Strategic Public Relations To Make Your Business Bloom
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Google Web Search, from A to Z
Google and God are a lot alike. Both work in mysterious ways. Both are unfair. And apologists are quick to defend both, because without them the universe (or at least SEO) has no meaning.
Because we have utmost faith in the wisdom of Google, we decided to input the 26 letters of the alphabet into Google Web search to see what links would earn St. Peter's gate key (we mean the "No. 1 position.")
We know we're mere mortals, but these returns do raise a few questions:
1. How come the movie M beats the letter M, but the letter Z beats the movie Z?
2. What's the deal with all the Google Finance results? You'd almost suspect Google had some kind of financial interest in the site.
3. Is Wikipedia a better dictionary than Merriam-Webster, and a better encyclopedia than Britannica? According to God (we mean Google) it is -- by a wide margin.
And funny -- but in 26 searches, we got back only three references to the letters themselves or to the alphabet that comprises them. Could it be that Google sometimes misses the forest for the trees?
Bah! That kind of talk can only lead to chaos.
Best that we teach our children a new ABC Song for the age of Google. Does anyone know a word that rhymes with "Google Finance"?
I saw one of the more brilliant music videos I've come across in some time today. Naturally, it wasn't on MTV; it was on YouTube. By an "unsigned artist" named Jessica Delfino. Here it is:
A few years ago, this poor girl might have never found a record label; now she doesn't need one. What's more, even if she ultimately is label-bound, it's more fun that I found her now -- before she becomes famous.
'Cause I e-mailed her, and she e-mailed me back in, like, 10 minutes. She complimented me on the Idea Grove Web site, and even fooled around long enough to stumble across a Charles Ives quote that applied to her work ("I don't write music for sissy ears.")
Anyhoo, a couple hours after I heard from Jessica, jazzycatzz posted this article on Spin Thicket, which describes how bands are becoming so adept at using social networks to promote their work that they are actually rejecting offers from major labels.
The band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, for example,
hired their own manufacturer, distributor and marketing company, and instead of the $1 an album they'd typically make from a record company, they'll get about $6 for every copy they sell.
Hard to argue with that -- especially considering how fickle labels have become with their artists. These days, in fact, many labels are only willing to sign artists for a "single song, maybe two, and a ring tone."
Which brings us to the worst reality of all for the music business -- their biggest revenue staple, the CD, is going by the wayside.
As Mark Cuban put it in a post today:
I would say the music industry has put itself in the position of being incredibly stupid. They are dependent on a format, the CD, that few people listen to...
Why can't the music industry get that we should be able to buy music when we want, where we want, in the format in which we consume it, on our IPods and comparable devices. Until that happens, total music sales will continue to decline and quckly.
As for the major labels, they are going to have to start offering more -- rather than less -- to artists. Either that, or settle for a considerably smaller share of the take.
Update/correction: Jessica isn't actually unsigned; she's with the indy label Loudmouth Records.
A debate is raging in Istanbul about just how much skin advertising billboards should be allowed to show. The dispute highlights the deep divisions between Muslims and secularists in the country. And it may become an election issue...
On the one side stands the Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Some swimwear manufacturers have complained that [AKP] city officials have banned certain revealing advertising posters for bikinis and bathing suits for "moral reasons."
On the other side are the left-leaning, strict-secularist nationalists who fill public squares each weekend with massive, anti-AKP demonstrations accusing the party of wanting to transform Turkey into a theocracy.
Palm Springs Desert Sun Awarded Honorary Pulitzer for Photojournalism
Yes, we know that, technically, we don't have the authority to award a Pulitzer Prize -- even an honorary one -- to anybody.
However, we simply could not bear to see the efforts of Luis Ochoa, staff photographer for the Palm Springs Desert Sun, go unrecognized.
In covering the National Bikini Pillow Fighting Championships staged by a local casino, Ochoa brought back a stunning series of images that captured the drama and majesty of this sporting event.
Our friend and former colleague Joy Jennings has penned an informative post exclusively for Media Orchard readers that we're delighted to share with you.
Joy, by the way, recently left the comfort of corporate life to start her own communications consulting business -- so if you're looking for a talented freelancer for your marcom or PR projects, Joy would be an excellent choice.
Without further ado, here are Joy's "10 Dumb Things That Smart Communicators Do":
1. Use business jargon
Try to avoid cliches and jargon and speak in conversational English. (I'm sympathetic if the clueless COO is twisting your arm.) Like the proverbial bath, good writing couldn't hurt and might help.
2. Put a copyright symbol on your press materials
Press releases, fact sheets and bios are meant to help journalists. So if you want them to use your stuff, don't mark your materials as copyrighted.
3. Capitalize the name of your industry and other non-proper nouns
Do you promote your company's role in the Fitness market or the Mainframe Maintenance space? Do your press releases quote the Vice President of System Push - CRM Resource Adjunct? Just stop. The names of industries are not proper nouns and neither are job titles.
4. Forget the online readers
Remember to use hyperlinks to get online readers involved. In a press release, you can link the quoted exec to his or her bio and link the product you're describing to its page online. Link to external resources such as Wikipedia listings and even YouTube videos to enhance your text; links can be made from photos and logos as well as words. And while I'm on the subject, stop using the clunky phrase "click here" to create links. Very 1996.
