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Most of the top UK PR agencies do not offer online press releases

Recent survey carried out by Bigmouthmedia revealed that 79 out of the 100 top UK PR companies don’t offer online PR services.

Sadly, only 14% of the operations that claimed to have new media covered, published their own blogs. All in all, surprisingly as low as 11% of UK PR consultancies communicate with clients, colleagues and the wider marketplace via their blogs.

Companies nowadays still do not seem to see the real semantic difference between online press releases and digital press releases.

The following figures for October 2008 in the UK show the differences in terms of their relative search popularity:

Online PR 2,900
Online public relations 1,600
Web PR 880
Digital PR 590
Internet PR 260
Internet Public Relations 170
Digital public relations 73

Posted in Internet Marketing, Nordic eMarketing, Seach Engine Optimization, Web Optimization | No Comments »

Just came home from the International Search Summit

the Summit, presented by WebCertain was held in central London last Thursday. The ISS is search marketing event with a niche, focusing on multilingual and international search marketing.

All of the sessions had a global approach looking at the issues affecting online marketers when they are managing campaigns in multiple languages and countries. The do’s and dont’s.

Among great speakers the ISS had Alex Burmaster from Nielsen Online, Eugene Lomize from Yandex, Christer Pettersson from the Scandinavian search engine Eniro, Andy Atkins-Krüger of WebCertain, Jessica Bowman of Jessica Bowman SEO and Ed Pushman from the Microsoft adCenter.

Great event and even greater after me and Eugene sang some Russian folk songs at the Ivy in Soho and had an instand offer from Simon Cowell on the SEO Factor.

And talking about Russian folk songs we are Nordic eMarketing are starting to prepare for the Reykjavik Internet Marketing Summit in March next year. We already have speakers from Google, Nike, Augure, IBM, Microsoft and Yandex lined up and more to me announced - www.rimc.is.

Click here for more information about the International Search Summit

Posted in Conferences and Expos, conferences | 1 Comment »

Reputation Management Online

Next week I am speaking at an event on reputation management, the date is October 21st  and the events location is the Dorchester Hotel, London. The event is held and managed by Augure - Corporate Communications Solution, you do not have to pay anything to enter, but there is limited seat availability so better book now than later.

“Reputation has become a board level priority affecting an organisation’s ability to raise capital, attract and retain staff, sell products and services and ultimately compete in today’s marketplace.”

Really good speakers are doing this event and it looks like a great event for those that are looking to learn about the latest in reputation management.

Posted in Conferences and Expos, ePR, online crisis management | No Comments »

The guy that got fired by CNN by blogging story

I was recently speaking at a conference in SMX and one of the topics I talked about was online reputation management, while me and my colleagues where talking afterwards one of the mentioned a story that I am writing about.  A producer at CNN (ex producer now) had his own blog and wrote about pop culture, politics and media, guy was recovering from a surgery and used his dead time to write and as sometimes happens his site became quite popular. Never revealing anything that could connect him to his employer he wrote about topics that where close to his heart but eventually someone found out at CNN and when the guy returned to his job his bossed called him and he was told that opinions had surfaced that had his name pined to it and he was fired. It was against the company handbook to do what he had been doing.
The moral of the story? Read the Company handbook before you start blogging and think before you write.

Posted in Social media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

Reputation monitoring and management through search

Just spoke at a session called “Reputation monitoring and management through search” at the SMX Sweden, with a great pannel of colleuges . The topic was quite wide and actual the title does not explain it to the fullest.

We talked about the challanges facing companies and individuals when information is available to the world as they arrive and can as demostated in the session spiral out of countrol.

The session was moderated by Sante J. Achille who did a great job and speakers inculding me where
Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Creative Director at deMib.com and David Lerdell the CEO & Founder of Lerdell Investigation AB. So it was a multinational session and reflected that quite well.

Great stuff and I always learn something when Mikkel is there, great speaker and full of knowledge.

Posted in Conferences and Expos, ePR | 1 Comment »

SMX Sverge is coming up - Stockholm I am on my way!

I will speaking at two pannels and moderating one at the SMX Stockholm 2008.

The first session is Nordic Search – What’s going on?
“Who are the dominant players and which players are the ones to watch closely? What are people looking for and how is that different to other markets? In this session our experts will bring you up to speed with the Nordic Search market.”

Moderator is Christer Jones from Sesam and speaking with me are John Brenne, General Manager WebCertain Norway and Christer Pettersson, Online Manager Search at Eniro.

