Redefining Our Role
Friday, March 30, 2007
This week two magazines were laid to rest. On Monday, the announcement came from Time Inc that Life Magazine will have its last issue on April 20th. Then, on Wednesday, Meredith Corp. announced that it will no longer be printing Child Magazine. As if to console both publications’ dwindling audiences, Time and Meredith promised to reincarnate the magazines online. The photo archive of Life magazine will live on in its new online format and Child will co-exist among American Baby, Family Circle and Parents in Meredith’s upcoming parenting-and-family portal. The death of print is no longer a projection, it is upon us and so the ultimate question for us becomes: how do we practice our craft in a world without print? Can we pitch a blogger in the way we have grown accustomed to pitching journalists? Will there be a few authoritative news websites or will we each find our own preference for news and entertainment? These questions can only be answered in time. However, while print may be dying, public relations is in store for a transformation. During this period of flux, we have the power to sculpt our role and approach to this emerging online news world. Now is the time to cultivate relationships with influential bloggers and to follow sites like Digg and The Huffington Post. It is also likely that traditional forms of media will live on in the online realm. The New York Times, USA Today and others may remain strong players in a space in which standalone blogs are not required to prescribe to journalistic ethics on which we have come to rely. However, Time has taught us that this logic does not always follow. Life Magazine is a journalistic icon. Who would have predicted its death in its heyday? Another critical element is the way companies communicate with the public. Already, many CEOs are blogging. In the future, a company’s messaging will have to be even more dynamic. Crisis communications, for example, will account for a wider array of situations that previously may not have been relevant because of the time gap between a crisis and the news picking it up. With the internet, there is no time gap; news is delivered instantly. Blogs -- and the many other resources that will undoubtedly surface -- become enormous assets for companies because they allow instant response. In addition, they provide companies with the opportunity to voice their messages consistently, making their reactions during a crisis more appropriate and meaningful. While no one can be sure what media will look like in five or ten years, we can be certain that public relations will be a large piece of this shifting puzzle. Labels: blog, crisis communications, digg, pr
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
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The New Rules of Journalism?
Friday, March 23, 2007
Amanda Congdon, ABCNews.com video blogger, was making headlines this week as controversy broke out about her other role as a spokesperson for Dupont in their “infotainmercial”. When folks questioned whether her dual partnership goes against the ethics of journalism, she asserted on her own personal blog that “under the "blogger" title… I am not subject to the "rules" traditional journalists have to follow.” Legally, in this case, she is in the clear. Both ABC and HBO – for which Congdon has a show in the works – approved the Dupont commercials. In Matea Gold’s article yesterday in the LA Times, Jeffrey Schneider, a spokesman for the ABC news division, explained that she is a contributing commentator and not a “journalist”, implying that she is not expected to be fair and neutral in her commentary on news. From a certain perspective, this rationale is sound. We as “non-journalists” are entitled to our opinions in our professions and, for the most part, our side projects are our own. However, from another perspective – the one that takes context and history into consideration – we have come to expect that our media, whether it be commentators or traditional journalists, are not to be bought or forced to report through ulterior motives. Congdon raises this issue in her blog, asking: “Isn’t that what new media is all about? Breaking the rules?” Perhaps some rules. The “new media” is online and it consists of blogs, commentators, and traditional print and broadcast media, which is still very much premature. Next to the journalists and media business executives, no one knows this reality better than us public relations practitioners. With this shift, news reporting will certainly experience a transformation. The expectations one has for ABCNews.com is completely different than those one has for their neighbors’ blogs. In essence, we expect all contributors of global authoritative sites like ABCNews.com to maintain the golden standard of neutrality, which involves being barred from accepting any form of inexplicit payments from corporate America. Yet Congdon’s affiliation with Dupont is not reflected on her ABCNews.com bio. If this core expectation is not met, then trust will be lost in the offending media. In the LA Times article, Jeff Jarvis, director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism, says it best: "Your readers and viewers are going to judge you and your credibility based on your actions and your transparency about them…A lot of the old rules are rules for a good reason." Labels: blog, new media
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
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Building Brands Online: The Power of the Internet
Friday, March 16, 2007
The Viacom lawsuit against Google's YouTube will perhaps bring us closer to identifying the influencing role the Internet plays in our lives today. With Viacom's main concern being that its clips are generating an obscene amount of advertising revenue for Google, it seems that Viacom is naively wondering: What is this "internet"? Surely, when the case begins to get under way, an examination into the benefits of these MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon clips (reported in the New York Times to be seen an estimated 1.5 billion times) will reveal that this exposure is actually increasing these channels' viewership. Furthermore, in a recent Online Media Daily article, Gavin O'Malley quotes Eileen Naughton, Google's New York regional sales director, commenting on YouTube's revenue. Naughton explains that "the ad effect has not even begun to be felt. There is no well-built-out [business] model for YouTube right now." Perhaps the real issue being put to the test here is the power of persuasion over the Internet. The media is only recently getting the message. USA Today revamping its website to allow users to comment on articles is a clear indication that this thing called the "internet" is forcing all forms of business to do an about face. So is Viacom just scared of change and is this lawsuit a last attempt to shoo this big bad Internet away? Maybe. But maybe this is Viacom's attempt to get a good deal out of Google. Their way of haggling, if you will. Because, even the Viacom executives, who might not scout YouTube on a regular basis, have to understand that having their material absent from YouTube will only reduce their viewership as our generation has entertainment options that extend far beyond MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon. Labels: Google, Internet, media, Viacom, Youtube
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
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Keywords Forever
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
The HitTail premium service is rapidly approaching. But don't worry. HitTail as you know it today will remain a free public service to bloggers everywhere seeking to amplify their voice in the noisy Web.
