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PR & SEO Blog from Silicon Alley

Zooming Vs. Scroll And Search: How Will It Effect SEO?

Monday, February 11, 2008

A fascinating article in Newsweek.com caught my eye, about how the future of online naviagation might be in zooming, not the scroll and search with which we are so familiar.

This all apparently has to do with the way humans process information, being far more skilled at scanning and picking out information spatially than by navigating lists. This has been a situation that has bedeviled web-developers for years -- but now there is finally headway being done in the area of zooming navigation.

Of course, we already have some examples of zoom in the form of Google Earth. But, Google Earth has pauses in its zoom to load up new images. The technology we are referring to in this article, however, involves seamless zooming, like increasing the power of a telescope.

The Microsoft-owned Seadragon is a bold step in that direction, and with a sharply increased staff as of late, it is clear the software giant has a great belief in its potential to revolutionize both the Internet and they way we navigate our own desktops.

So picture, if you will, a search where instead of lists of links you had a visual “map” of choices. You quickly scan with your eyes this map, lock in on the visual you want, and click a button to seamlessly zoom in on it. Repeat, drill-down, zoom in on result after result.

I know what you might be thinking – this sort of navigation might work well on a nice big monitor, but what about a cell phone? Well, wouldn’t this method work better than a list of links? I mean, how many Google links can fit on a mobile device’s “screen?” Five? Of course, Microsoft is also working on its own version of zoom for mobile – Deepfish.

But, the $250,000 question for us remains – how does zoom navigation impact SEO?

Certainly, there will still be tags and keywords. And apparently a zoom search is more efficient than scroll, increasing the amount of information one can work with at one time, according to the Newsweek article, by perhaps even a thousand.

However, I would think there would be certain logistics related to search results that would have to be adjusted. And, since zoom navigation might one day take over from scroll, we will have to anticipate these changes and adapt.

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posted by Valerie D'Orazio  1 comments


A Brief History of the Huffington Post

Friday, November 02, 2007

This past Monday, an interesting article by Fortune's Richard Siklos was published on CNNMoney about The Huffington Post. It caught my eye because we usually don't think of these Web 2.0 media outlets as businesses, but The Huffington Post turns out to be a high prized commodity for its founder Arriana Huffington.

Siklos' lengthy piece takes us to the very beginnings, when the Post was simply an idea, and a rocky one at best. "When the site first went live, the heavy betting was that it would quickly become a footnote in the sad annals of online ventures by celebrities -- anyone remember RodmanTV.com?"

I don't, but I guess that's the point.

The Huffington Post not only survived, but thrived in an environment that was not yet inundated with news social networks. In those days, Arriana started things off by hiring editors who would sift through the day's news and link to articles that they deemed interesting or worthy of a read. Original content was also provided by self-recruited team of volunteer bloggers.

These bloggers are perhaps the thing that sets the Huffington Post apart from most other sites of its kind. Arriana ran and still runs in celebrity circles. When she began her venture, she wanted to make sure to take advantage of her connections by asking some of these folks to write for her site. After all, whether we like to admit it or not, we all take interest in what celebrities think. She got a bunch of eager names in the beginning and now, most of her friends and acquaintances who are asked to contribute to The Huffington Post are honored.

The site now attracts over 90 million readers a month, which is approximately the amount of traffic the Philadelphia Inquirer site gets. Granted, the Huffington Post aims to reach a national audience, so the numbers are not staggering, but still significant enough.

The lesson learned here is that while there are no shortage of bloggers out there who serve a niche interest, even the ones that are trying to please the masses are having notable success.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


Blogging, Inc?

Friday, October 05, 2007

Douglas A. McIntyre from Wall St. 24/7 suggested in an article earlier this week that big media companies might start buying popular blogs. The reason for it being that the blogs of some newspapers and other news sites have not captured the same volume of attention as blogs like the Huffington Post and TechCrunch.

Rather than trying to compete, it would make sense for big media companies to just eat these blogs up. After all, relatively speaking, they wouldn't cost very much and would be fairly easy to maintain. AOL is already ahead of the game on this one with its purchase of Weblogsinc, which includes Engadget.

I suppose it's not really a novel concept for a big company to swallow up a small, popular fish, but will writers of these blogs be interested to sell? For many, I assume, it will be a personal decision. Do I want to maintain my own business and my complete creative freedom or do I want to hand the reigns over and feel secure in the financial footing of a media giant?

Regardless of what the likes of Michael Arrington might decide, if these purchases were to become rampant, our role in attracting the attention of the influencers would once again begin to narrow.

Another thought worth contemplating is how the public would react. Is it the independent nature of these blogs that we value or do we just like the writing style and quick turnaround these have over the traditional media channels?

This concept certainly raises a lot of questions and it will be interesting to see how this aspect of Web 2.0 unfolds.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  1 comments


Blogs Surpass Newspapers

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

"It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams" - Johannes Gutenberg

Whether you believe mass printing developed in Europe or Asia, there is no debating that movable type transformed society. The written word then went digital, and the information revolution was born. The sheer volume of data accessible today online has long since surpassed anyone's imagination. Yet for the better half of a decade, publishing on the World Wide Web remained exclusive to those technically savvy enough to deal with obscure acronyms like HTML and FTP. To some, it was no easier than dealing with picas and pigments.

Today, that time has come and gone. Blogs, which are really no more than chronological journal posts, have transformed the Internet. Indeed, they have altered the media and therefore our very view of the world. Even if someone still has never read a blog, the fact that influential reporters both read and write their own blogs have shaped the mainstream media... which means they ultimately affect the economy, politics, and somehow our everyday lives.

Today, user demand has caught up with the marketing hype. More people searched today for blogs than for newspapers according to Google Trends.

Many in old media may still hope that blogs are just a passing fad. Sure, the term "blog" may one day become passé, but the inexhaustible streams of everyone's own virtual press cannot be silenced. There is no going back, as Gutenberg would surely have attested.

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posted by Adam Edwards  0 comments


Blogging in China

Friday, August 24, 2007

The evolution of Web 2.0 is interesting to track in the West, but it is sometimes even more fascinating to learn about how countries like China, which does not support free speech, fine-tune advancements to align with their censorship.

During the past couple of days, stories have surfaced on blogging in China. Obviously, the anonymity available to bloggers is a threat to communist societies and so the Chinese government has "recommended" that bloggers not only refrain from posting "bad" material, but also register under their legal names with providers of blogging technology. Among these providers are companies like Yahoo and Microsoft, who have agreed to the stipulations.

Of course, these "recommendations" are nothing short of laws, and are probably enough to deter most bloggers from posting ill thoughts on their government.

But this censorship is nothing new. The information exchange on the Internet in China is not only limited through blog content, but also through blocking specific sites. For example, if you type "Tiananmen Square" into Google in China, you will not see any links associated with the 1989 protests. Instead, you will find tourist information and neutral historical references.

Though this is outrageous from our American perspective, this technological feat is impressive. After all, in terms of population, China is the largest country in the world and the second largest, after the U.S., for Internet users.

