Author Archives: Sarah Skerik

4 Reasons Brands Shouldn’t Rely Solely on Social Media to Communicate

Posted on April 4, 2013 | 8 Comments

I wasn’t the only social media denizen who scratched their head and said “Really?” in response to the SEC’s ruling a few days ago that cleared the way for public companies to disclose material news via social networks. It turns out I was in good company, as many others looked in askance at the ruling too, including Fortune’s Dan Primack (“SEC’s new social media policy falls short.”)

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Fundamentally,  I support brands using social channels to communicate.  I am completely and utterly convinced of the efficacy and utility of social networks as a means to communicate with key audiences.

twitter tos textBut I also know from my experiences in managing several of PR Newswire’s social media presences for the last couple years that social networks are not perfect communications channels.  For a variety of reasons, I’ll never rely solely upon them as key communications channels.  Here’s why.

  • Reliability – If you’ve ever used Twitter, you’ve probably seen the Fail Whale that appears when Twitter is over-capacity.  Facebook users experience problems with their API and delays in getting content to post all the time. Simply put, you never know when your social network will slow down – or even grind to a halt. Call me cynical, but Murphy’s Law dictates that at some point, you’ll encounter a service problem right at the moment you absolutely, positively need to post something.
  • Service & platform changes – The social networks all reserve the right to make changes to their services and their platforms, without any prior warning to users, and change they do.  Over the last several years, we’ve seen the networks start and end relationships with search engines and each other, change how user content is displayed and an increase in the commingling of ads within streams of user-generated content.  All of these changes have affected (in some cases significantly) how and when social content is shared and viewed.
  • Feed management algorithms — It may come as a surprise to some, most social networks employ manage what content their users see.  Using algorithms, they bias news feeds, tweet streams and the updates they display to users, surfacing content that’s proven popular and/or is from those closes to the users’ social graphs.  More mundane posts are buried. Point is, just because a company posts content to a social network, there is no guarantee that all their friends, followers and fans will see it.  In fact, one can be fairly certain that relatively few members of your social audience will see your message at the moment it’s posted.
  • Security – Social networks can be hacked, and while they obviously try to protect themselves, it’s not at all uncommon to see spammy messages spewing forth from hacked accounts.  Company accounts are not immune, and the stakes go up if you’ve cultivated a particularly influential and well-connected audience populated with analysts, bloggers and journalists.

facebook tosIf this post has you sweating a bit, it might be a good idea to take a quick look at the various terms of service the social networks require us to agree to in order to establish accounts.  None contain service level agreements and guarantees that you get from a paid vendor.  (Note:  PR Newswire is a paid vendor.  We build security and redundancy into what we do, and we consider uptime a requirement, not a nice-to-have.)

So, while I don’t consider myself to be a Chicken Little, and indeed, I think it’s great that companies can safely add communicating via social networks to their communications mix, I do believe that brands need to be cautious about becoming over-reliant on social networks, from which they have no guarantees and over which they can wield no real control.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

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Leveraging cause marketing for authentic communications

Posted on March 28, 2013 | 1 Comment

Sponsorship is one of the oldest forms of advertising, and the basic principle – associating your brand’s name positively with something your target market enjoys –still holds water today.  However, in today’s changed information marketplace, in which traditional media share the stage with bloggers, brands, experts and individuals,  traditional sponsorships can fall a bit short.  Why?  Because  they give people precious little to talk about.  Enter cause marketing.

Cause marketing – in which a brand aligns itself and devotes resource to addressing a specific problem or supporting a charitable effort – offers brands advantages not found in other types of sponsorship or advertising, and it works particularly well in today’s world of social networks and online tribes.  Here are a few reasons why:

Tribal affinity, otherwise known as market segmentation:   Any marketer will tell you that segmenting your market is a good idea.  Expending the brand’s resources without taking the time to target groups of people likely to have an interest in the message can be an exercise in futility – and it’s wasteful.   However, the brand that aligns itself with a cause that is relevant to its best customers and prospects can create real efficiency when it comes to reaching that constituency.

