Personally, I like the informal tone of the message and I have absolutely no doubt that the alarms are literally “blaring in the basement” right now.  Also, the glitch definitely won’t have me looking for a new e-mail provider anytime soon.

Technologies always have shortcomings regardless of whether we are talking about a global brand used by millions or a small shop in the Silicon Valley that services 10 clients.  As much effort as we all put into QA testing, monitoring, etc. there are always going to be circumstances that lead to unforeseen errors.

During these times it is always a good idea to remind ourselves that technologies are imperfect and head to the water cooler (or soda fountain) for a drink.

I have a great deal of respect for both SHIFT and Radian6, and think they are both doing some great things in the social media space so I was excited when I was saw their news release yesterday announcing that SHIFT had chosen Radian6 as their social media monitoring platform. Of course, I was even more excited to see that they used PRWeb to make their announcement.

In addition to the news, the release itself is (as you can imagine) a really great example of how a news release can be structured on PRWeb: It contains multimedia elements like images and video; contains links to video quotes; contains targeted keywords in key areas of the release; and is simply well written.

Here is Todd discussing the news:

]]> http://www.newinfluencer.com/social-media/shift-communications-and-radian6s-press-release-on-prweb/feed/ http://www.newinfluencer.com/online-distribution/roi-of-online-press-releases/ http://www.newinfluencer.com/online-distribution/roi-of-online-press-releases/#comments Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:59:35 +0000 Jiyan http://www.newinfluencer.com/uncategorized/roi-of-online-press-releases/ We are currently sponsoring a study being conducted by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) exploring the ROI (return on investment) of online press releases. Here are some key facts associated with the study:

• The research team involves SNCR Fellows including Shel Holtz and Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu;
• The research methodology will be oriented around interviews, a survey, and a number of case studies;
• The underlying research question is about the changing role of public relations; and the blurring lines between public relations and marketing

Read the official SNCR press release and help us by taking a few minutes to fill out the survey.

1. DoD develops ARPANET, the first operational packet switching network.
2. Several networks merge and TCP/IP become the approved protocol of ARPANET.
3. ISPs start springing up along with Usenet, e-mail, other peer-to-peer and peer-to-many apps.
4. Hypertext springs up and we see the World Wide Web emerging along with Web publishing.
5. First wave of content inundation hits us and content search-and-retrieval becomes an issue.
6. Google comes and solves the search-and-retrieval issue.
7. A new generation of brands emerge from the dotcom crash that leverage power of collaborative networks (eBay, Amazon, etc.)
8. Web publishing technologies (blogging) and collaborative networking come to the masses
9. Convergence of various mediums onto online platform
10. Second wave of content inundation hits us
11. Personalization of the Web

Note - if I’m missing anything big please let me know…

Initially, there were two basic functions of the Web. Maria Bakardjieva offers the consumption model and the community model. The consumption model is based in an origin of search and retrieval of data; while the community model, has roots in the earliest stages of network development when communication was the envisioned application. It is an imperfect dichotomy but useful nevertheless.

The first wave of content inundation was one of consumption. It was created by the introduction of hypertext and emergence of the World Wide Web. With many of the barriers to entry for publishers dropped on the WWW, anyone could become a content publisher if they had a computer, Internet access, and a certain degree of technical competence.

The consequent problem was one of information search-and-retrieval in this model because there was a lot of data but no singular, efficient way to organize and retrieve that data…

The question of how organize and retrieve Web data was answered through a number of methods including creation of directories (DMOZ, Yahoo!) and of course, development of Web search engines.

Search engines sorted data in usable ways and provided people with a filter through which they could retrieve the content they were interested in amidst the massive amount of data on the Web. Internet usage normalized (relatively speaking) for a few years because people could more or less find the information they were looking for.

You could say that search engines solved the issue of consumption of media online.

Initially, Web publishing was restricted to those who are technically savvy (people who can learn HTML, CSS, etc.). The creation of content in a consumption paradigm therefore was more or less restricted and search engines were scalable regardless.