Some condemn Google and the like for cooperating with Chinese officials to accomplish this task. However, one has to consider what it would mean if Google would refuse. Would it lead the Chinese government to reconsider its policies? Perhaps. But most likely, it would lead them to find other companies willing to perform the task, making for poorer access to all the unrestricted information online.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


Future of PR

Thursday, August 09, 2007

The world is changing, but the signs as to how are always there if you know where to look. If you want to find out where the media and PR industries are headed in the near future, one only needs to read between the lines on Silicon Alley Insider this week.

  1. Newspapers are embracing blogs, but the online divisions are still not seeing revenue like their counterparts in print. The online division of the New York Times is bringing in 10% of the company's revenue.

  2. Yet online advertising budgets are expected to surpass that of newspapers in four years.

  3. Meanwhile, bloggers can make a decent living on their own thanks to a chunk of that advertising -- in the realm of six figures.

  4. And, in an effort to keep up, editors at the Times are asking reporters to cut down on article length. It's not just to save paper or for people's attention spans; it's also to compete with those very same bloggers in search engine results. Short stories can be just as influential as novels in PR (meaning PageRank), so it's better for editors to get two shorter pieces for the price of one.

What does it all mean? You can expect more editors and journalists leaving high profile publications to become independent bloggers. It's no coincidence that journalists Mark Frauenfelder, Jeff Jarvis, and Om Malik have been made into celebrities through their blogs. They are smart guys with devoted readers, and they figured out how to build their own brand and create new destinations online. Even those who stick to their day jobs are branching out, from Walt Mossberg on All Things Digital to David Pogue's musical vlogging at the Times.

That begs multiple questions. Do you go to read a publication because of its reputation or because of its writers and editors? What is your loyalty to said publication? If your favorite columnist left the Times to go to the Post a few years ago, that might not have been enough to get you to switch your paid subscription -- but now it's easy to read both in your RSS feeds. This is just another indication that media consumption is going from one-to-many to many-to-many.

How does that affect PR? Blogs are leveling the playing field with traditional media, so future PR professionals had better start learning their names now. Clients, too, need to realize it's not always about getting a cover story. A post on the blog of that publication's former editor can be just as effective in getting your message across, if not more. That blog post you once thought was quaint probably has a link to your website providing a clear call-to-action and increased online authority in search engine algorithms. Plus, the blog post is more likely to come up in search results than a corresponding online version of a print article, meaning it has longer shelf life. That doesn't even include the viral marketing opportunities in such a post!

We see the future, but we understand it can be hard for some people to give up the past. Publications often have such vaunted histories that there is still a tendency to cherish the printed story above all, despite the fact that getting written up in influential blogs can often have equal or higher ROI.

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posted by Adam Edwards  0 comments


Google’s Public Voice

Friday, June 22, 2007

This week, Google launched a public policy blog on which Andrew McLaughlin, Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs, shares his thoughts. And for this blog, Google is facilitating a conversation by permitting comments.

McLaughlin blogged:

Yes, we're a multinational corporation that argues for our positions before officials, legislators, and opinion leaders. At the same time, we want our users to be part of the effort, to know what we're saying and why, and to help us refine and improve our policy positions and advocacy strategies.

Looking at this from the PR point of view, one has to wonder how much of this dialogue is driven by the negative press Google has received lately on issues of privacy. Whether or not I feel Google is truly a culprit, comments on blogs are an excellent PR tool and I commend Google’s efforts.

The blog itself also creates a great buffer zone for allegations by providing Google with a distinct voice that can comment almost instantly. Only time will tell if Google is truly proactive in its crisis communications; yet, something tells me that we will not be disappointed. I predict a chapter on Google in PR 101 text books of the future, if there is not one already.

From the other PR perspective - that being the emergence of new media - it doesn’t take a fortuneteller to foresee that if Andrew keeps up with relevant news and posts with a consistent frequency, this blog has the potential to become a true authority on public policy matters. So this could very well be the birth of actual media being generated by Google. For example, news could be broken right on this blog.

So the outcome of this blog clearly holds vast possibilities for us PR folks. In the meantime, we’ll be keeping tabs, taking notes and offering insight as this experiment unfolds.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


ProBlogger Meetup

Monday, June 11, 2007

For those who are just getting into blogging, Darren Rowse of ProBlogger writes a fine column on how to do exactly that. They hosted a night out in the Upper West Side over the weekend that I was lucky enough to attend. (Note to the tavern proprietors: please refer to the the basement of Gin Mill as the Gin Mill, and not a separate bar called the Speakeasy as Google Maps does not yet have an underground view. Thanks.) As I am sure my illustrious colleague Mike Levin will be writing his own writeup of Saturday's event on our HitTail blog, I thought I would post my notes on our sister site so we cover both bases!

Unfortunately Darren was quite swamped with adoring fans, so I didn't get to introduce myself but I did get to meet Shai Coggins from b5 media who was nice enough to give me a sporty new T-shirt.

I spent the most time talking with a very cool Dutchman, Peter Verkooijen, who hosts the Web2NewYork meetup. I look forward to hearing your feedback on HitTail's Nederlands interface! Chris Conley is on a journey that I'm sure I'll be reading along with at Startup or Bust. I met my first Huffington Post blogger, Alex Geana, who was far too modest about the importance of said publication. Jim Cortina was probably the funniest man there, and I have already found some useful applications thanks to Nick O'Neill from AllFacebook.

It was great meeting you all and if any of you happen to be interested in AJAX and the future of search, I encourage you to come check out our own Search Engine Superpowers Meetup tomorrow!

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posted by Adam Edwards  2 comments


The Mixing of Old and New Media

Friday, May 11, 2007

This week the topic of new media infringing on the old was brought up at the 56th annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference. Reuters reported that executives from the industry “said talk of the demise of traditional media in the digital age was overblown.” Elaborating that television still has a firm place in the homes of media consumers and that the “new” technologies have actually resparked interest for some.

This type of talk is to be expected from media moguls, and there is also truth in their claims. YouTube, for example, drove thousands to Saturday Night Live after million watched Justin Timberlake perform with Andy Samburg that hilarious Christmas song Andy wrote. Of course, such admitted claims beg the question of why Viacom would be suing YouTube if there is such potential to gain viewership.

Regardless, Internet has yet to conquer the complete entertainment spectrum. After all, is there any substitute to sitting in front of the television and being amused so effortlessly? In my opinion, clicking around on the computer screen is not an equivalent… yet. However, what clearly is in peril is the news business. Because while I enjoy watching my favorite TV shows the old fashioned way, I prefer reading my news online.

As PR people, we are keenly aware of this phenomenon. We have discussed it at length on this very blog. This week, I ran across another example of how print media can perhaps salvage itself by changing with the times.

A new free Boston weekly print publication, BostonNow, has started printing commentary submitted by local bloggers to its website. Editor, John Wilpers, felt this unique inclusion would spike interest in the newspaper by adding a distinct community feel.

