The idea behind PR is to increase the visibility of your brand in a way that’s beneficial to your brand. Over the last year several companies have proved that they can do the first part, but they really don’t have a grasp on how to make it beneficial…

1. Somerfields Easter Gaffe
In April of 2007, British supermarket Somerfields decided to put out a press release to promote their Easter range of products. But what angle could they go with? Then someone came up with the bright idea of commissioning a study to see if the youth of today knew the true meaning behind Easter. When the results came back how they expected them to come back, the press release was crafted and sent out. It talked about how young people really don’t know the Easter story, but at Somerfield they did, and you could buy your chocolate eggs at Somerfield safe in the knowledge that they were celebrating the birth of Christ… The next press release that went out changed it to “rebirth of Christ”… Then the Church of England got involved, and another release went out using the preferred term “resurrection of Christ”.

2. CompUSA sells empty boxes
In May of 2007, Terry Heaton purchased $3500 worth of items from his local CompUSA. One of those items was a $269 digital camera… well technically it was a $269 empty camera box. When Terry attempted to get CompUSA to give him the camera that they sold him, they told him that it was a liquidation store so all sales were final, despite them not actually giving him the item that he paid for. After a viral blogging campaign, CompUSA realised that this was not good publicity, especially for a company in the middle of closing half of it’s stores, so they eventually sent him a check for $300…

3. Microsoft Vista bribes bloggers
In December of 2006, Microsoft wanted to get bloggers talking about Vista, they wanted to get a jump start on a word of mouth campaign. The best way to do so? Obviously it was to send free copies of Vista to influential bloggers. But what if they had low end machines, or machines that wouldn’t work so well with Vista? The idea they came up with was to send the bloggers brand new laptops to go along with the O/S. Once that came out, there was a huge ethics outcry that Microsoft was perceived to be bribing bloggers with new laptops for a good review. Microsoft replied with a statement that they had told the bloggers that the laptops could either be sent back, auctioned off for charity, or disposed of however the bloggers saw fit. Unfortunately, according to several of the bloggers, those directions weren’t actually included with the laptops that they received…

4. Walmart and the fake blog
In September of 2006, a new travel blog was launched – Walmarting across America. The idea behind the blog was that a couple were going to be traveling across the US in their RV, stopping every night in Walmart parking lots, taking advantage of their RV friendly policy. It sounded like great publicity for Walmart, and it was… for about 48 hours. Then it came out that the couple were professional writers (both had written for the Washington Post), and that the whole trip wasn’t spontaneous, it was in fact sponsored by Walmart.

5. Sony and the fake blog
After seeing how great the Walmart fake blog (flog) worked, Sony decided that they’d do the exact same thing. They set up a flog, and created a bunch of fake YouTube rap videos allegedly of a couple of kids who wanted a PSP for xmas. Of course the true story came out, and they ended up with as much egg on their faces as Walmart.

6. Sony and the dead goat
Sony’s next entry in this list is from their launch party for God of War II. The decision was made to have a Greek themed launch party, complete with togas, serving wenches, and a goat carcass. Guests were asked to reach inside the goat’s still warm stomach to remove offal, with the person eating the most declared the winner. Sony was so proud of this event that they even published the pictures in the official Playstation magazine… which they promptly recalled after the inevitable public outcry.

Of course, when you go into the search engines for these companies, you now find these disasters showing up in their regular search results…  So what should these companies have done to avoid / minimize the impact of these PR errors?

1. Check your facts.
2. Double check your facts.
3. Have someone else sanity check your facts / plans.
4. Be transparent. Don’t try to hide who you are and why you’re doing something, as eventually it’s going to come out, and then people will get upset with you.
5. Listen to what your customers are saying, especially those that are online. If there’s a problem that you can nip in the bud, do so, don’t allow it to fester and grow into a nightmare.
6. Be part of the conversation. Don’t ignore what your customers are saying, and expect them to blindly take whatever it is that you have to say as gospel. Actively work with your customers, build up a level of trust between them and you, and it’ll serve you well in the long run.
7. Don’t be afraid to hold your hands up in the air and say that you were wrong, people will respect that more than someone blustering along or just downright ignoring the facts / using doublespeak.

So in other words, treat PR with care, don’t just assume that anything you put out is the final word, because in todays world of social media it most assuredly won’t be, and unless you realize that, you’re setting yourself up for a disaster.

I was asked to speak yesterday at the Public Relations Society of America’s T3 (Theory, Tactics, and Technology) for PR conference on the 30th floor of the Reuters building in Manhattan, and then again today for a PRSA breakfast meeting in downtown DC at the NEA building. At each conference I was on the same panel as Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR, and Melanie Mitchell of AOL.

