Moving to a new site

Since the new WordPress software came out I have done the sensible SEO thing and moved my blog to my own website.  You can continue to read my misadventures and commentary at www.thomasbrunkard.com/blog.

See you there!

Thomas

Irish Pork and Wikipedia

Like many in PR, I love watching crises unfold in the news.  This gives a chance to observe developments in how to handle the most difficult briefs get handled by the PR grown-ups.

The temporary decimation of the Irish pork industry was a recent window into the world of crisis communications and after observing for a week here is my nit-picking assesment.

The recall was a total success.   There was literally not a sausage to be bought in Dublin two weekends ago and Danish and British Pork were flown in by Harrier jet to cover the short supply of breakfast all over the capital.

The government were quick to belittle the immediate danger of consuming pork product with full page advertisements in the national papers.  A new tag was introduced giving your sausage a worthy obituary.  Soon, all was well.

All was/is not well.  The local operation would appear to be a complete success according to my sources (the girls in Dunnes, Sth. Great Georges Street, my thanks) but perceptions abroad were not so well managed.  A look at some European newspapers and my own addiction to BBC and Sky News shows that the message of ‘precautionary measure’ as opposed to ‘this is worse than CJD’ was not so well communicated abroad.  This is assesment is based on my own observations but one wonders did the government consider hiring some local PR in our European customers territories?  Die Wielt and La Monde still seem to think that Irish Pork and anthrax both have similar health benefits so it might me worth a look…

Wikipedia

And so to today’s ORM tip.  The scourge of college tutors and table quiz organisers everywhere, Wikipedia is a vast self-perpetuating encyclopedia that is the first call for many researchers, be they casual or professional.  That probably includes a lot of your stakeholders and journalists.

Wikipedia has a news counter that is updated very irregularly compared to the front page of most news websites.  The story of Irish Pork and its new special ingredient is now on the front page of the English-language Wikipedia site for two weeks.  Another opportunity!  The article is complete editable by any willing party though it would also be heavily monitored for untruths and slander given its exposure.

If I were working for any of the interested parties of this crisis I would be monitoring that page daily and ensuring the following:

• The truth is represented in the article
• Introducing positive developments and referencing them to credible sources
• Ensuring that all relevant official information was linked from the article

This would all help keep the message under control and also help credit the official sources as being the most informative.

Wikipedia in a Lesser Crises

Just because your crisis didn’t merit mention on the Wikipedia homepage does not mean that it isn’t mentioned elsewhere on the site.  The usual ORM methodology can keep you alert to any movements on the site with regards your charge’s keywords.  Also remember that Wikipedia is available in different languages to varying and lesser degrees so a careful eye on languages that might affect overseas business is warrented too.

If your brand/client/interests are in the news there is a high likelihood they are earning their own page on the site.  ALWAYS check Wikipedia.  You can ensure its truthfulness with a few clicks and a little typing.

My congratulations to the relevant authorities as the Irish Pork article seems to be completely PR managed at this point.

New UK ORM Survey – Online PR Being Outsourced To Search Marketing Firms

The results of a survey released on Friday by Econsultancy have shown that 49% of online PR campaigns are actually outsourced to Internet search marketing companies.  If this report had said that 49% of print campaigns were being sourced out to magazine retailers it would be plastered all over the PRII’s website.  For the savvy ORM practitioner the news amounts to the same thing.

It is understandable that businesses are working this way as 64% of PR firms don’t know how to handle ORM and are passing this on to specialist firms themselves.

A further opportunity the survey uncovered is that those that do outsource their online PR are anything but satisfied with the results–with only 48% of clients claiming to be either “very” or “moderately” satisfied.

The survey was conducted throughout the UK and can be bought here.  A quick Google for it turned in some hints as its contents as revealed by more gainfully employed practitioners who bought it.

If this is the case across the water then how are we doing in Ireland?  Can someone in the PRII comission an investigation?  Can they also start introducing some proper training days lest the industry desolves into “snake-oil” selling SEO firms when the internet finally subsumes all other media?

