Online Social Signals essential to PR…

It seems that page 1 of Google is becoming just as much the bread and butter of good PR as coverage in top print titles these days…

This was my thinking, at least, when I read about the recent survey from Branded3 which found that URLs receive a significant boost in Google rankings when they are shared on Twitter, with those receiving over 7,500 tweets almost always ranking inside the top five results on search engines.

Naturally, being a generally savvy bunch many in the PR industry have already capitalised on digital opportunities and we’ve been blessed with an array of much celebrated integrated campaigns for brands over the past couple of years. However, whilst there’s been plenty of speculation with regards to social media’s SEO impact, I have to say that this is the first piece of research that has provided tangible results that I can relay back to clients when recommending online PR.

The correlation between tweets and search engine rankings is big news for PR professionals. Social media is PR in its most organic form – direct dialogue. If this direct dialogue can now impact the hotly coveted page 1 of Google then surely that’s good news! Particularly if you need to, ahem, push down some of the less attractive search results that appear for some brands when searched. It’s my firm belief that good PR is now essential to all parts of digital marketing – getting people talking about your brand is essential to SEO.

Now what this means for Twitter and its rather fledgling business plan, I’m not sure. I remember thinking earlier in the year than the likes of Snoop Dog tweeting about Toyota’s ‘Swagger Wagons,’ and a host of celebs tweeting about Snickers UK was an opportunity missed for Twitter as third party ad agencies had capitalised on the talent pool and reach that the social network has at its disposal. Perhaps the news from Branded3 will convince more brands to part with the huge budgets required to set up promoted accounts and tweets on Twitter?

Either way, this is big news and confirms what many have been thinking for some time. 

2012 – The year of the Tweeting Twit

Let’s all be honest, when celebrities first got on Twitter, fearlessly spouting forth from the round table of life, it was quite satisfying to see the occasional fall from grace in the form of an all too honest tweet. Twitter, quite expertly liberalised us from the age of publicity-vetted blandness - note @RupertMurdoch’s most recent tirade against Obama and Google recently blogged about here. However, it would appear that politicians too are falling victim to stupidity’s tendency to go viral! 

Yes, it’s been a bit of a false start to the Olympic year for some of Britain’s more politically motivated Twitterati! There’s been a triple entente of 140 character social media faux pas’ already, ending in nationwide trending hash tags - effectively a mass digital sniggering from the online populace.

So strike one: Diane Abbot (@HackneyAbbott) tweets, “'White people love playing 'divide & rule. We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism.” With racial tension resurfacing amidst the Stephen Lawrence murder trial, it’s safe to say @HackneyAbbott was justifiably the first tweeting twit of the year.

Strike two: You’d think the calls for Abbott to resign after her 140 character fail would have resulted in slightly more diligent proofreading. At the very least the party leader would make sure the messages he pushed through the channel were fitting. Well, no. Ed Miliband (or someone in his digital team) let loose a rather inconvenient Freudian slip in a tweeted tribute to Bob Holness. Safe to say, Bob won’t be fondly remembered for ‘Blackbusters.’ Tweeting twit number two.

Strike three: MP Tom Harris, the Labour party’s ‘social media guru’ or ‘Twitter tsar’ (these titles are already open to debate after strike’s one and two) tweets a Downfall parody of SNP leader Alex Salmond and is forced to resign. If there is a no go area in UK politics it is Mein Führer. You’d think a social guru would have been aware of the parameters within which to operate such digital prowess. At least we found the source of the problem - tweeting wit number three.

Fact of the matter is, these are all fairly regular, minor gaffes (bar the Hitler one from MP Tom Harris, that was plain idiotic), but with quite large repercussions online. Quite simply, when you’re something of a someone on social media the key is to remember that age old adage and ‘think before you tweet.’

Have Twitter missed the boat here?

How much do you think a twitter endorsement costs from the Doggfather of rap? A 140 character shout out for a brand? Well, $10,000 (£6,256) apparently – at the very least, that’s $71 (£44) per character!

 

Yup, brands can now slip Snoop Dogg a couple ‘G’s for him to give you a ‘holla’ on Twitter. Ask Toyota, he’s already bigged up their ‘swagger wagons’ and he’s not alone either. Plenty of online celebrity influencers are using their enormous tweet reach to push advertising messages for big brands.

Ad.ly, social marketers and online conversation starters have set up this service for brands to tap in to their target audiences on twitter, reaching them through the hyper-connected twitterati – celebrities or influencers. They’re not alone either, Izea are another market leader in social media sponsorship, an industry that is unsurprisingly on the rise.

Now, rather than question the ghetto credibility of a Toyota minivan (It’s actually a really good campaign) and also bring Snoop Dogg’s good name in to disrepute by suggesting that the quadruple platinum hip hop star, has *ahem* sold out, there’s one thing that is clear to me here - celebrities are Twitter’s bread and butter. It begs the question really, why haven’t they already done this?

But perhaps they have just missed the boat. I read an article earlier this autumn in New York magazine which described how Twitter, if anything, is a talent company, dominated by an influential, media-celebrity-blogger elite who are connected to the millions. In effect, they tweet and everyone else listens. Twitter has to look after this talent like an entertainment company would look after its star attractions because without them it faces a digital backwash of MySpace proportions. 

Makes sense really. Adverts can now form part of the serendipitous chatter and reach audiences with the frictionless immediacy that only a micro-blogging site could provide. But whilst this dream has already been pounced upon by silicon valley vultures, have Twitter missed another lucrative opportunity?

Monkey See Monkey do: Facebook gets more like Twitter and Google+

Well it was only a matter of time before the ‘me-too’ skirmish began amongst the top guns of the social networking world. It’s Facebook that is now off the mark with the introduction of some new features that are strikingly similar to that of its closest adversaries. 

So it’s not called a ‘Follow’ button, but users can now ‘subscribe’ to Facebook users that they aren’t already friends with –such features already being commonplace on Twitter and new boy Google+.  Furthermore, users can not only follow key journalists, celebrities and people of interest, they can now organise their news feed in to lists (hardly an inconspicuous Facebook version of the Google plus Circles).

No doubt the competition between the three networks is heating up and there will be all the more monkey see monkey do activity in the year ahead. However, as a PR person I have to say the most interesting question to pose now is how will developments like the above change the way brands use the three networks.

With Facebook already a hub of b2c activity I wouldn’t be surprised to see certain branded pages acting as an umbrella for many official profiles whose posts will unsurprisingly be public. With more and more findings demonstrating the influence of Facebook on the SERPs, more public profiles could add to the social layer of a brand’s SEO.

For Twitter, many social media boffins may now argue that the pressure is on for it to develop. However, I can’t see any big changes in how brands will use the social network, only in how Twitter opts to generate revenue from it.

For Google+ it’s still a case of the chicken and egg. No doubt many social media savvy brands are salivating over the opportunity laden space that is the fastest growing social network to date but what comes first, the brands or the users? We call it user generated content, but more often than not it is facilitated by a brand. Either way it would appear that Google+ has indeed caused a stir in the social networking market which will no doubt influence brand activity across all three networks in the years to come.