Australian companies fail to take on the blog 1 May 2007
Posted by Catriona Pollard in Articles, Blog tips.2 comments
An article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald has reported that just over half of Australian companies were interested in social networking tools but were not using them yet. Another 26 per cent had begun a trial or were using them.
Why is it that so many businesses are still just thinking about it? When I develop PR strategies, when relevant to the business, I suggest developing a blog, but very few clients develop one. It is one of the few areas that levels the playing field between SMEs and corporates.
- Three-quarters of Australian companies are interested in using social networking tools such as blogs and discussion forums to improve communication between their employees.
- Australian companies are lagging: one in three overseas companies surveyed had begun a trial or were using social networking tools.
- Only 10 per cent of Australian respondents had set up corporate blogs, although another 19 per cent planned to.
- Almost half the respondents had either set up, or planned to set up a facility for employees to bookmark internet sites and share the links with each other.
- Almost a quarter had RSS feeds and discussion forums, while 15 per cent had a wiki and a further 16 per cent planned to have one.
It seems that althought SME Australia is still thinking about developing a blog……Social collaboration, and the use of Web 2.0 ideas in a corporate context, is becoming a key part of enterprise services, said Tien Tzuo, chief strategy officer at on-demand software company Salesforce.com.
Mr Tzuo said classic content management software was about storing and finding documents but by adding Web 2.0 tools such as tagging, a company could create a more co-operative environment.
The software could also be extended to bring the company closer to its partners and customers, he said.
Salesforce is using this model to develop ideas about features and fixes for its software. Customers suggest and promote ideas they want developed on the IdeaExchange website.
“The concept of voting (for software features) sparks participation – the user community is galvanised around that,” Mr Tzuo said.
In a previous post we reported that Australian CEOs are failing to use blogs, and in this The Intranet Dashboard survey also found that Australian chief executives were less likely than overseas chief executives to contribute to an internal blog.
- Only 13 per cent of Australian chief executives surveyed had a blog, compared to 20 per cent of those overseas.
- In Australia, 9 per cent of chief executives used their blog for regular communication with employees, while 4 per cent used it to communicate outside the company.
Are you an A-list blogger? 5 March 2007
Posted by Catriona Pollard in Blog tips.add a comment
A-list bloggers post several times a day (40.7%), once a day (25.8%), or several times a week (22%).
A-list bloggers revealed their full names (83.26%). A majority shared contact information, especially e-mail address (99.5%) and even instant message screen names (13.4%), mailing addresses (5.4%) or phone numbers (5.9%).
A-list bloggers told their readers about their day (80.4%), talked about feelings and thoughts (79.4%), shared political slant (45.4%), and talked about friends and families (41.6%).
Most A-list bloggers demonstrated competence by presenting their intellectual abilities (78.9%) or praising others (25.4%) ratherthan criticizing or blaming (18.2%).
Good reasons to blog for good PR 28 February 2007
Posted by Catriona Pollard in Blog tips.add a comment
I recently attended an intereresting PRIA webinar by Katie Delahaye Paine on PR measurement. She covered measuring blogs, wikis etc. with some interesting insights and facts:
* Reputation are made, destroyed and saved in the blogosphere.
* If you want to measure relationships or registration you need to monitor consumer generated media.
* Blogs need two different tools, one to measure the impact of your own blog. One to measure the impact of others’blogs.
Not all blog are important:
* 31.6 million blogs have been created on services such as BlogSpot, LiveJournal, Xangaand MSN Spaces, with 10 million created in the first quarter of 2005 alone.
* 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned.
* 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days. The average duration of the remaining 1.63 million abandoned blogs was 126 days (almost four months).
Why bother with blogs?
Bloggersfit the profile of “influentials”.
51% of journalists read Weblogs regularly.
28% of journalists rely on Weblogs for day-to-day reporting.
70% of journalists who read blogs do so for work-related tasks.
33% of journalists say they use blogs as a way of uncovering breaking news or scandals.
43% of journalists use blogs to research and reference facts.
41% of journalists access blogs at least once a week.
55% percent say they read blogs as part of their work duties.
Blogging and the Australian CEO 13 February 2007
Posted by Catriona Pollard in Blog tips.1 comment so far
According to the SMH article, Bosses let sleeping blogs lie, Australian chief executives are failing to capitalise on a PR phenomenon: blogging.
General Motors’ is well known, with postings from chief executive Bob Lutz and many other senior executives. Bill Marriott’s blog explores the world of hotels. Federico Minoli of Ducati is into motorbikes. Randy Baseler, Boeing’s vice-president for marketing, does a great job if you like planes.
Some are little more than corporate spin, vetted (or even ghost-written) by the PR people. Even so, their chatty and informal presentation has a softer edge than more conventional marketing.
But their real advantage is in the feedback they generate. Corporate blogging guru Debbie Weil says: “Any attempt by execs at the top of big organisations to think out loud and listen to feedback from employees and others is laudable.”
You’ll look high and low for a web log penned by an Australian captain of industry.