Community-oriented content development was more or less restricted to peer-to-peer via e-mail, or many-to-many through closed networks like Bulletin Board Systems.

A few factors have come together to create a situation where the traditional search engine model is no longer adequate as a singular solution to content inundation:

1. The explosion of community-driven content - Web publishing utilities have become easier to use and more easily accessible. These trends have created the foundation for the blog revolution / Web 2.0 / social media, etc.
2. Integration of multimedia -At the same time, increasing proliferation of high-bandwidth Internet and evolving compression technologies have facilitated the integration of more multimedia content onto the Web. The search engine solution is good for text-based content but imperfect as a multimedia solution.

These two trends have created a second tidal wave of information that overwhelms us on a daily basis.

About five years ago I would have a manageable routine each day: check e-mail, check a few online newspapers and publications, participate in a bulletin board, use search engines to find information.

Now, every day I open up Outlook and have hundreds of e-mails and blog postings pour in; see comments in MySpace and Facebook; watch video highlights from the previous night’s games; watch the news; read comments left on my own blog; etc.

There is a second wave of content inundation hitting us right now and people are simply becoming overwhelmed once again, which creates a new question.

The group of people who answer this new question will become incredibly rich.

I instinctively feel that the answer to this new question is evident in the following innovations:

1. Facebook’s Personalized Newsfeed - Facebook aggregates all of the individual changes in your social network into one newsfeed that is the first thing you see when you log-in, so at a glance you can quickly see what is new in your social network.
2. Match.com Recommendations - Dating sites like Match.com look at your personal profile and your communications patterns, and then provide suggestions based on those data points.
3. Amazon.com ‘Recommended for You’ - Looks at your purchasing patterns and offers tailored suggestions for items you might want to purchase.
4. LinkedIn ‘People You May Know’ - Offers people who you should connect with based on some data points (I don’t know what they are).
5. iGoogle / My Yahoo / Netvibes - These are literally personalized portals that you can use to import RSS feeds, manage content, access different data points…

The underlying trend between all these features is that they are all tailored to help the everyday user cope with the second wave of content inundation through some sort of data mining or aggregation and organization of personalized content.

The next big answer will involve more intelligent approaches to community-driven communications such as a new algorithm for determining visibility in community-driven communications, aimed at creating a new level of filtration that helps us prioritize what is truly important and worthy of our time and effort online; it will also help balance the various mediums that are becoming increasingly convergent online.

The next big answer will be about once again, helping the everyday user emerge from their current schizophrenic state into one that is more grounded - allowing them to again focus on using the Internet instead of vice-versa.

The software itself is pretty basic - it basically provides an interface that allows you to upload a video file, add data that will be passed on to the video sharing site, and then submit the file to a number of video sharing sites. It isn’t fundamentally different than a list of links to major video sharing sites except you save time by only uploading the video once (whether that is worth $100 per month is questionable in my mind).

The concept is not really that radical actually. SEO software (like Web Position Gold) does the same thing with Web sites and Web search engines, and more recently I’ve seen a number of services that aggregate links and pass data to social bookmark sites like Social Poster.

Traffic Geyser simply saves you a bit of time adding video to video sharing sites, and if I were in the online video business I might even consider buying their software - if it were $20 for a lifetime license (as opposed to the ridiculous price tag of $100 per month).

What I found to be a bit snake-oilish was the claim on their Web site that “Pay Per Click isn’t the answer.” They show a few case studies where high performing videos rank #1 in Google for targeted keywords.

In my experience I haven’t seen a lot of online businesses make a living out of selling high results in Google and proclaiming that customers didn’t need to purchase Google ads. In fact, that is tantamount to writing an e-mail to Google asking them to blacklist you.

That being said, a few things I want to address here.

1. Videos can perform well in search - if they have backlinks

Traffic Geyser is not lying when they say that pages in video sharing sites can perform well in Google’s organic search. Video sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video are going to be interwoven with domains that have a lot of PageRank to pass around. In fact, if you run a query for “PRWeb in Plain English” in Google you will see that the YouTube results rank #1 and #2.