In a CNET article, Wilpers explained, “It doesn't take a whole lot of smarts to look out at the Internet and see thousands writing on their communities, whether they be geographic or thematic." So why not include their thoughts in print?

In this exchange, Wilpers also hopes to generate fans for the bloggers as the bloggers are not paid for their submissions. Instead, it’s a form of free advertising. And with a circulation of 85,000, it’s not a terrible waste of time on the blogger’s behalf.

Another point worth noting is that the bloggers’ posts will be scanned by an editor so as to ensure similar standards that we have come to expect from news sources.

This notion is certainly interesting and we will have to see whether others adopt the convergence of blogs into the print world in quite this same way. Perhaps this trend will spark interest with the older generation to be more blogger-friendly and for the younger generation to be more newspaper-friendly.

For those of you who are wondering why anyone would even bother to create a new print publication, it is safe to say that print still has a pretty healthy pulse. As e-books are still in their infancy and Internet is inaccessible underground, for us urban commuters, print media is actually still very relevant.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  1 comments


A Company’s Virtual Voice

Thursday, April 12, 2007

“Google bombing” is personal online defamation, but can companies fall victim? This week’s BusinessWeek explores the topic in an article by Michelle Conlin titled, “Web Attack”.

The article cites various examples of big name corporations that have fallen victim to online badgering. Home Depot, for example, took the brunt of MSN Money columnist, Scott Burns.

In his column, Burns accused Home Depot of wasting its costumers’ time with poor service in the stores. The response he received from his column was unprecedented! Thousands upon thousands of angry Home Depot costumers concurred with his accusations and demanded change.

Instead of pretending it’s 1985 and there is no Internet, Home Depot CEO Francis S. Blake decided to respond timely and meaningfully. He posted an apology on the MSN message board stating that he is sorry for the inconveniences and promises to fix the problem by hiring more staff and training them properly. He also thanked Scott Burns for brining the problem to his attention and asked for costumers to voice their concerns “like Scott Burns did.”

For this, Blake received a thumbs up from customers and even Home Depot employees, on whose blog his letter received approval.

This story, amongst many others, teaches us that sometimes an admission of guilt and promise to change is all that is necessary to break the fall of a corporate giant. The lesson learned hits the point home: Don’t hide behind your computer screen; use it as your megaphone!

When describing the birth of the Web, Conlin jokes that it was perceived as “the new public-relations nirvana!” She then goes on to make the argument that now, after the negative potential of the message boards, blogs, and online news has been unleashed, the Internet has turned into a public relations nightmare.

We, the PR people, beg to differ. Hasn’t negative press, in its varying shapes and forms, been around since the beginning of time? The online world gives everyone a voice and it is up to companies to recognize theirs and implement public relations teams to deal with the space. In some cases, perhaps exclusively.

Dell, for example, has a blogger-in-chief, Lionel Menchaca, who gives Dell a voice in the industry and overall online community. When that inevitable crisis hits Dell, Lionel will be the front lines of defense. And people will listen, because he has established a relationship with the community (AKA his blog is not an ever-changing commercial for Dell).

A few years ago, companies were wondering whether they really needed a website. Now the question becomes, do we really need a blog? The answer is clear.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


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.

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


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."

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posted by Gina Bolotinsky  0 comments


Ethical Corporate Blogging

Friday, November 10, 2006

Blogging ethically is pretty straightforward. Corporate blogging can be beneficial for companies and blog readers alike as long as it is done in a trustworthy fashion with information valuable to a target audience. If more businesses took this into consideration, the blogosphere would be better off.

Unfortunately some companies like McDonalds and Wal-Mart and their large agencies are creating high profile fake blogs (flogs) for shill marketing. Once again a great Internet creation has been tainted by big business, but there are better ways to utilize the power of blogs without being so misleading and disingenuous. Blogging has become an established means of communication and corporations can obviously see its benefit, but how does a company blog in a way that enhances the blog community instead of outraging it?

A blog needs to be started carefully and transparently. Corporate connections need to be mentioned and any biases need to be addressed. A key factor in creating a blog is realizing that this is first and foremost a resource for consumers and secondly a speaking platform for the company. It is an informal means of informing, creating a community, and offering opinions as an authority in a particular industry. If a post is written in the voice of a particular official in the company, the piece needs to be reviewed and edited by that individual so they are involved in the blogging process. Smart companies that do well by their customers have much to gain by joining in the discussion online, including search engine optimization benefits, reaching new markets, and a new platform to deliver company news.

If you think you're ready to start a blog but don't have the resources or aren't sure of the direction to take, give Connors a call. Our work is displayed proudly by our clients, not hidden in secrecy. We're a boutique PR firm that understands technology and the people behind it. We've been doing online outreach far before blogs -- in fact, even before the World Wide Web! What else would you expect from the firm that launched Amazon, Priceline, GoTo, Vonage, and RedRoller?

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


HitTail.com: PageRank of 5 in 4 Months

Friday, October 13, 2006

So, the HitTail.com was registered on June 6, 2006 and we're only at mid-October. In one third of a year, the PR firm of Connors Communications brought a site from a Google PageRank of 0 to a PageRank of 5. Not that PageRank is all that important in long tail optimization, but with all else being equal, if two sites target the same keywords, the one with the higher PageRank will win. So, it's nice to see it go so high so quickly.

This is also a testament to the marketing approach of saying to heck with link building. Just put out a superior product that everyone loves, and make some portion or version of it free. We have no affiliate programs. We haven't asked to trade links. People are just spontaneously linking to HitTail.com throughout the blogosphere. This is yet another reason why search engine optimization is really just a subset of the public relations industry. It's just that no one in PR or SEO really accept this fact yet.

Sure, one can argue that HitTail has been such a success organically because it appeals to the online-savvy crowd predisposed to linking. But that is only particularly true of HitTail because we are so early in the evolution of the new online media of citizen publishing. Give it a few more years, and the "superior product gets rewarded" strategy will work in just about every industry as those audiences go online. And link-building campaigns will be so last-century.

So the message here is that Connors practices what it preaches. We bring our own sites from brand-new unregistered domains to PageRank of 5 and search engine results out the wazoo in under 1/4 of a year, without even asking for a single link. Often, companies are guilty of the "cobbler's children have no shoes" effect. I'm here to tell you that my PR and SEO teams at Connors are as effective in garnering publicity for its own internally incubated technology as they are the handful of emerging technology companies that we take on as clients. And that will serve as one impressive modern PR case study.

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posted by Mike Levin 


Lawrence Lessig and Chris Anderson an NYPL

Friday, September 29, 2006

So yesterday I had an opportunity to sit and listen to Wired magazine editor, Chris Anderson, and Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, talk at the New York Public Library. It was the now very familiar long tail subject matter, and I was hoping to hear more about the brewing DRM culture war that Lawrence as the creator of Creative Commons, is at the center of. In fact, there's a DRM protest demonstration being held at the Apple store this weekend. But alas, it was mostly about the long tail.