The websites of most of the big players in PR do not list any ORM services.  My blog is now the top result on Google for “Online Reputation Management Ireland” and I am a but a lowly unemployed blabber-mouth.

Other findings of the survey show that the area is to grow exponentially in the next year despite the recent economic downturn.  If I were running a PR agency and was wondering were to chase new business in 2009 I’d be taking a close look at this and then subsequently this.

Errorandum

I am advised by Michelle from Econsultancy that this report can be downloaded for free if you register for free with their website.  I have an “exploratory” ORM interview tomorrow so I’ll be learning the bones of it by rote.  If you actually have a position of influence in your PR department/agency you might do so too.

Job Hunt Update

I did actually intend to use this blog as a job hunt commentary before I got side tracked into industry commentary so in honour of the blogs title here’s how things are going.

I was in contention for three positions, two were offered to me.  Being a firm believer in the old adage ‘Fortune favours the brave’ I turned down one and delayed response to the other in the hope that I get an offer on the third position which is perfect for my skill set and career focus.  I might live to regret turning down jobs in the dark days of economic doom we find ourselves in but would have, could have and should have are verbs and tenses I’m not particularly fond of using on myself.

If this gambit fails then I’ve learned a valuable lesson and will start looking  at careers in food retail and waste management…

Your good intentions and wishes at this time are welcome…

ORM in Ireland Online Communities – Boards.ie

As promised, I am starting a series of articles with tips on effective ORM in Ireland. One problem with ORM, in an ever expanding and nebulous Internet, is the identification of the opinion leaders that matter as opposed to the individual griper.

In Ireland we are blessed with unique situation where a smaller amount of sites can provide a focus for your monitoring or your responses.  One such site is Boards.ie.

Boards.ie

Boards.ie is the PR practitioners ORM dream. The site is a massive, well read and well indexed discussion board with a solely Irish focus and covering such a broad remit of topics that your client is bound to be represented somewhere.  Everything from archeology to PNII recruitment has its own discussion forum on Boards with each board churning out commentary, reviews, tips and other information like a collosal information hive.  The site is one of the most popular in the country and boasts 150,000 members regularly contributing.

Three on Boards.ie – A ORM Case Study

This forum has an impressive SEO operation and queries on many matters Irish will return a result from the site.  A quick Google search for problems with Three Mobile’s service churned up numerous posts on boards though one in particular is noteworthy.  The topic “Three Mobile Broadband -THE PROBLEMS M-M-MEGATHREAD!” as of today has received 5,609 replies and more importantly 438,434 views.  The posts are far far from complimentary and offer damning inditements of Three’s services, customer service and pricing.  Three has a dedicated PR department but their policy is to ignore this and its ilk and focus on glossy advertising and sponsorship.  What PR professional in their right mind would ignore a publication with a verfiable circulation of 438,434 over six months with incredible SEO visibility on brand keywords that offers complete, instant and open right of reply ?

Three’s negligence of this thread and the many others found on boards.ie is incompetence and negligence in the extreme.   There is an old PR argument against intervention on such discussions as it legitimises the medium of the discussion and web boards are frequently and rashly dismissed as improper outlets requiring intervention.  At this point I would argue that a single thread with nearly a half million reads is already legitmised.

This leads me to conclude that Three are either:

• Unaware of the Thread
• Unwilling to engage with thread
• Hoping the thread and it’s numerous siblings on boards.ie will disappear

What Three can do:

Engage with the Thread

By firing a quick email to a moderator on boards Three could easily create an offical profile profile branded with their livery and therefore identifiable as the canonical source of Three information.  They could then deal with all of the points raised by posters and offer explanations, excuses and maybe even compensation or sweeteners to disaffected happy and thereby neutralise the debate.

