Flack's Revenge

Power Searching for PR Professionals

So we have our Lexis/Nexis, we have our Google, does PR searching get any better?

For the intrepid infonaut (aka Newsmaster Flash), you bet it does – and will get even more powerful, for those who want to take the time to push the envelope and stay on the cutting edge.

Let’s face it; although Google has done a great job with search, the iconic blank screen with a simple stark search box has dumbed down the art of finding things on the Web.

Ever more powerful algorithms improve relevancy of results, relieving people of the burden of actually understanding how search works (and lessening the need to master advanced search).

In short, better search capabilities bring better search to more people, making it seemingly unnecessary to be search experts.

Yet for the PR professional – and other knowledge workers - this can be a dangerous thing. The specific ways in which you enter your search (and where you go to search) can mean big differences in the results you get.

We need to understand what search covers and what it doesn’t (not all print hits wind up online, of course, general Web searching is not necessarily the same as blog searching, and there is no single place to go to that I am aware of – for free, on the Web, or even from paid content libraries – that includes everything), and how to structure search differently for different engines to get what we want, and how to master advanced techniques such as using search operators, wildcards, etc., and how to search metadata.

As more and more content migrates to the Web, and increasingly originates on the Web, and as tools get better, I truly believe we are headed for a golden age in PR in which we can better plan strategies, monitor buzz almost as quickly as it develops and gauge the results of our efforts.

Advanced unstructured data searching, reporting, analysis and content mining tools will increasingly help us make sense of the sea of facts and opinion, take the pulse of the state of thought in certain areas, make sense of what is being written about; track the conversations that count, how often themes and concepts are explored, and determine the penetration and prevalence of key messages for our clients, employers and competitors.

Armed with these capabilities, we can start answering the following questions:

• What issues are emerging and rising in importance?
• Where are our clients/employers mentioned, in what context (positive, negative, neutral) and for which audiences?
• Which influencers are rising and which ones are yesterday’s news?
• Are the desired messages getting through?
• And are we getting our fair share of attention and coverage?

Of course these types of questions can all be answered today, but with lots of heavy lifting, and/or in conjunction with specialized services.

As Jon Udell mentions in his article Divergent citation-indexing paths, “In the academic world, where citations are taken very seriously, digital object identifiers play a much more important role than they do on the web. We web folk could learn a thing or two from our academic cousins.”

So, there are some advanced search technologies being deployed in the world of scholarly searching, and this may give us a sign of what is to come in general Web searching. E.g. there are free tools on the Web for science searching, like Scirus (full disclosure, a client). Scirus features a hand crafted index designed to screen out sites that have no relevance to science, and utilizes a massive scientific vocabulary to check search terms against. Scirus thus improves relevancy for science specific searching. 

There are also subscription products, like Scopus from Elsevier, which helps librarians and researchers navigate a sea of peer reviewed scholarly content, giving users ways to mine citation records and thus derive useful information about the evolution of research topics and influence of scientists and researchers.

I will come back to issues of emerging search technologies like content mining, in the meanwhile I list below some links I have found to be helpful.

The somewhat long title of this Online Magazine article says it all:

Blog searching for competitive intelligence, brand image, and reputation management: do you know what is being said about you in the blogosphere? Should you care? Aren't blogs just for kids, political campaigns, and geeks, of no value in business? If you think this, you're likely missing out on an increasingly powerful information source.

This post from Burnham’s Beat describes the persistent search trend (basically, the art of setting search alerts).

Persistent Search: Search’s Next Big Battleground

ResearchBuzz is a great site (with an accompanying email newsletter) that covers cutting edge search topics.

Of course, SearchEngine Watch is the recognized authority on search related topics.

This blog post from Digital Inspiration covers the subject general Web vs. blog searching.

Anyone worth their salt in PR these days and/or who agrees new media and the blogosphere are forces to reckon with should master Technorati’s various search tools.

 

Armchair Flacks

When it comes to glory and earning power, they have us beat, so why do VCs want to hone in on our action?

VCs are often protrayed as swashbuckling risk takers, a vital engine of the tech economy.  The good ones make untold millions, for themselves and their investors.

PR folk are generally seen as hucksters, spinmeisters, handlers, fixers, and, well... flacks.  The good ones sometimes get some props, and our clients and employers (and mothers and fathers) love us, but rarely do you read or hear about this.

Yet on the PR side we often find VCs that want to play armchair flacks.

This observation really applies to any stakeholders who think they know about PR, but are operating at arms length from the PR program - the sales team, board, shareholders of public companies and the like.

And it is made all in the good spirit of wanting to improve things, we berate because we love (many of my referrals come from VCs and I by no means want to slay the golden calf or antagonize anyone).

I have written an open note to VCs, including excerpts from a clients' email on the subject, which was written to placate the VCs and keep them at bay from the PR program.

You can read all about it on the Fusion blog.

The Google and Web 2.0 Productivity Dividends

An old upright piano given to me by my mother-in-law, and 30 years in 2 seconds - these things have led me to reflect upon the potential importance of Google and Web 2.0 worker productivity boosts.

Let me explain, you will see that these points are related.

Having neglected a hobby I once enjoyed - playing rock and jazz piano - since my college years in the early 80's, I was thrilled to have the chance to get back into it after my mother-in-law recently gave me a piano.

However I quickly learned that the "chops" I once had were now more like freezer-burnt cutlets.  I realized that if I wanted to do this right I would need to (sigh) take lessons again.

