Twitter: Surrey networking - a review

Last week, we organised the first Twitter networking event in Farnham, Surrey (aka a Tweet-up). On a busy week full of festive gatherings we were delighted with the interest and attendance.

We organised this gathering following encouragement from all sides, led by @emmafirth of the Daily Telegraph. It was great to see quorum of Twitter enthusiasts rocking-up, including: @jamesfirth, @andypiper, @guy1067, @toni_jane, @jeniferdav, @kwright5, @pascalw and rachel_adams88.

There were a good number of conversations including:

• Telegraph expenses story
• Paywalls / free content
• The rise and rise of Google
• The digital goldfish bowl
• Programming: Ruby, Adobe AIR, .NET
• The perils of marathon running (!? - @guy1067 is gearing up to his second Marathon and is tackling London in April 2010)

We will definitely have another evening Tweet-up in the New Year, so the conversations can continue.... currently thinking end of January, beginning of February. Do let us know if you would like to come: info at thebluedoor dot com, and when.

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'In digital, data is the only currency' - discuss.

Last night, I attended a debate at the House of Commons organised by The Debating Group and sponsored by the IAB. The motion was 'In digital, data is the only currency'. For the motion were Matt Brittin of Google UK and Louise Ainsworth of Nielsen, and against were Graham Hales of Interbrand and Mark Cridge of Glue.

To a packed audience assembled in Committee Room 10 (normally reserved for the discussion of finance bills which seemed rather appropriate), both sides presented eloquent arguments. These included:

For:

• Data is pure, simple and beautiful. It efficiently connects businesses and people
• data makes businesses smarter, faster and more efficient
• data enables ideas to be tested
• data allows people to be safer, healthier - it even saves lives
• data provides granular insights to enable survival
• data allows us all to build reach, frequency and impact - ensuring increased engagement, and enabling an increased, creative world.

Against:

• Data cannot be the 'only' currency online - if we truly believe this, humanity is reduced to the mere binary
• data is the new glut of 'stuff' for us to deal with - wine lakes and butter mountains of data
• digital is about the human and social connections: it is about what we choose to do with the data that makes it valuable
• ideas change lives, not data
• the true currency is what we do with the data
• if we only value data, we risk knowing the cost of everything but the value of nothing
• human intuition is the most important currency online, data is just the canvas.

And then it was the turn of the floor to propose opinions and questions. There was significant, eloquent resistance against the motion. One orator reminded us of the story of Phineas Gage - a 19th century labourer who suffered an appalling brain injury with a pole skewering through his head. Remarkably he survived, able to compute, understand and communicate with intelligence and lucidity. However, he lost his human values, emotional resonance and ability to make rational decisions. Data enables computers to compute, ensure logical results and access to information - however without the human interpretation, it is meaningless - a currency with no value.

I am glad to report that the argument was not carried by the popular vote (approximately 65% voted against the motion) - the flaw was surely in the wording of the motion.

I believe that the true value of digital networks and tools lies in how we interpret the data and what we do with it. But as Alan Patrick cautioned the audience, if data is even being considered as possibly a global currency, then it is one without regulation, laws or governance. This surely must be an challenge that is tackled before too long.

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Digital PR: Google 4 grown ups

Google is the daddy - that was the message from the seminar I recently attended. Not that I had any doubts on that subject, with Google funneling the majority of search queries as well as developing extended services like Google Wave and Google Docs, no-one is currently in a position to challenge their status.

Being interested in web optimisation and ever keen to keep up on the latest methods that Google is using to crawl, index and serve up search results, I was looking forward to the seminar hosted by Thoughtbubble and delivered by Tim Ireland. And I wasn't disappointed. Tim is an excellent speaker - his experience and knowledge is vast.

If you have been following our recent debates: PR vs SEO, you will know that we, at thebluedoor, believe PR and online PR, and SEO are complimentary but very different skills that share one common goal: raising and maintaining "brand" reputation.

Hearing Tim talk about his experiences and showing live examples of his work underscored what we have heard from Matt Cutts and other Google gurus: reputation is key. There are no shortcuts and no substitute for longevity: well written keyword rich text and strong inbound links gained through sucessful partnerships are what really count.

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SEO Chinwag London event: a PR's round-up

There were some interesting insights at Chinwag's Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) event 'Search is dead, long live search'.

Chinwag had once again assembled a brilliant panel, all who contributed their expertise and opinions, including: Alan Patrick, Nick Garner and Teddie Cowell. It was chaired by Jon Myers.

As well as covering and debating current ground, the panel were asked to look into the future, and the following points were highlighted:

• Discount Bing at your peril: definitely one to watch and is growing share quite dramatically at the moment,
• the future of search is about conversations i.e. PR, and these conversations must be helpful and truthful,
• real time search is growing in importance: Google was taking four to six days to index Twitter, now it is six hours,
• hyper local relevancy is going to gain in importance,
• there are many people focusing on tackling filtering / relevancy of search results – these will lead the game,
• the war on spam from affiliates has only just begun,
• ignore mobile at your peril: markets such as Korea and Africa where mobile penetration is at 120% will be leading the charge imminently,
• there is currently a changing of the guard re: Google – they are the incumbents: innovation is being driven by the new kids on the block.