Start a commercial interaction forum

Boards are generally receptive to offering a purpose built forum for interacting with businesses that garner large topic counts on the site and are willing to use the site as a dialogue facillitator between customers.  A list of the current batch of campanies and their foums can be found here.  If Three started a forum and delegated a member of staff to oversee it they would reap a couple of benefits:

• All forum moderators would be obliged to put any thread relating to Three on to this forum.  This means monitoring is simplified and topics relating to the company from various related boards are now centralised in one space for easy review.
• Directly engage with customer queries and complaints.
• Pre-empt bad SEO by co-opting the medium of the complaint

This is still a novel approach and those involved in online culture would surely appreciate such a fresh approach.  It would also box off the source of a lot of negative word-of-mouth publicity.

Unfortunately for me Three rejected my application for a role in their marketing department recently but being a totally terrific an nice guy I’m flagging this for their immediate attention.

If I had a budget I would commission some research into the impact of boards.ie posting on customer perceptions though I suspect that with such a high hit rate and its 90% Irish readership I’m sure it’s self-evident how important an outlet it is.  If you are reading this and do have such a budget then do it now and then hire me and I’ll stop giving away these nuggets to competitors.  CV is at www.thomasbrunkard.com

How I Fixed My Laptop

A quick deviation here.  A favoured topic amongst Irish bloggers is the so-called Rip-off Republic.  One eminently admirable function of Web 2.0 is the empowerment of the Irish public to flag purveyors of quality and poor value in equal measure.  Here is a quick tale of how I

My laptop recently suffered the infamous blue screen of death recently and was the cause of much panic and heart break as it is my most important job search tool.
A quick run around various repair shops in Dublin’s city centre drew quotations of amounts varying between €200 to €400.

One such shop (the €400 mega repair quoter) said that a reinstall of the system software would be enough as well as some other nonsense that translated as “We think you don’t understand so we’ll throw these in as well…” .

Armed with this information I bought myself a SATA caddy and used my girlfriends computer to back up my old hard drive (€14 from Max Burns) and spent ten minutes reading up Dell’s excellent help website’s reinstall instructions.  I also had a read about how to check various internal connections and ran through them all cleaning and securing ones that seemed potentially dodgy.

30 Minutes later and the computer was alive and has been happily functioning ever since and my hard won cash was spared for such gratuitous expenses as food, light, heat and nice paper for printing CVs…

Moral of the story – DIY

How I would wreck your business using the internet. Part 1. Squatting and SEO

That got your attention!  Due to the mental stress and psychological pressures of job hunting and, in particular, dealing with refusals, one’s mind is prone to relieving such strain by indulging in conceptual revenge.

As this weeks topic will be ORM then I will detail I coped with the indignity of being refused a position I would clearly excell in by conceiving how I would exact vengenace and thereby give your client/organisation the opportunity to pre-empt a similarly well knowledged but less morally sound and slightly more unstable agitator from causing you an ORM headache.

Your Domain Name

One quick way of someone giving your company a foul virtual blow would be to cyber squat your brand or company with a phoney domain name.  This means registering a domain name that by rights should be used for something else.  The debacle of bertieahern.com being a famous example.

A tragically large number of brand managers do not register their brands as domain name comprehensively.  Lets take the mysteriously popular breakfast cereal/horse feed Fruit ‘n’ Fibre.  Lets say Mary Smith, a marketeer in Kellogs, was erroneously called back from her honeymoon to deal with some minor occupational crisis.

The suitably agrieved newly-wed Mrs. Smith, bent on revenge, could visit one of many whois websites and start entering key brand words associated with Kellogs.  Taking on the role of Mrs. Smith I found that while popular Kellogs brand Fruit ‘n’ Fibre is held by Kellogs as as domain name as fruitnfibre.ie and fruitnfibre.co.uk, the domains fruitnfibre.com and fruitnfibre.net are actually available and unsecured, waiting for the suitably agrieved Mrs. Smith to reserve for some nevarious purpose.

