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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Objective: Get Publicity. Tactic: Publicize Publicity.

What adds up to “publicity” today? How about the fact that you already got publicity.

I subscribe to PR Newswire for Journalists. The top – and only -- release this morning was as follows:

05-Jul-2012 

 * Bliss Drive Reaches #1 Position for Highly Competitive Key Phrase: 'Orange County SEO'

And your point is .... ? 

Here's what the first paragraph of the press release says: "Bliss Drive, a full-service Internet marketing and web design company that is located in Irvine, California, has just achieved a crucial milestone. They have climbed their way to the top of Google's search results, and now the company's website sits proudly at the number-one position for a highly competitive key phrase, Orange County SEO."

No doubt, today's press release will Bliss-Drive the company's Google positioning up even further.

And, really, that’s what search engine optimization is all about, isn’t it?

Annoying, perhaps. Effective, definitely. Executed, blissfully.

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Why One PR Pitch Added Up to PR Poop

Somebody who shall remain nameless picked up my email address from the Internet.

+1 for initiative

The pitch was pretty good two: flattering, personal, authentic, fair, to wit: "We saw your e-mail at The Digital Nirvana contributors page and we're wondering if you're interested in writing a feature article about [us] on your personal blog or at The Digital Nirvana. Your expertise in the field of marketing and public relations could help readers how to implement effective marketing strategies using our print products."

+1 for relevancy

Better luck next time, Tommy.

 But wait … there's more (and it's all downhill).
The email salutation says "Hello, Tom!" Ooops! Not personal after all; not even in the same dressing room!

- 2 for faking-and-failing
The final sentence reads "Your expertise in the field of marketing and public relations could help readers [alert: word missing] how to implement effective marketing strategies using our print products. In return, let us know your requirements before getting a post about us on your blog.

- 2 for poor grammar and presumptive schmoozing

Bottomline: Minus Two
Sincerely, I can't promote you if I don't believe in you. And I don't believe in you.

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Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Hey, I'm a "brand journalist." Who knew?

I'm happy to be myself, but I avoid talking about myself on this blog. Forgive me. I'm a little excited right now. This morning, I attended Ann Handley's seminar dedicated to the notion that Content Rules. This morning I learned a new name for what I do.

I am a "brand journalist."

This is a term Ann threw out during the Q&A, when somebody asked how a small organization can possibly "do it all" -- website, blog, social media, content curation and management, etc. Ann's answer was to hire a "brand journalist." Why? Because this is the person who has the skills specific to the accelerating demand for corporate and nonprofit content.

The specific skills of a brand journalist blend marketing, PR, and journalism and include the following attributes:

1. The ability to analyze and identify the needs of the audience for whom content is created.

2. A skill for writing fresh, authoritative, but also conversational, friendly, and approachable stories.

3. A penchant for show-don't-tell writing that's easy to read and accessible to many reader segments.

4. An understanding of and experience with all the ways to present content: blogging, articles, video, podcasting, slidesharing, etc.

5. Knowing how to "reimagine" content, which means, perceiving how to rethink, recreate, and rewrite current material to meet multiple cross-platform needs.

6. A writing style that builds momentum and can take the reader along to the next step or action.

Several weeks ago, I set up a new blog titled Brands That Share, so Ann's word choice was an exciting moment for me. I heard the new role of brand journalism defined exactly as I have been envisioning it.

My next blog will share other takeaways from this seminar. But, for now, I just need to say it: I'm a brand journalist!

And thank you for listening!

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Alert for Copywriters, Marketers, and PR Folks: Top 10 Things Customers Are Thinking About Right Now

Experian’s Hitwise Data Center features a Retail component that discloses which Internet search terms get the greatest boost each week. A quick look at the list gives marketers insight into what’s top of mind among customers right now.

So what was the Zeitgeist of the planet as people entered the first week of September?

1. More than any other term, people that week were searching about “unexplained phenomenon.” Frankly, this one baffles me. Maybe the interest was driven by something reported on the Live Science website. Whatever the impetus, people expressed growing interest in stuff that can’t be explained -- which probably includes just about everything that's happening in their lives.

2. Women’s clothing got a closer look, particularly plus size clothing for special occasions. Yes, the holiday season is coming up, and, yes, women are struggling into their size 18s.

3. Laptop deals and cheap notebooks are big, which would seem to reflect a consumer fascination with all things portable, as well as the success of Bill Curtis’ omniscient ads for AT&T’s netbook.