Now here is the catch - the high performance of these videos is primarily the result of the links pointing to the URL hosting the videos. We launched these videos as part of a broader marketing campaign that involved distribution of PRWeb press releases with the embedded video and posting of the video to a number of blogs.

Over time, the links pointing to the video page made that page a good candidate for a top result in Google. That is something that Traffic Geyser neglects to tell you however - that you can put your content out there, but someone has to care enough to link to it if you want long term results, which leads me to my next point.

2. Videos can perform well in search - if they have good, relevant content

Traffic Geyser sells their $100 per month subscription with royalty-free images and a “slideshow creator” that allow you to produce “video without a camera.” Basically, they want to give people the tools to come up with anything that can be uploaded into video sharing sites.

If content doesn’t matter to you, your customers, or your brand, then this approach will probably work. Otherwise, you may want to think a little more carefully before you start driving people to your content.

When we wanted to create our video content, we went out and hired Common Craft, one of the most talented production teams out there (who have also done video work for a little company called Google). We wanted to make sure that the thousands of people who were going to see our video, left with a good impression of our brand and a desire to enter into a long-term relationship with us.

That being said - we didn’t spend a fortune on the production budget and we were the first client that contracted them to make a video. We found them because they were creating some great independent materials on social media technologies. One idea? Go out onto video sharing sites and see who is creating great video content in your space.

At the end of the day, you might be able to get a top result for a short amount of time but if the traffic that is flowing through search engines to your content sees shoddy craftsmanship - what is that going to tell them about your brand or product and more importantly, what do you think they are likely to do? Would your typical consumer entrust their business to a company when their only impression of that company was a video that looked like it was made by a fifth grader in two hours?

If you care about your brand or your company, you may want to consider what it is you are putting out there for public consumption. Additionally, good video content is going to get you more back links and better placement in search over the long haul.

3. You don’t need to upload your video to 25 different video sharing sites

On principle, I’m not crazy about software that goes and pushes content to a number of different social media sites with no regard for the etiquette of those sites. In practice, it simply isn’t effective. You are better off focusing on one or two of the top video sharing sites than getting your video onto 15 or 20 different ones.

Again, over the long haul one of your goals is to make your video on YouTube perform well. If you have your video spread out over 15 or 20 sites, then your links are also going to be spread out. Would you rather have one YouTube video with 100 back-links or 20 videos dispersed with 5 back-links each? Let me put this another way - would you rather have a page 1 result in Google or dominate pages 5-6?

4. You’re better off not spamming video sharing sites or pissing off Google

I’ve sort of alluded to this already, but I’m really not crazy about the idea of blasting off some crap content to a bunch of video sharing sites on principal alone. The idea behind these video sharing sites is that the infrastructure is present to create a two-way flow of communication between you and the people you are interested in connecting with. The video is the vessel that carries your message to your intended audience but it isn’t just a one-way message because people can comment on your YouTube video, add it to their blogs, and even write directly back to you - in text and with video submissions! You can also build out your network in video sharing sites and over time, people will subscribe to your channel and be immediately notified when you upload new videos.

Participating in social media can be a way of creating real connections with customers, stakeholders, etc. when done correctly. When abused, it normally doesn’t end well for the perpetrator.

At any rate, my overall perception of Traffic Geyser is that some guys in San Diego cobbled together some software and are selling it for $100 per month and going on a marketing blitzkrieg, claiming top results in Google. It is snake oil - the latest craze and it will be antiquated in the next six months leaving Traffic Geyser customers feeling disappointed and the Traffic Geyser owners feeling happy because they just made millions of dollars by teaching people how to make terrible video content and spam the Internet.

Remember - all those social media sites are free to use. When approached properly they can perform even perform well in search. Just make sure that when people come to your content, there is something for them to see.

My advice - if you have $1200 to spare (the cost of Traffic Geyser over 12 months) use the money and buy a camera or take a class and learn how to build your own great piece of video content. It isn’t that hard. Alternatively, think about hiring out a local production firm or even a local freelancer - and upload your video to the top two or three video sharing sites yourself.