Once both domains are purchased with hosting for a mere €30, Mrs Smith could then recreate Kellogs website with small twists in the design to circumvent copyrights and intellectual rights protection and then input false but damaging data about the product.  Maybe by simply changing the listed ingredients of Fruit n Fibre to unwholesome food stuffs such as sawdust, fibre glass and belladonna and include some ‘endorsements’ from some celebrities best kept away from any brand such as Lord Lucan, Stalin or Tara Reid.

Mrs. Smith then could work in some simple SEO techniques such as adding some nice meta tags, preparing a Google map for her website and then swapping links with a few other Fruit ‘n’ Fibre miscreants.  She can sit back and relax as her site slowly rises higher and higher in the search rankings.

Soon a few bloggers might mention that Fruit n Fibre is made of fibre glass, the addition of Belladonna as flavouring could feature in a science students online essay and the photoshopped endorsement of Tara Reid might become a rock bands T-Shirt design in Singapore.

Kellogs PR agency being bang out-of-date will not notice this incursion on brand perception until it is too late.  Sales plummet as rumours of the nasty ingredients in our breakfast cereals circulate, competitors who hired me or an ORM expert brand their cereals as being both fibre glass and Tara Reid free and Mrs Smiths vengeance is finally exacted when various statutory bodies instigate highly damaging investigations into Kellogs ingredients.

In case you’re thinking of doing this to Kellogs you may be too late as I’ve already emailed their PR guys a link to this blog.  If you’re in PR and brand management then you might want to check this:

Stop this happening to you

• Keep an eye on this blog and read my post on ORM monitoring
• Spend two minutes on whois sites (like webhost.ie or whois.net) inputting all permutations and spellings of your brands
• Spend a mere €10 pa on each vacant domain ressembling or naming your brand
• Sleep easily

Online Reputation Management in Ireland

Reputation managment can be one of the more difficult aspects of the PR practitioner’s brief.  How does one measure the quality of an organisation or individuals reputation?

Media monitioring is of course a key element but this method is only really monitoring the opinion of the press.  Consumer/stakeholder surveys might not be cost effective and passively relying on inward feedback reveals little.

It is a cliché in the press and international PR websites that the Internet is the “new” media for reputation management monitoring.  Anonymity frees the stakeholder’s id to rant and rave about an organisation or individual without restraint and, crucially, be listened too.

So why ten years after this became the preeminent web issue for PR practitioners is their not a single Irish agency offering Online Reputation Management (ORM) as a core part of their services?  A cursory search for Online Reputation Ireland reveals only one Irish firm, Evolution-e, offering ORM services.  They also offer SEO which is interesting given their low position on my Google result page.

Luckily this blog comes to the rescue with a few tips.  At this point if you are a PR agency/department and you’re scratching your head about this post and my previous post then you really ought to give me a job.  As always the title of this blog is tragically a statement of fact so please go to www.thomasbrunkard.com now, hire me and become a market leader.  I promise to kill this miserable blog if I get a job and will start ten new ones under various pseudonyms praising your organisation…

For the rest of the week I’ll be ranting about ORM so here’s a few readily available generic tips that you can utilise now to start seeing who is talking about your client now.

In their “Online Reputation Management” guide, Elixir Systems identify “3 steps involved in Online Reputation Management”: Monitoring; Analysing and Influencing.

There are various complementary ways to monitor one’s online reputation. There are a few online tools that can be used for online reputation management. Let’s try and elaborate a methodology to set up a monitoring system:

• Set up Google & Yahoo alerts based on specific keywords relating to you products and services, your brand name, your key employees’ names, your industry, your competitors. It is recommended to couple this with a frequent checking of the main search engine results against strategic keywords for you, including your brand name.
• Open an account with an RSS reader such as Newsgator.
• Create custom RSS feeds based on chosen keywords with websites such as Technorati or blogsearch.google.com to monitor blogs. You can then add these feeds in your RSS reader. You can classify these feeds according to categories such as “Brand terms”, “Industry terms”, “Competitors”, “Employees”…
• According to your industry or field of activity there might exist groups or message boards and forums it would be beneficial to track. You can identify such groups thanks to tools like Yahoo Groups or Google Groups. You can try and find interesting forums and boards with BoardReader.com, ForumFind.com or BoardTracker.com for instance.