That said, there are some caveats for brands when it comes to selecting a cause.

“The issues Millennials care about most varies from country to country and its tempting to let that drive what cause you support,” notes Simon Mainwaring, a leading social branding strategist and author of the book We First: How Brands & Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World in his discussion of how corporate purpose can turn Millennials into brand ambassadors. “But a brand must ensure its own purpose, values and mission dictate what cause it supports to avoid accusations of greenwashing or causewashing. That way, a brand’s cause work drives Millennial engagement and reinforces the authentic for-profit narrative of the brand.”

Storytelling, otherwise known as content generation:  Cause-related marketing creates a lot more traction than a fleeting brand impression, because it presents the opportunity for the brand and its partner to tell stories.  And those stories can be powerful catalysts for conversations in social networks, which in turn delivers real message amplification that is positive — and relevant for the audience.   Programs created in association with your brand’s non-profit partner can be rich sources of the sort of attractive and interesting pictures, videos, charts, data, graphics and stories that people enjoy consuming and feel good about sharing with their friends and followers on social media.  And each piece of content derived from a brand’s cause-marketing program can

Incentive, otherwise known as the whole point of most marketing efforts:  Finally, cause-related marketing provides important extra incentives for buyers to make their selections in your brand’s favor when the simple act of making a purchase in turn helps a cause they care about.  Whether the consumer simply likes the idea of sending an extra dollar your cause’s way, or they’re making a conscious decision to only support brands that have sustainable business practices and give back to the community – the effect in the moment of the purchase decision is the same.  The scales are tipped for your brand.

Quite a lot of thinking in the CSR/sustainable business/cause-marketing community is coalescing around the idea that these practices are no longer optional for brands – they are necessary pieces of the strategy mix.   It’s difficult to disagree, from either the emotional or practical standpoints, for two reasons – people like doing business with organizations they like, and a great way to get people to like your organization is to do some good in the world and tell that story in an interesting way.

b4bA unique opportunity for brands considering cause marketing initiatives is coming this May at the Business4Better Expo in Anaheim CA.   There, representatives from the corporate side will find scores of non-profits that are primed for and seeking corporate partners.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of content marketing, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

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How Content Distribution Drives Message Discovery (and Results!)

Posted on March 26, 2013 | 2 Comments

Like any business, sometimes our own story needs telling.  Earlier this year, we decided that we needed to do some PR for our MultiVu business, which focuses on the production and distribution of multimedia content.   It’s cutting edge stuff, with some truly unique aspects, and it sits right between PR and marketing, and we needed to offer some explanation and raise awareness of these services.

So what did we do?  We did the same thing any of you, our customers, would do.   First, our team brainstormed the messaging.  They outlined the key points we needed to convey from a brand standpoint, and then approached the messaging from the opposite context – the questions our audience often asks has about producing video and other multimedia content, and the various struggles that can complicate these projects.

“The hardest thing to do is to distill what you do into a short-form, engaging video,” noted Bev Yehuda, vice president of web engagement products for MultiVu.  “We had to apply what we tell our clients all the  time regarding developing a video: if you don’t take the time out during the process to determine what your elevator pitch is, you run the risk of creating irrelevant content.”

With the messaging drafted, it was time to determine the medium.   Since this was about MultiVu, we knew we needed to use multimedia messaging.   We wanted to show our expertise (and our personality!) in a fun and friendly way, so we went with an animated approach.

Upping exposure with distribution

Once our animated video was done, we packaged it into a multimedia news release (“MNR”,) which combines a variety of distribution strategies and channels.

mv mnr explainer

Here’s a snapshot of the MNR we created to promote the MultiVu video. Click on the image to see the whole thing.