Corporate blogs are an effective way to communicate with and get feedback from customers, prospective customers, the public, employees and business partners. They allow an organisation to respond quickly to negative trends or rumours.
How often should you update your blog? 24 January 2007
Posted by Catriona Pollard in Blog tips.7 comments
The answer is dependent on the role of the blog. Many businesses think they don’t have time for blogs because they think they need to update it several times a day.
Certainly news and review blogs need to be current and updated several times a day and daily. However, if you are using your blog to let people know what is happening in your business then the strategy is different.
You should keep it updated around once a week or evey two weeks. Some of your readers may find they just don’t have time to read updates anymore than that. Athough it is more important that the stories are relevant, than just adding any old story so your blog is updated.
You may like to try different schedules and different times, watch your traffic logs and keep track what you’re doing. You will find a schedule that suits you and your readers.
Search Engine PR 27 December 2006
Posted by Catriona Pollard in Blog tips, PR tips.add a comment
Blending the traditional tools of public relations with innovative search marketing techniques opens a new avenue of promotion for savvy content providers and site owners. Understanding how news search engines operate is as vital to a public relations (PR) campaign as understanding how to contact reporters.
News search engines
According to Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder of SEO-PR, search engines have become an indispensable utility for journalists.
“Normally, it can take up to 30 days for a search engine to index a new page of content and get found,” said Jarboe. “So by definition, what the search engines are serving up is old news.”
“A couple of years ago, along came news search engines. They fill a very strategic gap,” he continued.” The only pages in the search engines are articles and press releases less than 30 days old. So if you are a journalist and you are about to do a story, you’re going to go to news search engines and poke around. You will find everything that has been there 30 days or later. If you are doing historic research, that is very useful.”
“We use news search, mainstream search, and other channels that will drive traffic directly and will be in the mainstream search results,” said Nan Dawkins, Co-Founder of RedBoots Consulting. Dawkins recommends using a gateway site into news search engines.
“In the environmental sector, we have found a great little site called Environmental Media Services,” she said. “Google will pick it up within 2 hours.”
“You have to roll up your sleeves and figure out what those are gateway sites are for you,” she continued. “They are out there. There are sites that Google News and Yahoo News like a lot. Yahoo has ‘full coverage’ where they group the news with other coverage about that news topic. To get content in, email the editor of that topic. It does not have to be your news, specifically.”
Newsgroups are another good source for PR. “If you have content that relates to the topic of a topic specific news group, and if you are a contributor to that news group don’t be afraid to post a message to that newsgroup,” Hawkins recommended. “Let people know you have some content they might be interested in. When you do that be sure to treat it like a press release. Put keywords in your subject line and in the message you post.”
Click here for the full aritcle.
Monitoring crisis situations through blogs 7 November 2006
Posted by Catriona Pollard in Blog tips, PR tips.1 comment so far
From a PR perspective it may be very important for you to see who is commenting on your business or your products. Certainly if you are managing a crisis situation you will need to monitor it, not only through the media, but now through blogs.
Tracking company, Technorati tracks the number of links, and the perceived relevance of blogs, as well as the real-time nature of blogging. Technorati automatically receives notification from weblogs as soon as they are updated, it can track the thousands of updates per hour that occur in the blogosphere, and monitor the communities (who’s linking to whom) underlying these conversations.
According to Technorati data, there are about 75,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers update their weblogs regularly; there are about 1.2 million posts daily, or about 50,000 blog updates an hour.
To search for comments in blogs, go to http://www.technorati.com/ and type your search terms.
What is a blog? 29 August 2006
Posted by Catriona Pollard in Blog tips.1 comment so far
Although most of us read blogs now, I am often asked what a blog actually is. A weblog, or blog, is a personal journal on the web. Weblogs express as many different subjects and opinions as there are people writing them. Some blogs are highly influential and have enormous readership while others are primarily intended for a close circle of family and friends.
A few years ago, Web search was revolutionized by a simple but profound idea — that the relevance of a site can be determined by the number of other sites that link to it, and thus consider it ‘important.’ In the world of blogs, hyperlinks are even more significant, since bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, which creates the sense of timeliness and connectedness one would have in a conversation.
Starting a blog 12 August 2006
Posted by Catriona Pollard in Blog tips.4 comments
Welcome to the Small Business PR and Marketing blog! It seems that blogging has reached a critical mass and everyone is thinking about starting one (obviously including me!) In the process of developing this blog I talked to expert Carol Daunt (who helped me set up this blog!). She is in the business of explaining communications technology and she believes that blogs:
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Build your profile as blogging demonstrates expertise
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Allows you to shares information with customers
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Informs people about other things your business is doing
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Generate powerful referral networks
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Creates an opportunity to network and share information with people from around the world
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Permits the kind of conversations that are necessary to truly connect with modern customers
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Creates an opportunity to build relationships with your customers
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Search engines are attuned to finding blogs
I hope you find this blog informative – as the title says it is PR & marketing tips for small business entrepreneurs.