 The first presentation was the last of the day in the conference, and unusually for a conference, they were running ahead, so instead of the 45 minutes that we’d planned for, we had a full hour to give our presentations and answer questions. The topic for that presentation was SEO, SEM & RSS for PR.

The second presentation, in DC, was a breakfast seminar, which meant that we were the only game in town. Unfortunately Greg Jarboe’s plane wasn’t in town, and was actually still in NYC, so the presentation went ahead with the remaining 2 of us. The topic of this presentation was different to that of the day before, in that it also dealt with Social Media topics, this, combined with the increase in speaking time to 20+ minutes each (with no Greg), meant that we were able to cover much more content, although it has to be said that the content was covered in earlier sessions in the NYC seminar.I have uploaded a copy of my slides to the resources section of this site (the NYC slides are a subset of the DC ones, so if you attended NYC, you’re getting a bonus), so feel free to download and peruse them, and if you have any questions you can either comment here, or drop me an email at the address in the presentation.

It’s important for an agency and a client to understand each other’s language when discussing search engine optimization efforts. It’s important because the language of search engine optimization involves a number of measurements which mean different things to different people.

A small poll recently indicated that one of the biggest concerns in the search marketing industry is the amount of “disinformation” and “rumors” on the Internet about obtaining top search engine visibility. Search marketing newbies, either in an agency, in-house, or as a client of an agency can all easily get caught up in the dizzying array of information and incorrect assertions freely available on blogs and forums. When I read about SEO, I’m alarmed at the many, conflicting definitions of phrases when people discuss off-page optimization, in particular, link building.

In search engine optimization, inbound links are a powerful tool to increase search engine rankings. While each search engine optimization process should begin with on-page optimization, prior to building thousands of links in off-page optimization, it would be a good idea to do some due diligence in off-page optimization.

Consider the following three phrases:

• Link Density
• Link Popularity
• Backlinks

When researching link opportunities for search engine optimization, or measuring off-page SEO results, one could assign a number to each of these phrases. What do these phrases mean to you from your off-page optimization due diligence? For some, the three numbers would all be the same. While one person may state they checked link popularity, another person may say they checked link density, and they could have checked for the same thing and reported the same number! But if you were to ask two SEOs to check link density, link popularity, and backlinks of a page, with no request for how they define the terms, you could end up with as many as 6 different numbers!

Defining mutually agreeable language and measurements between a client and an agency will go a long way to helping clients understand the value of their SEO efforts and expertise behind an agency’s recommendations.

Will the increased adoption of personalized search and the advent of Google universal search make the lives of search marketers more difficult? It certainly has the potential as more video, maps and other features begin to show up in the SERPs and push more “traditional” results off the first page. I could go into how this will broaden the types of content that will need to be optimized for search but I’ll focus instead on the potential impact on PPC and leave that for a later post.

How can you make sure your message is seen as more individuals begin to see personalized results and Google’s other products begin to show within search results? The simple answer is through PPC. If you no longer know where organic results will show and don’t have the content assets or resources to optimize content throughout all of Google’s vertical search products then turning to PPC as a permanent solution may become very attractive. In an ideal world you would try and take up as much real estate as possible by having excellent organic and paid listings and in turn decrease the visibility of your competition. As a recent iCrossings report shows, this tactic also has a very positive effect on all metrics from clicks, to average page views, to orders. If, however, searchers begin to adopt personalized search and you no longer know where your pages are ranking organically then paid search is going to become a more crucial piece of search marketing. With PPC costs already steadily increasing the potential impact of personalized and universal search could make the lives of PPC managers more difficult. Meeting the ROI goals or other success metrics of a client will become increasingly more difficult and unless you’re on top of your game you may end up with some very unhappy clients. As more advertisers turn to PPC to help counter the unknowns of organic SERP’s in a personal and universal search world the costs will inevitably spike. This will force PPC managers to take a closer look at the strategy they employ for each client.

Separating out keywords into branding and direct response buckets is a start. In order to remain as visible as possible it will be important to have your ads shown in top positions when searchers are in the research phase. This will hopefully allow your client to be placed into the searchers consideration set resulting in your client’s brand being top of mind when the searcher is ready to buy and are searching on more targeted direct response keywords. Being wise about how you bid on your keywords and the results you expect from your various keyword groups will ultimately determine the effectiveness of the strategy you deploy.

