Google Penguin was updated on April 24th 2012 and what it has changed is quite significant. It’s not long since we heard about Google Panda getting rid of “black hat” SEO practices – spam tactics. You know them all of those nasty Viagra comments you see all over the internet. Google Panda was focussed on stopping people using link farms to get their sites coming out higher in searches. Let’s face it, anything that rids us of spam is a step in the right direction. In my opinion the more Google relies on quality content and great creators of brilliant content the better.

So what has Penguin changed then and what does it mean for digital PRs?

Well it has changed quite a lot actually, it has been used to demote sites that use negative spammy links to cheat the clever linking system. Yes you read that right – it isn’t about the amount of links anymore. So if you hired an SEO specialist and they have been buying you a lot of directory submissions you might want to check them out first as they could have been buying the wrong types of links and if you use them, some people think they actually now cause a risk to your site.

An article on CNBC quoted Navneet Virk, director of optimization at Roundarch Isobar he says:

“The ones that are really feeling the change are the small businesses who may have hired an SEO vendor and didn’t know what they were doing to improve ranking, but now they are being penalized,” Bailey said. “(These changes are)disrupting any consistency of guidelines and punishing small businesses that lack the resources to respond.”

And Robert Gembarski from Brand Personality added in his article:

The Google Penguin update has led to a lot of panic and confusion, much in the same way that they Google Panda update did. The buzzwords at the moment are “Negative SEO”. There is a belief (note, no actual evidence of the case) that it is now easy for a site to be penalised if it has too many low quality links pointing at it. Low quality links include free-for-all directories, blog comments and forum profile links.

However, I do not believe that this sort of linking harms a websites at all. The sites that think so have probably just relied too much on these methods for SEO in the past. Now, cheap linking strategies such as this are no longer of any value. So sites have not been penalised, they have simply seen the quality of their backlink profile reduced overnight.

If you have ever done any slightly irregular link building and you have noticed your site has dropped off a cliff in searches recently you might want to read the following article on how to recover.

All of this news has got me asking myself what are the cheaper SEO companies going to do now? Are they stuck and forced to spend their time writing good quality content and getting other bloggers to use their content? Hmm well yes that’s exactly what they are going to have to do – evolve and improve. The best SEO providers are already doing this, writing good quality content and engaging in strategic blogger relations exchanging articles. Hang on, is all of this starting to sound just a little bit familiar? Are you starting to wonder where SEO stops and online public relations starts? The truth is the two have become so similar we are going to see PR companies hiring SEO specialists and vice versa much more often.

When I started this blog several years ago I called it Dead Dinosaur because I felt it was ironic, I felt that if PR companies didn’t evolve and adapt to the new media landscape they would struggle, die out and get beaten by the competition and I still stand by that. The same goes for the newspapers that are still trying to create clever digital strategies to make money out of writing their content and I don’t blame them. They just should have done it much earlier and we wouldn’t have seen as many publications go to the wall. Well now the same can be said of SEO companies and those that adopted the cheaper link building strategies as these are simply not going to work any longer and the results will be poor. This whole digital space has changed significantly in the last 12 months and companies now need high quality writers that are specialists in developing relationships with bloggers and other webmasters. I think I might be spotting an opportunity here guys.

So ask yourself am I a PR, an SEO or an online marketer? Does it even matter anymore? Do our clients even care as long as what we do achieves great results for them? Let me know.

(The image credit goes to xrayspx/ Thanks)

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It is all part of a wider campaign called http://www.hashtags4heroes.com/. The campaign has been created for the whole month of May (which in PR terms is Military Appreciation Month) to raise awareness for Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) and injured service members.

Every time a user tweets during the time period, the application will autofill any unused Twitter characters with messages that help  spread the word about their charitable services.

What I love about this is they are using something which is free to raise awareness of a particular message at a particular time. It’s a great example of a clever idea executed brilliantly. They have even created browser plug-ins and a dedicated mobile application.

They have set a target of 300,000 characters donated by May 31st 2012 but I think they will smash that as at the day of writing they have already secured 148,000.

The reason why I like this idea is because it is simple but it is PR and social media combined to deliver a multi-platform campaign. I would love to work for a charity on something like this and I tip my hat to the guys that came up with it. I have even tweeted my support – great campaign well done.