Then on the 24th I am speak really early in the morning (thanks Sara) on a topic really close to my heart “Reputation Monitoring & Management Through Search”

“What do people find when they search for you by name? Is it negative? If so, what do you do? What can you do? Depending on the situation, there are a range of tactics that may help. This session explores the issue.”

Sante J. Achille will be moderating this and with me I will be Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Creative Director, at deMib.com and David Lerdell, CEO & Founder of Lerdell Investigation AB.

Finally I am moderating a session called “Search Advertising: Test & Tactics”. Speakers are Anna Eriksson, Sales Director from Keybroker, Jørgen Brunborg-Næss, Co-founder and Oslo Manager for Synlighet.no and Daniel Rytterström, Agency Relationship Manager from Google Sweden.

“Not all ads convert equally and it’s not always obvious why. To maximize the impact of your search advertising, it’s important to test different combinations of ads and landing page copy, and evaluate the results. This session explores the various methods and tools available for most efficiently testing and improving your search results.”

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/stockholm/2008/full_agenda 

See you there!

Posted in Conferences and Expos, conferences | 1 Comment »

viewzi.com my new favourite tool

Short and sweet go to http://www.viewzi.com and check it out. Thanks Leigh for the pointer. Great tool and it’s even in BETA my other favourite search engine!

Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

New! Download Chrome (BETA) - the new browser from Google

Google just launched their new browser and I must say it looks really good. It’s called “Google Chrome” and is according to Google “a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier”.

The browser has one box for literally everything, you type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages. Then there are the thumbnails of your fav sites so you can access your most favorite pages instantly from any new tab.

I recommend that you try it, it’s super simple and easy to use and very very very resource easy. The installer completed in seconds and the Chrome was browser automatically up and running.

Then when you start using it you see that it’s very striped but strangly includeds all what you need, nothing more and nothing less. For examble when I wanted to look at my default search engine and when into the drop-down for that the browser showed only my local engines, such as Google IS, Leit.is, Finna.is and Embla.

Also I like the not include in browsing history option, now I can travel around porn sites and my wife will never see them in the history ;-)

Super easy!

Posted in Google, Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

Online lookalike swindle, web shoppers getting scammed

I was reading a magazine the other day and I found and article in it that I found quite remarkable. So this is the scenario when Virgin MegaStore became Zavvi in the UK, they opened a website as can be expected under their brand name zavvi.co.uk and it was business as usual. But it was not, because around the same time a UK based company opened another website called zavvidirect.co.uk looking strikingly similar to the original site, this did then easily fool unsuspected online shoppers and when they advertised a limited special offer on a gaming computer people when out and ordered, filled in their credit card information, clicked on enter and waited excited for the delivery that never arrived. Just to cut a longer story short, this was corrected and Zavvi has now, through copyright laws, closed this site.

For more information on the WebUser article buy issue 192, 2008 and you should find it there on page eleven to the right above the “Gordon Ramsay Cooks up Game” article and beside the “Internet cafes under attack”.

So how can you try to prevent this?

1. Don’t shop online, just kidding… I have shopped online for over 10 years and never had problems
2. Shop with established online shops such as Amazon
3. If you don’t want to do that, Google the name of the shop you want to buy through
a. If there only or mostly negative activity, don’t shop
b. If there no activity, then that should also ring bells, I would then wait a little to see how things evolve
4. When looking at the forums or blogs and you see one or two negative posts and you really want to shop with them, send the company an email and ask them to explain why these customers are negative
5. Only shop with companies that use PayPal or other recognized payment systems
6. Don’t use debit cards use Credit Cards, they work in a different way and are to my knowledge more secure

Good luck shopping!

Posted in Web Optimization, online crisis management | No Comments »

Are 80pc of SEO consultants are scammers?

College of mine pointed a blog post to me written by Peter Kent, author, SEO for Dummies. The post claims that 80% of search engine marketing consultants are scammers and I must say that I agree. I have seen some poor samples of SEO consultancy to even the biggest companies.

In the post there is also a mention of flash designed webs having poor visability, even though I have seen search optimized flash sites they tend to have lesser chance than other and I must also say that I agree with Peter when he claims not having seen evidence showing that flash sites are indexable, I have but for me it’s rather a question of the ranking.

The rule is that you do not hire anyone that says he/she can get to the top 10, even if he has done it for another client, different clients have different needs.

Another thing is be carefull of what tools you use, many are just there to collect information about you and your activities, understand trends and so on.

Get case studies and references to verify that they are correct.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Seach Engine Optimization, Web Optimization | 1 Comment »