4. Interest in Walgreen’s flu shot program jumped, boosted no doubt by new and stricter "sick" policies adopted by many schools this fall, coupled with vast TV advertising about -- guess what? -- Walgreen's $24.99 flu shots.

5. Proving that holidays drive public interest and confirming that people don't want to be caught in last year's trend, halloweencostumes.com got heavy hits.

6. Winter is coming and concern about energy costs seems to have driven Internet search, too. Briggs and Stratton, manufacturer of home generator systems, got lots of website visits, which was more good news for the Milwaukee firm that has been enjoying record profits. Meanwhile, folks also were searching the terms “robe” and “television stands,” forecasting a lot of cozy hunkering down in front of the TV.

As an aside, the research holds terrific clues for TV advertisers looking to gauge the impact of their ads. This research may not match the quid-pro-quo of direct mail measurement, but it's probably the best guide media buyers have had.

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Smithfield Is About To Scamper. Watch Them Fall Down.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Surgeon Generic, went to La Gloria, Mexico, this morning to visit "Patient Zero," a five-year boy who is reportedly the first human being to contract H1N1 swine flu. Speculation has it that the child picked up the virus from Smithfield's nearby pig plant, which Gupta and his TV entourage tried to get into, but Smithfield said no. The swine flu could not have originated there, you see, because Smithfield gives their pigs flu vaccine regularly and tests them every month for the virus. They also crowd these smarter-than-dog-or-primate animals into pens, feed them crap, and let them stand to their knees in pig excrement their entire lives. But enough of that: The Internet is full of lurid details of industrial pig farming and “fecal lagoons”, which few of us have the stomach to contemplate. But if you do, you might start here, with PETA, to which this outrage is nothing new (full disclosure: I’m a 12-year vegetarian).

Lately, Smithfield has been busy closing U.S. plants and moving to places like Mexico, Poland, and Romania. Smithfield's overseas factory workers (aka “caretakers) surely have no more time or tendency to Pig Patience, poverty-stricken and downtrodden as they themselves are. But I'm sure Smithfield has long stories about how their presence in this rural town in Mexico has raised *every*body's economic level and made life really gay (see the natives dancing?). But this is the Internet, so that’s not likely to fly. What will Smithfield do?

Well, Smithfielders, what you may have caused (and we really don't know, do we?) is probably going to out-noise your own part in this pandemic for awhile. But, soon enough, there will be hell to pay because swine flu has brought the pigs home to roost and your need for damage control is about to explode – except there is no permanent damage control – or marketing – to explain away unconscionable acts. Yikes, problem. Still, overseas, where there is no PETA and much less environmental regulation .. but where there is, believe it or not, an Internet. Oops, again!

Let me hasten to say that I’ don’t pretend to have a formula for how we’re supposed to feed the world population without industrial farming like Smithfield's (others, like the eloquent John Ikerd do, and are talking about it, thank goodness). In the meantime, swine pandemic or not, we’re seeing that current industrial farming practices -- many of which, as we noted, have been conveniently exported to more desperate Third World countries -- are not safe for man nor beast. The lid has blown off the pot.

Apologies, but I must add a final word for Dr. Surgeon Generic: Shame on you! In your voice this morning, I have heard the earnest outrage of a Lou Dobbs, which is sure to sell more TV face time for you and CNN, but this is a FIVE-YEAR old you called on, for pity’s sake ... and you showed him on camera and you used his name and you called him "Patient Zero" and his charming innocence had no idea the use you were making of him. Quite frankly, it makes me sick and I hope my outrage is contagious.

The Korean Taco Approach To PR

By now, most marketers have heard about the success of the L.A. Korean Taco truck. This popular meals-on-wheels snack won a loyal customer following using Twitter, and garnered attention in Newsweek. The story fascinated everybody and, in my PR business, the term “Korean Taco” crept into our jargon. Very simply, around here, a Korean Taco is a communication with editors that contains a nugget of useful, printable information, as is. So, while the objective may be to place an article with an industry publication, we make sure our email to the editor extracts a salient point – a Korean Taco – that the editor can use even if the full article doesn’t get picked up. Editors seem to like the KT approach. I guess that’s because – as Ben Self, founder of Blue State Digital and genius behind Barack Obama’s online presence in Election 2008, says – “Nobody reads press releases. Even editors don’t read them.”