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I went with my Dinosaur PR hat on to explain what students can do for jobs in this sector and in this region. I think we all now acknowledge that this is one of the most protracted nasty recessions we have had in more than 50 years. However, let’s not use that as an excuse on why we can’t be getting jobs or starting companies ourselves. I see so many people saying its difficult out there and they are right but in my mind negativity brings nothing and you can talk yourself out of ever doing anything proactive or clever. Let’s stay positive.

The students asked some really interesting and challenging questions on the night, I answered how people can use social media channels to get jobs. Firstly, I pointed out that we do receive a lot of enquiries for either work experience or full-time positions and some of them just aren’t up to scratch at all. For instance I received an approach the other day that had no subject in the email, and simply stated “Please see attached” to which they were referring to their covering letter which was (yes you guessed it) completely generic.

I have even had emails which have copied all of the other agencies in – in one go. So all of the recipients can see the other 30-40 email addresses and a badly written email that says “Dear Sirs”.

My advice to the students last week was, be different and stand out. Try and think of things a little differently. I referred to the interactive CV video that Graeme Anthony had produced a while back see below. I think this was a simple, low cost but clever way to stand out from the crowd. If you are looking for a job in a creative space why not get creative? It’s the best way to showcase your talent.

I used the story of when I worked at a previous agency and a little old PR chap called Jed Hallam contacted me with a link to a Facebook group which stated “Ten reasons why you should hire Jed Hallam at XXXX”. I thought this was an interesting approach but then noticed he had managed to get a lot of people I respected in PR and social media to join his bespoke group. However the deal clincher for me was the final point which was “I actually considered getting a barbershop quartet to sing these ten reasons to you”. This made me laugh out loud, so I dropped him and email and asked him to come in for an interview and we ended up working together and becoming good friends.

So the moral of this story is, go the extra mile. Sure follow people, engage with them but do something a bit different and daring. If you are struggling for different ideas here are some interesting examples of social media resumes which are simple and pretty cheap to do.

If you are still stuck for a few ideas on what to try check out this article from my good friend Ben on 5 Tips to Pitch Yourself to a Potential Employer Using Social Media.

Good luck.

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The client has issued some academic research on sustainable gardens and the benefits of having a messy section in your garden to attract bees and other insects. The brief for this campaign was to make sustainable gardening more accessible and to reach out to a new demographic that doesn’t normally think about gardening.

The team are doing a great job on the usual traditional media relations campaign which includes us showcasing a garden at the RHS Royal Chelsea Flower Show.

For this campaign I wanted to get people talking about sustainable gardening (despite the weather) so we created an application where people can share their best sustainable gardening tips. It’s really easy to add a tip by planting a flower with your tip. As you would expect you can share with your friends and invite people to get involved.

Over the next few weeks, we will be contacting relevant groups and parties and inviting their opinions and tips in a dedicated outreach programme. This is more about getting people to share their expertise online than anything else. I think the guys have done a great job on this application which is one of the reasons I wanted to share it.

Feel free to get involved and leave your tip.

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For instance, yesterday I must have seen more than 10 digital marketing, SEO, advertising and website companies all offering social media marketing as a service. This got me thinking – what service are they actually offering? How come everyone is offering that these days? Is it just a magic service people now place on their banners and leaflets because its what people want to hear and it still sounds cool?

At Dinosaur PR we have actually dropped it as part of our main strapline because I didn’t want my team and I to be pigeon holed as another company just selling social media services. I try to explain to people that we come at it from a conversation seeding and momentum prospective rather than we can do a few tweets for you or teach you how to join a group on linked-in. I think the keyword to use here is strategy, anyone with half a brain can set up social channels these days but if you don’t sit down and ask yourself why are you doing this? What is our strategy online and offline? You probably aren’t going to achieve anything.

It’s no doubt the social media sector has matured in the UK and I am sure many of these companies can do a reasonable job for businesses. So although we still offer social media as part of the offering within a digital PR remit its not our core offer anymore. I have been asked a lot to provide social media training and I do this for clients on the job but software training isn’t the reason I got involved in this part of communications. I did it because I liked the way people interacted, I like to research an audience, profile them and figure out what made them tick. I didn’t start this blog for SEO purposes that is just a useful by-product from writing content that (I hope you agree) isn’t shit.

Whilst I have seen the social media marketing space mature, so has the SEO sector. I read share and write blogs on SEO myself and I think there is still a huge place for it to play in online marketing but I am pretty convinced there are more terrible SEO people than there are good ones. If you find a good one, great hire or employ him quickly as the difference between 10th and 1st place can be millions of pounds.