It's the first time I heard Lawrence speak, and this blog post is mostly about his style. Chris' long tail ideas evolved around a PowerPoint demo and charts and graphs, as he readily states, and when Lawrence got up to run his demo, you could see the glowing Apple logo on the top of his PowerBook, which led into a decidedly non-PowerPoint demo, which I recognized from the text transitions as Apple Keynote software. So, the Wired publisher had the charts and graphs, and the lawyer had the lively humorous videos.

But by far the most noteworthy part of Lawrence's demo was how he slickly "framed" the rest of the discussion. The demo talked about the read-only culture (RO) of mass consumption, and the read-write (RW) culture of neo-creative's who remix popular culture into their own art. And the last slide was an entirely black screen with the words "RO vs RW" big and centered in a way that RO ended up over Chris' chair and RW ended up over Lawrences.' And it just sort of stayed there for the rest of the discussion.

It worked at a very subconscious level, and I was looking around to see if anyone else appreciated the irony. No one mentioned it throughout the rest of the talk, which lasted over an hour. The discussion could have gone in almost any direction, but you could just feel from the nature of the questions that the conversation was "framed" as the read-only long tail consuming culture of Amazon and iTunes users vs. the re-mixing, copyright violating consume-and-resume anti-commercial culture of YouTube.

They seemed to agree on many point, and searched out where their points of contention were in order to make the discussion most interesting. And while they varied on some small points, they agreed on most, like the future of microtransactions. They both felt it was generally community-poisoning bad thing, whereas I [gasp] agree with Jason Calcanis in that quality creativity and a time commitment should be able to be directly rewarded. In fact, I fell that "being creative" should be a viable alternative to state lotteries, able to turn the creators into overnight millionaires.

But aside from the actual subject-matter of the talk, the most interesting thing I came away with was the contrast between Lawrence and Chris, and the very slick presentation style Lawrence used to "frame" the discussion. It was evidence of the power of an emotive presentation style over figures and statistics.

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posted by Mike Levin  0 comments


PR Bloggers

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Robert Scoble wrote that blogging is existing and that this word of mouth network is the new PR. If you want your idea out there and you want your news to matter, it needs to be in the blogosphere and people need to be talking about it. A company's own employees can be talking or bloggers can be talking about the company. Either way, someone needs to be saying something on a well-respected blog in order to get anyone online to listen. It's an interesting idea. Connors is a PR firm that blogs and also reaches out to bloggers. Connors blogs, therefore it is.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


Blogger Relations

But why is are blogger relations so vital in today's PR world and how does one go about wooing these new influential writers?

A lot of attention has been focused to blogger relations recently. Guy Kawasaki wrote a blog entry on how to suck up to bloggers, talking about building contacts before they are needed as well as paying attention to the helpful influence of schwag. BusinessWeek's Nichola Saminather also covered the topic in "Buttering up the Blogosphere." The idea that blogs and the Internet have changed the path of information dissemination is starting to sink in and go mainstream. Bloggers are important and we need to be paying attention because buzz is being generated by the blogosphere and spreading to more traditional media instead of the other way around.

Okay, so blogs are important, but how do you reach bloggers? Of course, one of the main lessons is that you have to read the blog, understand the blog, and write to that specific blogger as opposed to a mass email. This should be obvious. When you're sending out news and want it to get picked up, who exactly will a generic blast email work on? The next lesson is that if the news you're pitching is good, it will most likely get picked up. This is much the same as traditional PR outreach, just adapted for a new medium and a different type of news source.

The main difference is the role that PR plays. In traditional media, there is a symbiotic relationship between PR professionals and journalists. The relationship isn't always easy, but at least there is some mutual respect. PR agents need journalists to get coverage for clients and journalists needed PR people to make their jobs easier and to help them find news, trends, interviews, and research for their stories. Bloggers don’t have the same deadlines or need to post “new” news. They can break a story or take a break and comment on other stories going on at the moment. They don’t need the constant flow of information from you and other bias sources and would often prefer to find it themselves. So, while PR people have something to offer in the way of interviews and a heads up on news, it is often viewed with skepticism and mistrust. That brings us back to why Kawasaki's emphasis on building up the relationships with bloggers before you need their help and how this is of vital importance.

When a blogger recognizes you as an interested reader, sees a link you've given to the blog or insightful comment you've left, that is when you can begin a dialog. Engaging one influential blog that focuses specifically in the area of your client's news will get you more targeted, worthwhile coverage than a massive campaign to get the news to everyone. If they don't hear about it all, it won't get covered, but if they do find out and it's not from you, the buzz will be louder. And that's the key to the blogosphere.

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posted by Jessica Ek 


Pharmaceutical Companies, Public Relations & Search

Saturday, August 19, 2006

One major feature driving the growing popularity of public relations for marketing is its ability to live within limitations and restrictions set by law. The rules governing pharmaceutical industries come to mind. Everybody has noticed change in drug commercial TV-spots resulting from the FDA's truth in advertising laws. But when your publicity is being driven through word-of-mouth and matter-of-fact editorial coverage, you don't have such restrictions. Editorial gets a "get out of jail free" card when it comes to garnering publicity. It's exposure in mainstream media, but it's just not advertising.

Public relations is made to order for drug companies. In addition to developing strategies to get your message out, public relations is uniquely suited to deal with damaging news stories, preferably diffusing the story before it even hits the press. And with today's real-time blogging, sometime it is even beneficial to monitor the mention of drug names online in real time. The danger is that un-tended, just about any blogger with a horror story and axe to grind has a decent ability grab that first page of search results on the drug's name. The ability of single individuals to impact the viability of entire product lines is constantly on the rise. PR firms know how to manage this. Managing your Web and "search engine presence" is now firmly in the realm of public relations, so you can get a complete and very strategic alternative marketing campaign from a single company.

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posted by Mike Levin  0 comments


Communications Firm

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

So what does it mean to be a communications firm? It involves reaching the public with the right message that will help raise awareness and appreciation of a company. This communication is achieved a number of ways. We write content so that people searching will come across information and get the messages directly. Another way is to work with reporters to let them know about the company so that they will be interested in communicating that to their readers. Sometimes a viral campaign and outreaching to bloggers is the best way to work toward communicating with potential customers.

Communicating is all about getting a piece of information out to a certain person or groups of people. When the scope of this communication makes one-on-one conversations impractical, a communications firm can hit strategic places to get the message out through as many avenues as possible. Connors is a PR firm that specializes in successful communication.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


What Makes a Good PR Person?

Monday, July 24, 2006

While blogging, I've spent a lot of time discussing what Connors does for clients and what sets Connors apart from the rest. When it comes right down to it, people are what make Connors successful. The talented and sharp public relations specialists who work here make all the difference. So what exactly does it take become a good PR professional?

A good PR person is someone who has impeccable speaking and writing skills. It is someone who can look at a bunch of information and pick out exactly what is news and what of it matters the most. A successful public relations agent is personable and can "read" people well, picking up on subtle clues and implied meaning as well as stated comments. To do well in PR, you need to always be thinking, strategizing, and brainstorming. If one method doesn’t work, you switch to another and always do research beforehand. Most of all, a PR professional can’t be afraid to pick up the phone and must be able to accept no as an answer. Most outreach does not lead to coverage, but it is this process of outreaching and building relationships that will end up getting coverage for clients.