 

Of course, we could have simply shared the video socially – and we did post it directly to a number of social sharing sites – but the distribution component that is built into an MNR is crucial, for a number of different reasons:

  • Distribution drives discovery, delivering content to relevant audiences across the web – on channels, via news web sites and in industry niches.
  • Discovery seeds social conversation, amplifying your message, and increasing exposure to relevant groups.
  • Social conversations deliver third party credibility that can spur people to take action.
  • Distribution increases the number of digital touch points for your brand, and if your audience values the content, it will gain visibility in search results.  Search engines are informed by user activity and interactions around a piece of content.

How Content Distribution Drives Social Interaction

Prior to the release of the MNR, we shared the video itself on PR Newswire’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages. More than 1,400 of our Facebook fans saw the video, and it was liked by 6 and shared by 3.   It fared better on LinkedIn, where it was seen by 1,983 people, generated 30 click-throughs and 8 shares.  Decent exposure for the two minutes (if that) required to share the video with PR Newswire followers.

mv distribution effect on social

However, if you need proof of how distribution drives social interaction with content, you needn’t look any further than the sharing numbers the MNR generated.  Readers of the MNR shared it with their Facebook friends 196 times (as of this writing.)

Distributed content reaches qualified, interested audiences.  And social shares have a strong viral effect, triggering more shares.

Overall Multimedia News Release Results

The social sharing was just one aspect of the visibility the MNR generated for MultiVu.  Over all, adding distribution paid off for this project, tallying thousands of reads of the press release — and tens of thousands of video views.

mv explainer Multimedia News Release Results

It’s very satisfying for us to put on a “customer” hat and use our own services to promote our messages, and witness first-hand how our networks deliver lasting results and visibility.  And based upon the results of this campaign, you can look for more from these animated characters created by MultiVu – several more videos are in the works!

Want to explore creating your own “explainer” video or learning about how multimedia distribution can increase discovery of your brand’s messages?  We’d love to hear your ideas, and help turn them into reality. Contact us for more information.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

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Headline Hashtags & Other Tweetable Press Release Tips

Posted on March 20, 2013 | 4 Comments
Press releases generate multiple tweets per minute.

Press releases generate multiple tweets per minute.

A post on the Forbes CIO network titled “#Accounting: Why Finance Teams Need to Get Social” garnered an unusual amount of traffic when compared to other posts on that channel.  With a current tally of more than 430,000 reads, this particular post is a real outlier.  A quick scan of other posts on the site suggests that reader tallies in the low four figures are the norm.

This anomaly was spotted by Lou Hoffman of the Hoffman Agency, and he highlighted it in a blog post titled, “The Role of the Hashtag in a Forbes Headline Attracting Over 400K Views .”

“The one element that makes this Forbes post different from other executive byliners lies in the headline and the use of the hashtag #Accounting,” he noted in his blog post.

I think Lou is on to something.  According to HubSpot’s new LinkTally tool, the article was shared 1,200 times on social networks.  And, as illustrated in Lou’s blog post, Google is differentiating between the search terms “#accounting “ and “accounting.”    While I am not willing to ascribe the success of this post on Forbes entirely to the presence of the hashtag in the headline – after all, it is a well-written discussion of a timely topic – I do think that the headline format had something to do with the article’s success.

press release quote

There’s certainly no doubt that press releases are important grist for Twitter’s information mill.  A look at the live search results for “PRNewswire” on Twitter shows that people are tweeting the press releases we issue multiple times per minutes.   And there are a few things you can do when writing press releases to help encourage people to tweet and share your copy.

  • Try using a relevant and popular hashtag in a Tweet-ready headline – keep it to about 100 characters, and make it interesting.
  • That obligatory quote?   Craft it for Twitter by dropping the hyperbole and editing it down into a 100 character statement that makes a key point.
  • Encourage tweeting by including the Twitter handle of anyone you quote in the press release.
  • Don’t forget visuals.  Twitter.com displays media in tweets, and we know that visuals do a great job of grabbing reader attention.