However, the more articles I read up on SEO and the latest tips and tricks the more I think, hang on, this is what we do as part of online PR? Am I an SEO person? Do I wear a magic black or white hat? Do I sit in the corner of the office protecting my magic bag of tricks and tips with my head buried in the Google Keyword tool reading every SEOmoz blog post there is – errrr nope.

No I am just a PR blogger that happens to understand social media, reputation management and SEO. I wonder if they are worried about where they sit in this world now – do they want to be PRs secretly? I don’t mean the fluffier side of PR but are they actually aiming to do our job of reputation management? Do they see this as the next area to move into? Or are they just using the latest techniques which happen to be social media and online PR related?

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I could just see the red tape and risk assessments piling up.

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• Government scores own goal with petrol PR disaster

So now we are in that amazing situation that petrol has run out all over the country – including three of the four local petrol stations I passed this morning – and all for nothing apart from a terrible bit of messaging from the Government.

I am sorry but whichever way you look at this, it is, to use Labour’s descriptive a total “Shambles”. The handling and messaging of this have been truly awful and they need to review this process in future. What’s more worrying for me though is the fact that everyone feels the need to fill their cars to the top because  those people that don’t have much fuel can’t actually get any and why? There is still actually no strike and there won’t be one for at least seven days either! What a ridiculous situation. Come on David sort it out and now! It makes me laugh that his background was PR because that is one big mess.

Now where is my Jerry can?

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The music I play is everything from funky house through to the more funky electro. I do like a nice strong base line and a strong vocal. For this set I played for 3.5hrs and this is about an hour in so it is a bit more up tempo rather than a warm up set.

I was asked to play more commercial dance music for this event but it was attended by well over 200 people and at the end they were wanting more. This is a picture of me in the booth – what it doesn’t show is me trying to find out how to use the smoke machine which is strategically placed behind your head so when you turn it on you get freeze dried which was quite a shock at first.

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Then I spotted this viral video that was filmed in preparation for the launch. I think it’s OK and a clever idea but they could have used different camera angles and made it work a bit harder. A big thumbs up for coming up with a different idea and using it across platforms but I think we could do something a bit more daring and scary and more engaging. Good ideas don’t always have to cost the earth to deliver.

I am pretty impressed with the amount of likes the park has on its Facebook page too as as it has almost 1million – they must be hoping to smash that soon. They should come up with a clever social campaign to drive people onto Facebook, when they are on the rides. A check-in on a ride should get you something free at the park or at the very least entered into some sort of prize draw on a particular day.

What they really need to do is to identify bloggers and invite them to test the ride out first for free – I am willing to give it a whirl and share my screams as I love the brand and the park and my wife would love to see me scared out of my mind.

This was also cross posted on the Dinosaur PR blog.

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Following some extensive online research and analysis of conversations taking place online around pets together we devised a strategy of creating a place where all of the pet sites could be found. The problem that we found was that many sites were from totally different sectors about different animals and it was hard to find one from another.

So today my client has launched the The Monster 50 which lists the top 50 pet bloggers in the UK. We have created this in association with Pet Product Marketing and shared this with a number of the people included and we will be targeting key media to increase awareness of the story. We also identified the country’s top pet blogger who is a lovely chap called Brian, who is the guy behind the Pigeon Blog, he commented:

“I started the whole blogging thing back in 2006. Pigeon Blog is just my online diary telling it how it is for the pigeons of London. By a pigeon for the pigeons was my motto, and still is.”

“It’s great that the blogging exploits of birds and animals is being recognised at last here. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that that typing and navigating a keyboard alone is hard enough, so keeping up a regular blog, especially one involving pictures, takes time and requires a lot of physical effort.”

Bloggers that are included in the list can proudly place a Monster 50 blog badge on their site as a stamp of authority.

For full details check out the news release.

In other news, on the same client, we have also helped create the Easter Bunny Hunt 2012. This is a very fun special Facebook photography competition where you can enter your rabbit to become the face of MPS and win a number of exciting goodies for your furry companion. The competition has been seeded in various places online and has already received more tha 1,000 entries and helped to drive like numbers up by more than 28%. If you have a rabbit make sure you share a picture of them.

The thing I love about Emma and the guys at Monster is that they ask for our advice, listen and then use it, and if every client did that I reckon we would be involved in award-winning campaigns every month. I truly love working in digital PR!

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