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Sudden attention from Google & Facebook?

March 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

ZGoogle, Facebook, LinkedInIn the past couple of days I have fielded phone calls and emails from Google and Facebook about our Google Place page and Facebook company page. They want to verify information and be certain that we own these digital properties. I dig the attention and admire the diligence.

Why is this so unusual? These are specific inquiries by actual humans who know what they are talking about. I know that Google is out to build up its place pages since they often come up tops in searches, and Facebook is going through major changes with its company pages but this effort must take enormous resources.

Facebook is about to super charge its advertising, that’s what it’s really about for them (a $100 Google ad Words giveaway ended yesterday). And Google is Google – they own the rest of the digital world not owned by Facebook.

LinkedIn, another public company with pressure to grow, grow, grow, the third piece of the air/water/fire triangle of social media, is also heavily promoting user engagement to pump up ad values.

This sudden attention tells me I need to update our Google Places page and Facebook page.

When does this bubble burst?

Filed Under: social media Tagged With: ,

PR Makes Me Sick

May 16, 2011 By 1 Comment

You Make Me Sick from pointlessbanter.net“Find out what the client wants and give it to them” – that was the mantra of my ex-boss (mentor?) who was a particular type of PR animal. We were aggressive publicists unencumbered by analysis of the news we were flogging or the real intentions or motivations of the client. The client, really, was beside the point. The point was that if you wanted to keep your job and move up the ladder you better get your client in the news.

Burson’s efforts to discredit Google on behalf of Facebook are not shocking. Bigger PR firms represent countries that kill their own people (Libya) and companies that are complicit in oppression and even murder (Blackwater).  Burson’s sudden attack of morality and conscience in repudiating its actions really makes me sick.

They do not say what their policies on transparency are, or how they would change in the future. A vague ‘PR statement’ is not what is needed here. Who does Burson’s PR? Aren’t they supposed to be specialists in ‘reputation management’? Well, their reputation right now is in the toilet. I would like to hear a full-throated, unencumbered apology and a line-by-line accounting of how they intend to change. Isn’t that what you counsel a client to do? Sometimes, PR makes me sick.

See Sleazy PR Firm Throws Scummy Facebook Under the Sordid Bus in TechCrunch.

Now that Facebook has come forward, we can confirm that we undertook an assignment for that client.

The client requested that its name be withheld on the grounds that it was merely asking to bring publicly available information to light and such information could then be independently and easily replicated by any media.  Any information brought to media attention raised fair questions, was in the public domain, and was in any event for the media to verify through independent sources.

Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined. When talking to the media, we need to adhere to strict standards of transparency about clients, and this incident underscores the absolute importance of that principle. Burson Marsteller Statement

Filed Under: News, PR Agency, PR Practices Tagged With: , ,

I Am #1 Sidewiki Comment on Twitter Home Page!

October 15, 2009 By 2 Comments

The Sidewiki comments for Twitter, comment by Mark Rose, PRBlogNewsIt could change at any moment. I could drop to the bottom or be eliminated by a vindictive Google algorithm or maybe I’m hallucinating … but as of this moment, I have the #1 Sidewiki comment on “the entire site” of Twitter, ahead of the venerable Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land, and the mega-blog, Tech Crunch.  How did this happen? Nobody knows. What does it mean? Probably nothing.

We are crazed by Sidewiki since it launched Sept. 30 because Google has essentially “wrapped” the web with virgin space to add content. We’re pioneering new content turf here – we can have impact, influence, see our name immediately without the bothersome obstructions of search mechanisms. Google mysteriously ‘ranks’ these comments and stores them in your Google profile.

I say ‘mysteriously’ because several Sidewiki comments I posted to The New York Times and other sites have disappeared althogether. BusinessWire has taken pre-emptive action by inserting its own Sidewiki comment that is identified as “Page Owner.”

It’s not quite Afghanistan-Pakistan or Yankees-Angels but Google Sidewiki represents such a disruptive force to the web that PR people, SEO mavens, developers,  and advertisers are at odds as to what it means.  So far, generally across the web, comments have been sparse and respectful although we don’t know how many Sidewiki comments Google is deleting or archiving.

That’s the point here – Google is calling the shots, we’re scratching our heads and playing catch-up. #1 today, sayonara tomorrow.

Related: Big Pharma and Google Sidewiki: A Sink or Swim Situation? – 10/15/2009 AdvertisingAge

Filed Under: News, social media Tagged With: ,

Google Sidewiki is PR Game Changer

October 1, 2009 By 12 Comments

The gig is up.  Any client who thought they could escape social media is now in it, whether they like it or not. Google Sidewiki, launched a couple of days ago, is a PR game changer – it exemplifies, perhaps more than any other application, how social media has infiltrated all communication and can undermine any PR strategy that does not consider social networks.

Here’s how Google spins it: What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor, had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through? In other words – what if Google can turn everybody into a content producer and then rank and control all that content?

Google SidewikiNow they can, and they will.It means that on this blog page you, or anyone with an easily installed Google Sidewiki app, can write notes that are then visible to anybody else. The general public – adversaries, friends, competitors, your nephew - can enhance your web page without your consent or knowledge.

This is what it looks like (left). In a way, every web page is now a blog, with unmoderated comments open to everyone.

Google will somehow rate these Sidewiki comments, through one of their mysterious algorithms, and present the most relevant first. You Sidewiki comments are then stored in your Google profile.  Sidewiki comments can be Tweeted, emailed, Facebooked.

So, my buried Google Sidewiki comment “Mark Rose is a big fat idiot,” follows this blog forever, and can be blasted out through other channels. Only Google could come up with something this insidious and mind blowing. Google Sidewiki is ready for Internet Explorer and Firefox, soon for Google Chrome. Download Google toolbar with Sidewiki.

What does this mean for public relations?

It means that all clients are now IN social media, whether they know it or not. Google is further connecting social media channels and controlling major social networks, such as Blogger and YouTube.  This is further proof, if we needed any, that a PR strategy that does not include social media has a huge hole in it.

Three questions to ask:

  1. What’s your social media PR strategy?
  2. What’s your Wiki strategy (Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Google Sidewiki)?
  3. What is your social media news creation and delivery mechanism?

These can seem like esoteric questions but just asking them moves you in the right direction. The primary function of PR is no longer “How do I get the media to cover me?” It’s now “How do we impact our audience through our own media?” Google Sidewiki further re-defines media, when anybody can ‘report’ their opinions and facts on any web page, or words, phrases, or sections of a web page. What makes this frightening from a PR perspective is that all this content is subject to Google’s ever-changing algorithms. It makes Google the most-powerful social media company out there.

From Google: In developing Sidewiki, we wanted to make sure that you’ll see the most relevant entries first. We worked hard from the beginning to figure out which ones should appear on top and how to best order them. So instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed.

Filed Under: News, social media Tagged With: , , ,