The event delivered lots to think about, but interesting that the SEO sector is moving ever closer towards PR. Therefore, an understanding of SEO is a vital skill for any PR agency to embrace.

Should Pay Per Click advertising be part of your PR crisis planning?

PR in a crisis is a challenge for any communications team. Being well prepared and practised is the key to getting the right message across at the right time. For a digital PR agency, the focus is usually on communicating clear, simple and relevant messages to the appropriate audiences. However in a crisis, PR is starting to embrace all digital tools as part of a strategy, including Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.

Behaviour in a crisis

With increased broadband access and the proliferation of personal computers, those affected by a crisis have instant access to online channels to spread their concerns, fears and anger when something goes wrong.

Communicating the right messages quickly and simply is vital in order to give information or reassure and demonstrate positive action to those affected.

It’s a two way conversation: be part of it

People search for news online. On hearing of a plane crash, a spreading virus or product recall they tend to go online in order to find immediate information. This is the stage at which a well thought through crisis plan will pay dividends. When search results are returned via Google or any other search engine, businesses need to make sure that the website they want people to go to is right at the top of the page.

For example: typing “swine flu” into Google search gives the following results:

In this example, the two top sponsored links are the Government and the NHS. Both websites give out practical, factual information on the virus, its spread, diagnosis and treatment. It is clear that the Government and NHS had planned for this crisis and were ready to roll out their campaign – providing clear information to the general public.

Paid search vs. natural search

We know that it takes time and dedicated digital PR to achieve good results in natural search (via Google or any other search engine) – typically three to six months. Once a crisis happens it is too late to improve natural search results. However, if there is advance knowledge of an issue over a number of weeks, a company can start building bespoke pages and optimise them for the relevant terms that people might search for.

Preparation is the key to dealing with a crisis online. Businesses need to be ready to deliver strategic messaging across all channels open to them: website, blogs, and other social media platforms. Use of Pay Per Click advertising can support existing communications and should be considered as part of an overall crisis strategy.

Will Microsoft devour Yahoo! and challenge the unstoppable Google?

In the world of search, Google has a 65% share of US traffic, Yahoo! with 19.5% and Microsoft trailing behind with only 8% (Guardian). The figures speak for themselves – so how can Microsoft hope to challenge the mighty Google in search?

Re-launching its search with the new Bing engine, designed to rival Google, does not seem to have done the trick, but perhaps that’s not what it was meant to do…

Maybe it was conceived to send other search companies a message.

Only a month after its launch we saw it taking some of the Yahoo! market share (Bloomberg). And it’s no coincidence that this week we see renewed talks between Microsoft and Yahoo! If talks succeed then maybe the resulting search engine can claw back market some of the market share.

Search companies make their money through advertising dollars and so far Bing hasn’t raised Microsoft’s search advertising revenue. In fact, it remains static at the 6% share it controlled before the launch (Eweek). That said, if Microsoft was to gain just one percent of the search share from Google, it would cost Google $220 million in revenue.

Rumour has it that Microsoft is about to announce poor fourth fiscal quarter results, following a drop in sales of personal computers bundled with its technology. Over the past fifteen years Windows operating systems have been the only option for many of us and now Google are starting to challenge that domination with its open source operating system Google Chrome OS.

It’s hardly surprising that Microsoft wants to regain some advertising revenue from Google but will it consume Yahoo! in the process? We’ll have to wait and see.

The science of search: has the Bing revolution begun?

It appears that Microsoft’s newly launched ‘decision engine’ Bing has generated some great interest with an ever increasing number of web users trying it out. Yesterday Microsoft released its own data on the state of Bing just one month after its official launch. It makes for interesting reading…

According to Microsoft’s own data, Bing has seen an 8% growth in unique users to bing.com in its debut month and based on their own polling Microsoft has also seen an increase in the number of people ‘likely to recommend’ Bing to their friends or colleagues.

With its appealing design, easy navigation and claims to be able to deliver more relevant results than its competitors, Bing is certainly creating waves. However, while Bing appears to be making strong in-roads into enhancing the search experience in the US, here in the UK the current Beta version doesn’t enjoy many of the tools that enhance the US search results.

While it is strong on image results – I personally love how you can search by image type – it needs more work to be a real competitor to Google right now. Although this looks set to change, in a recent article featured in MediaWeek Microsoft UK's head of search, Paul Stoddart commented: "We want to make sure Bing in Britain is the best Bing in Britain we could possibly have." One to watch it seems…

While Bing in the UK continues to develop its search capabilities, real time search is evolving rapidly. The uniqueness is its immediacy. Micro blogging sites such as Twitter are fast becoming the buzz in the world of search. Even Bing has begun to include certain key Twitter feeds into its search results. Like wise, following its recent re-design and the introduction of real-time search, FriendFeed now updates continuously as data comes in. You can search for anything on the site and see it instantly. Real-time search is also possible for advanced search options, including search terms that you can save and track through FriendFeed, and on its blog widget.

The significance of real time search is the possibilities it presents. The lack of delay between composition and publication of information means information hungry audiences are provided with up to the minute results which are more relevant than those provided by more traditional search engines such as Google.

In my opinion these are exciting times for the world of search. Competition is healthy, new entrants to the search market will result in new innovations and help regulate the bigger players.

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