You can also announce it using embedded video in a PRWeb press release

Let me start out by saying this: Our ultimate goal is to provide top-notch service and ensure our customer’s news releases get distributed as far and widely as possible.

Now that I’ve put that out there, I’ll go into a more in-depth explanation of how this happens and what it means for our editorial guidelines.

Currently, we are at a point where newswires like PRWeb are multi-faceted and aim to accomplish a number of things. Some of the major goals of press releases these days include:

1. Communicate to journalists and media outlets (AP, media databases);
2. Communicate to consumers (through places like Google and Yahoo!);
3. SEO / drive Web site traffic;
4. Provide content for journalists and other influencers;

Different newswire services place emphasis on accomplishing different goals but I don’t want to dwell on the competitive differences. One of our main focuses at PRWeb is on direct-to-consumer communications and one of the ways this happens is by getting our customer’s news releases to other high traffic news sites like Google and Yahoo! News.

Google has one set of recommendations for what they will or will not index. Yahoo! has another set of guidelines, and so on and so forth. Our editorial standards therefore have to strike a balance between providing our customers with the flexibility to use their creativity and talent in writing press releases; and making sure that they fit into the guidelines of what our partners recommend so we can deliver on our commitment to provide them with widespread distribution.

In addition, we also need to meet the needs and standards of bloggers, journalists and other subscribers who receive the release directly via RSS, e-mail, Associated Press feed, etc. We are constantly engaged with these groups to find out how they want their news and information delivered and then tweaking our editorial standards accordingly.

Now, as PR and Marketing people know – we are in a fast moving space. A new breed of influencers are becoming prominent online, the mainstream media is evolving, audience habits are shifting, etc. So everyone who works in this space – from PR people to newswires – have to evolve accordingly. So when we talk about our editorial guidelines, we are talking about an evolving set of standards that are designed to meet a constantly changing environment.

We have been listening to the recent conversations and understand the growing need on the part of PR professionals to use a more informal voice in their press releases. We have weighed these needs against the impact on news release distribution and in this situation, have decided to loosen the restrictions and provide writers with the ability to publish more informally toned content.

At the end of the day it’s our commitment to place our customer’s interests first and foremost and to help get their news releases distributed as broadly as possible. Our editorial standards are here to support this commitment.

To touch on some of the more specific points raised:

Lists or bullets
According to Google’s Tips for Successful Crawling, “If the article body appears to consist of isolated sentences not grouped together into paragraphs, we won’t be able to crawl it. Try formatting your articles into text paragraphs of a few sentences each.” Several of our news releases that have been primarily composed of bullet lists have not gotten indexed in Google News. This is an ongoing challenge that we (and others) are working on. Ultimately we recommend not using bullet lists if you want to get into Google News but it will be up to you to decide.

Use of first or second person
Traditionally we have attempted to place limitations on the use of first or second person to ensure greater objectivity and increased media/journalist pick-up based on our research into how to most effectively reach the media. Clearly, blogging and other forms of online production are having an impact on the tone of news and we are in the process of evolving our standards accordingly.

Paying more to fix a release
We have never told customers they have to pay more to fix a press release that they have submitted.

Role of editors
Our editors are not sales representatives and do not work on commission. They are focused on reviewing news releases and providing customer service.

AP / Journalistic perspective on PRWeb
We have a partnership with the Associated Press to distribute press releases directly to leading media outlets within the AP network via the AP Datafeatures service. Any claims that we (or any other newswires) are “release spam” is false. In addition to the AP, we have had over thirty thousands journalists opt-in to receive our news releases and most journalists regularly use the major newswires as a top resource.

Volume of reads
It has been suggested that we falsely claim that an average press release is read by 100,000+ people. Many of our press release receive this many “impressions” (times the news release title appears in various places online we can track) but if you check your analytics, you will see that the actual reads (times someone clicks-through to access the full content of the release) of the news release is a fraction of this number.

