Tag: Google

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Digital marketing digital pr General PR online pr

Is Google turning evil?

(This post first appeared on The Conversation)

Google’s announcement of Search Plus Your World on Tuesday this week certainly got the digerati talking.

Initially, reaction was quite positive. The idea that Google was explicitly acknowledging social signals as a ranking factor and giving people the opportunity to view either personalised or “objective” results was seen as good.

But it didn’t take long for dissenting questions to be raised.

You know something is up when Danny Sullivan (a real SEO expert and long time Google defender) starts talking about “alarm bells”.  As he puts it: “What the hell are you doing, Google?”

But more to the point, what has all this got to do with PR?

As I’ve been saying for some time, search and social media are becoming ever more entangled. Indeed PR, search and social media are combining in ways we are only just beginning to discern. This latest Google announcement merely adds fuel to that fire.  The long term implications for PR relate to skills. Now more than ever, the modern PR pro needs to develop additional strings to their bow beyond the traditional smarts of writing and press handling.

As Google web analytics expert Avanash Kaushik says in his latest post, “one trick ponies are going to be a liability”. In other words, 100pc specialisation is no longer a route to success. He talks about a 70/30 ratio: “At one time, it was okay to be 100% good at one thing, and only one thing. But today companies with people who are 70% magnificent at one thing and have filled the remaining 30% with being good at everything in the periphery of their jobs will rule this world.”

Or as E-Consultancy recently put it, there is a massive demand for (and short supply of) T-Shaped Individuals: “Within the context of digital marketing, T-shaped people can be interpreted as those staff who have a strong, vertical digital skill, but have either a breadth of experience outside of this vertical area or at least a useful level of understanding and empathy with other vertical digital channels and notably with traditional marketing practice and techniques.”

For PR, that means broadening one’s skill set to encompass search and social media expertise at the very least.

And the CIPR has recognised this. There are a whole host of training workshops and webinars lined up in 2012 covering these topics from a PR perspective – from complete beginner through intermediate and advanced. Wherever you sit on the spectrum, I’d strongly urge you to have a look at what the CIPR has to offer these areas.

It may be one of the best investments you make this year.

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Digital marketing digital pr General PR online pr tech pr Technology PR

What has Google ever done for PR?

The CIPR’s Social Summer season kicks off next Thursday, May 26th, at Russell Square with a session presented by yours truly on the subject of What Has Google Ever Done for PR?

This is an updated reprise of the presentation I gave (twice) last year. The main thrust of my argument remains the same – that the PR sector has a lot to thank Google for, not just in terms of the technology it provides for free, but how we can learn and be inspired by its business approach and culture. I hope you can make it along.

On other matters, one of my recommended books this week is Douglas Hubbard’s Pulse: The New Science of Harnessing Internet Buzz to Track Threats and Opportunities.

I’ve waxed lyrical in the past about Hubbard’s earlier book, How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business. In this latest, he explores the opportunity offered by massive and publically available Internet data sources to help better understand customer sentiment and opinion – or as he calls it, The Pulse.

As Hubbard says: “The Pulse actually is a far faster and cheaper predictor of economic activity and public opinion than traditional methods in many respects and it is also often a better one.”

Given that one of the aims of PR is to shape public opinion, we ought to devote more attention to the biggest and best source of sentiment ever available.

Hubbard also makes the salient point that most of the big Web properties such as Google, eBay and Amazon provide APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow anyone with a modest amount of development skills to access immense amounts of valuable data for free. Why should PR people be interested in this? He cites the example of being able to analyse sales data on Amazon as a predictor of economic trends – it is this kind of data driven approach that PR needs to get its head around.

However, let’s not get too carried away. A more cautionary view is taken by Douglas Rushkoff in his latest book, Program or Be Programmed. He argues that that we are in danger of sleep walking into a world where we are programmed by the technology we use rather than the other way round. He makes a passionate plea that we need to better educate ourselves about how these technologies are really being built or programmed – or else we will be programmed by them.

As he puts it: “We are intimidated by the whole notion of programming, seeing it as a chore for mathematically inclined menials than a language through which we can re-create the world on our own terms. In a digital age, we must learn how to make the software, or risk becoming the software.”
You have been warned.

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digital pr marketing Media online pr tech pr Technology PR Web/Tech

What Google’s offline media services mean for the future of PR and advertising

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that Google’s offline TV. radio and print ad services don’t get much attention in Europe (they aren’t available here yet). However, it surely can’t be long before we do get them – and I don’t doubt that they will have the potential to further disrupt the media services landscape.

If you subscribe to Google’s Let’s Take It Offline blog (and only 833 people appear to) you’ll have seen the constant stream of new enhancements and case studies about Google’s services in the offline arena. Take the example of Event Triggers. In the US, it is possible to not only book your radio ad airtime via Google, but only have the ads run if specific environmental criteria are met. As Google says:

With event triggers, you can set up your Audio Ads campaigns to play only when specific environmental conditions are forecasted in your target market. This high-tech feature lets you deliver a relevant message to potential customers in the moment they need you most.
For example, you could set up your campaign to start playing only when the forecasted weather indicates “hazy” conditions or “rain showers,” or when the UV index is above 10. Currently, advertisers can set campaigns to trigger based on four types of environmental cues: apparent temperature, actual temperature, UV index and weather conditions.

How it works:

  • Build an audio campaign with your desired demographic, daypart, format and markets.
  • Indicate the environmental cues you’d like to target during campaign setup. (Tip: You should create a separate campaign for each set of unique conditions)
  • Upload specific ads with messages to match the event that triggers them to play.
  • When the conditions are met, based on the forecast for the next day, Google Audio Ads will trigger your campaign and serve the ad you specified.

The services in TV and print ad booking are no less innovative. For example, it is now possible to carry out the entire print ad process from creative design, media space booking and measurement all within Google. The Hotels.com case study is a good example.

Imagine if you could run PR campaigns like this? And what limit is there on the type of criteria you can use to target your content? Who knows. As William Gibson said, “the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”