5. Use the same style manual you've had since college English
I respect the Chicago Manual of Style and the authoritative Elements of Style, but today's resource is the Associated Press Stylebook. Because it is used by media and PR folks alike, it has become the dominant style for non-academic and non-literary writing. Audiences today are subconsciously familiar with it because they see it in newspapers, magazines and online copy.
6. Bury the news
Don't make journalists wonder what your release is about or mention your real news nonchalantly in the third paragraph, such as your CEO's resignation or the launch date of the new product. Look at your announcement objectively and acknowledge what the real news will be.
7. Describe your company in such flowing terms that no one can tell what it actually does
I've seen this too many times. You're so focused on the benefits of your services that you gloss over what it IS and what it DOES. Don't make your vendors, investors, prospective employees, media, analysts and other non-customers guess.
8. Put more than four bullets per slide on your PowerPoint presentation
Brevity is the soul of presenting. If your presentation is going to be displayed or projected onto a screen, give your audience a fighting chance and make the bullets brief. Resist the urge to paste in a 20-cell spreadsheet or a dizzying pie chart. Crowded presentations defeat the objective of communication.
9. Focus on the words and forget the visual
What a nice case study you've written. So many words and paragraphs to dig into. Now step back and consider what could enhance it visually: your customer's logo, a photo of the quoted subject, a beauty photo of the product or of people using it, a stock photo that conveys the service's idea, a graph of the money saved or efficiency gained, a screenshot of the software, a photo of your building or your customer's building, a callout quote of a significant statement in your text. You'll find lots of simple ways to enhance communication. Do the legwork and don't leave it to your graphic designer to "make it pretty."
10. Be inflexible about your writing because you're so proud of it
My favorite line to clients is that this isn't my ninth-grade poetry. I can write their document nine ways to Sunday, so they aren't hurting my feelings if they want to edit it. I'll champion effective communication, and I'll keep them from presenting themselves poorly, but I certainly won't pout if they start making changes.
Effective communication is deceptively simple. Remember and respect your audience, and your communications will be the better for it.
---
Joy Jennings is a freelance writer who helps organizations with marketing and public relations projects.
For God's Sake, Do Not Try to Tell Us What a Blog Is
We're getting tired of people trying to define the word "blog" for us -- because usually the definitions reflect at best an overly narrow and, at worst, a self-serving interpretation of the word.
This has been the case ever since the first ubergeek began writing content in reverse chronological order. In the 10 years since blogging started, we've been told by various self-proclaimed authorities that blogging is:
a personal diary
a stream-of-consciousness ramble that is "inauthentic" if it has been spell-checked or properly punctuated
an exciting new way to argue with and attack our fellow man -- er, we mean hold a "conversation"
Now, of course, blogging has evolved well beyond these limited (and limiting) definitions. We now have group blogs that are similar in content to magazines, blogs that gather or aggregate news around certain topics or interests, and so on and so forth.
And yet, when it comes to corporate blogs, everyone wants to go back to ubergeek rules:
The blog must be written by the CEO, and he must put his name on it, and he must actually write all the words himself, and he must accept criticism in comments and respond to that criticism.
In other words, it should be a personal diary with lots of authentic typos and bad writing, and the CEO should be willing to argue about it with any schmoe who takes 30 seconds to post a negative comment.
Um, excuse us but -- SAYS WHO?
Here's what a blog is: A series of entries on a Web site that appear in reverse chronological order, per the standards of blogging software.
Beyond that, have at it! Do what you want with the format! Change it. Expand it. Adapt it to your specific needs.
If you want a ghostwrittenCEOblog, for example, go for it! If it's of value, people will read it. If it's a bunch of PR fluff, they won't -- no matter who composes the words.
CEOs don't have the time (or in many cases the writing skills) to prepare their own speeches, letters to shareholders, and on and on. Same deal with blogs.
Try all you want to hold companies to ubergeek rules; it's just not practical and it's not going to happen.
If you want to create a blog that covers your industry rather than offering the typical company diary, that's fine, too -- even if the blog pharisees criticize you for not adhering to blog orthodoxy. Ultimately, it will be the quality of what you produce that will matter -- not whether your ideas fit into someone else's box.
When working with our clients, we've got one rule -- and only one rule -- when it comes to blogs and online communities:
Be honest. Don't misrepresent yourself.
If you're doing that, you should feel completely comfortable in standing up to your critics and creating your own model of what a blog should be.
We're reminded of something we told Geoff Livingston not too long ago:
Web 2.0 started the way Web 1.0 started. That is, you had a bunch of techies and academics and anti-corporate types running everything and thinking they could make the rules for everybody else. But guess what? They can't. We live in a deregulated market economy -- and ultimately, where there is money to be made, the market will make the rules.
If you want a gold star from the blog pharisees, fine. But the market doesn't go by ubergeek rules; it goes by what the consumer wants. And in the case of blogs, consumers will choose what they read based on the value of the content -- and little else.
