online-PR-Briefing-March-2006

Online PR – Roundtable Briefing, March 2006 Online PR Roundtable Briefing, March 2006 1. Introduction This is a summary of the discussion at E-consultancy’s March 2006 roundtable about Online PR. We run four roundtables a month for our corporate members, covering a range of topics relating to internet marketing and e-commerce. If you are interested in attending a roundtable, or corporate membership of Econsultancy, please contact Peter Abraham on +44 (0) 207 681 4053 / Peter@econsultancy.com. E-consultancy URL: http://www.e-consultancy.com 2. Organisations in attendance Blue Barracuda Lexis PR COI Market Sentinel eBay Net-A-Porter Hello! Magazine Simplyhealth/HSA Immediate Future Wordtracker Copyright © E-consultancy.com ltd 2006 1 Online PR – Roundtable Briefing, March 2006 3. Summary of Key Points from Roundtable Discussion 3.1 Online Press Centres   The vast majority of Online Press Centres are still of a very low standard. o Journalists want access to basic information but this is often missing. Checklist for online press centres: o Online press centres should/can contain:  Contact details  Current and archived releases  Backgrounders  White Papers  Blogs  FAQs  RSS feeds  Images  Logo’s o Don’t make journalists register for basic information although you may want to allow them to sign up for alerts. o Press releases are good for search engine optimisation, because it increases the amount of relevant content (and links) both on your site and off-site which search engines will spider. o Submission to online press release distribution services (e.g. Econsultancy) is a good way of getting wider exposure and coverage. Organisations must have a clear chain of command and clear responsibilities in order to keep an online press centre as up-to-date as possible. o Complicated Content Management Systems can be a barrier to doing things quickly. Companies which do have good online press centres can reap the benefit in terms of enhanced PR strategy. o “It’s a great way of getting our message out there,” said one attendee.   3.2 What progress has there been for online PR in recent months?  Online PR has been slow to take off as a vehicle for proactive PR and marketing. o More typically, it has been been used more as something defensive. A reason for the slow progress of online PR has been a disconnect between PR and digital departments which have separate budgets. o “It keeps falling between two stalls” The reluctance to launch online press centres is part of a wider fear within companies about how content will be used if too much information is made available. 2   Copyright © E-consultancy.com ltd 2006 Online PR – Roundtable Briefing, March 2006 o Companies think they will lose control of what is being said about them unless every message and comment is managed by people in PR departments. o But the reality is that refusing to provide online information or to comment about a situation (whether through an online press center or through engagement with consumers online) won’t prevent people from writing about you.  In a well-publicised example, Jeff Jarvis talked about the difficulties he had experienced with Dell on his blog, BuzzMachine. His dissatisfaction was made worse by their refusal to engage in an online debate about customer service issues. o Some companies have genuinely delicate PR issues which mean they have to be very careful about their online engagement.  Companies have to weigh up whether engagement online will have an overall benefit in the context of their overall communications strategy.  Financial Services companies have to tread particularly carefully because of regulatory restrictions.  Some companies are concerned that journalists might use content or images which are no longer up-to-date. 3.3 Blogging  Blogs are another excellent way of building search engine visibility. o Blogs will often reproduce press releases or parts of press releases verbatim, including valuable links. o “Some people are scared of blogging but it’s just a simple way of publishing on a regular basis without the need for a content management system. The reason there is so much excitement about blogs is because it’s so easy.” For many companies, the opportunity afforded by the blog phenomenon is less about publishing their own blogs and more about the publicity and sales opportunities which can result from exposure on other blogs. o It can be an opportunity to present a brand in a different environment.  “It has more resonance and power.”  Blogs can be used to spread viral campaigns. o Suitable blogs need to be identified. There is a trend towards commercialisation of blogs. o Blogs can be a vehicle for pushing certain types of product a company wants to sell.  Niche blogs can be very useful for monetising “the long tail”.  