We recently conducted a series of polls on LinkedIn to determine how professionals read news.  You can download the full report here.  The key findings showed that while news sites continued to dominate, search engines and aggregators were a major source of news.  On the mobile side, news specific mobile applications (such as the WSJ app on the iPhone) were even more important than a mobile web browser.    Our bottom line finding, based on these polls and third part research such as Hitwise’s list of top news web sites (which found both news sites and search engines in the top ten), is that major news sites along with search engines and aggregators still need to lead the way in distributing information.  Social media then provides a measurement of how well the news was received as well as an amplification effect.  Key findings included the following:

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?

So when a marketing oriented SEO/PPC expert writes an article on the importance of SEO to PR, I think it’s worth reading.  In the case of one just published in iMediaconnection, it’s worth passing on.  You  can read the full article at http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/19109.asp .

Here is a brief outline of the key areas where SEO and PPC ads can serve as a core PR tools:

1. Address negative publicity by optimizing and advertising online material.  When people search for more information on negative rumors, they find your company response. 
   Build consumer trust by directing people to both company and third party information (perhaps to a blog of product reviews).
2. Raise your brand’s image in front of new audiences.  If you have a specific audience you are targeting, they may have common search patterns against which you can optimize and advertise (the article does not get this specific but makes some good general points.

This is more of a shift of focus than a switch.  Since the Web exploded, communications professionals – from PR to advertising – have been focused on driving to traffic to destinations.  This was true whether it was for informational purposes (such as in PR or branding programs) or for sales.   This is like focusing marketing on getting people to go to a store just to learn about the product instead of teaching them through the magazines they read and the TV shows they watch.  It can be a lot of effort for relatively little return. 

Now efforts are shifting to distributing branded or messaging carrying content.  The focus is moving to getting information to all the appropriate places where consumers congregate.  Go where the consumers are, put information in the context that they, and the community in which they congregate, naturally appreciate. 

The three main drivers of this shift – social networking, Web video video and personal portals like Netvibes of My Yahoo that are driven by RSS feed – have gained an enormous amount of momentum the last few years.  However, marketers have only experimented with these sites and remained focus on driving traffic to proprietary sites. 

Ad budgets will focus on driving traffic to third part sites.  We already see micro-versions of this with Facebook ads driving users to branded Facebook pages.  Next we might see a Yahoo based ad driving a user to a branded video channel on Heavy.com or section of Dailymotion (disclosure: a client).

But a careful balance will have to be sought.  Advertisers will still want to capture that traffic and not simply invest to build up traffic to someone else site.  I would not be surprised to see some third party sites make it easier for advertisers to register users on those sites.

Go online and search for baby safety products and what will you see?  A lot of ads for the sale of baby good products and a few for information on those products.  According to the data, people are more likely to 1) search when they are about to purchase products; and 2) click on the information links as opposed to the sales oriented links.

Marketing and public relations teams interested in leveraging this behavior should be conducting a few checks on their search engine strategy:

1. Is information oriented content being optimized in a way that complements the sales oriented information (good)? Or is the sales oriented information taking the priority (bad)?
2. Are keyword advertisements being placed for both information as well as sales oriented literature?  The Comscore information indicates people may be more likely to click on the information ad over the sales ad.
3. Is the information content being looked at from purely a marketing point of view (usually meaning mostly company literature)?  Or is it being looked at from a public relations point of view (third party testimony, links to other third party blogs, discussion groups etc)?
4. Are media results being leveraged in terms of reprints and links appearing on the site?  This can raise the value of media results exponentially over the value of the initial placement (as more people can view it through your site than might have seen it on the publication date).

This is just a few starting points but asking these questions should highlight if and how a company is either capturing or missing those many eyeballs (and lucrative ones, according to Comscore) looking for pre-purchase product information.

1) For public relatoins executives, this is a post we should put into program proposals.  Google ads are a great way to deliver public relations messages to targeted audiences (in this case, people interested in health care issues).  However, most of the ads sales are sales focused messages.   Here we have Google’s ad division reminding corporate communications departments that the Google ad network is a terrific online message distribution tool.  I believe it is, but don’t see enough media industry executives backing up that notion.  It’s good to see Google point out that PPC ads are not simply for measuring ad-sales click through rates.  Here’s what Lauren wrote:

Many of our clients face these issues; companies come to us hoping we can help them better manage their reputations through “Get the Facts” or issue management campaigns. Your brand or corporate site may already have these informational assets, but can users easily find them?

We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company’s assets while helping users find the information they seek.

2 Lauren gave us a perfect exmaple of why executives must pay attention to the corporate messages.  In this case, the advertising executive should know that their job is to advocate for Google as a way to deliver messages, not to advocate for the message itself.   The message Lauren posted would have been more effective if it was about the effectiveness of Google’s network for reaching a broad audience concerned with health care issues.  Instead, the message was Google is an effective network for companies interested in maintaining the status quo of the American health system (and possibly that Google has a strong anti-national healthcare stance).  As it seems Lauren found out, she has every right to provide her opinion on Sicko as an individual, but when speaking for the company, as anyone does when writing on a company blog, her job is, in fact, to communicate the corporate message (do no evil…so be careful around any movie that has a central message of providing healthcare for everyone).   It is what any public executive is hired to do. 

