Seat at the Table

Pick a topic, any topic, that you don’t know that well and type in some keywords online.  Those initial results and their ranking are you first impression.  Now, type in your company or product name along with associated keywords and see what comes up.  That’s your audiences first search impression.  These days, it may be there first impression overall.

Protecting and enhancing your search reputation is still an often overlooked component of reputation management, as the Obama campaign found out.  Using a marketing tactic known as ambush ads, The Wall Street Journal’s recent article on the McCain online strategy outlined how McCain is using Obama related keywords (such as Biden) to direct viewers to McCain controlled content.  The result? For many people looking for more information on Biden and Obama, the first impression will be one formed by the McCain campaign.

Search continues to be dominated by marketing and sales by search reputation is an area that should be considered as basic as media relations, if not more so.  The problem lies not in PR teams realizing the importance of search, but in the understanding of how to manage a brand’s search reputation.  To do that, several basic skill sets and steps must be taken:

1. An understanding of your audience and their use of search.  Like any other medium, the importance of search reputation management will be more less important depending on your audience.  For example, a young professional audience may likely use Google for a first stop for information while a high end business audience may use a high end research service such as Factiva for corporate information.  Understand how and why your audience is using search.
2. Analysis and ongoing tracking of user search habits so that the PR team understands what people are looking for when they happen to or should come across positive and accurate information on your brand.
3. An understanding of organic and paid search engine optimization.  This means learning how to manage Web page optimization and paid search results so that the first search impression of you brand is the right one.

These are just three basic rules to follow.  The reality is more complicated and difficult as it requires PR teams to be as well versed in search as they (hopefully) are in media relations.   As an industry, we’re still at an early stage.  How many PR job descriptions have you seen with search engine optimization skills as part of the requirement?