No particular blog in itself may be particularly big, but the cumulative effect can be very significant. o Blogs can be used for advertising either via display ads or an affiliate marketing arrangement. o The boundaries between PR and commerce are becoming very blurred. 3   Copyright © E-consultancy.com ltd 2006 Online PR – Roundtable Briefing, March 2006 There is a danger that blogs will become commercialised and their essence will be corrupted. o Blog publishers who want to make money through commercial arrangements need to tread a fine line in order to maintain editorial credibility.  There should be a clear distinction between independent editorial content and advertising/advertorials.  “It’s where it encroaches on editorial that it becomes sticky.”  “I’m not prepared to pay people to run a story.”   Running a blog relations campaign is like running a PR campaign. Like journalists, some will be amenable and others will be “grumpy”.  Corporate blogging hasn’t really taken off in the UK. o “The people who are blogging in Britain are teenagers”. o By contrast, in the United States, marketing people are running blogs for companies, with blog marketing as a distinct discipline within marketing.  Organisations who are considering blogs need to think about what they want to communicate and to whom they want to communicate.  Blogs can be a good way of “humanising or normalising” your brand but should not exist just for the sake of it. Organisations want to use blogs to engage with people, but need to somehow manage the risk of the medium’s transparency. o You have to watch out for unsuitable comments, e.g. bigotry. o However … “If there is any sense that it is being managed then it will lose credibility. It is a difficult balance to strike.” o Government bodies are aware of the opportunity to reach people but at the same time have to be aware of responsibilities, e.g. law enforcement issues.  Blogs can be a useful tool for educating in an impartial way and informing a public debate.  David Miliband, MP and Minister of Communities and Local Government, now has his own blog.  Blogs can be a good way of informing young people about sexually transmitted diseases and recreational drugs. Online PR isn’t just about blogs. o There are other ways of getting message across online, e.g. webchats, webcasting and bulletin boards.   Copyright © E-consultancy.com ltd 2006 4 Online PR – Roundtable Briefing, March 2006 3.4 Bulletin Boards and Podcasts  Like blogs, Bulletin boards can be susceptible to the potential danger of unsuitable content. o Self-regulation can often be an effective way of moderating content. Bulletin boards can be a good way for customers to get quicker answers. o For a company with millions of online customers/consumers, this can be a good way reducing the burden on internal customer service. At which point does online PR become viral marketing or digital marketing, and at which point does it become reputation management? o There is crossover between these areas. o “There is no clear distinction between promotional PR and digital marketing.”   3.5 Brand reputation monitoring  Companies are increasingly interested in what is being said about them online. o There is greater recognition that those writing online are normal customers and what they write may be representative. o More businesses understand that the internet is a huge database of information which they can leverage for their benefit. The enormous quantity of data on the internet means that companies have to focus on particular areas to monitor. o “You have to be specific.” o It can be difficult to search the web for what is being written about your brand if your company name is a generic word but easier if you have a distinctive brand name. o Large companies might be mentioned in a myriad of contexts which makes it hard to track what is actually impacting their brand and reputation. o There is software which can enable businesses to sift out positive and negative references. o While software is useful, businesses like tailored reports which highlight particular words which have been used about them or come up in the same context. o Sometimes manual online searching is necessary. o Some companies are happy to pay for offline press cutting service but don’t want to pay for online monitoring.  This is because offline monitoring gives them a tangible set of articles which mention them. o Companies should regard online reputation monitoring in the same way that they regard insurance.  It can enable them to avert potential crises which could damage 5  Copyright © E-consultancy.com ltd 2006 Online PR – Roundtable Briefing, March 2006 or ruin their brands.  