We will reserve announcement of the detailed feature list until closely before release. But there is one I want to talk about today in order to get you thinking about why and how HitTail works so well...
Keywords Forever.
Such simple words, and so much competitive advantage for HitTail users. This is the fundamental reason we're a writing suggestion tool, and not an analytics package. We record the keywords that have lead to your site--forever. And this makes other features of HitTail (like the writing suggestions) all the more powerful.
That's right. We have a growing list of keywords for each website using HitTail. And this long keyword list begins to act as a uniqueness filter. By this, we mean that we use the old list to filter the new list. That's why the keyword tab works like a first-time keyword radar system. We can tell the first time a particular keyword combination has led to your site--ever! (or at least since you've installed the HitTail code)...
And that's REALLY cool.
This sounds somewhat simple, but it makes all the difference in the world. No other service that I know of keeps the list of keywords leading to your site forever, so that you might zero in on the new words most quickly. The new keywords under the keywords tab are filtered based on all the words that have led to your site in the past. So everything there is TRULY new, and is keyword gold ore. That keyword gold ore is where the HitTail algorithms kick in and refine keyword gold--in the form of writing suggestions. So, everything you're looking at is new, and not the tired old stuff that you've looked at in your analytics software for years.
So when we say "Keywords Forever", we're talking about our ability to warehouse every keyword that ever led to your site, and use it as a real-time filter for new hits coming in. It's sometimes hard to wrap your mind around, but this saves you incredible amounts of time in your keyword research.
When choosing an analytics-like tool for deriving blog writing suggestions and alleviating writer's block, be sure to check if it's got the Keywords Forever feature, because without it, you're going to be considering the same terms over and over. We de-duplicate these terms early on, and respect your time.
While we will be attempting to preserve the Keywords Forever feature for our free users, we can assure it for our premium users. It's a subtle difference, but it definitely provides a one-of-a-kind advantage to online marketers worldwide.Labels: HitTail, HitTail Plus
posted by Mike Levin
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Search is Just Another Medium
An article by Dave Pasternack today in DM News comments on the growth of search engine marketing. Yet for all of the cheery forecasts, one of his best points is that advertisers still downplay the importance of search. He mentions a journalist that recently said "paid placement search marketing is the dirty secret of online advertising". Search engine optimization (SEO) gets talked about even less in PR circles, despite the fact it's the same value proposition -- influencing editorial content instead of paying for advertising. Nevermind that it's more cost-effective than advertising and builds a long term corporate asset. Unlike paid search advertising whose influence disappears the minute you stop paying, natural search results stick after SEO contracts end. More PR firms and advertising agencies need to realize that search is another medium, just like print or broadcast. Oh, but search happens to be the first place people go to do their research... whether you are a reporter, an analyst, a potential consumer, or investor. No wonder ad agencies worry about Google selling advertising and don't want to separate SEM from online marketing budgets. Too bad they don't have much of a choice as Google moves into other media. Google didn't have to move onto Madison Avenue to make an impact in New York. When will the world wake up and realize the future of advertising is in Silicon Alley instead? Labels: advertising, pr, seo
posted by Adam Edwards
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The Importance of Wikipedia
Friday, March 09, 2007
We all use this vast repository of human knowledge from time to time. There's no denying it. So shouldn't the 10th most visited site on the Internet provide authority to all of the other websites that made it so popular? Jimmy Wales no longer thinks so, even though the Wikipedia community does. How important is Wikipedia? Enough to attract the attention of universities who refuse to call it a legitimate source and senators who want to ban it in public libraries (either intentionally or out of ignorance through overarching laws). Yet for all of these naysayers, it is still an authoritative place to post mostly un-biased information and refer back to it. Newcomers to the Internet may not realize it, but Wikipedia was a fix for one of the longstanding problems of the Open Directory Project (which was never really open in the first place). In addition to providing encyclopedic tidbits, you can also link to relevant articles and external sites. As the Internet has grown exponentially in size, it has shown how much we lack a truly open directory. Search engines are great for finding websites based on keywords, but not if you want a hierarchical view to discover things on your own. What happens if you know nothing about a particular category? You can't search on keywords, so you need to do old fashioned research. Without an online Dewey decimal system, we only have Wikipedia. So there's no reason that links from this great amalgamation of knowledge should not be authoritative. When everyone in the world links to Wikipedia articles making it the 10th most visited website in the world, it seems unfair that links back to the real world no longer provide the same authority back. Especially when we've seen the alternative in the Open Directory Project that relies on mysterious editors who rarely log in to approve or decline your submissions. In reality, it was about as closed of a system as the Yahoo Directory. If Netscape had done something with ODP instead of trying to copy Digg's interface, they could have renewed interest in one of their most influential properties. But they didn't. So I, like so many others, have helped to build up Wikipedia with my time, research, and monetary donation. I know Mr. Wales is concerned with spam, as we all should be. However, I think he underestimates the Wikipedia braintrust who has done quite well at keeping this to a minimum so far. As the Foundation slowly learns how to deal with anonymity, it should begin to embrace its authority, not run from it. That's the Wikipedia I want to support, at least. Labels: digg, seo, Wikipedia
posted by Adam Edwards
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