It had been about 30 years since I had taken piano lessons, back in high school.  I studied under an extremely talented musician named John Lampkin.  At the time  I wanted to rock out and play the keyboard riffs from The Doors, Traffic and Jethro Tull; John reined me in and taught me to appreciate and play the finer piano things in life: Dave Brubeck, and songs by Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, etc.

At any rate, I decided to go ahead and contact John after all these years to see if he still remembered me, and could recommend any good piano teachers in my area.

Not knowing where he lived, or even if he was still alive, on a whim I did a Google search and found his Web site in about 2 seconds.  In almost no time at all, I had sent him an email, he replied, and we were back in touch.  John's Web shingle and a quick search and email exchange allowed me to traverse 30 years in seconds.

It then occurred to me that most of us take for granted the efficiencies in finding information we have gained these days, and led me to wonder whether there is some productivity dividend specifically related to search and the Web that all those economists who crunch numbers should be considering.

Let's consider some of the factors at play.

Few would disagree that information is getting easier to find these days.

Google is the most visible driver of this, but not the only one.  People are becoming more search savvy  - getting better at searching with Google, and other tools where appropriate.  Second, it is not only Google but other facets of our online experiences which aid discoverability of online content - tags, social bookmarks, and the fact the Web 2.0 era means quick and easy blogs, Web sites and user generated content.

John's information rose to the top was because he has his own Web site, John Lampkin.  And who (or what) doesn't have some kind of Web presence today?

The net, I think, is that IT in general will continue to contribute to improved productivity, and that Google and Web 2.0 will be an increasingly important part of this.

RSS – Read: Stop Stalling!

Some say RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  Others say it means Rich Site Summary.

But it could just as easily stand for Really Smart Searching.  Or, Recognize Searching vs. Subscribing.  Or, Really, Start Subscribing!

The words are right there in the first definition - Really Simple -  so why haven't PR folks jumped on the RSS bandwagon in droves?

It is a mystery to me, as I can say for my part that using RSS has drastically improved my ability to sift through the fire hose of daily news and online discussion and be on top of what is important to my clients and me.

It really feels good to be the first to spot a hit, important blog post or breaking news.  Since I started using RSS several years ago, I have been able to impress clients and industry peers alike with this ability.

And isn't that what being a NewsMaster Flash is all about?

In terms of RSS basics, a good place to start would be to check out the archive of a symposium I ran last year ago for the International Association of Online Communicators' blog on the topic (Welcome to RSS Basics Week).  Also, here is Wikipedia's definition of RSS.

The reason I am an RSS zealot is simple: it allows me to get timely updates, sift through more information more quickly and zero in on what is important.  It does this in two ways:

1)    RSS cuts out the search middleman.   By polling the feeds I have subscribed to on a frequent basis with my newsreader (see #2, below), I can get updates as soon as they are available; there is no need to wait for the content to be indexed by a search engine.  Nor is there the need to
manually surf to each site to see what is new.

Better yet, I can combine the immediacy RSS updates with the wide net of search.  Most search engines now offer the option of making results available as RSS feeds.  By subscribing to such a feed with my newsreader, I can see what the search engines are finding for my search terms of interest.

2)    An interface built for news consumption.
At its most basic level, the news reader allows you to subscribe to, browse, and read the content of RSS feeds.  The better readers sport interfaces consisting of several panes, to give you an easy way to see what is new amongst your feeds, browse headlines, and read the content of each feed.

I have been using FeedDemon, from Bradsoft (a company that was acquired by competitor NewsGator).  It is a desktop based newsreader that does the basics but also goes further.  For example, I can define "Watch" channels that sift through all my feeds and collect the ones that match predefined search terms.  I can also define search channels that use my key words to return matching results from RSS search engines like Feedster and Blogdigger.

I typically set Watch and Search channel terms to be the names of clients, their products, competitors, and technology key words.

FeedDemon lets me easily send emails or post to my blog about news items of interest.  Its built-in browser prompts me when feeds are available at a site and gives me a number of ways to easily subscribe and build out my list of feeds.

Some feel that online newsreaders are the way to go, because you can access these from any system with Web access, and there are many good free ones out there.

TechCrunch had a great feature about the State of Online News Readers last March.

Others appreciate the advantages of desktop software - richer interfaces, and better performance that comes from using your local desktop processor to do the heavy lifting of sifting through the thousands of feeds required for intensive PR news monitoring applications.

I don' have hard survey data but suspect, based on my discussions with other PR folks, that RSS has not been widely adopted in the profession.  I am assuming that this is because people tend to be reluctant to try new things, especially when there is a learning curve involved.

Some might object to the investment of effort required to assemble a comprehensive collection of feeds.  The fact is, this is not as hard as it seems.  Most newsreaders come already populated with a good selection of feeds. And there are a number of OPML (Wikipedia's definition) directories that are freely and publicly available that let you pick and choose from tens of thousand of feeds, sorted by categories, and add feeds in bulk to your collection.  For example, Syndic8 and NewsIsFree are two good resources for finding feeds.

Finally, newsreaders like FeedDemon have built-in browsers that automatically discover the feeds that are available when you visit Web sites, and prompt you to select and add these.

In conclusion, if you are in PR and don't start using RSS, you will be doing yourself and your client/employer a disservice.  And that would be a Real Sad Shame!