You can also use ClickToTweet to embed pre-loaded tweets in your messages, though I would caution against relying solely upon an embedded tweet to generate engagement.   People use lots of different mechanisms to tweet, including browser extensions and social media management dashboards.  You’ll be most successful when you cater to a variety of user preferences.

Why 100 characters?  I thought Tweets were 140 characters?

While you can put as many as 140 characters into a tweet, there are a few reasons why limiting tweets to 100 characters (or even less) is a good idea.

  • If you’re adding a URL to your tweet, allow 20 characters for Twitter’s URL shortener.  All URLs on Twitter are converted to Twitter URLs automatically.
  • You’ll also want to leave space for other people’s comments and Twitter handles, to encourage re-tweets.
  • Research by PR Newswire shows that press releases with long headlines (longer than 140 characters) experience a significant drop in online views, so writing a Twitter-friendly headline can help boost overall results.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik .

Want to get more visibility on Twitter for your news?  Try SocialPost – our Twitter-based press release distribution service, delivering exposure via carefully-curated, subject-specific Twitter presences.

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Common Themes from the Content & Distribution Track at SXSWi 2013

Posted on March 14, 2013 | Leave a comment

This year’s programming for South By Southwest featured an entire track devoted to the subjects of content and distribution.   The sessions in that track varied wildly from ultra-tactical (“How to Rank Better in Google and Bing,”) to the esoteric (“#CatVidFest: Is This the End of Art?”) Despite the wild array of subject matter and expertise that are the hallmarks of SxSW Interactive, common themes did emerge over the course of the conference, and communicators should take note.

Don’t forget we’re talking about human behavior.

In addition to the hundreds of panels devoted to the discussion of storytelling and other content tactis, the Interactive program also devoted considerable space to user experience design (“UXD”) and different aspects of psychology.  Why?  Because ultimately, marketing communications exist to influence human behavior.   Sitting in sessions that picked apart the psychology of habits, the social behaviors that drive the rapid spread of a meme across social channels or discussed how YouTube’s treatment of comments encourages troll-like behavior among those commenting on videos really drove this fact home.

The discussion of what makes media spread in the panel titled “Spreadable Media,” offers a profound example.  Think about it: we sit in front of our screens, and an avalanche of Tweets, Facebook posts, links in emails and other content floods our attention.  As human beings, we make specific choices about that content. What’s worth passing along, and to whom?  And in which channel?  And as part of what conversation?

“If we just think in terms of going viral, we’re not treating the audience as having social agency or cultural effect,” one of the panelists (I didn’t catch which, though I captured the quote verbatim) noted. “We strip away the politics of what goes viral.”  Simply referring to a piece of media as “viral” in nature glosses over the choices that went into mobilizing the material, which means that we overlook the very mechanics of the message, and what caused it to resonate with the audience.  And I think that any marketer can agree, that is stuff worth knowing.

Content needs to be quality.  Everything else is a waste of time, and can injure your brand.   

There are myriad reasons why it’s important to be selective about what you publish – and that message was emphasized in a variety of sessions.  Quality content that’s useful to the audience generates the kind of engagement signals (e.g. time on page, click-throughs, shares) that search engines notice.  The same sort of quality content is that that is most likely to spread and augment your brand’s image and credibility.

It turns out that the downside to publishing content that doesn’t make the grade with the audience isn’t simply a waste of time.   Lightweight content that doesn’t deliver value to the reader will cause visitors to “bounce” (immediately leave) from a web page, sending a negative signal to the ever-vigilant search engines.   Bad content can also result an active departure from the brand audience, by motivating people to disassociate from the brand by un-liking or un-following social presences, or unsubscribing from an email newsletter.   Content for content’s sake is a bad idea.  It won’t trigger the human behavior you’re after, which in turn won’t result in the search engine ranking the brand desires.

