Archive for March, 2009
Trial by social media: Hanson et al
In response to the call last month by Victorian police to stop internet blogging about the alleged Victorian bushfire arsonist:
When the alleged Victorian bushfire arsonist was outed with his photograph published on Facebook and numerous blog posts, did the social network and possibly the self-publishers breach a court order that prevents media discussing the case? Should social networks be subject to the same conditions as other media publishers and broadcasters?
By revealing the accused’s identity, the Facebook posts could jeopardise his right to a fair hearing. The reason the law binds traditional media is that prejudice could result in a guilty man walking free, or an innocent being found guilty.
Some social network operators claim speaking freely is the right of their members and equate it to catching up with a mate in the street. The reality is that social networks are as public as your local newspaper.
Take another recent high-profile case: when purported pictures of Pauline Hanson turned out to be fakes, people asked, ‘have the media gone too far?’ This highlighted two issues:
1. The individual’s moral right to privacy: were these tacky 30-year-old images in the public interest?
2. What are Pauline’s legal rights? If the pictures were published on a social network, what would be her legal rights then?
These two cases open us all to the possibility of being victimised for a crime we did not commit, or being subjected to embarrassment or harassment if inaccurate or sensitive information is published, either online or offline. Proving false accusers are wrong in court is costly and, sadly, even if you win, mud sticks.
Without regulation, social networks can become a great playground for bullies - and they already are to a degree. Just ask Jodie Melbourne of CQR Consulting, a white hat hacker who is crusading against cyber-bullying.
Even if you lead a pristine existence, would you want your entire private live opened up for all to see, from birth to grave, whether by writing, image, video or sound, without your permission? The whole issue of privacy, online and offline, reminds me of the Ben Elton book Blind Faith, which paints an ugly picture of a world where it’s illegal NOT to expose every moment of your life publicly.
Whereas smaller social forums have tended to be self-policed by their members, the mega-networks have much bigger challenges. I believe that if they can’t control malicious or illicit content, they will eventually implode. There will be more and more cases of inaccurate opinions and indiscreet pictures taken in private circumstances — leading to legal challenges and a mass turnoff by people who want to keep their private lives private. The Twitter network has some precedents - there already are laws governing harassment by text message.
The “Wild West” feel of social networks is exhilarating; suddenly we don’t need to rely on third party media channeling our opinions. But both advocates and owners of social networks who feel they have a right to freedom of speech at any cost are heading down a slippery slope.
COPYRIGHT© 2009
Spreading sunshine with search-engine friendly PR
Hi - I’m new to e-Channel’s blog so first a bit about me: I’m a journalist with a background that covers everything from Australian Women’s Weekly to The Australian newspaper’s Tuesday IT section, Vacations Magazine (travel writing - those were the days:-)) to Cosmopolitan to the Toronto Star. I founded a service called NewsMaker last year to help marketers and PR dudes give their clients added value with every PR campaign - Google News Indexing, SEO, social media as well as traditional media distribution services. Here are my favourite tips to help you get started in maximising every word in every press release while increasing your Google quality ranking:
Top Ten Tips for Successful Online Publicity
The following tips for writing online press releases will help generate buzz about your products and services across the web, driving traffic back to your website and creating a direct channel to journalists, media outlets and customers.
- Use major keywords in your heading and first paragraph - these are often all that will be picked up by Google and other News Indexing services
- Proactively share your news using the share and RSS buttons on press release websites
- Don’t use “you” and “your” or “I”, “we” or “our”, unless it’s within a quote - your press release should be written in the third person so it doesn’t sound like an advertisement
- Make your headline meaningful to media and search engines - don’t be too clever
- Keep it short - Google will not index news item that are too long
- Make your press release relevant to news or trends - get the message across succintly in headline and first par
- Make sure you have good landing pages on your website relevant to your press release - otherwise you are missing an opportunity
- Proofread your release and make sure it’s of a press-ready standard; your release could end up anywhere and you don’t want to spread an unprofessional image of your company (or yourself)
- Use free online press release services tagged with relevant keywords to make it easy for people looking for your products/services to find them - this is the cheapest, easiest free publicity you will find
- If you’re new to online press releases, post older material first then work your way up to the present so you have a good history online, driving incremental (long tail) traffic back to your website.
Cheers,
Little Miss Sunshine
SEM and SEO: Agency Vs In-House
In almost 10 years of working in advertising and marketing there is only one aspect that has caused the most arguments in the industry and that is the trade off between In-House and Agency for SEM and SEO. Every company has their own thoughts on the subject and all of them can hold forth with a reasonable argument for their choice. However no matter how effective their reasoning is all of them boil down to four simple points: Time, Cost, Results and Control.
Most companies feel that these four key points will determine the direction that they go when it comes to how they manage SEM and SEO and it is quite obvious why. Combined they will decide how effective the campaigns are and what the bottom line return will be at the end of the day.
More often than not a business that decides to manage their SEM or SEO themselves will have a simple reason for doing so and it will use a combination of all of the above points or the ones that are most important to them. But if you look into them a little deeper it simply does not make financial or rational sense to attempt to self manage an effective SEM campaign In-House if the business has a large number of keywords active in their campaigns.
Aside from the obvious fact that all Agency fees are a tax deduction as a Marketing Expense we need to look at the hidden costs of doing SEM and SEO In-House. Firstly you need to find an expert who is willing to manage it on your behalf and these do not come cheap, if you decide to manage the campaigns without a specialist in SEM or SEO then the person assigned to manage the campaign will have no time to do anything but monitor the campaigns therefore there is a loss of productivity from 1 staff member who is in effect learning on the job. Following on from this is the fact that an active campaign needs to be constantly checked, modified and updated to ensure that there is no wastage and that you are achieving the best possible results. Lastly if you are running a campaign with any number of Keywords over a thousand you need to maintain your quality score through effective Landing Page Management and multiple Creative’s for each keyword as consumers want to be hooked to click on the link rather than just see the same generic Creative for every search term.
When you add all of the above aspects together then it seems obvious that of the four key points highlighted at the start there is only one that stands up as to why a company would manage their SEM and SEO In-House, and that is Control. There is a demonstrated loss of staff time as they try to manage campaigns while doing their core role, results suffer as the Quality Score for the campaign will not be at an optimal level and the costs (both of the campaign and the staff costs) spiral as there is not going to be an effective system of management on what keywords are working and how to alter the Creatives to enhance Click Through Rates.
A good SEM and SEO Agency will manage all of the above on your behalf and consult with the client to ensure that they maintain complete control and understanding of what is going on, once a company has found the best Agency for them then the upfront cost of setting up the campaign and the ongoing Agency fees are actually going to save them money in the long term as a result of better campaign management, higher traffic levels, greater conversion rates and a better understanding of what is working for them now and will work for them in the future.
In short if you are running campaigns with more than a couple of thousand keywords then you are costing yourself money by attempting to manage your SEM and SEO campaigns In-House.