A second vital aspect will be the creation of exceptional ads that catch a searchers eye and draw them in without promising more then can be delivered. Constant testing will be even more imperative in order to stay ahead of your competition. The same holds true for landing pages. Getting a searcher to click on the ad is only half the battle. If you don’t have a landing page that will benefit your quality score while also being exceptionally efficient at moving the searcher along the conversion process then you’re letting a lot of your money be washed down the drain. With the multitude of landing page testing options out there, some of which are free, there is no reason not to be testing on a regular basis. The impact that doubling your conversion rate will have on your ROI is incredible and you won’t be spending a penny more on PPC to get those results. As costs rise it is by far the best option to counter the increasing costs you’ll be paying for each click.

In conclusion the best way to counter the inevitable rise of PPC costs as a result of the further adoption of personalized search and the recent deployment of Google universal search is to bid wisely and test, test and test some more.

On Sunday, several members of the RBDRodeo team attended the first meeting of the Virginia Search Engine Marketing Meetup Group. Many different topics were discussed, and thanks to the varying levels of experience present, we had a nice mix and were able to look at different topics from a variety of different perspectives.

One of the questions that was raised was how to market to a foreign country, one where you weren’t even aware of the default search engines / breakdown of market share in a particular market. There wasn’t anyone there that had a definitive answer for that question, so I thought I’d take a look and see what I could find out.

The first item to research, when looking to market to another country, is to identify the search engines that are out there in that market, and to determine what language(s) they support. For example, one client I worked with in the past worked primarily in a particular Asian market, but marketed in the English language only, therefore they only wanted the English language searchers to find them. So what’s the easiest way to find out what’s out there? Well, there are a few directories of search engines, that list them by country, such as SearchEngineColossus, AIT, and Big Search Engine Index. For most of these directories, simply click on the country of choice, and you’ll see a list of search engines, along with the languages that they support for that country (I had no idea that Google had a Welsh version). Is the information in these directories complete and accurate? Well, AIT didn’t have a list for the US, but the other 2 listed above did, and neither of those had the 4th & 5th largest search engines in the US listed – Ask & AOL. So while these lists are not complete, they are a good starting point for you to find out a nice chunk of search engines that operate in a particular market. How else would you find out about TibetSearch for that Sherpa job site that you’re launching?

Next comes the harder part, you need to research the different search engines and directories listed to see what their guidelines are for inclusion. It may be that you need to purchase a local domain (i.e. a ‘.in’ for India), and perhaps even arrange for hosting in that country, as some search engines will take those items into account when deciding whether or not to index you, and where you’re going to rank, relative to your competition, when they do. It may just be as simple as an inclusion request, or an annual fee.

One item that you’re going to have to be careful with is that different cultures have different standards, so you may have to change or completely remove content that doesn’t gel with their local standards before you can be included. YouTube found this out recently, when access to their entire site was removed in Turkey, as they had content that contravened a law forbidding criticism of the modern founder of Turkey – Kemal Ataturk. Once you find out what it takes to get your site included, you can then start the work of improving your rankings, and reeling in all that internationally local traffic.

So, in conclusion, bonne chance, viel glueck, buena suerte, buona fortuna, goed geluk, and good luck with your international search marketing efforts.

I had the pleasure of speaking at a dinner this week hosted by the Calvert Group, a socially responsible investment firm. The topic was how social media might be used for SRI investors. I was part of a lively panel of speakers, including Brian Reich (Cone Communications), Mike Ford (political strategist, Dean campaign), and Omar Wasow (Founder of the vertical social network, Black Planet).

Of the four of us, Omar and I were the social media cheerleaders. Brian warned the audience about too much focus on the “tactic du jour” (social media) and although I agree with him that there is almost always too much focus on tactics and not enough on strategy, I don’t see social media as a tactic.

Social media is the heart of the Internet today. Social Media isn’t a web site, it isn’t a group of tools. Very simply, it is what people DO online. People go online to collaborate, to share, to express/create, to connect — and the emergence of simple web publishing tools helps them to do that better and faster than ever before. The result is that the online audience doesn’t listen much anymore to “one to many” messages. They are too busy listening and talking with each other. “Staying out of” social media is like saying you are going to New York but plan to stay away from the crowds. It isn’t possible.

It was a long evening and we covered many topics, but one of many things that stuck out for me was Brian’s statement (and Mike’s grudging agreement) that online advocacy isn’t working anymore. Perhaps that is because email communications (which is a “one to many” communications tactic) is the extent of “online advocacy” for way too many organizations today? Brian and I agreed that your ability to stop someone from their busy life, get them to pay attention to what you want them to do, and drop what they are immersed in to do it for you, is getting increasingly harder – which is one of the reasons I am a social media cheerleader.