Now that you’re back home and have had a chance to unpack – both your luggage and your brain – what were the theme that stood out to you at South By this year?

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik

Want to make your media spread?  PR Newswire can distribute your content — text, images, video and any combination thereof — to digital audiences both broad and narrow.

 

 

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SXSW: Forget Stories. Your Brand Needs a Narrative.

Posted on March 12, 2013 | 12 Comments

If you’ve spent any time at all recently reading PR and marketing blogs, you know that storytelling is a top trend, and for good reason.  Building storytelling into the communications mix delivers the personable and engaging messaging that sticks with audiences and is effective fodder for social content consumption.

However, at SXSW yesterday, I learned where stories fall short in a brilliant presentation titled “Moving from Story to Narrative,” by John Hagel, author of “The Power of Pull” and co-chairman of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge.

The problem with stories, Hagel argued, stems from the fact that they’re not participatory.   Stories are told to the reader, from the vantage point of the teller.  This leads to the next problem.  Stories eventually end, and the reader moves on to other things.  Now, savvy marketers reading this will say to themselves that those other things can be influenced by providing compelling calls to action, streams of related nurturing content or the ability to participate an adjacent community.   Without a doubt, this is all true, but even the best CTAs don’t work all of the time.

Enter the narrative.

Narratives differ from stories in two important ways, according to Hagel.  First, narratives don’t have an end.  They are open ended, and the resolution is yet to be determined.  Secondly, narratives invite participation.   The inherent message isn’t “Listen” — it’s “Join.”

“Narratives motivate actions,” Hagel noted in his presentation.  “In some cases, they motivate life and death choices.  Stories don’t do this.  Every powerful movement that has impacted our world has been shaped and energized by a potent narrative.”

The “Think Different” slogan from Apple beautifully encapsulated the company’s narrative: how technology and intuitive design can enable people to achieve  more. As Hagel said, Apple founders Jobs and Wozniak thought differently from day one.

  • Apple:  Their charge to “Think Different” isn’t about Apple.  It’s about us, and how we can use technology to achieve more.  Apple is the catalyst.
  • Christianity:  People are born in sin, but have the opportunity to be saved.  How things turn out isn’t known, but it will be determined by people’s choices and actions.
  • The American dream — Anyone from anywhere can achieve anything:  This opportunity expressed in this narrative has drawn people from all over the world to America for hundreds of years.

“In a business context, if you can harness the power of narrative, you can derive competitive advantage,” said Hagel.  Narratives work because they don’t simply motivate employees, they can galvanize a broad swath of people, and inspire them to action.

From campaign to context

I took pages and pages of notes during Hagel’s presentation, even winning kudos for speed and thoroughness from the reporter sitting next to me in the audience.  For the last 24 hours, I’ve been noodling on what he said, thinking about how a brand might start to embrace narratives.  As Hagel mentioned in his presentation, narratives take root organically, growing from the actions of people, and they evolve over time.  They aren’t the product of a brainstorm session, so this post won’t contain Tips for Making Narratives Work for Your Brand or anything like that.

However, there are strong parallels between Hagel’s description of the narrative, and the move we’re seeing in marketing away from episodic campaigns, and toward living brand streams.  The clear message is that today’s audiences crave context, and communicators can derive more power for their brands by providing that important framework.

I’m going to go away and think about the narratives emerging within my company, and my industry, certainly. However, I’m also going to be thinking long and hard about the connective tissue content generates, and how that can be used to create context around opportunities.  If a narrative emerges, great.  But in the meantime, there are important lessons for communicators about what makes people tick in John Hagel’s work.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik

Is your interest in honing your brand’s content strategy piqued by today’s post?  Join PR Newswire and special guests Brian Solis,  Jim Lin and Lou Hoffman for a live event  in San Francisco titled  Tipping the Engagement Scale in Your Favor: How to Employ Multimedia Content for Compelling Storytelling

