SEO PR TIPS

The use of social networks and micro-blogging is growing faster than ever, with many business joining in to enhance their services, improve internet rankings, reputations, any campaigns and much much more.

Recently the first official “Twisitor Centre” was launched in the US by Travel Portland, where travellers can connect to the Twisitor Centre to find out holiday / travel information, just like a walk in visitor centre, which relies on Twitter technology, so travellers can plan holidays to the city etc etc.

The use of codes to transfer the “tweets” to the Twisitor Centre is essential to get the correct feedback, visit Travel Mole who reported on the tweeting city.

Twitter and other micro blogging / social networking sites are great to find out local information, like places you are visiting on holiday etc, keeping your Twitter, Facebook, Myspace etc profile public may be risky if you declare too much information, however if you are following people from all over the world, information will be far more accessible, just remember to be careful!!

Techradar thinks that “Facebook has jumped the shark”

The Telegraph seems to publish about 5 Twitter stories a minute, which proves it is hot stuff (they have an editorial policy of making sure they are writing stories on the top Google searches, something they have been mocked for.

But, hey wait a minute – this providing what the reader wants rather than forcing upon us the biased views of the owner – right kids? And it was what we were doing years ago at www.ananova.com – before I’d heard of SEO)

However, at the moment at least the Telegraph list of the top 30 Twitter users is blank…tut tut.

Tech Digest doesn’t think Facebook will be around in five years

I don’t know, but I do know that Friends Reunited is but a distant memory…

One thing that all professional writers are taught when they are starting out is to know your audience – visualise them in your head when you sit down and write and it will make it easier to pick the right words.

This is one of the cornerstones of writing press releases and remains unchanged. You imagine the grumpy sub-editor who has a chip on his shoulder about supposedly overpaid PR types, looking for grammatical mistakes as an excuse to spike your story. You imagine the stressed out young reporter who has a target of x stories per day to write and might just be tempted to overlook the fact that this is a bloody press release, because it won’t need much re-writing and it just about comes across as a kosher news story (not that working in the media has made me cynical. Oh no…)

But now if you work in online PR, you are more than likely writing on social networking sites and imagining your audience is a much more complicated affair (ignore the hecklers shouting, “it’s easy, they’re all geeks!”).

For example:
On Facebook, my boyfriend updated his status with the esoteric statement “…is baking in the boulangerie of the mind”, which was understandable to precisely one person (me, it’s a long story).

Again on Facebook, a friend posted “…thinks 5-0 will do very nicely, thanks.” This is understandable to everyone that knows that he is a Man Utd fan.

Meanwhile on Twitter, Laure is wondering where John is (and appropriately enough in this mixed up, muddled up world, this is a reference to said John’s unexplained disappearance from Facebook). Meanwhile I’m confusing people with an oblique reply to Oscar about the mayor of London (“who’s Boris?” I’m asked by a third party).

My point is that on social networking sites you are often addressing different overlapping audiences, with different interests, and with different levels of knowledge about your subject matter. Confusing things even further is the presence of friends-of-friends who don’t actually know you at all.

It’s obvious that if your boss or clients might be reading, this isn’t the place for letting off steam at the end of a bad day at work. Correction, it should be obvious.

If you are planning on using social networks for marketing or online PR, you need to go back to basics and define who you are and who you want your audience to be.

You have the choice to be an online mate, a handy bite-sized news source, the straightforward corporate face of your company, or the knowledgeable (but human! I am human, look what I had for my lunch while I was finding you that link to the latest data on web usage in Uzbekistan!) SEO-expert networker – the latter accounting for approximately 50% of people on Twitter by my reckoning.

NB – Imagining my audience for this blog is super-easy – it’s the most intelligent and beautiful group of humans known to man – aren’t you! Do leave a comment if you have any thoughts on this.

Following the article wrote by Jenny on social networks “You sure you want your whole social network to read that?!”, I am just going to relate on the story that created a big buzz all over France about this French journalist who revealed the all about the life of a random French Facebook user thanks to the information he got through the different social networks this person was on and so…to conclude, in exposing his daily life in public.

His holidays, his friends, his job…The newspaper “Le Tigre” has published all the possible information that he published himself online.

The very first concept was really simple – create the newspaper portrait of a random internet user thanks to the information that he found on the online social media platforms (Copains d’avant, Facebook, Flickr…)

And this is how the journalist Raphael Meltz starts his article, straight to the point: “You are the unlucky one to be the first Google portrait from “the Tigre” experience”.

In this long article (that you can find on the Le Tigre website – only in French unfortunately but will probably think of translating it), one learns that “Marc L” (this is how he is called on all his networks) is an architect, where he has been on holiday (Bombay, Montreal..), who are his last lovers (Laura, Sandy) and his passions.  There are even some notes about the place where he works (the big boss is not going to be happy!).  In short, we know almost everything about his private life – or shall I just say public life.

Marc L detailed how devastated he was by the article. He claimed:  “I can’t sleep anymore. I am really annoyed with the journalists. All the information that I published online was for the people who surround me. I’m really feeling bad and have a lot of troubles sleeping. Besides being myself concerned by the story, I feel also really annoyed for all the people who are part of my contacts and whose the identities have also been revealed – mostly with regards to my personal love life…”

Pretty natural, as we learnt from the article that Marc loves women with “small boobs, short hair and nice long legs”…

Nevertheless, Marc L recognised himself the mistake of having created his own Big Brother space through the web and will surely keep an eye now on what personal information he will be sharing on the web.  Probably the most positive side of the story is that more people are informed now of the danger of exposing too much their lives.

He added however having this big regret: “I would rather not have been the one picked.” …Obviously!!! Who would like this happening to them?

That is just leading me to think twice again about the phenomenon of social networks, for which we are all the specimens in the laboratory…

Millions of people around the globe use these tools everyday without realising that someone is probably following your every move and could actually – and as this article proves – destroy your life!

Don’t smile – you could be the next victim!

Risks of confusion between public and private life on the web?  Le Tigre has underlined the seriousness of this issue.

However, while writing the article in the form of a friendly letter (“Hey Marc, you’re all right? You don’t know me it is true, but me I know you really well!”), the journalist exposes in a provocative way how any user can be the target of cyber-criminals that can easy find out where you leave, with who you go out…etc. and use that information to commit crimes.

I will end with a simple question: When will the internet be controlled and measures will be taken to protect the privacy of individuals?