Social media isn’t about “mobilizing” or interrupting people at all. It is about listening to what niche groups of individuals (communities) are saying, understanding what they are already interested/involved in, and facilitating what they are already doing. Now THAT has potential for online advocacy. Mass marketing is certainly the easier path to take but the “one to many”, broadcast mentality just isn’t working so well online anymore – whether you are an advocacy organization or a .com.

I’ll be doing another social media workshop at SES Toronto on June 10th and I’m sure I’ll come back with my brain buzzing, so more on this topic next week.

A social media entry page is a page that doesn’t lie under your site’s domain. Rather, it remains under your control off-site. Social media websites such as MySpace allow you to design and edit content while engaging visitors and potentially gaining search engine visibility for your brand from the social media entry page. This entry page is not a supplement to your site, it should be viewed as its own site – your site, where people are introduced to your brand.

Each page about your brand appearing in the search engines or through inbound links is a potential entry page. Each entry page should be designed to guide the visitor to an action. Your homepage is one in a series of pages your visitors may see or enter through during their visit. As Seth Godin describes, “You don’t need one home page. You need a hundred or a thousand. And they’re all just as important.” Your social media entry page at MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo, Netvibes, or Pageflakes is just as important as your homepage, your PPC landing pages, and every entry page you have on your site.

During your search engine optimization efforts, did you discover that you need to take up more shelf space in the search engine results pages? There are dozens of opportunities for expanding your domain’s content into siloed structures and themes. You can do this to gain quality links to your content, and you improve your chances of appearing in the search engine results by being search engine friendly and by the increased number of quality links coming to your main site.

Going off-site with mini, themed content sites may be appropriate for some organizations, and may create quality links to your main site. However, they are potentially harmful to your search engine optimization efforts. Search engines can read IP addresses. If your mini sites aren’t truly off-site and isolated properly from your main site at a distinct IP address, the search engines may be able to penalize you for receiving links from a “bad neighborhood.”

Additionally, these mini-sites require their own SEO and link building efforts to provide any true benefit to the rankings of the main site. By taking your focus away from basic on-page optimization of your main site, you may not be doing all you can do for your main site. But blogs with RSS feeds, networking profiles, and start pages of aggregated content should all be part of the effort towards the ultimate goal of converting a visitor through a desired call to action. All of these content assets are standalone entry pages that send targeted traffic, through quality links, to your main site for conversion, or in some cases, convert visitors directly by phone, bypassing your main site entirely.

Social media is about engaging people so look for social media marketing opportunities that are easy to join and enjoy. These opportunities could be in blogs, networking sites, and start pages, as mentioned previously, or in social bookmarking, social news, podcasts, and video. By becoming part of the conversation and encouraging user generated content, you are marketing from the bottom up in a viral, word-of-mouth fashion. This engagement is often not built into business and nonprofit homepages, but the time and effort required for building a MySpace page, a Facebook group, a Squidoo lens, or customized start pages through Netvibes and Pageflakes is becoming smaller and smaller. Now is the time to move beyond just your homepage. Every page you create is an entry page, whether it is on your domain or off-site. As Justin Sanger, President of LocalLaunch.com said at SES Chicago last year (2006):

‘There is no single landing page for a business anymore. It’s not about a website. It’s about business information online. It’s a different way of thinking. We must cleanse, enrich and optimize content. Think: Atomization – separate and spread.’

Not another SEM blog I hear you cry. Heck, Lee Odden has over 350 of them on his Biglist of Search Marketing Blogs. So is there room for another blog in this crowded field? The answer is emphatically “Yes“.

So what’s going to appear on this blog? What is going to differentiate it from the crowd? Well, let’s start off with a note or two on what is not going to appear on this blog. This blog is not going to be a “me too” site, where the same news that has broken across the blogosphere is going to appear in the same format here. There are many other blogs that already handle the topic of breaking news in this industry, and to attempt to do the same without a full time staff dedicated to this blog would be a foolhardy prospect. So what is going to appear here, and who is involved? Well, the answer to the second part is that this blog is going to have posts from the RedBoots Digital team. The answer to the first part is that we’re going to be posting on a variety of Marketing topics as we find interesting items through our daily work in the RedBoots Rodeo. Topics will range from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Pay Per Click (PPC) to Social Media Optimization (SMO) to Search Agency issues to general Digital Marketing to Marketing for Non-Profits. If we learn something that we think would be of benefit to those outside our company, we’re going to share. If we have a unique perspective on a topic, then we’re going to share (that’s the one exception to the ‘me too’ rule).

We are going to aim to write interesting and informative topics that’ll have you coming back for more, and we’re going to encourage you, the reader, to comment on any of the posts that we put out there. Tell us what you like, tell us what you don’t like, and we’ll do our best to make this a go-to site for your feed reader.