Click thumbnail to view a screen shot of our analytics

Traffic of major newswire sites
It has been suggested that the traffic on our Web site and the Web sites for the other major newswire services has plummeted over the past two years. If you look at the picture over a broader time span (the graph is over the past five years) you will see that this “decline” is part of a much larger trend that has impacted more than just newswire sites. For instance, you can see from the following graph it has also impacted sites like Washingtonpost.com.

Shifts in search engine algorithms are accountable for a great deal of the shifting traffic patterns you see. We are constantly examining these trends and making enhancements to ensure that we continue to be a tier-1 Web site. Every month, we continue to get millions of visitors to our Web site, reading our customer’s news releases and that hasn’t changed and it won’t.

At any rate, I hope this has provided a useful resource for some of you and has clarified some of the points that have been raised. We consider the blog comments/critiques on our editorial services to be a valuable source of input and we look forward to continuing the conversation with you guys. Additionally, if there are any issues with our editorial standards we are always happy to field your concerns via our help desk.

I felt like the discussion brought up some extremely important issues and am very satisfied with the job we did. I do however wish we had more time to address the hundreds of questions that were flooding in from participants. We are already talking about doing some sort of follow-up that would be more of a ‘how-to’ oriented webinar that would address many of the questions we received during the webinar.

If anyone is interested in a recap. of the webinar, Des Walsh’s blog does a very good job outlining the main points discussed.

One point of note is that Brian mentioned that the screen shot of the social media release we showed during the discussion may not have been the best example of an SMR, however I do want to mention that the screen shot was not representative of the actual release - it ended up cropping out most of the key elements and just showed the text. That was a mistake on our part however and the full social media release is available on PRWeb.

During the webinar we asked attendees to vote on which release they preferred - the traditional press release or the social media release. Our (very non-scientific) poll revealed that 64% of our attendees compared the social media version compared to 36% for the traditional version. Granted, all these guys were spending 1.5 hours on a Tuesday listening to people talk about the social media release so this probably wasn’t the most unbiased sample in the world but I still found it interesting.

Another metric that might interest some people: I went and looked at the Web analytics and found that the average time on page for the social media release was 3:17 compared to 1:27 for the traditional press release.

More Links:

• Gaukrodger’s review of the discussion

Fast-forward a couple of weeks and Vocus, Inc. and the Society for New Communications Research are gearing up for a webinar that will explore the social media release.  The discussion will include Thom and Chris, as well as Brian Solis and Monika Maeckle from Business Wire.

We are going to be discussing a number of questions, including:

• What is the social media release (SMR) and who is it for?
• Is the SMR a replacement for a traditional press release or a supplement?
• What are some challenges faced with the SMR?
• What should be the role of newswires with regard to the SMR?
• What do you see down the road for the SMR?

I’m going to be moderating the webinar and am eagerly anticipating the flurry of ideas and opinions that are going to come from this expert panel.

To publicize the webinar and help familiarize those new to the SMR with its format, we have issued both a traditional press release as well as a social media release to announce the event.

Earlier today I read that Marketwire was unveiling their new product called ‘Social Media 2.0’, which they are claiming is the “Industry’s Most Authentic Social Media Product.” This new release has an embedded YouTube video, social bookmarking tags, Technorati tags and trackbacks.

I must admit that looking at it made me ooh and ahh - it was quite the innovative news release.

Then again, I felt the same way when PRWeb came up with this stuff years ago.

Not that I have anything against pushing the envelop - rather, what I found curious was the claim that Social Media 2.0 is the “most authentic social media product.”

According to Merriam-Webster, authentic is defined as “not false or imitation.” I am not going to make the claim that their product is false. I’m also not going to go into depth discussing how most of these features imitate things that PRWeb and others have already done.

Rather, I’m going to focus on their claim within the broader framework of social media.

If you were to ask ten different so-called social media experts to define social media, you would get ten varying responses.

We are talking about a movement that has been pushed forward by a global community of academics, innovators, industry professionals - that is still relatively undefined and amorphous.  It is however a collaborative movement, and I think it is wrong for anyone to claim ownership over it. 

