A new definition for SEO.

There is a lot of debate about the changing nature of SEO and PR. As I have suggested in earlier blogs, I think this is because there is one space that people approach with their own skill sets. 

So, I'm just putting this out there. 

Here is the CIPR definition of PR: 

Public relations is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.

Now replace PR with SEO:

SEO is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

SEO is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.

Let me know what you think. 

Three things I've learnt about marketing agencies.

All my career I have helped agencies build their brands and grow. I thought it would be worthwhile sharing the three key lessons I’ve learnt over the years.

1. Don’t try and be all things to all people. Most agencies, certainly in the regions, work across a broad range of sectors and provide a mix of services.This usually leads to talk about the value of the generalist or the creation of a seemingly endless stream of specialist offerings, often across a small team. A strong reputation is based on a truth, an expertise that is evident in everything you do. This can drive a wider offer, but no-one was ever asked to deliver a keynote speech on ‘marketing stuff’.

2. Act like the agency you want to be. On a very simple level, don’t shout about every little piece of work you do, position your brand in the market by demonstrating you work with prospective clients peers.

3. Word of mouth shouldn’t be a passive lead generation channel. If you tell me that 80 per cent of your business comes through recommendation, you should have a structured programme in place to generate referrals. If you have happy clients, they won’t mind referring you, but recognise they may need a prompt.

What is the future for regional business journalism?

In a world of 24 hour rolling news where stories are broken on Twitter, reported, shared and re-reported before you go to bed, it is easy to be cynical about the role of local business reporting in today’s world.

This week the Manchester Evening News announced it would stop all business reporting, once considered core to the title’s success. The wisdom of this move will be seen over the coming months. But, before you resign the local paper to the annals of history, take a minute to think about the importance of local reporting.

Local reporting gives local businesses a platform to reach out to their markets. It often champions the issues of readers and provides a valuable conduit to the national media, as stories are picked up and reported.

Where will businesses outside the FTSE 100 and the M25 have a voice when local papers are gone? National media continue to pull back on their regional resource and even the BBC is looking at a more centralised delivery of news.

Marketing dogma would suggest that every business is able to become a self-publishing, content marketing engine that attracts an engaged audience to serve as a pool of prospective customers. It doesn’t happen like that in the real world. Small businesses often lack the resources to plan and sustain a content led digital campaign.

There is no easy solution to this problem. Companies have shifted spend to digital platforms and many traditional media brands have failed to commercialise their digital offers work. There are notable exceptions, such as thebusinessdesk.com, which has grown through tough times.

Northcliffe recently launched its Local World offer, with the stated intent to ‘reinvigorate local media’. It will be interesting to see if the new chief executive, Steve Auckland, can repeat the success he enjoyed at Metro.

Local daily and weekly media titles have levels of brand awareness and passive loyalty that most start-ups envy. Most people would hate to see their local paper go but haven’t bought one in years or, more importantly, spent any advertising  budget. The challenge must be to engage a lapsed audience with the right content on a range of media.

I don’t have the magic bullet for local media, if I did I would sell it to Steve Auckland, but we can only hope that local media brands find a commercial model that allows them to maintain the high quality journalism required to build an audience.

Don't forget the lessons of the past

When you can sit on your sofa watching a live stream of an Austrian guy dive from space, on your phone, it is easy to see why many would think the lessons of the past are irrelevant. 

Living in the North of England the subject of economic regeneration is always a hot topic. Where will the growth and jobs come from? The strategy changes with fluctuating budgets and political dogma, but there is a constant belief in 'build it and they will come'. You can see this belief played out in high speed rail, technology parks or incubator hubs. 

I was a fairly good history student because my lecturer always told me I had empathy. My empathy with the past was built on a belief that the same fears and hopes that drive people today, drove people 300 years ago. 

If you look back to the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand. Artists depended totally on patrons while the patrons needed money to sustain geniuses. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia and Europe. 

Today 'money' is angel investors and private equity and 'art' is creativity. If we can create an environment that encourages private money to take a risk on a great idea, big things can happen. We are still looking to expand trade with Europe and Asia. The highest value thing we can export? Ideas. 

Take away the barriers to lending in new ideas and investors desire to back the next big thing and make a pile of money will look after the rest. The UK, the North, Leeds, are awash with big ideas, some will work and some won't. 

Where is the UK's Facebook or Amazon? Probably sat in Starbucks, using the free wifi to write a business plan and wondering where the hell the money will come from.  

3 media relations tips

I thought I would share three tips from a panel event I spoke at last week. We covered a lot of ground in an hour and the debate was lively with lots of PR people clearly challenged by communicating the shifting media sands to their boards. 

We all accept that the media is changing and as PR people we have to react to that change. With this in mind, here are three tips for digital PR: 

1. The newsroom has shifted from thinking in terms of headlines to thinking about interaction. What will generate the most debate or shares is a key consideration for news selection. This should shape the content from any PRO. 

2. Think in multi-media. This goes beyond video news releases or great pictures. A French doctor was interviewed on the Today programme last week because of she added 100 female scientists to Wikipedia. How we use content can make a story. 

3. News is real time and churnlism is here to stay. It is not good enough to simply fire out a press release and wait for the coverage. Stories can be built over time, recycled, comments used to inform strategy. Every story should be approached as a game of chess and carefully planned. Sometimes it is worth thinking laterally about your media selection. Trade magazines may give your story the weight it needs to appeal to national or international press. Broadcast news will often shape their running order around trending topics. Monitor and react to the arc of your story. 

Interesting times. 

Coke's great content journey

Coke recently outlined a shift in focus from decades of great ads to a focus on compelling content. They outline the strategy here: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LerdMmWjU_E

and here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiwIq-8GWA8

A nice execution of the strategy can be seen here: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh2v1XfQ-SE&feature=player_embedded#!

If find a clearer explanation of where marketing is at right now, please let me know.  

Rappers get it.

Corporate and brand communications hasn't kept pace with technology.It is still grounded in positioning statements, straplines and brand promises.

People are savvy to it and want to engage, partner and be part of a brand. They want to like the page, follow the twitter feed and wear the t-shirt.

Rappers get it. They leveraged their brands across multi media years before anyone mentioned content strategy. They understand that people love what they do and when people love what you do they want to make it a part of their lives. Then it is simply a matter of creating conversations. That could be a tour or getting your new album played on Mars.

It gets harder for business. One bloke doesn't turn to another in the pub and compliment him on his lack of dandruff. It can be done. It just needs a bit a creativity and a some bloody mindedness at the board table.