PR in a virtual world

Omar Jamil on what PR companies need to digitise for effectiveness.

Most people today would agree that we are living in an increasingly digitised world. Over the past few years, we have seen an explosive evolution in the way we interact with digital media. The ‘net, originally a relatively static experience that merely broadcast information, has become a far more interactive medium. The birth of Web 2.0, the proliferation of user-generated content and the rise of social media (ranging from forums and blogs to real time search and social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook) have all fundamentally changed how we interact with and respond to the online world.

At the same time, while the internet was undergoing dramatic changes, traditional media industries, including print and broadcast, were undergoing changes of their own. With the onset of the global recession, advertising budgets came under pressure and purse strings tightened; the inevitable result was a cutback in ad spend.

What was perhaps less anticipated by many was that a large portion of traditional marketing budgets was now being redirected or extended towards online campaigns. It seemed that clients were finally clocking on to the fact that online was by its very nature a more targetable and measurable medium – one that not only gave advertisers more bang for their marketing bucks, but was also incredibly comprehensive when it came to tracking ROI.

This increased interest meant increased investment in digital – which in turn resulted in further development, from the rise of online video as a marketing medium expected to soon eclipse even TV (most online pundits expect online video ad spend to overtake TV by the end of 2011 – if not sooner) to whispers of Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web – an online experience that is specifically geared around individual users.

With so much interest in online – and traditional media under pressure – it is therefore inevitable that PR professionals too turned to the internet to harness its burgeoning power. In fact, there is so much interest in the subject that it is almost impossible to sift the wheat from the chaff. While researching for this article, a quick search on Google for ‘online PR’ and ‘digital PR’ returned 122 million and 65.3 million results respectively. What this shows is, a) that the interest and development of digital PR – or Online Reputation Management (ORM) – is a real and tangible phenomenon, and b) that there is still no clear cohesion around what one means when talking about ORM or digital PR.

So let’s take a step back and take a quick look at the bigger picture – just to understand why it’s important for PR professionals to ensure that online PR is an essential part of any PR programme.

According to Hamadoun Toure, head of the UN’s telecommunications agency, the number of internet users worldwide has reached the two billion mark in January 2011. This means that nearly one in three people in the world surfs online. According to another report, put together by the Pew Research Centre and Nielsen, the average internet user spends 60 hours per month online – that is one entire month in a year spent on the internet. Of these hours, about 42% are spent in general browsing and consuming content (websites, online videos, images, articles, etc.), 22% is spent on social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and 36% is spent on search. To add some perspective, a comScore report revealed that Google saw ‘87 billion’ searches in 2009 – a figure that no doubt rose exponentially over 2010.

In Pakistan, there are currently about 22.9 million internet users; this figure is predicted to rise by about 11% to 25.5 million users in the current year. Given a population of approximately 190 million, this implies an internet penetration rate of around 13.5%. According to the Pew Research Centre’s Global Attitudes Project, about 44% of these internet users are also regular users of social networks. 

Okay, so we have established that one in three people globally – and at least one in 10 here in Pakistan – are connected to the internet. And that on average, these users spend 60 hours a month online. Now let me throw a few more stats your way (Courtesy, Datamonitor and Forrester): Eighty-seven percent of most online journeys begin with search; at least 84% of internet users use search engines; more than 50% do so daily; 39% of searchers perceive those results in the top ranks as top brands in their field and 97% of journalists go online daily to source information.

Research also shows us that 80% of consumers rate customer reviews as more important than any other information. In fact, more than half of all adult internet users refer to online reviews before making a buying decision. Seventy percent of consumers who read online reviews share them with friends, family and colleagues. Seventy-four percent of consumers agreed that they choose companies and brands based on what others say about them online. All these research and stats demonstrate the importance of search and social media when it comes to your reputation online.

With so much user attention focused online, it fast becomes clear why digital is an essential part of the PR mix. The challenge lies in deciding which parts to focus on. As it stands, digital PR is a vast subject, covering everything from how to use social media (blogs and forums, Flickr, YouTube, etc.) to building reputation, to leveraging the power of social networking sites to create word of mouth viral buzz around your brand, to using PR methodologies together with search engine optimisation (SEO) executions to help generate positive search results. 

Often, agencies will decide to separate social media from the overall PR campaign mix, and create a dedicated programme to focus entirely on targeting social media, as well as social networking sites. This leaves one with search focused strategies and tactics.

As with any marketing programme, the first step is to identify who you are trying to reach and what it is you want to communicate to them. The next step is to determine the keywords and phrases based on your audience demographic. Once you have completed these two steps, it is time to turn to the search results.

Traditional SEO often only looks at the first page of Google rankings; when it comes to ORM, you need to look at the entire SEO rankings. There are five main factors you need to look at here: sentiment (are the results negative or positive); volume (how many times is negative/positive coverage appearing); intensity (how positive or negative is the coverage); exposure (who is reading the coverage) and influence (who is talking makes a difference).

Basically you are looking at what is being said, how often and by whom, and how and who is influencing it. Having determined where your client stands in the search results (as well as the nature of those results) you can use search technology to optimise the positive results and push them up the rankings and push down the negative coverage.

If there is no positive content to push up the rankings, it is the PR job to create that content, and here you can use optimised digital press releases, or Wikipedia pages or LinkedIn profiles. Facebook is also a good tool to leverage, but bear in mind that search only indexes Facebook groups pages. Guest articles published in online publications and blogs with high readership and rankings also help. However, remember that the objective with ORM is not only to generate media and/or social media coverage, but to do so in a way that can influence search results.

In the end, the overall philosophy remains the same whether offline or online. Press releases still need to deliver news; guest articles must contain real insight and information; media pitches still need to be tailored to a reporter or blogger’s beat. What is different is the way you craft the messaging, and the prioritisation of your targets. Most of all, always remember it is not a question of offline versus online, but a clever combination of both that will deliver your clients the results they need.

Omar Jamil is CEO, Latitude. omar@latitudecrs.com

First published in the March-April 2011 issue of Aurora.