I suppose on some broad level we can make certain claims about social media - I think many would agree that we are talking about a shifting media landscape where the role of passive media consumer is quickly becoming antiquated. Social media has empowered many individuals to have a voice amongst the din of big business - that is why I have always considered PRWeb to be a social media product - because we help individuals and smaller organizations speak with a megaphone.

Social media is about putting the social back in the media.

This product is simply riding the Web 2.0 hype wave – it almost seems like they have created a list of all the buzz words and trendy brands (many of which are already on the way out) and found ways of adding them into a template.

In the newswire industry, I do not believe that places like Technorati or StumbleUpon or just distribution points to be injected with content. They are places where conversations about great stories happen.

To help our customers better leverage social media, we help them create great stories through text, images and video. Our tool will carry their story throughout the Internet to people who are interested in reading about it.

We also make sure that the release contains all the necessary content (images, file attachments, podcasts) for bloggers or journalists who are interested in turning the news release into a story.

Finally, we make sure that the news release becomes an engine to drive traffic and links back to the customer’s Web site.

For me, the most telling aspect of the Marketwire social media release was when I clicked on the Digg and Technorati links that opened up a search for the news release in those Web sites. There was some interesting content but no reference to the news release itself. The social media release had struck out in the spaces it claims to impact.

Maybe when Social Media 3.0 is ready to go publish, PRWeb should be used to announce it.

I know there are a lot of conceptual shortcomings with the hype cycle but I thought it would prove a useful tool for helping map out the trajectories of where these different forms are headed. Quick note - I’ve used some of the top brands in each of the forms to represent the form as whole.

Social Media Trajectories in ‘08

Social Bookmarking in 2008

Of all the forms of social media, I believe social bookmarking is ready to take the hardest fall. My feeling is it is becoming increasingly infiltrated by spammers and marketers. Also, more popular social networking sites like Facebook are beginning to include social bookmarking functions that may compel some former social bookmark users to shift. With no viable revenue stream, I believe many social bookmark sites will either go under during 2008 or struggle to stay afloat while finding new methods for dealing with the influx of junk coming into their domains.

MMORPGs (Second Life) in 2008

I’m actually more focused on Second Life here than on other MMORPGs. Although there is a decent chance that Second Life will simply die and go away, I am going to defy popular logic and say that it will actually crawl out of the trough of disillusionment as the technology gets better, integration with the regular Web increases, and a more realist perspective on its potential facilitates more niche, targeted applications. It is clearly not the ‘Second Life’ that it proclaims to be, but maybe it can be a third or fourth life.

Social Networking in 2008

On a broad scale, people will continue to shift from the over-commodified and under-innovated MySpace to the ever-growing Facebook. The absolute volume of social network users will seem like it is increasing substantially but it will simply be because more user accounts are being opened in Facebook from people who already have user accounts in MySpace. There will however be incremental growth from vertical social networks, with LinkedIn leading the way.

Blogging

Four years after being dubbed the ‘word of the year’, blogging will start to emerge onto the plateau of productivity. The wave of experimental bloggers who flame out within 12-months is probably over and what is left are those who are going to have a shelf-live of over 12-months. Top-tier bloggers will continue to more closely resemble their mainstream counterparts (as their mainstream counterparts begin to more closely resemble top-tier blogs). The sustainability of long-tail blogging will be supported by AdSense and other ad networks. From the corporate perspective, it will dawn on more PR departments that spamming bloggers isn’t necessarily the best way to engage in blogger relations.

Video Sharing Sites in 2008

YouTube will continue to blend with traditional – YouTube will continue its move into the mainstream as user-generated content will become more readily available in mass media technologies like cable and television. Similar to the reciprocal impact of blogging on mainstream media, user-generated video will continue to impact both production and consumption of traditional video media and we will see increased similarities as the two mediums continue to blend.

On a final note, I know many people are predicting that 2008 will be the year when mobile really explodes. I predict that mobile will continue to grow. With continued innovation and domestication of hand-held and mobile devices, a new generation of social media forms and services will start to move into the mainstream as early adopters show us cool things and help brands like twitter ascend the peak of inflated expectations.