A talented PR person can come from any major or prior career track. Much of PR is utilizing the relationships with reporters that you build through time in the industry. This experience gives you a better sense of what each reporter is looking for and what news will appeal to each. It is through these connections and knowledge that a truly successful PR agent is formed and Connors pools its experience in the industry to cultivate this success.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


The Buzz About PR 2.0 Firms & Technology

Sunday, July 23, 2006

It seems that PR companies "getting it" either consists of partaking in online dialogues via blogging, optimizing press releases, or word-of-mouth buzz. I went to a conference recently, and any time I would introduce myself as being from a PR firm, people immediately thought I was going to talk about the "buzz thing". Some of our peers out there that have done a very effective job of positioning PR as word-of-mouth bumble bees, real-time bloggers or press release optimizers.

While we believe in and partake in these practices, the PR industry has been so successful in getting these messages out, that it makes the challenge even more difficult for PR agencies that are technological innovators. Its one thing to be experts at using online tools, such as blog software or newswires, but it's an entirely different thing to have the insight and capacity to invent wholly new technologies and marketing methodologies.

And PR agencies such as Connors are doing exactly that with applications such as HitTail. And now that we have defined a new category of software, tools to help you write for the long tail of search, we have to get over the hurdle that we're branded as buzzers and bloggers and blasters... oh my!

HitTail fosters a decidedly softer sell that's more aligned to the true mission of PR--to get you publicity that you could never have paid for at any price--usually in the form of editorial coverage. You generally pay less for PR than large advertising campaigns, but the pay-off can be much greater. The favorite saying is what is a mention in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal worth? Today, the equivalent is saying what's a top position in Google, Yahoo or MSN worth? PR and SEO are the same. And brilliant editorial coverage is what happens when the client's prospects FIND THEM in the due course of their research, vendor selection process, or the like. In other words, that taboo acronym: SEO, but made palatable to the mainstream marketers of the world.

So, the question is how does a PR agency formulatize the process of SEO? It needs the intimidating luggage that goes with that horrible acronym removed. And it needs to be executed in a reliable, confidence-building fashion, similarly to how the traditional process may involve positioning & messaging, SWOT analysis, pitching news to journalists, and staging newsworthy events.

PR's answer to online marketing is not merely making those same press releases more effective through search, though that helps. PR's answer is not just in opening a corporate blog and entering the online discussion, though that helps. And PR's answer is not merely in chatting it up online or off, though that helps. The answer is in incrementally and systematically dominating an entire conceptual area on the Internet. And since some conceptual areas are so difficult to penetrate in natural search, the answer is in finding the right starting point, carving out a niche, and continuing digging out from the niche in concentric circles until it grows into a crevice, then a cavern, then a canyon. This is not theory. It actually works. You can control a lot of quality traffic in your space this way.

HitTailing works because there's easy pickings out there in the long tail of natural search. If you pick a phrase that's at all off the beaten track and write about it in blogging software, you're almost assured a strong position in the search results. And it may pay off. The difficulty is in knowing where to begin and improving your odds. And a PR agency has the answer. A PR firm has such a deep strategic understanding of natural search that they were able to break out just a tiny piece of the SEO offerings that they offer to their clients, with that alone, potentially move the entire state of online marketing a large step forward.

The technology is necessary, filling a major missing hole in online marketing tools. Why? Because, if you begin in the wrong part of the long tail of keywords, you're going to be doing a whole lot of writing for nothing. But if you start in the right place, then you're going to start growing traffic and improve the accuracy in your decisions of where to go next in that endless long tail of potentially lucrative, but mostly time-wasting long tail of search. This technology is 50% automation, and 50% hard work, because you can't automate the craft of writing original content.

But I find myself constantly having to knock down the buzzing and the blogging and the news blasting hurdles, which were the first PR attempts to master online media. It has actually given the some SEM firm counterparts a lot of ammunition to discount PR agencies as limited in technical capabilities. As practitioners of warm & fuzzy relationship building, there's no way we can consult about search on a strategic level, some say. In fact, they plan on making the search discussion so technologically intimidating, that they scare away traditional agencies, and reduce the competition in the new media agency space.

Connors has actually made the deliberate decision to deliver paid-search through partners, and to focus instead itself on genuine editorial search coverage. This is the proper domain for PR, and is ever more widely acknowledged by industry observers as the most valuable company asset. Those who master natural search--especially ACROSS engines--are not beholden to anyone. As engines come and go, their asset and very strong posture will remain. With properly executed public relations, a strong presence in search is not the result of an advertising campaign that only lasts as long as you're buying the media. Instead, it persists, just as with the genuine reputation that comes from repeated exposure from trusted sources.

Connors has developed technology to do exactly that. It's different from the type of software you'll find in the SEM world, such as bid management tools, because it's not a media buy. It's a media seize--but in very small, smart increments. Results will be completely measurable, and over time, you can grab bigger and bigger pieces of the editorial media. Eventually, such small grabs will build enough critical mass within your site that making the big keyword grabs becomes possible.

What do I mean by that? Well for example, search for PR firm in any major search engine. Connors was not able to achieve the first page position across all major engines over night, even though it's the subject matter of the main homepage. We first had to start with smaller concepts. We used HitTailing to build up the content of our website and our blog. And over time, the concept of PR firms kept coming up, and natural links started to occur to us from people discovering our site, and they would reliably refer to us as a PR firm, without any prodding on our part. It's a 100% organic process that led from obscure HitTailing to spot-on cross-engine top positions on a paydirt primary keyword that PR firms much larger than us would kill for.

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posted by Mike Levin  2 comments


Long Tails and Wise Crowds: Some Pre-qualification Necessary

Sunday, July 16, 2006

So, I'm just getting into James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds. I know I'm a Johnny-come-lately to blogging about this book, but as I encounter the pre-qualifications of what makes a crowd smart, I keep coming running into similarities to what makes a market have a long tail. With The Long Tail, the qualifiers are increasingly simple means of production, distribution and filters, turning making the supply-side virtually infinite. Because online shopping is striving to become a mere 25% of all commerce, long tail markets are still the exception and not the rule. Admittedly, it will be becoming more so over time, because improving technology dictates improving supply-side capabilities. But today, the long tail is mostly an eBusiness phenomenon.

Similarly, the absolutely counterintuitive notions of the wise crowd are predicated on a diverse sampling of people. If the crowd is too homogeneous, such as everyone being smart, the crowd actually gets stupider, because cohesion and bias sets in. James refers to the bad decisions leading up to the Bay of Pigs invasion as an example. The same people who thought up the idea were the ones consulted on whether they thought it could work, and vital facts were left out of the decision making process had they used a larger sampling of people, such as the intelligence branch of the CIA or the Cuban desk of the State Department. So, just because you have a crowd and an independent voting mechanism doesn't mean you have superior predictive or decision making capabilities.