Irish PR angencies suffer from lack of SEO

Here is a post from the chronically under-used Irish PR discussion forum on boards.ie.  It’s a bit technical but the gist is that for communication practitioners working in the 21st century a lot of Irish consultancies score pretty badly on search engine reports.  You can view the thread in its entirety at http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055417880 and contact the person who did the leg work about it there.

If you don’t understand what this is about and it applies to you then you ought to make it your business to get advice lest you get left behind.

On the back of the Thread started in the PR forum about Linkedin – it got me thinking – how do the PR websites do in terms of “Search PR”. As well “the names have be changed to protect the innocent”, no one is mentioned by name.

With much difficulty I managed to get 109 websites for companies/individuals that held themselves out to be in the PR game. Can I state for the record the compiling of that list was a real dog!

I then ran some keyword analysis against some of the sites and some separate keyword research to try and extract keywords. I appreciate that some companies have particular specialities and this is far form an exhaustive search – but it does cover a good range of keywords.

Eventually I settled one these keywords/key phrases in no particular order of merit:
Corporate communications, crisis communication, crisis management, Event Management, Financial Public Relations, Investor Relations, Media Relations, Press Releases, Public Affairs, Public Relations, sponsorship Management. Again the keywords are broad searches but all of them have strong search volumes in terms of Google Searches.

I now put the 109 PR websites under scrutiny – to see how they would rank in search engines against these terms. The search engines used were google.ie and google.ie with an Ireland only search (I have a limited time here and much more importantly its pro bono work!).

Google Search (from Ireland)
Corporate Communications: 4 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked – 22 (p3)
Crisis Communication: 8 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked – 9 (p1)
Crisis Management: 4 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked – 18 (p2)
Event Management: 3 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked – 22 (p3)
Financial Public Relations: 10 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked – 1 (p1) !!!!!!
Investor Relations: 0 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked – 0
Media Relations: 3 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked -17 (p2)
Press Releases: 0 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked – 0
Public Affairs: 1 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked – 47 (p5)
Public Relations: 7 sites in the top 50, Highest ranked – 4 (p1)
Sponsorship Management: 2 in the top 50, Highest ranked – 17 (p2)

Look – it’s by no means conclusive research, but it does point out that, corporately, PR companies could do better in search

Obama – PR genius?

The success of Barack Obama’s campaign for the Whitehouse are a justification for proper public relations practice.  Here an individual stayed on message, campaigned positively (largely) and utilised modern communications technology and branding techniques to persuade various publics to vote for his agenda.

This will be a campaign of study for decades and will hopefuly have an influence on all levels of PR practice.

Here are a few little tweaks a mere communications jobseeker such as I would have suggested should he had hired me:

A dedicated press/media section on his website.

• A page with links to high resolution audio files of speeches and print-resolution photography would allow easy access of materials to journalists.  It is a basic principle of web PR to try and encourage an ‘information-addiction’ to ‘journalists as it would allow more control of the message as they return to your page for their information fix.  I’m sure there was no difficulty in acquiring those materials from the campaign for any of the larger media outlets. However, not facilitating the lowly hack from a local radio station/paper/website who would rely on such easily obtainable web resources is a missed oportunity.
• Spam.  To many text messages is a major complaint from my western Atlantic interlocutors.  A mobile phone is a personal device and every text message is read by its user.  To use SMS marketing effectively is a lesson in restraint that e-mail marketeers are just beginning learning to learn.  Send too many text and their effectiveness is diminished.
• Turn-arounds.  When it happened that Obama change tact on certain issues such as Oil-drilling in August he looked weaker and showed inexperience and dittering.  Luckily the subsequent dip in that months polls galvinised a consistency in his proclamations that made his more senior adversary McCain appear more erratic.