Related reading:

Create narratives, not stories – Moxie Interactive

Moving from Story to Narrative – @ItsDane

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SXSW Interactive: What’s Catching My Eye

Posted on March 11, 2013 | 1 Comment

sx big fishThis is an unusual year at SXSW Interactive, because as of this writing, there’s no big break out story, company, app or trend – at least that I can detect – and I’m hearing the same thing from the journalists and fellow bloggers I’ve been talking to up in the Samsung Blogger Lounge.   That said, a few things have landed on my radar screen over the last few days, including:

Big data about influence + smart filters * knowledge graph = HeyBigFish

From the folks behind Little Bird comes a great new way to look at real-time and influential conversations swirling around an event.  HeyBigFish lets you dive in to the digital discussions around specific topics at an event like SXSW.   You can find out in an instant what emerging conversations are about  and who’s shaping the discussion.

Note to brands: Need=Opportunity

Click the icon to get the beta version of the Ion app.

Click the icon to get the beta version of the Ion app.

The app I’m really digging:  From the folks at Otterbox – makers of cases for all manner of mobile devices – comes a neat new app that tells you exactly when your device is going to run out of power, based on your usage.  It’s actually very handy at an event like SXSW when you really do want to conserve and manage your power, because the days are long and you just don’t know when you’ll be able to recharge.  Called Otterbox Ion, it’s out in beta for you to try.

Along the same need=opportunity line of thinking is this simple but clever sx t chargepromotion from AT&T.  They have created secure charging stations, and have placed them all over South By.  You can put your phone in a little locker to recharge while you run to the washroom or grab a cup of coffee.  It’s smart and relevant branding.

The pervasiveness of cats.    

So we’ve been talking (and joking about) the prevalence of cats on the internet for years now.   But cats are a hot topic at SXSW this year.  Lines to see Grumpy Cat at the Mashable House stretched for blocks.  And a session on the Walker Art Center’s Internet Cat Video Fest (@catvidfest) was packed.  Even among the digerati here in Austin this week, cats are cool.

SXSWi attendees waiting in the rain to meet Grumpy Cat in person at Mashable House.

But really, the take-away here for marketers isn’t to stick cats into all your messaging.  However, it is worthwhile to spend some time reflecting on what is about cats that makes them so attractive to digital audiences – which is ultimately the ability for people to relate to them – and to assign conversations, feelings and emotions to them.

Real social relationships:

It’s interesting watching the juxtaposition between people who dive 100% into the whole SXSW experience, and those who don’t – and the difference between the two is (at least as I’ve observed it) is emphasis on real-life versus digital experiences.  It’s important to remember (and invest in) the real relationships and experiences that social media fosters.  Without interactions IRL, you miss a lot of value.

Watch this space for more from SXSW over the next few days.  And if you’re in Austin this week, tell me, what’s catching your eye?

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik.

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What Content Creators Can Learn from Tablet Design Pros

Posted on March 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

According to recent Adobe study, tablets are trumping smartphones in global website traffic.

Users of the internet prefer to use tablets for more in depth visits.  Whether they’re shopping, watching videos or just leisurely browsing the mobile web, tablet users tend to visit 70% more web pages than smartphone users do.

The experts on the panel titled “Lean Forward, Lean Back: Tablet News Experiences,” Dr. Mario Garcia of Garcia Media and Sarah Quinn of the Poynter Institute, discussed findings from the Poynter Eyetrack tablet research study, and some of those findings provide useful instruction for content creators seeking to reach tablet users.

You have about 10 seconds to keep readers from bailing out, according to the Poynter study.  Content publishers need to provide readers with what they panelists called “gold coins,” such as pulled quotes and visual elements to keep engaged. Dr. Garcia referred to this as the pop-up moment – something needs to happen to keep them reading more.