And that has been on my mind recently, thinking about Digg. Digg has many of the things going for it that one would think necessary to create a Wikipedia-like phenomenon. There was a debate recently of whether Digg was better than The New York Times, and could one day have a larger audience and influence. This brought me back to making Digg part of my daily read, least I get left out. I quickly took it off again, realizing the signal-to-noise ratio was excessive for the finite time I was willing to allocate. Linux stories, no matter how small, are considered front page material by the Digg audience, while actual newsworthy stories, even in technology, faced a difficult challenge in rising to the top.

It was with this perspective that I watched with interest as Jason Calacanis helped AOL launch the new Digg-like Netscape, but with Anchor picks. I thought, OK, here's where the wisdom of the crowd could be brought to bear on news, but without the anti-Microsoft Geek agenda bias. Not because of the Anchors, but rather because of the broader and more diverse sampling of audience a site like Netscape could bring to bear on the problem. It's too early to draw any conclusions, and I certainly wouldn't replace the Yahoo top-headline RSS news feed on my mobile phone with the Netscape feed yet. But the fact that technology news is getting mixed right in with politics and natural disasters is an interesting sign. Considering it's the Time Warner conglomerate behind this, I think they could have given the endeavor an even better chance by picking a more news-oriented domain from their portfolio, like Time.com. It may have less traffic (according to Alexa), but it's probably a better audience for this sort of experiment. Now, that would have made news, and really tested the viability of the new news dynamic.

So, my summer reading list also includes Inside the Tornado and The Tipping Point, two books which I know are all about pre-qualification. Not every company finds themselves inside the tornado having to deal with hypergrowth. And since the bust, it's even fewer. But still, it does happen, such as with MySpace. And Connors may have such a case in HitTail--only time will tell. But I'm VERY interested in those pre-qualifications that the Tornado book deals with.

Similarly with The Tipping Point, not every industry undergoes rapid change analogous to the outbreak of an epidemic. It's only when such-and-such conditions are met (the pre-qualifications) that you reach a point of no return. It may take overcoming much initial resistance before a process is set irrevocably in motion. I revert back to the Google example. Google taking over the world was not inevitable in its early days as seems intuitively obvious today. DogPile and Mamma seemed MUCH better than Google to the casual observer in those early days. A lot of people had to be convinced to look closer before dismissing this minimalist colorform-esque site. What exactly were the pre-qualifying factors that ALLOWED Google to overcome and reach the tipping point? I need to know.

So my final point is that these generalizations about disruptions to the shape of business, culture and our lives always seem to require pre-qualification, which has something of a dampening effect. If every new business concept were as transforming as the hype accompanying the launch and the book's success, then society would be getting transformed and re-transformed at a more rapid pace. In the face of books like The Long Tail, The Tipping Point, Crossing the Chasm and others of that ilk, I'm constantly in conflict over how much I buy into the pontifications of business guru, and recently deceased, Peter Drucker. I REALLY believe most of what Drucker has to say about the underlying tenants of business, success and change. And in the end, I think Peter Drucker was right about most things: you might say about the first 20% of things that make 80% of the difference. And you'll really appreciate the irony of that statement if you're a longtailer.

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posted by Mike Levin  1 comments


Blogging Features

Monday, July 10, 2006

While we happen to use Blogger for this site, in others we also use TypePad and they recently introduced Feedburner integration. This will be great for advertisers looking to know those ever-elusive RSS circulation numbers and shows a great strategy for Six Apart. They also started a partnership with Kanoodle ads, allow a tip jar via PayPal, and maintain an impressive widget gallery. Blogger still serves its purpose but the Pyra team, wherever they are, had better keep their eyes open.

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posted by Adam Edwards  1 comments


PR Firm Makes it to Museum of Modern Betas

Monday, July 03, 2006

That's right, a product created by a NYC PR firm has reached Saurier Duval's clever and popular Museum of Modern Betas site... twice! Thank you, Saurier for recognizing the value of re-listing us since our name change. It will help us a lot in getting established.

For a variety of reasons, we changed our name from MyLongTail to HitTail. And in doing so, lost some initial momentum. The MyLongTail beta site was becoming linked-to at an increasingly rapid rate. The domain acquired a Google PR of 2 within days of the beta announcement--rare for a brand-new domain. So it was with this sense of urgency that we wanted to get the renaming over with as quick as possible.

Thankfully, we are rapidly regaining our momentum, and just about everyone who blogged about us during our beta release in June has made follow-up posts with our new name. It's in this spirit of gratitude that I'm making this post, to acknowledge the important role that Saurier and site's like his play in giving new beta sites their fair chance in the new Darwinian landscape of Web 2.0... whoops, Web Infinitiy Plus One, betas. Now, if we could just show up in O'Someone's Radar and Michael Arrington's blog. All in due time, I suppose.

Incubating HitTail inside of a New York public relations firm has been an interesting experience, balancing the needs of clients against the desire to extract and abstract a tiny piece of the secret recipe that gives us our edge--then, altruistically giving it away to the world. We're doing this in great part because it is going to be a big public relations win, in and of itself. But we're also doing it with great care, so we do not upset either our Clients, to whom we provide a far greater superset of services, or the search engines themselves, for whom we wish to make their jobs easier and not harder.

The process has also been an exercise in intellectual acrobatics. The connection between PR and SEO was absolutely clear in my mind when I joined Connors. But the way to turn it into a universally appealing product that was not too techie, and which could also scale to meet the potentially massive worldwide demand was not. That took some thought. But we're there now.

Almost everything about HitTail is innovative and counter-intuitive. It hearkens back to the days when Google first started making the rounds outside Stanford. Remember your first reaction? It was probably "so what". It definitively took a few open-minded tries to understand why this stripped-down, seemingly rehash site was indeed something special. It was a culmination of simplicity, relevance and performance at a time that AltaVista and others left an opening so big you could drive a GooglePlex through.

And so it is with HitTail. But instead of the opening being made by anti-search Portal-centrism, the opening is made in the broad divide between the disciplines of natural search engine optimization (intimidating even just to say) and pay-per-click search engine marketing. In other words, the gap between SEO and SEM.

This gap is colossally larger than the chatter on the Internet would lead you to believe. One field is full of technical and editorial projects with built-in inertial resistance. The other field is becoming more like media-buying every day, as analytics increasingly tie back into the campaign / bid management software in order to auto-optimize campaigns, thereby removing the once-technical barriers; in other words, easy!

Are you following? SEO, the free and natural part, remains difficult and rife with politics and inertial resistance. SEM on the other hand, the $7 billion industry part, is becoming easier and more automated due to the financial incentives to make it so. In between lies the void. Atmospheric pressures collide, and there, inside the tornado, lies HitTail.

It is with this level of strategic thinking that we created the HitTail product. It is with the desire to fill this void that we named it with a noun, a verb, and a present participle. You use the HitTail site, therefore, you HitTail. This makes you a HitTailer engaged in the practice of HitTailing. And it is neither the intimidating uncertainties of SEO, nor directly paying homage at the alter of G/Y/M.

