Philip Sheldrake

Category: Public Relations (page 12 of 17)

14 July 2010 / 3 Comments

SEO changing up its game… it’s called PR

My recent post "Where's your brain at? Where's your consultancy at?" was prompted by a fascinating discussion at the CIPR Social Summer session on the 1st July at which we debated aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO) and the PR profession's paralysing hesitancy to grasp the SEO nettle.

Well personally I'm excited not paralysed, and I keep a beady eye on great information sources such as SEOmoz and Search Engine Watch, and I'm posting today to highlight a couple of posts I've just found.

seomoz logoRand Fishkin, SEOmoz's CEO, has written a super perspective that should be read by everyone interested in the ebb and flow of the SEO world, particularly as it relates to activity one might consider to be in the PR domain. "The Death and Rebirth of Editorial Citation on the Web" identifies three epoques to date of web linking activity: Read more

14 July 2010 / 0 Comments

An interview with Brian Solis

Brian Solis at Affiliate Summit East 2009
Image by affiliatesummit via Flickr

I interviewed Brian Solis for the CIPR's website recently. Brian is one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist and futurist, Solis helps practitioners get to grips with the effects of emerging media on marketing, communications and publishing.

His perspectives are well worth a listen:

Brian Solis interview 20th June 2010

One quote I'd pick out is this:

PR used to be right there at the top, but we slipped into publicity and media relations and spin, and forgot the opportunity to steer and shape perception, just such an opportunity afforded by participation and engagement in social media.

Brian's conclusion on this issue are optimistic however. When I asked him if this was a renaissance moment for PR, he basically claimed it to be a renaissance moment for every discipline in the "socialisation" (or is that with a "z"?) of business.

2 July 2010 / 1 Comment

Where's your brain at? Where's your consultancy at?

Do you 'do' search engine optimisation? If so, it seems you are most probably a SEO consultant because public relations consultants who 'get' SEO appear to be very thin on the ground. Not only that, but some argue that's how it should be.

SEO%2C%20search%20engine%20optimisation%2C%20left%20brain%2C%20right%20brain%2C%20PR

Nixon McInnes’ managing director Will McInnes, ever the polemicist perhaps, asserted during yesterday evening's conversation on SEO that to fuse the two disciplines would have to entail some kind of genetic engineering along the lines of a pig-monkey hybrid. Read more

8 June 2010 / 0 Comments

Making sense of social analytics

This is my article as it was published in New Media Age yesterday:

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations Social Media Panel launched a Measurement Group last month to help practitioners navigate what is a rapidly developing and increasingly confusing area, writes Philip Sheldrake.

As I commented in the Social Web Analytics eBook in 2008:

If you could go back to the mid-1990s and offer a marketer a little box that would sit on their desk, let them listen in on thousands of customer conversations and participate in those discussions regardless of geography or time zone, it would appear so far-fetched that they’d probably call security.

And yet here we are, with somewhere upward of 200 services vying to be our eyes and ears on the social web. Social analytics is a growth market reminiscent of web analytics ten years ago, with all the potential and confusion that comparison implies. The market is just beginning to demand that some order, consistency and semblance of maturity is brought to bear, and the three big asks are: Read more

26 May 2010 / 2 Comments

CIPR Digital Impact Conference

The CIPR hosted a smashing event on Monday focusing on the impact of digital and attracting delegates from all sectors as well as a mix of in-house and agency.

I was given a half hour slot to throw my perspectives into the mix, and I decided I'd focus in on the following assertion:

It's my opinion that the things people think have change haven't, but some things have changed that aren't yet widely understood.

Here's my slidestack and I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if Amanda Brown, Head of PR at First Direct is picking up references to her name and company name in the big ol' Wide Web, I'd love to be able to point people to your presentation... loved it :-)

How digital changes everything and nothing

P.S. If you like this, and you're in London on Thursdays over the Summer, you might like this.

14 May 2010 / 0 Comments

Best practice guidance and policy for social media measurement from the CIPR

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations announced this week one of the first actions to come out of its newly formed Social Media Panel... the Social Media Measurement Group.

Some time back in the early days of media relations some bright spark came up with the idea of using a ruler to measure 'column inches', a considerably less than perfect approach to assessing PR campaign success only compounded in its inability to drive performance and measure success appropriately by advertising value equivalence (AVE).

My disgust for column inches and AVE has nearly lost me business on more than one occasion, but being prepared to work with prospects on improved approaches can end up contributing to the reasons for going on to convert their business.

Without a doubt, the simplest and shortest response to someone's defense of such amateur approaches is to ask how they would measure a campaign's success if a primary objective of a campaign was to keep brand X out of the press? "Oh, errr, well, I mean, that would be, ermm....". Read more

22 April 2010 / 2 Comments

The most exciting development in PR since the Cluetrain

The Semantic Web, aka Web 3.0, is here. Now. And there is, as yet, little concerted recognition of or contribution to it by the influence profession... all the converging marketing and PR disciplines.

But is about to arrive in our lives, and in a big way. For example, what if I told you that when Best Buy embraced aspects of the Semantic Web its website saw a 30% increase in traffic.

Got your attention?!

Thanks to the following for their time and attention last night:

15 April 2010 / 0 Comments

CIPR social media group and the Semantic Web

The CIPR has assembled a social media group, information about which I've appended here for your convenience. I'm delighted to have been invited and look forward to working with the group, half of whom I know and half I look forward to meeting.

One of the first things I'm going to do is to invite the group to a meeting Wednesday 21st April 2010 to present the work to date on the Ontology For Feelings About Things and the PR Ontology, both pieces of work critical to the PR industries contribution to something referred to as the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is most often what people mean when they talk about Web 3.0. Read more

12 April 2010 / 0 Comments

Your "Awesome Analytics Advantage" starts today

In my presentation at Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp 2010 last month (embedded below for your convenience) I dedicated a slide to something I referred to as the "Awesome Analytics Advantage", making those organisations achieving this advantage "Triple A"!

Fundamentally, this advantage is manifest via the intelligent connection of traditionally siloed analytical services and databases....

retail analytics + web analytics + social web analytics + CRM + sRM + business intelligence + Internet of Things data analytics = Awesome Analytical Advantage!

SAS%20logo

Well, I've just enjoyed a 50 minute webcast by SAS, featuring the queen of measurement herself, Katie Delahaye Paine, during which SAS presented their new social media analytics service and answered questions from the floor and via Twitter (hashtag #sassma). My conclusion... Read more

18 February 2010 / 3 Comments

PR and Web 3.0… a call to action

PR%20and%20Web%203.0%2C%20and%20the%20ontology%20for%20feelings%20about%20things

Four things struck me in 2009. They are part of a bigger picture that means that public relations practice is about to undergo another change that will be as great this coming decade as it experienced during the last decade...

1. Web 2.0 participation

I dislike the 90:9:1 ratio of passives:occasionals:enthusiasts with respect to the "write" part of readwriteweb. In other words, 90% of people online don't contribute anything, they remain passive consumers. 9% contibute content and interact now and then, and 1% are passionate bloggers, video makers, photo takers, wiki updaters etc. Read more

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