People consume content via the “media quartet”  — papers, the web, smartphones and tablets.  However, user behavior for each media type is different.  Papers and tablets are “lean back” media – readers put their feet up, and slow down.  Conversely, smartphones and the web are generally “lean forward” media – users are moving quickly and need to find information quickly.

Content publishers also need to keep these behaviors in mind when designing content, because one size doesn’t fit all.   In order to capture audience attention on each channel, the content needs to suit the users’ needs.

Related reading: a Storify collection from the session: Storytelling in the age of the tablet.

By Erika Kash, product manager, online services, MultiVu.

 

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A look at the future of search with Google’s Amit Singhal at SXSW

Posted on March 10, 2013 | Leave a comment
Guy Kawasaki interviewing Amit Singhal at SXSW 2013. Photo: Victoria Harres.

Guy Kawasaki interviewing Amit Singhal at SXSW 2013. Photo: Victoria Harres.

Today, Guy Kawasaki interviewed Amit Singhal, Google’s senior vice president of search.  Billed as a conversation about the future of search in mobile world, the conversation ranged into devices and other future Google projects.

To put the conversation in context, it’s worth repeating a fact Singhal dropped on the crowd in response to Kawasaki’s question “What really is on the internet?”

According to Singhal, everything is on the internet, and it’s sitting on more than 30 trillion web addresses, which in turn reside on some 250 million web domains.

The evolution of search

According to Singhal, who’s been with Google for 20 years and has a PhD in search, at the beginning, people didn’t expect search to work.  That’s changed entirely today – searches are growing increasingly granular and complex.  Additionally, people are searching all the time.  When desktop search volumes go down – at mealtimes, for example, and in the evenings – mobile search volumes increase.

How to gain search rank

Once again, the advice was simple – publish useful content that adds value.  However, Singhal made an interesting point – that search engine optimization is really about marketing your content to search engines – telling them what it’s about, and why it’s important.

When it comes to the mechanics of achieving rank, it’s important to keep something firmly in mind: A perfect search engine should know exactly what you mean, and give you exactly what you want, and that’s Google’s goal.  As Singhal said, search engines need to be comprehensive, relevant and fast.

Inbound links are one signal, but they use more than 200 other signals, including: on-page content, words in the title.

What’s in development now?

Google Now is one project Singhal mentioned, describing it as “… the things you need to know, just coming to you.

“The future of search would be bringing knowledge to the world in a completely multimodal environment,” noted Singhal.

He envisions Google Now as a perfect assistant – it’s by your side, you can talk to it and ask it things.  But it should also tell you things proactively, such as when traffic is bad and you need to leave a bit earlier than anticipated to get to your next meeting.

Other things on the collective minds at Google include the knowledge graph, speech recognition and natural language understanding, brought together, as Singhal says, to create “search magic.”

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik.

 

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Want to make a viral video? Don’t forget the PR! #SXSW

Posted on March 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

Newsflash – brand videos don’t go viral.  According to the #ComedyTech panel yesterday at South by Southwest Interactive, viruses go viral; videos spread.  To simply describe that spread as “viral” implies an organic, infective power that simply doesn’t exist — and worse, it overlooks the mechanics of creating a video that successfully develops a life of its own online.

Whether or not a video spreads on the web and in social networks is largely predicated upon three things:

1) Whether or not the video is funny (seriously, when’s the last time you shared an inspirational video? Or a boring one?)

2) The video’s originality.

3) The PR push behind it.

According to the panel, the real driver behind the spread of videos online is getting “a big voice” behind the content.  That big voice can be a celebrity, or it can be generated by media coverage.  Enter the PR department.  Deliberate media research and engagement can deliver the credible media exposure that gives a video message the best shot at internet immortality.

Give your messages a boost with video and multimedia content distribution from MultiVu, a PR Newswire company.

sarah avatarAuthor Sarah Skerik is PR Newswire’s vice president of social media, and is the author of the e-book “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”  Follow her on Twitter at @sarahskerik.

 

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