And because HitTail is solid, delivering on exactly what it promises, and is adding features with the same cautions "stay close to core" approach as Google, we're not getting shoved into the crowded analytics space (the "portals" of today). Also, similar to Google, our service is so radically different, without seeming so at first glance, due to something very analogous to PageRank that lurks behind the scenes--something that makes our writing suggestions super-charged for natural search effectiveness.

We are effectively taking a practice that many of the most advanced, top-of-their-field SEOs have long engaged in, and making the average marketing Joe able to do the same thing. But this is the nature of all technologies. They are arcane and difficult-seeming at first, but then someone comes along and cost reduces, improves ergonomics and markets it for the masses: like Henry Ford. Or like Prometheus bringing fire to the people. It's a recurring theme, and is inevitable.

But we are not simply making a high-end SEO method as it existed available to everyone. We are adding our own special formula. Just as Larry Page realized that hyperlinking was the equivalent of academic citations, and was a key indicator of relevance in what was to become PageRank, so have we come to understand the key indicators of what is bound to work in terms of natural search.

And THAT is what makes the HitTail data so special, and using HitTail such a source of competitive advantage.

So, on this note, we'll end this blog post that started as a simple thanks to Saurier Duval and the Museum of Modern Betas. It's a real sign of the times when a PR firm in New York City can incubate one of these puppies itself, from idea to execution, instead of waiting for it to come in as a Client.

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posted by Mike Levin  0 comments


PR Isn't Adapting, It's Leading

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Where does Public Relations' ability to embrace new technologies and business models come from, where traditional advertising channels are struggling to hold onto their piece of the global marketing budget pie? I think the ability to adapt and jump on unorthodox approaches to generating publicity is just part of the DNA of public relations. Let me explain.

The notion that a company can announce its own activities as newsworthy is in itself a radical and relatively new notion. It brings up church and state issues in journalism. None-the-less, there is no denying that the activities of companies impact society, current events, and even our personal wealth with how more people are invested in stocks. And where high-tech is concerned, it is all the more so, because it reflects upon the overall human condition. The constant flow of nanotube news comes to mind, and how we're inching ever-towards manufacturing on the molecular level. Pure science and industry have never been so closely coupled.

And it is this technology itself that is disrupting traditional media businesses. As data flows more freely, and distribution barriers fall, special interest channels rise, and reaching your audience becomes simultaneously cheaper and more challenging. It's cheaper, because your information is just bits that fly over the ether at virtually no cost. It's more challenging, because anyone can do this, and audiences are organizing and reorganizing themselves into ever-shifting ad hoc communities. Targeting them is more like programming an intelligent missile rather than aiming an arrow.

It is in this environment that public relations shines, and the "old formulas" of press releases and pitching transform into new formulas of blogging, email and social networking. The three big networks of ABC, CBS and NBC are forced to co-exist with countless cable networks, and now even user contributed content over sites like YouTube. Print has undergone similar fragmentation, and additionally has to compete with free RSS feeds that are readable now on the average mobile phone. There is no equivalent today of the ABC, CBC and NBC... well, almost no equivalent.

Search has elevated itself into a mainstream media, and today's giants are Yahoo, Google and MSN, constituting an eerily similar "big 3" resemblance to TV networks. In the runners up, you've even got the media mavens of QVC fame in Barry Diller of Interactive Corp and Ask, and Rupert Murdoch of Fox and MySpace. While you can't achieve similar saturation with a simple media buy as you could on the big TV networks 15 years ago, you can be sure that virtually your entire audience will be visiting Yahoo, Google or MSN some time soon. And you can "rig" the system to deliver your message at exactly the right moment... when... they... search!

It's like today's equivalent of the big-3 networks have an ultra-efficient method of delivering advertising, where you the advertiser never has to pay until the moment you know your intended audience is actually interested and predisposed to your message. And this form of media is competing for the same global marketing budget as TV and print. It is more like a redistribution of these fixed marketing dollars than it is growing or shrinking of advertising budgets. And public relations is uniquely suited to deal with these shifts.

While public relations does have a "formula" per se, involving press releases and pitching, it has always had a more versatile word-of-mouth and publicity aspect that revels in unorthodoxy. It is the unexpected or the extreme that can make a grab for the "free" editorial space that exists in all media. On TV, it's the equivalent of news spots and guest appearances. In print, it's usually the subject-matter of the main articles. And on the Internet, it is both the viral word-of-mouth thing, AND the "natural" results in search.

This is contrary to much of the message that the "inner circles" of the public relations industry are repeating these days. Much of the talk centers around how the traditional formula involving press releases is changing, or how blogging is such a powerful method of engaging in the public dialogue. While I wholeheartedly agree with these notions, I also think that they are missing the big picture by such a broad mark that I had to develop a product by way of responding.

And the HitTail product is Connors Communications way of throwing its hat into the ring. The field of public relations is not merely adapting to these media changes; it is leading. Public relations is not merely keeping itself relevant, it is educating the rest of the world on what it means to be relevant in the new media landscape. Public relations is not merely struggling to reproduce the big viral marketing wins of years past, it is creating brand new methods of virally disseminating a message.

Indeed, HitTailing is like solving simultaneous equations in a way that produces results already described by detractors as "too good to be true." It provides your corporate blogging strategy and your free search hit strategy in one master stroke. "Too good to be true" is quickly becoming the strongest argument among HitTailing naysayers. Think about that. The only things standing between us moving forward the entire state of Marketing are keeping pace with demand, and convincing users that "too good to be true" sometimes IS true.

This is an admirable accomplishment indeed, both for Connors Communications and the field of public relations as a whole. The very companies that stood by and watched as new businesses incubated from operations like Idealab are now able to become their own incubators, their own Angels, and their own Venture Capitalists. For Connors, it was the culmination of about two years of providing these services as a public relations value-add, realizing they had something that could only achieve its fullest potential if let lose in the Web 2.0 ecosystem, and so it has.

So, where multimillion dollar media buys can still allow you to achieve saturation of a sort on today's equivalent of the big-3 networks (PPC campaigns on Yahoo, Google and MSN), the equivalent of getting onto the Ed Sullivan Show or American Idol is HitTailing. It costs you nothing more than the work of putting yourself in the right place at the right time to be discovered, doing it by piecing together the minute clues left for you by your past website visitors.

This unorthodox thinking is something that has always been characteristic of the public relations industry. Sometimes it has taken the form of glitzy stunts that capture the news cameras. Other times, it takes the form of stunning acts of generosity and altruism by PR clients. Very often, it takes no form at all, merely being an invisible influence over what companies and stories are favorably covered. When PR is at its finest, you don't know it is there at all. And so it is that the free and practical alternative to paying for search hits was born in the offices of a New York PR firm, and is now suitable for use by every marketing department in every company in the world.

