Simon Collister, PhD

Strategy + Consulting

New media

Telegraph.co.uk’s SEO – Shane Richmond responds

by simoncollister 3 Comments

I posted earlier this week about a story in  Private Eye about Telegraph.co.uk ensuring their news stories are chock full of realtime SEO key word goodness.

Well, I asked the Telegraph’s Communities Editor, Shane Richmond, if he could enlighten us any further and he has kindly posted his response on his Telegraph blog.

What Shane says makes total sense and (perhaps unlike the ultra traditional Eye) I see no reason why media outlets shouldn’t optimise their content.

In keeping with this idea, Shane provides a great insight into what other UK newspapers are doing – or reportedly doing. Shane writes:

"we’re [Telegraph.co.uk] far from unusual. As far as I know, staff at the Times get an email telling them what search terms are bringing people to their site, the Guardian, it’s rumoured, has begun training staff on SEO and the Mail has recently hired an SEO manager."

Intersting times indeed.

Technorati tags: Telegraph.co.uk, Shane Richmond, SEO, Newspapers

Telegraph’s web traffic chasing secrets revealed by Private Eye

by simoncollister 1 Comment

One of the few paper publications I still buy (jndeed subscribe to) is Private Eye, the UK’s only satirical magazine.

In this fortnight’s ‘Street of Shame’ (the section exposing the often shallow hypocrisy of the media) there’s an interesting insight into how the Daily Telegraph achieves such high online traffic:

According to Eye:

"news hacks are sent a memo three or four times a day from the website boffins listing the top subjects being searched in the last few hours on Google. They are then exepected to write stories accordingly and/or get as many of those key words into the first par of their story."

Of course, most Private Eye material needs to be taken with a pinch of salt and to the ultra-traditional Eye journalists basing stores on digital consumer demand is a terrible thing. It is also the cause of the Telegraph’s growing obsession with celebrity and news-lite entertainment stories.

But that’s unfair, as the Telegraph has made some significant and well-thought out investments in the digital space under editor, Will Lewis. For example it was the first UK newspaper to reorganise its enwsroom to recognise the primacy of the web in the news cycle.

I wonder if the Telegraph’s blogger Shane Richmond has anything to add to the Eye’s story. Shane?

10 immutable laws for measuring conversation

by simoncollister 2 Comments

Er… so it seems Edelman held an academic social media conference the other week in Chicago.

There is a good round up of some of the topics discussed at the conference live blog, but I like this post from one of the delegates, Karen Miller Russell, who teaches at the University of Georgia, about measuring social media.

Readers of this blog will know that I haven’t brought myself fully into the ‘how we measure’ social media debate because I haven’t yet decided why we need to measure social media (apart from the usual "so we can justify our existence to the client" which is the one reason not to use to develop metrics, IMHO).

However, the following list of "10 somewhat immutable laws of measuring conversations" from Sean Moffitt helps get us a step closer to defining why we measure social media:

  • REACH—how far does it go?
  • RELEVANCE—does it support your intended direction?
  • INFLUENCE—who shares and with who? How many generations of
    impact?
  • AUTHORITY—how trusted is the source?
  • ENGAGEMENT—how involved do they get?
  • INTERACTION—did they do anything with it?
  • VELOCITY—how fast does it travel (viral)
  • ATTENTION—how much time do they spend?
  • SENTIMENT—how positive are they?
  • NET PROMOTER—are they recommending you to others?
    Would you
    recommend Brand X to a friend or colleague? (On a scale of 1-10, the
    formula is "People who say 9-10 (extremely)" minus "those who answer
    1-6" = your score). And this is what really matters
    most.

Hat Tip Karen Miller Russell

Technorati tags: Edelman, social media measurement

Hollywood teaches us the ethos of social media

by simoncollister Leave a Comment

I watched the film, Be Kind, Rewind, on my way back from South America this week and discovered a line in the film sums up the ethos of the social web and social web in one nifty phrase.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the film is about a couple of guys running a VHS-only video store who accidently wipe their stock. faced with the prospect of going out of business they set about making their own versions of blockbusters. As the film progresses and their idea becomes popular they start letting their customers appear in their self-produced hits.