It is difficult to work out which websites are authoritative in a particular area. o Computer programs/search engines struggle to identify accurately who is really authoritative about a particular subject. o Companies will often assume that certain offline/online publications are influential when the reality can be quite different. 4. Useful links: E-consultancy Business Development Guide, including section on Online PR & Marketing written by Katy Howell of Immediate Future PR. http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/winning_new_work/ Jakob Nielsen report: ‘Designing websites to maximize press relations’ http://www.nngroup.com/reports/pr/summary.html Online press release distribution services E-consultancy http://www.e-consultancy.com/about/advertising/press-release-distribution.asp Business Wire http://www.businesswire.com/ M2 PressWIRE http://www.m2.com PressBox http://www.pressbox.co.uk PR Newswire http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/ Jeff Jarvis vs Dell: ‘Blogger’s Complaint Becomes Viral Nightmare’ http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/695 Immediate Future – PR for the digital industry http://www.immediatefuture.co.uk/ Lexis – public relations agency http://www.lexispr.com/index.htm Market Sentinel - provides live feeds to help companies monitor criticisms; helps create and maintain a corporate blog http://www.marketsentinel.com/ Teoma – search engine which enables you to find similar/like-minded websites… “Instead of ranking results based upon the sites with the most links leading to them, Teoma analyzes the Web as it is organically organized.” http://www.teoma.com/ Technorati – “What are people talking about right now?” Copyright © E-consultancy.com ltd 2006 6 Online PR – Roundtable Briefing, March 2006 http://www.technorati.com/ PubSub – “Matches your requests against new information as it appears in real time, all the time”. http://www.pubsub.com/ Blogpulse – “Search the Blogosphere” http://www.blogpulse.com/ Google Blog Search http://www.search.blogger.com/ Google Alerts – “Email updates of the latest relevant Google results.” http://www.google.com/alerts Yahoo! Alerts – “Real-time updates” http://www.alerts.yahoo.com Alexa - can give you a sense of website traffic and usage. http://www.alexa.com/ Previous E-consultancy Roundtable Output – July, 2004 http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/online-pr/ How To Implement Successful SEO (white paper): http://www.e-consultancy.com/knowledge/whitepapers/90291/how-to-implementsuccessful-search-engine-optimisation.html?keywords=SEO E-consultancy interview with RSS expert Rok Hrastnik: http://www.e-consultancy.com/newsfeatures/newsletter/2117/interview-with-rokhrastnik-about-the-joys-of-rss.html#21506 E-consultancy interview with SEO expert Alan Webb: http://www.e-consultancy.com/newsfeatures/newsletter/2206/interview-with-alanwebb-on-search-engine-optimisation-seo.html#22489 Copyright © E-consultancy.com ltd 2006 7 Online PR – Roundtable Briefing, March 2006 5. About E-consultancy E-consultancy is the UK’s leading online publisher of best practice internet marketing reports, research and how-to guides. It also publishes buyer’s guides and has a directory of 100,000+ third party internet marketing white papers. Since moving to a paid-content model in 2003 E-consultancy has amassed thousands of paying subscribers, more than 35,000 registered users and 150,000+ unique users sessions per month. Its weekly newsletter is sent to 20,000 users. Subscribers pay from £149 per year to access the exclusive and highly practical content, which helps internet marketers get the most out of their websites. E-consultancy has more than 100 events lined up for 2006, including roundtables and monthly Supplier Showcases, where six suppliers pitch to an audience of prequalified buyers (typically between 100-150) in a Central London venue. http://www.e-consultancy.com/about/ 6. Public Training Courses E-consultancy also provides a range of public and in-house training programmes, such as seminars and workshops. Our next Online PR training seminars will be held in June and September, 2006. The training courses will take place in London (June and September) and in Manchester (September). Please visit our website for more details (URL below). If you would like to know more about our in-house training options then please contact Craig Hanna on +44 207 681 4078 or email him at Craig@econsultancy.com. Please visit our website for more details (URL below). If you would like to know more about our in-house training options then please contact Craig Hanna on +44 207 681 4078 or email him at Craig@econsultancy.com. 7. Contact If you would like to know more about corporate membership and our roundtables then please contact us on +44 207 681 4053 or Peter@e-consultancy.com. E-consultancy URL: http://www.e-consultancy.com Copyright © E-consultancy.com ltd 2006 8