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posted by Mike Levin  1 comments


NextNY Google Event

Friday, June 30, 2006

Yesterday (technically, 2 days ago now) I went to a Google / nextNY sponsored powwow in the Google offices at 40th & Broadway here in New York. There was a limited 100 open slots for this tech talk, and I was lucky enough to get one of them. Ambar Shrivastava, a co-worker of mine was notified by his friend, Rishi Khanna, about the event. I was lucky enough to get spot 88 that opened up. I hadn't met Rishi before, but I ended up waiting in line next to him. He asked what were the chances, and I realized way too late that the answer was 1 in 50.

Anyway, Google made us all sign the standard non-disclosure then proceeded to put us through a public relations event to promote the New York Google operation consisting of 500 people and that we should feel free to talk and blog about the whole event. So here I am doing just that. They just bought a huge facility in Chelsea right next to where I live, which they did not talk about at all, but I get the idea that the whole Broadway office will be moving. They explicitly said that they are hiring advertising sales people in their large market segments including automotive and a couple of others. So, if you're in sales and want to work for Google in NYC, get hopping. Or is that hoping? Either way.

Representatives from Sales, Engineering and Product Management spoke. Marcus Mitchell gave an intro, followed by Dominic Preuss, Tom Thai, David Eun and Dennis Crowley. Tom Thai's presentation consisted of a long tail diagram showing the profile of their ad clients. A few very large clients existed at the head, namely Sony. There was a fairly big middle, then a textbook case of the long tail. I'm feeling like Chris Anderson, seeing long tails everywhere, but Google's sales of AdWords to the tiny marketers of the world must truly be one of the best long tale examples I can think of. The product is digital and inexhaustible.

Of the presenters, all of which were interesting to varying degrees, Dennis Crowley's ending presentation was the best. It's just such a great story where he was a dot-com'er who went back to school for a business degree, and as his senior thesis project did a project called Dodgeball. It was/is social networking software that you email from your cellphone to tell it where you are. It then proceeds to let your entire "real life" social network know where each other are, so you can all gather after work, or whatever. But the point is that him and his partner had little need or motivation to monetize it, and through serendipity, ended up talking with Google folks who got excited about it, and acquired his 2-person company, and he's now a Google employee. He was a really personable guy who could have gone the entrepreneurial route, and chose Google. It's a mixed bag. He's got the awesome resources of Google to tap, still gets to live in NYC (he was an NYU'er), but now has to compete for those resources with everyone else's 20/10 projects.

Ahhh, the now commonly known Google 70/20/10 rule states that 70% of your time goes to the "core" job, consisting mainly of search and AdWords. 20% of your time goes to things related to your main job, and 10% can go to just about anything interesting. This turns Google into a part-time incubator. It reminds me a lot of Motorola where competing GMs compete to turn different technologies and product lines into nearly autonomous companies. It is a strategy of keeping that special edge that Larry and Sergey brought to the picture as young guys. It's tough to preserve that edge as your company gets large and established, and more and more is taken for granted.

I talked with a delightful woman in the pharmaceutical field there about how companies like Google had to be on constant guard for the business equivalent of geological sudden catastrophic liquefaction wherein your entire foundations suddenly disappear beneath you, swallowing up an entire city before you know anything was wrong. What if Apple didn't make the Mac, and subsequently the iPod? Steve Jobs is a person who totally understands sudden obsolescence is moments away for any high tech enterprise. 70/20/10 is Google's attempt to inoculate against that disease. Not everything needs to be a revenue generator, but it does need to keep the users coming back!

Another aspect of 70/20/10 that I later realized is how it breaks up over a business week. If you assume a 5 day work week (not always true, I know), then 5 into 100 is 20. So each workday is 20%. So one day out of 5 can go into anything you want that's related to your main job, but is not your priority. And a half-day can go into anything at all, no matter how off the wall. And in a culture of super-geeks that have a day-and-a-half discretionary time, it creates interesting super-geek-politics, lobbying at lunch for your engineer buddies to work on your 20% project instead of the next guy or gal's. It creates something like a Darwinian idea farm, which I'm sure has emergent behaviors. Certain ideas create excitement or boredom. I heard rumors that Google never cracked the music nut because Sergey just wasn't that into music, and the 20% projects along those lines never got the resources, leaving Yahoo an awesome opening… but who knows.

Anyway, even though it had the tinge of a recruitment effort, it was still a great event to attend. We all went drinking afterwards at Stitch bar on 37th Street, and went a little too late into the night. I ended up taking the next day working from home, finishing up the video. It shifted my wake/sleep cycle a little too late, as this 4:50AM post probably shows. Good night.

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posted by Mike Levin  0 comments


Writing for Search Engine Optimization

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

I've written before about the importance of writing in an SEO strategy. Recently, I haven't been the only one authoring online content. As part of the latest Connors offering, HitTail, Mike has been busy blogging about its creation, progress and uses. He has worked on explaining the product and in the process, starting to show up on some very useful keywords.

I'd like to mention this because it's a great way to back up a launch. In addition to gaining top rankings for important search terms, it also helps to manage brand image. If you search Feedster right now, you will find articles from SEO Scoop and other sites mixed in with all the HitTail blog entries that Mike has been writing. Any issue brought up, like whether or not the site will always be free, is quickly answered by a blog post on the product site, with an official response. Any questions are either anticipated and covered or answered once they're brought up elsewhere. In this way, all feedback is encouraged and any concerns addressed, making it a very flexible, receptive, and active launch.

I just wanted to bring this up because I've been following Mike's blogging and think it's a great example of what we're working to do here with search engine optimization writing

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


Writing for Public Relations

Okay, when was the last time that you read an article and wondered where some of the messaging came from? There's a whole lot of work that goes into drafting email pitches, press releases, and briefing documents. The most successful PR writing is never seen because it is the pitch that entices a reporter to focus on a product story. This writing is succinct, interesting, attention-grabbing, and personalized.

The key in writing pitches is to get right to the point and make it interesting. Spending a lot of time on the title is valuable since the message needs to stand out from the spam in order to get opened. Then, the message must be more than a stock pitch to get the reporter’s attention and get our message across.

Press releases must be carefully crafted to get all the important information across. This is where reporters will be picking up quotes and facts. Now that they are being posted on the web, it is also a place where the public can come and get their news directly. Press releases can be picked up in part or whole by bloggers and the news may spread to people who were not on the outreach list. While this is great for the news, it means that the press release needs to include the whole story.

Finally, once interviews are secured, the briefing document will prepare clients for the reporter. This will include possible topics of interest, sample questions, and past articles. This way, each interview results in the best possible coverage.

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posted by Jessica Ek  0 comments


Fotolia Partners with Slide

Friday, March 17, 2006

As a PR firm, we have a lot of releases going out on a regular basis and we want to keep you updated on some of the cool things we're working on. So in the future, you'll be seeing some of our client releases posted on the blog to share our latest news. To start this off, I want to include a new release from Fotolia, the online marketplace for stock images.


FOTOLIA and SLIDE Partner to Provide Customized Crawl for Stock Images

NEW YORK, NY – March 15, 2006 – In an exciting partnership, Fotolia is teaming up with Slide Inc., making the search for the perfect image or inspiration easier than ever before. Through this agreement, Fotolia (