Jack Black describes this as:

"Making our customers stockholders in their own happiness"

Ok it’s a bit schmaltzy, but isn’t this what social media and the social web is allowing us to do? The moral of the story is that their customers loved being involved in the film more than simply watching it. So let’s see more of us PR people advising our clients that involving and empowering our customers isn’t just a fad or marketing ploy – it’s a reality that makes people feel good and drives sales (if you’re cold hearted enough to only care about the cash).

PS. as a footnote I could add that the moral of the story could have been about the signifncant tensions the social web is putting our outdated copyright laws under. There’s a scene involving the film industry’s copyright police which isn’t fully explored – but then it’s a Hollywood film so they aren’t going to examine their dirty laundry in public are they?

Technorati tags: Be Kind, Rewind, copyright, customer service, public relations

Twitter case studies: Bad and er… bad

by simoncollister 1 Comment

Twitter_2

This isn’t a particularly constructive blog post, but I thought I’d share two great examples of bad Twitter use.

The first one I didn’t even bother clicking to view their profile page, because frankly why would I want to having received the notification email pictured left?

I mean, that’s not even trying is it? It’s not even setting up a Twitter stream as an affiliate link farm and pretending to be a real person.

It’s just doing what it says on the tin: Top Affiliate1. Still, I suppose it’s at least ‘authentic’.

The second example of Twitter abue is slightly less forgivable. I received a notification that Coca Cola Zero was following me on Twitter (albeit in Portuguese) so I took a look at their profile thinking how interesting it would be to see what the brand was doing on Twitter.

Amazingly (and presuming it is an official Coke branded site – although I have no reason to think otherwise) the Twitter feed is more or less being used as a spam site. Take a look at the screenshot below:

Coca

You should be able to make out that the user is following about 5,000 people (me included despite not speaking Portuguese) while only having 200 followees. Also, although you probably can’t make it out, they have only posted two tweets in over two weeks. That’s a FAIL in my books.

As a footnote, I was in Brazil last week speaking to PR professionals – so I wonder if someone I met works on the Coke Zero account and has added me. If it was – feel free to drop me an email and I’ll tell you where you could improve 🙂

Technorati tags: Twitter, FAIL, Coca Zero

Sao Paulo, risotto and anarchism

by simoncollister 4 Comments

So I’m here in Sao Paulo for a couple of days doing some social media training for Brazil’s PR trade body, Aberje, as mentioned in my previous post and while I’m here I’ve been catching up my Edel-colleagues.

Yesterday I had a fantasic lunch with our Digital Manager, Thiane Loureiro at a restaurant where you can buy everything in the place. We had a great discussion over risotto and beer about social media, PR, relationship building, sustainable communications and anarchism – but despite having many shared interests I’m sure I keep mis-pronouncing her name! I think it’s pro: Tee-ahn-nee. Tee-arn-uh. Thiane – am I right?

And then today I visited Edelman’s rapidly expanding Sao Paulo office to meet the rest of the digital team. Our office is on the twentieth floor so you get quite a view from the window:

Dscn1552

Anyway, I sat with the team and we talked about monitoring brands online, the difference between digital advertising and digital PR, the added value of relationship building in the online space and they took me through a couple of case studies – all of which were really cool, well thought-out and executed programmes.

I think it is really cool to see that even in another (pretty different) market that the fundamental ideas behind delivering online PR campaigns remain the same  – and more importantly are successful.

The reason for this – I decided today – is that aside from a few cultural differences, people are people throughout the world. They are largely driven by the same desires, needs, likes and dislikes.

By putting them (indeed, us!) at the heart of our work then we can finally start to make meaningful connections with society on a global scale. And that can only be a good thing, can it not?

I’ll end this post with a top quality Brazilian tune, Sex-O-Matic by Edu K. The Amazonian natural world video is amazing too. Check it, as they say:

Technorati tags: Brazil, Sao Paulo, Aberje, Edelman, Thiane Loureiro, Edu K