3. In general, this blog is a great example of using blogs for B2B marketing.  It’s a running dialogue on how companies in the health industry can most effectively use the Google ad network.  If I’m a health marketing executive, this is one I would watch.  Another good example is Google’s packaged goods blog at http://google-cpg.blogspot.com/) which most recently discusses the advantage of buying radio ads through Google  (I love it as I find Google’s ad buying portal very easy to use and would recommend it for clients needing to make local radio buys).

For those of you interested in reading more about what Lauren wrote, here are some links of interest:

http://searchengineland.com/070701-193852.php

http://www.thebloggingjournalist.com/2007/07/googles-lauren-.html

http://blog.insiderchatter.com/2007/07/02/why-google-health-is-sick-o-2-trillion-medical-target/

http://www.articlesnatch.com/blog/2007/07/02/google-health-ads-blog-backs-off-sicko/ 

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/google-takes-on-michael-moore/

Update:

Google’s marketing executive clarifies Google’s more populist friendly health message.

• The information bloggers “uncovered” (that certain locks were easily picked by BIC pens) had actually been in the public domain for some time.  However, they were in older publications that are not easily searched.  Once the information was on the Internet it was easily searched, posted and then, when it hit the right blog, picked up and spread by bloggers, emails and other forms of communications.  LESSON: Just becuase an issue is old don’t assume it’s dead. Old information can easily be uncovered, treated as a new issue, and spread like wildfire.  What forgotten skeletons are in your corporate closet.
• Kryptonite reacted within several days which many, if not most companies, would considere quite fast.  However, in this age of light-speed distribution of information, an hour can be too long.  Jeremy makes the important point that even acknowledging a possible issue on the web site and asking people to return or sign up for more information is better than silence (which can cuase a visitor to never return, and become an ex-customer.  LESSON: Every company should be prepared with at least a basic crisis plan that includes on online holding statement…and be prepared to go into action without literally a minute to spare.
• Although the information was originally in traditional media, it spread as a new crisis 12 years later thanks to blogs and other online communications.  LESSON: Understand all parts of the media pie (traditional, online community etc) and track what is being said about your company carefully.  And, again, thanks to the Internet, today’s old forgotten news may be tomorrows new news.

This is a critical point for companies pursuing search engine public relations straties.  As people look for information, it is far more effective to use search engine ads and SEO to direct them to the company site with the relevant information.  Using ads on content Web sites (context ads) and other tactics means having a convince people to stop their current activity and redirect their attention to looking and absorbing your information.  A far greater challenge.

Once again, I’ll return to the rationale for always having a strong search engine PR strategy - it is far easier to meet the people as they look for your information, then to have to search them out and redirect their focus.

The central idea is to show where and how information flows, what skills sets are needed for those parts if you are a PR professional, and, as an example of adopting the old to the new, how releases (not press but X releases, may be used where relevant.  Here’s my a working draft of the graphic – click on it to get a larger more readable version.  Comments, feedback, questions and ideas welcome.   I will update this post with new versions over the next several weeks.

And a thank you to Tim Leberech at Mindjet for suggesting the use of his companies software (MindManager) to create a visual representation of these ideas.  I love it so much I may try to use it as a PowerPoint replacement.

Radio did not kill print, television did not kill radio, the Internet did not kill television and the blogosphere is not going to kill off the first half of this sentence. They all feed of each other in an ecosystem that extends from my personal blog, to search engine results, to the international reach of News Corp.

Despite pundits proclaiming otherwise, the so called old media will remain one of the most potent sources of influence. However, it will also be a smaller part of a much larger system that includes conversational mediums such as bloggers and portals, information mediums such as search engines and social interaction such as social networks and buzz marketing networks. If anything, it’s likely that large media companies will not only adapt to this larger ecosystem (as Richard Edelman outlines with some clear examples), but continue acquire a substantial part of it. In the meantime, as Marc Babej points out, media companies are still doing quite well with old media. Their party may be over someday, but it’s not today.

So as the evolution progresses, what skill sets do PR professionals need and what should companies be looking for in PR agencies?

First and foremost, the old media skill sets (media relations, analyst relations etc) are still critical and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Beware professionals that claim otherwise. Consumers still watch the news and read their daily newspaper; executives do the same while also listening to trade media and industry analysts. While there is a growing influential audience getting information directly from new sources such as the blogosphere, it is still just that – influencers and not the masses. But that’s the key role blogs continue to play.

That means that professionals and agencies need fundamental understanding of how the whole media ecosystem works and feeds off itself. The PR profession needs to understand how people use search engines to gather information (I’m still astounded at how few PR professional make search engine optimization and keyword advertising a part of their offering), how journalists read blogs, how blogs connect to each other to steer readers through a conversation, and how the larger part of the public still gathers their information.

So far, I’ve found the average PR professional has a strong understanding of basic reporting media (print, broadcast, etc), a very basic understanding of conversational media such as blogs and discussion groups, and almost no understanding of information media such as search engines. I find this somewhat ironic as these same professionals often use search engines the most, read blogs throughout the day, and read the paper only once a day.

That said, I think this is a temporary problem and one that will have to be solved. With the media ecosystem becoming far larger and more complex, there will be a greater demand for PR professionals that can provide proper counsel.