I agree with you about quality over quantity but quite often, the audience is of such a large quantity, that search engine PR may be appropriate. BP, for example, seems to be trying to tell all audiences that it is the energy company that is looking at all alternatives beyond petroleum. While a blog would be appropriate for their higher quality audience (e.g., activists who follow them closely), search engine PR may be appropriate to let the broader audiences know that BP is closely engaged in this topic. I’m not saying this is absolutely the proper tactical approach, but one that should be considered.

And I agree that PR people do not need to be technology people. I think I should focus my comments to say that PR people should understand the mediums with which they are working. Just as the best media people have a good understanding the the media business, search engine PR people should understand how search engines work (not in technical jargin but as an information delivery mechanism).

You make an important high level point in that “PR people should continue to learn and understand how people learn about subjects and make decisions.” I see this as fitting directly into search engine PR as search engines are the first stop for many trying to learn in order to make a decision.

That said, perhaps only *some* PR people should specialize in search engine PR just as some special in media relations, analysts etc. I do think there is, or should be, demand, but I’m not sure that it needs to be a skill set required of all.

P.S. And apologies for not properly identifying your blog and company (as a PR person, it’s a double timeout for me). I’m fixing the post.

I’ve just left a relatively lengthy response to blogger Ephraim Cohen’s most recent post on PR and search engine optimization.

First off, thanks for the trackback. Just to clarify, the name of the blog is “Much Ado About Marketing” and the name of my company is Brand Central Station – the guys at Marketing Central (in Atlanta) like me to try and help keep that straight whenever possible.

More importantly, though, I think you’ve brought up two important points with this post:

1) PR people are wrestling with the implied conflict between mass media (i.e. television, radio, etc.) and social media (i.e. blogs, etc.). Interestingly enough, I’m not sure anyone knows where to put search engine PR yet. Certainly, search engines are a channel frequent by huge numbers of people, but the people drive the search (with their search terms) making the actual configuration of the message viewer dependent.

The reason all this is important gets back to the basic skill sets PR’s and journalists have been developing for the past few generations – they research and tell stories, allowing the public to reach their own decision. This skill set is ideal for the social media channels but the nature of that medium precludes the huge numbers we’ve been conditioned to expect through mass media.

By putting an emphasis on “quality” of audience over “quantity”, social media forces PR’s to re-think their discipline in order to justify it to clients and the like. A

Advertising agencies are running into this same problem. But for them, the problem is even worse. The ability of the medium to monitor discreet transactions is completely re-defining how agencies can expect to get paid in the future.

2) You suggest that PR people should learn how search engines optimize content, how news trackers pick up press releases, etc. I’m a bit of a geek and get into this, but most PR people are not. And, frankly, I’m not sure they should have to.

PR people should continue to learn and understand how people learn about subjects and make decisions. PR people have to learn how to be persuasive while remaining fair and (relatively) impartial. That’s not as easy as it sounds.

Should PR folks understand the technology? Maybe more important than understanding the technology is knowing where to go to learn what they need and keep up on the changes that could take their clients out of the public’s eye.

Again, great post. Thanks a million for the link.

Regards,

Mike Bawden
Brand Central Station