair. Three simple rules can help you make the best of email in a social media world:

  • Target your audience! Spamming millions doesn’t works. Period. Public Relations and Stakeholder engagement needn’t be complex processes but knowing your audience, their topics of interest and material preoccupations will boost your open/click-through rate tremendously. Use your data.
  • Make your content interesting! Simple and informal aren’t necessarily the exclusive attributes of Facebook updates. Press releases can also benefit from this, as well as most newsletters. Jargon is not read, jargon is not shared. Jargon and self-promotion repulse readers, destroying SEO (and damaging online reputation). When searching online, people are mainly looking for information. Three quarters of journalists are looking for new sources of expertise, mostly browsing websites such as Wikipedia and corporate websites. Provide people with useful information. Write well, follow the inverted pyramid pattern and provide links to more in-depth content. Your traffic will thank you.
  • Use both! Interrelated media work best and getting your fans and followers to subscribe to your newsletter is a very good practice to multiply impressions and angles. The additional step is meaningful as research shows that LIKEs and Follows are not considered by their authors as implicit permission to market (an Opt-In), only an expression of interest in a brand or product. Jeff Bullas suggest 10 ways to integrate social media and email. Integrating the two (mail and social media) requires unified content, strategy and teams.

There are many more reasons to use mail (better tracking, stable platform vs evolving commercial social networks, better edition possibilities in email, one email several for social accounts …) but integration is the way to go. If you’ve started along these lines, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Filed under Engagement Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

7 reasons email still rocks PR and 3 rules to use it well

October 15, 2010 by 3 Comments

With social media adoption rising among marketing, product communications and corporate communications services, should you still rely on good old email to engage stakeholders? Should email still be at the center of your public relations strategy? The answer greatly depends on your sector of activity and goals.

The question is certainly valid when over 80% of journalists hunt for, research and promote their stories online and over 30 percent of people regularly use search engines for news and information. And, inevitably, some companies have abandoned email altogether for their marketing: one such example set the blogosphere alight when the UK subsidiary of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream announced they had dropped email marketing altogether. And when a hotel promotion network recently ran a picture competition, they received as many entries from their 2.2 million newsletter subscribers, as from the 12,000 followers of their twitter accounts!

Alas poor email, I knew him well

Email not dead!
So, it is true that social media have become a great opportunity for some forms of engagement. But that doesn’t mean emailing has become a waste of time, as the new kids on the block would like you to believe. Quite the opposite, in fact, and here’s why:

  1. A 2010 Nielsen study reveals that reading eMail is still a very important online activity occupying over 10% of online time, overtaken only by social media (networking) and gaming.
  2. A well crafted Email + CRM project has very high SEO potential. Good writing skills are essential to create interesting content with links to your owned media. The traffic driven by these will provide a tremendous organic boost to your rankings.
  3. There is data in CRM that social media does not allow you to use as consistently or efficiently. Yes, you can create lists on twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, but these do not allow you to target a message in the same way as a well maintained database. In the above photo contest example, was the 2.2M subscriber list a well qualified and structured one made of opt-in subscribers or simply bought off a third-party? The abysmal response rates of the latter case are notorious and well documented. CRMs and stakeholder databases are all about data and targeting.
  4. A communication strategy built exclusively on social media requires very high expertise in both social media themselves and your sector of activity (a rare mix indeed) in order to identify influencers, material issues, most appropriate channels. It is not a simple matter of setting up a pretty Facebook page and idly watching millions of fans beg to read information posted to it. Behind each leafy tree of successful social media campaigning lies a forest of fruitless and uncoordinated efforts. Or worse, of flaming backfire.
  5. Besides, is your PR limited to people you can engage on social media? Not all audiences are reachable on social media. Social media is big with customer engagement, but if your PR implies dealing with local authorities or inter-government organisations, best ofluck with Facebook ;o)
  6. Even if your target contacts are on social media, they might not respond. Connect2 Communications recently conducted an analysis of journalist and analyst activity on Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter and Delicious. The results show they use social media sites to hook-up with friends and family on a personal level and do not use these websites for business purposes or professional engagement.
  7. Finally, in spite of the blurring induced by new media, the frontiers between Communications and Marketing still exist. Goals and methods are not the same. Public Relations and Stakeholder Engagement best practices can be found in documents such as the AA1000 SES: all recommend using the appropriate channel for each of your stakehodler groups . Social media are a part of the mix, but so is the very efficient email + CRM tandem. In the case of Ben & Jerry’s UK subsidiary, bear in mind that Facebookers LIKE food and Ice Cream is one of the most favourable terms on Facebook. That company’s savvy and well researched decision would certainly NOT work for other industries such as Travel, Sports, Museums, Fashion, Automotive, Government, Pharma, Food & Beverage (the industry, not the food itself), Retail, Non profits, Education, Health, Beauty, Technology, Banking, Medical Services, Professional Services, Financial services … which all rank among the least LIKEd subjects.

