Getting Messages Out in a Blogger's World
Every day, there are 1.2 million unique blog posts on 93.8 million blogs. "Blogs have come out of left field very rapidly," said Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder of SEO-PR, who was on the panel on "Innovation in Cyberspace" at the most recent session of Full-Spectrum Innovation: Driving Organic Growth.
Jarboe began his career as a news editor at a daily newspaper and worked in more traditional public relations until the arrival of blogs and other innovations transformed the news and public relations business. In the old world of newspapers and broadcast television, communications were carried through a limited set of channels. "In the old media world, there were very few people who could own a printing press," he said.
To keep track of the innovations that are transforming communications, he attends a half dozen conferences a year, often as a speaker, but always as a listener. In a recent interview, he offered insights on three innovations that are changing the process of getting messages out: blogs, search engines, and universal search.
Blogs: Wagging the Dog
In 2004, Jarboe was proud to launch his first blog at a time when the world was just discovering this new medium. His bubble burst when his 15-year-old daughter told him she already had three.
"If you haven't updated your crisis communications plan and there is nothing in it for Google Universal Search, you need to think about this." — Greg Jarboe, President and Co-founder, SEO-PR
As he developed public relations campaigns for major companies and organizations, Jarboe found that blogs were turning the world on its head. In 2005, when he was promoting a story for Consumer Reports about inflated mileage on automobile EPA ratings, the story was picked up by CBS News and by TreeHugger, one of the most popular blogs. "TreeHugger generated more visitors to ConsumerReports.org than CBSNews.com," he said. "We realized we may have been pitching to the wrong list of press people."
In 2006, while pitching stories for The Christian Science Monitor, bloggers Boing Boing and the Huffington Post generated more traffic to CSMonitor.com than ABC News. Clearly bloggers did not fit the stereotype of "angry guys in their pajamas." They were now the tail that wagged the dog.
"Blogs are the new trade press," Jarboe said. There are almost as many blogs as Web pages, and a recent survey found that 76 percent of journalists looked at blogs for story ideas and trends. Companies now need to pitch stories to bloggers in the same way that they pitch them to reporters.
Search Engines: Coming Out on Top
In September 2002, Google launched a new service called Google News. When Jarboe did his first search on the site, he was surprised to find that electronic press releases appeared along with traditional news articles. "For a hundred years, the press release was sent to reporters," he said. "It was part of the invisible innards of the distribution process. Now it was like Penn and Teller revealing everything to the public. Although Google News may call it a press release, it is now a news release."
Instead of pushing out press releases to reporters, hoping they will be picked up, companies could now design news releases to be read by both reporters and end readers. They also had to be "optimized" so they would come up at the top of searches. This means that in developing a news release, companies need to pay attention to what consumers are searching for as much as what the company wants to say. A company may want to promote "holiday gifts," but searchers actually are only looking for "Christmas gifts" or "Hanukkah gifts." Organizations need to optimize communications based on search results rather than just push them through traditional news channels.
Universal Search: A Not-So-Subtle Change
Jarboe said one of the most important recent changes was Google rolling out "universal search" in May. Instead of the "ten blue links" of a traditional text search, the universal search comes back with images, video, and news results, all on one page. While it appears to be a subtle change, "nothing that Google does with 5.5 billion searches a month is subtle."
As an example, Jarboe points to a Google search for Hillary Clinton, which comes back with a critical YouTube video based on the famous Apple Computer 1984 commercial (and promoting rival Barack Obama). A click on images turns up a couple of less-than-flattering photos. In contrast, a search for Steve Jobs shows uniformly positive images of Apple's founder — from his early days to the launch of the iPhone, to a YouTube video of his 2005 Stanford Commencement address. This demonstrates Apple's awareness of the importance of universal search.
Organizations need to be aware of what these searches reveal. At a minimum, search for your company, CEO, and brand names. Jarboe points out that a search for the University of Florida (in mid September) comes back with a photo and news story about a student who recently was Tasered by a security officer during a town hall meeting with Senator John Kerry. Is this really what the university wants prospective students to see? "If you haven't updated your crisis communications plan and there is nothing in it for Google Universal Search, you need to think about this," he said.
For more on Jarboe's thoughts on the Wharton Full-Spectrum Innovation program see his blog posting on this topic, "5 Questions on Innovation."
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