It seems that most PR companies know everything about old-school public relations, but very little about PR in the information age. Our recent experience has shown a disturbing lack of knowledge in these types of areas:

• How a search engine works and how a website improves its listing
• The benefits and function of RSS feeds
• The impact of keywords and relevant content on a website
• The constraints to “being found” by search engines and visitors (and how some of these can be avoided)
• The implications of social networking websites like Facebook
• How bookmarking works, for example del.icio.us, and why you might try out Digg

If you feel like you’ve been left behind, the good news is, you haven’t. Most PR companies are in a similar situation. Even BETTER, there’s a world of opportunity to go to the forefront of public relations as it evolves online.

http://www.facebook.com/people/John_Cuthbertson/725432824

It seems I also now have a bunch of “friends”. There’s a few I’ve approached myself (even though I’ve not spoken with them in years (some since high school) and there are some that wanted to be friends with me.

If you’d like to be my friend, just ask!

Now, I’m trying to understand how Facebook can be a benefit to me, rather than waste what little spare time I have. I’m the sort of person who would normally phone or go and see a friend, rather than play text message or email tag.

Scrabulous…and other games

I’ve started a few Scrabulous games with some friends. The dictionary and “allowed words” leave me scratching my head though. I thought Proper Nouns and abbreviations were illegal in Scrabulous. Its an intersting experience waiting on a friend in Kampala (the capital of Uganda) to have their turn. Her internet connection was too slow for her to play and we had to wait until she returned to the UK.

My Friend Network

I’ve had Laura in the office doing some writing for my backpacker walking tours website. Laura is a mid-twenties, English backpacker who’s visiting Sydney on her way to Thailand. She’s a writer “by trade” but is loving the backpacker lifestyle.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Laura_Jones/510768878

Laura has some 300+ Facebook friends, so she’s obviously a more popular person than me. I asked her why she likes Facebook. She said she uses it to keep in touch with her disjointed, dislocated group of backpacking buddies, and it helps her update family back home as to where she is and what she’s doing.

I tried to work out the “social networking” benefit that a business might gain from running a Facebook group. Anyone can create a Group. You just need to have enough friends to invite to the Group in order for the Group to “take off”. I’d joined numerous Groups (but then left many of them within days). It seems that most Groups do nothing. You get Facebook spam (notifications of irrelevant stuff posted by other Group members you don’t know, that has no interest to you), but most of the Groups had a funny name, but that was about it.

My Faceboook Groups

I’ve started a Facebook group of my own:

Tasmanian Entrepreneurs

So far we have 8 Members who are friends I know from Tasmania. I’m from Tasmania myself, and have been in Sydney for a little over two years.

I’m meeting with a fellow expat Tasmanian who’s running a PR company in Sydney to see whether we might be able to get the Group up and running. I think this kind of defeats the purpose of Facebook in that I’m actually going to have to meet with a living, breathing person!

In recent attempts to source additional contract work in the SEO and SEM fields, I’ve been quizzed by all-knowing (but I’m sure, well-meaning) job/contracting agencies as to the recent PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns I’ve managed. I have a Degree in Economics - as if I can’t run a PPC campaign. If it requires a University degree to use Google AdWords, Google is in big trouble - not to mention, me! My response was usually “if I felt a client needed a PPC campaign, I would put one in place”. This doesn’t seem to cut the mustard, so I decided to start a campaign, and document my efforts here.

I have run PPC campaigns previously, as owner of a successful Australian web hosting company. I’ve not been involved with AdWords recently because of an apparent lack of return-on-investment.

Day 0 (Wednesday):

I’ve set up my campaign and used a fairly random set of Keywords (although they were all recommended by Google). My Keywords are:

• digital marketing
• online marketing
• ppc campaign
• self promotion
• website promotion

I’ve decided to only have the ads show on Google search results. When I’ve run AdWords before I found that the Content Network proves very expensive, and very ineffectual. I might try the Content Network sometime in the future.

I’ve set a HUGE daily budget of $2.00. The Max. CPC (cost-per-click) has been set to $0.65 which seems to be the minimum amount I need to bid in order to have my ads. displayed. I didn’t realise I was worth so much! I could edit the CPC for individual keywords but I’ll leave that for another day. All the destination URLs are also set the same to this page (which maybe is how you ended up here). I’ve also (for budgetary reasons) set the ad scheduling to run 2 hours each weekday. It’s turned off over the weekend. Scheduling is as follows:

• Monday - 8am to 10am
• Tuesday - 10am to 12pm
• Wednesday - 12pm to 2pm
• Thursday - 2pm to 4pm
• Friday - 4pm to 6pm

My first ads should be displayed tomorrow. Let’s see how they go.

Day 1 (Thursday):

Fantastic! The ad. was displayed for 2 hours, during which time it was displayed ONCE by Google at Position 11. Any position past number 10 is not actually displayed on the organic search page, so it does make me wonder why it would even be displayed at all. I’m curious as to whether Google has any statistics available regarding how many people actually click through to see “More Sponsored Links…”

I also notice that Google puts LOTS of emphasis on maximising Click-Through-Rate (CTR). That’s a ratio of the number of ad. clicks to the number of ad. impressions. The higher the CTR, the more money Google makes. However, I’m more interested in Conversions (maybe we could call this “Click-Through-Conversions”). Unfortunately, an ad. that works well for me (for aguement’s sake, lets say it converts to a sale everytime it’s clicked on) may have a lousy CTR and consequently can end up getting dropped by AdWords. It seems Google (those bunch of amateurs) and me might be at cross-purposes.

• Are all the buttons and links in places you’d expect to find them i.e. is it like driving a car where all the controls are in “standard” locations?
• Are page links obvious and do they catch your attention (with relevant titles)?
• Can you find your way back to pages you previously visited without starting again from the home page (ideally there would be a “breadcrumb trail”)?
• Is there an (obvious) sitemap?
• Is there an “Intro” screen which you need to (annoyingly) click through in order to reach the main menu?

Graphics and Colour Scheme

• Do the page colours look good on different monitors and at different monitor brightness levels i.e. is it “easy on the eye” or too bright or dull?
• Is the colour of the text in good contrast to the background (optimal readability is normally darker text on a light background).
• Do all the pictures/pages load quickly?
• Are there too many animations/moving images that are annoying/distracting or are they supporting/explaining the message and/or difficult issues, visually, in an effective way?

Readability and Accessibility

• Is the text big enough to read?
• Are there relevant headings that draw your attention when scanning the page?
• Are blocks of text broken up by “bullet points”?

Information and Services

• Is the information on the website relate to what you expect to find there?
• Do the links to information pages relate to the content of that page?
• Is there enough information?
• Is there a good balance of information c.f. “advertising/promotional” messages
• Does the information look current and/or recent?
• Is there an obvious section for “latest news”?
• Does the information presented make you want to revisit/bookmark the website?
• Are there ways to contact the website owner e.g. phone, email (online form), street address?
• After submitting an online enquiry, how long did it take to receive a PERSONALISED (not automated) response?

There are many facts and theories as to how best utilise the internet for the purpose of public relations. The old PR “rules” have changed, and the new rules could leave many of the old guard out in the cold.

Building Links Using Trackbacks

Trackbacks are a link placed on your website that notify the owner of the destination website that you have linked to them. For some reason they apparently benefit your link building effort.

A Great Business Website Hosting Company

A reliable web hosting company is absolutley imperative if you want to succeed online. I no longer have a vested interest in this web host but I used to be a part owner. I know for a fact their service is excellent.