In the next post, I will describe 3 rules to get the best out of your email engagement.
If you are mixing social media and email, tell me how it’s working out in the comments!

Filed under Engagement Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Is your online reputation management sustainable?

September 27, 2010 by 3 Comments

Securing a healthy online reputation and business requires search engine results for your brand and products to be positive. Particularly at a time when most buying processes, both in mainstream consumer products and B2B projects, begin with online research. But approaches to achieving a stellar web record follow very different schools of thought.

Last Friday, a post on a reputation management company’s blog discussed an alleged ethics row about online reputation management. The post and its title referred to a “growing debate over whether the practice of burying bad publicity and minimising the exposure of negative blog and forum comments was ethical”.

The post went on to equate reputation management with the practice of using various technologies to monitor and hide damaging news: “Firms like XXX use their in-depth understanding of search engines and how they work to make sure only the results that clients want are shown when people search for their name, business name or brand”.

While I agree with careful monitoring and striving to have your version of the story told on the Internet, the other half of the proposition is not nearly as engaging (pun intended) and reveals two very different approaches to reputation management.

Burying the bad news

Search Engine Optimisation experts use their understanding of Google, Yahoo and Baidu’s ranking algorithms to create strategies that promote positive company coverage so that any unwanted news shows up much further down the search results list, in pages that no-one ever views. Several techniques allow this mechanism to work, mostly based on the multiplication of inbound links from websites owned, financed or otherwise controlled by the reputation management company or its client, or on paid-for ranking schemes.

Stakeholder Engagement

The alternative, which Augure supports and facilitates, is to leverage your stakeholder engagement process to achieve the same goal. By sending out well targeted email information campaigns or newsletters insuring high open rates, link-rich press releases via wires, posting documents to your virtual newsroom, engaging with bloggers, journalists and industry experts, you insure the propagation of your story and promote an organic SEO that achieves equally high ranking.

So, which should you choose ?

Two arguments appear to favour the first approach. First, organic growth takes time. Most online marketing strategies are hybrid in that they combine fast PPC campaigns with organic SEO growth hormones and phase out the former once the effects of latter are felt. Secondly, a rule of stakeholder engagement is that you do not control your message once it leaves your company’s owned media, which could appear to leave more potential for things to go awry.

However, the arguments in favour of stakeholder engagement far outweigh these. For one thing, highly optimised search-engine savvy strategies exploiting loopholes in ranking algorithms are fragile beasts indeed, constantly at the mercy of a change of parameter in the algorithm itself. Companies such as Google change their ranking methodology frequently to optimise their business and favourable rankings obtained by exploiting the previous version’s specificities are very likely to sink to the bottom of the list the very next day. Secondly, and to return to the initial discussion on ethics, some link schemes are indeed somewhat dodgy. And organisations and agencies actually risk damaging their reputation through these link building practices. Finally, it would take one mighty link farm to counter a severe attack such as Greenpeace’s Orang Utang Sinar Mas video or Kevin Smtih’s twitterant about SouthWest Airlines. I doubt that it’s even possible. Think of the number of accounts needed to counterbalance the NGO’s Facebook fans or Smith’s twiterati followers, particularly given the high credit Google gives to active twitter accounts.

A long term bilateral relationship with your stakeholders means the public and your key constituencies know what you stand for which, at the very least, dampens unexpected blows[i]. Besides, the communication channels put in place during the months and years of stakeholder engagement are there for you to respond quickly and efficiently if/when crisis strikes. And stakeholder engagement well done leaves traces for your reports and gets your story told by more trusted authorities than the company’s marketing team. This alone explains why SEO companies are hiring more and more PR talents to do the job.

So, is your online reputation management sustainable?

[i] For more on this read Once Brand Takes Flight, It’s Hard to Bring it Down:         http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=143631.

Filed under Engagement Tagged with , , , , , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 2,501 other followers

%d bloggers like this: