Lessons on authenticity and PR from my 23-year old intern

When Richard Branson stripped down to nothing but a strategically placed phone in 2003 for the launch of his new mobile phone service, he demonstrated more than the pay-as-you-go service. Try not to visualize it (bet you will anyway), but his act also represented the changing nature of communication — building community using technology, with “nothing to hide.”

You can’t avoid communicating differently to reach the emerging generation. My intern last year gave me a crash course when she admitted she has no need for phone books because she Googles whatever she needs — while IM-ing the information to a friend faster than I can type an e-mail — and then posting the experience for her friends on her Facebook page. In the time it takes me to look up my insurance agent’s phone number, she was already influencing her peers on how to find health insurance without one.

And here’s the scary part. My intern’s generation puts itself out there in its communications just like Branson did physically — nothing to hide. In just one Google search I found articles and blog postings galore (especially from the younger generation) sharing how the authors seek authenticity above excellence in finding a church, job, political party, etc. In practical terms, they’d rather have it be “real” than have it well-written. Whereas I was taught to read nonverbal clues, my former intern shares her nonverbal cues openly and translates them directly into her messages.

Wondering how to connect with this generation? Not sure how to be authentic?

Here’s where strategic public relations comes in. For years, our industry has specialized in building excellence in skills and messaging (writing, pitching, web sites, etc.). But the strategic value in public relations is figuring out what’s important to your key audiences and how they want to be engaged. It just might be time to dress your organization’s communications from scratch, ala Branson.

On Monday, a two-hour ABC News Special entitled “Six Degrees of Martina McBride” aired whose storyline uses six country music hopefuls to prove the theory that everyone is connected by a human chain of six people. (Basically, a variation of the cult phenomenon “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”).

Without much effort, I can connect myself to Martina in two different ways:

· Right out of school, a former colleague of mine pursued a country music career and knows the artists Big & Rich who have performed with Martina.

· In addition to his day job, my Risdall colleague (and interactive guru) Dan Asby is actively involved in his family’s event business. Through the annual WeFest event put on by his family, Dan has met country music stars including Martina on several occasions.

This is a fun exercise but how can this theory be translated to the world of business? I can’t really call Martina for lunch.
However, the reality is that in any organization, who you know is just as important as what you know.

Your network – both internal and external – is your link to making things happen, making connections for clients, generating new ideas and promoting yourself.

In today’s emerging world of social networks (i.e. MySpace and FaceBook), the LinkedIn Network has created a virtual Rolodex that you can use to tap into your network.

Have a new business prospect you want to learn more about or want to get a meeting with? Or a job candidate you are interviewing? If you check them out on LinkedIn, I bet you’ll find that you are connected in some way through your network.

And I bet you’ll even find that you and I (My LinkedIn Profile) are part of a common network as well!

Pagesaver is a screenshot addon for the Firefox browser. What is that you say? “I already have a screenshot tool, it is called Print Screen, learn to blog Brad!”. While your “Print Screen” is cool and all, it can’t take a screenshot of the horribly long and forever scrolling blog sites out there in one command, can it? Not so cool now are you?

Capture just the visible area, or the whole page with a simple right click.

Cost: Free – cheapskates rejoice!

https://pearlcrescent.com/products/pagesaver/

Search Engine Optimization has been around for years… yes… even before Google! Having worked in the Search Engine Marketing world now for going on 10 years it still amazes me that almost every time a client comes to us looking for help with search optimization and we ask them what their goal is, the almost unanimous response is “to be #1 on Google” for some specific phrase.

Now don’t get me wrong, being #1 on Google for any phrase is wonderful. But it isn’t the end-all be-all of search optimization. Let me explain.

A client comes to us asking for search engine optimization because they want more qualified traffic coming to their website from search engines. Is it more important to be #1 on one phrase or #5 on ten phrases, or even #10 on twenty phrases? And for that matter, being #1 on Google for a phrase that absolutely no one searches for makes that listing virtually worthless. On another search vendors website they listed off client successes where they achieved #1 ranking on Google and it was humorous to take those words and put them into our keyword research tools and find that basically no one ever searched for those phrases.

To steal a phrase from RMPR, our Public Relations Group, search optimization is all about “Results That Matter.” And that is increasing the amount of qualified traffic to a website, which increases the amount of registrations, leads and sales, which increases happiness at your office. Those are Results That Matter.

The YouTube Democratic candidate presidential debate has created a lot of buzz both in mainstream media and online  AND at RMG.  Clearly, the use of YouTube has shaken up the political process.

The questions were blunt and earnest, yet sometimes bizarre. From a melting snowman from MSP asking about global warming (hey it was 90° in MSP yesterday) to questions about the war, average citizens used YouTube to gain a national platform for their questions. It was groundbreaking step – we saw candidates respond to real voters instead of polished TV personalities.
Clearly the town hall debate format popularized by former President Bill Clinton has been updated.
But the real question is “do you – average citizen – YouTube?”
Is your organization actively looking at the potential and power of YouTube (and other sites) to help your organization communicate and gather information?
As I see it, the easy part is developing the video. In less than five minutes – three of us at RMPR armed with a digital camera and a laptop shot and post this YouTube video (sound and special effects would have taken another five minutes).

It isn’t rocket science but the reality is that this isn’t a cornfield in Iowa and if you simply “post it” they won’t come!
Getting the information (aka video) to (and viewed by) the desired audience is critical. Not every video is going to get a national attention at a presidential debate. The key is to mix tried and true and new strategies to deliver the message.
I’d love to hear how your organization is using YouTube – let me know.

There is a lot to be said about advertising offline and the direct impact that it has online, not to mention the success of the offline ad. If someone sees an offline ad in print in the Wall Street Journal or another favorite magazine, most of the time there is a web address. I wonder how many people actually remember the web address or if they go straight to a search engine and type in a relevant keyword based on what the advertisement portrayed or said to them. My bet is the search on the search engine of choice.

At this point, the largest information medium is the internet. When someone is searching for more information about a company or service they use the internet and search engines to find what they are looking for. This is where aligning offline advertising with online advertising comes into play. An offline advertisement can be set up with search in mind to help attract better searches or make searches easier to acquire the requested information online.

These initiatives can be accomplished with both search engine optimization and through paid search advertising. The preparation needs to begin at the time the offline advertisement is being set up to form the search engine marketing plan to coincide with the offline ad. Whether the offline ad is a radio commercial, magazine or newspaper ad, similar online market research needs to be accomplished in order to be successful. Therefore, when an individual sees or hears the offline ad, when they go online for more information, the online component is there in order to fulfill the need and take it to the next level.

With both mediums in harmony, both campaigns are better suited for success.

I recently began using an open source editor called Notepad++. This thing is lightweight, and supports contextual highlighing for all of the top programming languages out there.

There is also an option to install the program as a portable application onto a thumb drive. Great for those on-site client debug sessions.

Free: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Tonight in South Carolina a groundbreaking event in American Politics will take place: American’s voices will be seen and heard. A few weeks ago it was announced that CNN and YouTube would be teaming up to allow the American voter a visible way to get their questions answered by the Presidential candidates. People have been and are being allowed to submit a question through video via YouTube to possibly be answered by a Presidential candidate. CNN will select a group of the videos to be broadcast during the presidential debates and the candidates will be answering them on the spot. This is part of the YouTube YouChoose 08 campaign. YouTube is the #4 searched site on the entire internet falling only behind the big three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN.) This means that YouTube sees an incredibly large amount of traffic and they feel that they are the perfect outlet to get voters interested in the election. The debate that will take place this evening is between the Democratic candidates that are vying for their parties nomination. On September 17th, the Republican candidates will have their YouTube infused debate covering many of the same issues, but with their specified video submitted questions. Regardless of your political affiliation it has been stated that the creation of this campaign was done in hopes to support the founding grounds of Democracy. Some people are challenging this and stating that this is taking all control out of the candidates hands, while others are praising it in succeeding in its goal.

What are your thoughts? How do you feel about CNN choosing the questions that will be asked?
Update:

After I made this post, I noticed (through the power of Technorati) that another blogger made a very similar post within minutes of mine. It is pretty amazing that personal publishing can connect similar thoughts in this manner

MinnesotaBusiness Magazine editor David Gee is one of those rare individuals who have successfully navigated careers as both a journalist and a public relations practioneer. In this month’s Risdall McKinney Public Relations Web site guest column entitled “No, it’s not brain surgery,” David reiterates the basics of “Media Relations 101.”

According to David, each day he receives several dozen pitches “that don’t have a clue about who we are and what we need and why and when.”

Yes, pitching and placing a media story is not brain surgery. But like any other tool in the marketing/public relations arsenal, research and planning are essential elements for success. (more…)

The 301 redirect is very important from a search engine optimization standpoint and although there are ways around it, this helps to carry page rank and linking value from pages that are no longer in existence, or for the launch of an entire new website with a new domain. The article here explains and has a nice diagram of the power of 301 redirects and how they specifically apply to search.

Search Engine Land also has a really nice article on the comparison of two large corporations and how they have used 301 redirects with very different results. The article is the Coke vs. Pepsi Challenge and directly shows the differences in search engine results pages (SERPs) between the two with the use of 301’s. The article is also nice because it directly shows the value meta elements still have for search engine optimization.

Bruce Clay has long been known in the SEO arena and on his site one of his colleagues explains how to perform a 301 redirect, when to use it, and if there is not access to perform a 301 there are some workarounds they have nice explanations of. Although this article was from March, it was recently updated and all of the comments were from the past week with some very good information.