SEO PR TIPS

The International Search Summit London is now only 2 days away, with this year’s focus on Innovations within the search marketing industry. Hosted at the Barbican by WebCertain, this is now WebCertain’s 5th search marketing event, which attracts search professionals from across the globe.
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Oscar Carreras, Sales Strategist at WebCertain kept us up-to-date throughout the Search Engine Strategies Conference in London via Twitter and has now most helpfully provided us with a round-up of the key messages.  Interestingly, all of his points relate to SEO-PR…

•    Video is the future

Not only there were several sessions about video but it was mentioned in at least 3 non related sessions. YouTube is already the second biggest search engine in the world and internet users across the world spend 30 min at least by average watching videos, not to mention the rising appearance of videos in blended or Universal search.

•    Online PR = Strategic Link Building Strategy

Online PR seems to be utilized by most of agencies as their main tool for strategic link building. In addition, blogging, social media, etc are all supported by online PR teams. Content creation should be a must.

(Jenny – my italics.  As I mentioned in my post yesterday about the boom in social media, the role for PRs to play is to create original content to support these activities)

•   The challenges and opportunities of Social Media

Social media pervaded all the sesssions at SES London, but it seems to be difficult to build a business model around it.

The way most of the agencies are approaching it is by leading by example and make it an integral part of their marketing toolset for lead generation and then show off that knowledge and results to provide with consultancy to clients or support in the way of apps generation, widgets, video creation, etc.

They don’t seem to offer to create profiles and handle them on behalf of their clients since it is not cost effective and not very useful since clients know more about their products that an agency will never do. Conclusion: walk the walk and don’t talk the talk.

(Jenny – yes, this is the major issue with these types of campaigns – who does what?  It’s all about user-generated content, but it needs a push – and imagination combined with technical / web know-how)
•   Reporting and analytics

Automation, analytics driven processes, etc seem to be the ways for agencies to scale services. The most important skill for both SEO and PPC, and maybe Social Media too, should be analytics expertise to reach conclusion out of empiric data.

(Jenny – and analytics is the main focus for the technology team at WebCertain)

Any more thoughts on SES London?

It started with a drumming gorilla, a Phil Collins old song from the 90s and the most successful advert of 2007. The video “went viral” on the internet, as users posted it on video-sharing sites, blog the all concept and e-mailed friends.
According to the Times, it even turned again Collins into something of a cult hero as the advert placed him again into the music charts.

Thanks to that viral campaign sales of Dairy Milk have been boosted by 9 per cent helping the brand to reverse its fortunes after the confectioner had lost market position for years.

Now Cadbury is about having the same success with is brand new campaign “Eyebrows “featuring a brother and sister preparing themselves for a family portrait.

Watch up the video – that’s hilarious!

You may not be immediately aware it is a Cadbury campaign (although I don’t know if the violet t-shirt of the small girl could refer in somehow into the color of the brand…) but the goal is still the same : “make the consumers smile so that they enjoy the product better”, explains Phil Rumbol, Cadbury’s marketing director in Britain.

And it keeps working!! The brand is creating the same buzz over the web than the previous campaigns edging up already to one million views on Google and YouTube (1,387,643 to be exact) besides having also delighted posts from fans. E.g: “Completely stupid – I love it,”

The response to the Eyebrows ad looks moreover phenomenal than it is taking straight to number three on YouTube behind clips of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech.

A perfect piece of viral marketing…what do you think??

The UK’s Community Secretary Hazel Blears has launched an attack on the “vicious nihilism” of the political blogosphere.

She partly blames the political apathy in the UK on the attitude of the bloggers (or at the very least makes the connection between the two).

This is very much in contrast to the huge impact blogging, social bookmarking, YouTube etc. have had on the American Election, with the re-energised electorate.

I think we can all agree that blogging is a hugely important part of any political campaign…