Panda Pounds PR Regurgitation, Pleas for Fresh Content

Alan Caulfield, CC By

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land's News Editor has covered search news for over five years. Upon the release on May 20 of Panda 4.0, Google’s latest search engine algorithm, Schwartz noted that public relations web services got hammered. “PRWeb.com, PR Newswire, BusinessWire, and PRLog all seem to have lost significant rankings in Google. PRNewsWire.com seems to have shown a significant drop in SEO visibility, dropping 63% after Panda was released.”

Say What … Say Why.

Jacco Blankenspoor, a website developer from the Netherlands, concludes, “If there’s anything to learn from this Panda update, it’s that Google prefers longer, broader posts over the shorter, more targeted ones. Also, although there are some exceptions, they really don’t like pages consisting of tons of links. More importantly, they are actively enforcing these policies.”

SEER’s Sean Malseed commented on lower traffic at hoovers.com, businesswire.com, prweb.com, prlog.org, and sbwire.com, noting that “Google has been saying for more than a year that links in press releases shouldn’t carry any value.”

So what Does Panda Like?

Tender Nuggets. If you got hit by Panda or want to please Google in the future, Blankenspoor suggests you focus on quality. “Use a healthy combination of content and links, and make sure people stick for a few minutes so Google know your page is worth sending visitors to.”

Fresh Fodder. Writing on the Moz Blog, Cyrus Shepard noted five things to reach for going forward:

• a high ratio of original content
• pages devoid of empty content that merely links to the meat elsewhere
• sites that reject content “farming”
• sites with a low ad ratio
• pages free of affiliate links and auto generated content.

In short, Panda likes to chew on fresh content, new grown insights, and blooming branches of original thought. Ya gotta love it.

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Duck! It's the New REALITY Wave in Digital Marketing!

In their podcast on June 15, social media guru Mark Schaefer and Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image, talked about the future of digital marketing. Here are 10 points delivered in the podcast.

1. To date, digital marketing has evolved in three waves:
    a) In the early 90s, we responded to the emergence of the World Wide Web.
    b) In the mid-90s, we were on the Web, figuring out how to broadcast our presence to others.
    c) In the mid-2000s, social media and mobile moved us from marketing to creation, usefulness, utility, and customer service.

2. As we reach the end of each wave cycle, large numbers of us figure out the technology, but competition gets harder and more expensive and the market becomes crowded.
Enter the new wave.

3. The coming wave is exemplified by such emerging developments as augmented reality and wearable technology (for example, Oculus and Google Glass) and will culminate in the creation of interactive, immersive, useful products and services.

4. In this wave, we'll be learning how to merge the digital and physical. As demonstrated in the failure of many Kickstarter projects, we're also learning that "physical production" takes big bucks and expertise that few have.

5. Nevertheless, ultimately we can imagine a world where virtual reality is the norm, where people spend increasing amounts of time in an immersive virtual world.

6. What does this merging of digital and physical mean to marketers? The amalgamation will embody "integrated marketing." And, though it won't die, advertising will become out of place in this environment that dislikes interruption and favors message merged with actual experience. Meanwhile, product development, too, will be forced to shift, change, and integrate.

7. Customer engagement will build and compound on apps like Zite (recently purchased by Flipboard). Technologies of this type will become irresistible as they learn about individual choices and the content we love.

8. The best managed companies -- for example, CocaCola, Nike, Proctor & Gamble -- are already knocking on the door of Oculus and Google Glass and will lead breakthroughs in this new wave. They are already looking at how to leap the gap between serendipity and targeted marketing in order to take users to a full substantive experience.

9. Ideally, marketing will move from its current position in the corporate vertical structure to a multi-disciplinary position in the evolving horizontal corporate structure. Hopefully -- though not necessarily assuredly -- marketing is poised to take on a key role in the new multi-disciplinary environment, moving beyond its current role as the advertising or communications layer to a new position that can influence the process of bringing products to fruition.

10. With each wave of change, agencies are seeing greater pressure to be both integrated and highly specialized. Trying to be everything to everybody is getting more difficult, while business is being lost to boutique agencies with new specialties and niches. Figuring out the dynamics of this fragmented service environment will be profound.

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Talk Nice and Other Tricks to Make Your Email Kissable

In April, SilverPop released a white paper useful to any marketer responsible for “talking to” customers, particularly when the channel of conversation is email.

The essential message of “5 Tips for “White Space” Emails,” is keep it useful and make it look good.

To that end, fill promotional emails with useful, educational, enteraining content—photos, humorous stories, info graphics, tips from other customers/donors. 

For example:

1. Seasonal tips and stories that tap into your customers’ time-sensitive needs: spring clean-up, holiday recipes, December charities, March madness, etc.

2. Personality and humor. Write chatty copy that reflects your customers’ attitudes and interests.

3. Other-user-generated content. Search out customers’/ donors’ own words. Find them in social media comments, letters to customer support, etc. 

4. Buying tips: Customers don’t just buy; they interact with products and services for a reason. Broaden everybody’s buying experience through education. Political donors go to the polls and have experiences to share; nonprofit supporters embrace values and belief systems with a community of people; folks who “like” products are interested in how other customers make choices.

5 Usage tips. Focus copy on innovative ways customers can use your product or get involved in your charitable activities. For copy ideas, talk to customer service reps who hear feedback in customers’ own words.

Source: SilverPop white paper,  5 Tips for “White Space” emails, April 2014, http://www.silverpop.com/marketing-resources/overview/

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