Search Engine Technology Has Changed PR Forever……

….So Why Is It Taking So Long for PR People to Adapt?

APLINK happened onup this great post, the reality is GOOGLE is the media source for everyone !

Maybe they should just call it “Google Relations.”

source:  MARKETCOMPR

Google’s search engine technology has so radically changed the practice of public relations that it may be time to change PR’s name entirely. Why? PR is built on the assumption that companies, institutions and politicians could not only manage, but actually mold, the perceptions of all of their key audiences—or “publics,” as the earliest PR practitioners of a century ago called them.

Google has upset the PR paradigm. It’s much harder to control information. It’s much harder to get out ahead of bad news. And every piece of public information about your company—the good, the bad, the ugly—lives on the Web more or less forever.

Consider the following results of the Google revolution:

Search engine technology itself continues to evolve, making every relevant piece of information available to anyone, at any time, as long as they have a computer and Internet access.

The result is an enormous impact on a company’s “publics”—customers, vendors, employees, analysts, shareholders, regulators and everyone else capable of typing the name of a company, its management or product on their keyboards.

Enormously effective add-ons like Google Alert push information to the user instantly, and most of the content is not produced or controlled by the company named in the alert.

YouTube and its imitators (including Google’s Video) have allowed consumers to post video content that either infringes on copyright or reproduces what companies (and, increasingly, politicians) don’t what people to see.

The same process is now complete with static images that can be searched as easily as words, and used as an offensive weapon by advocacy groups (as Google itself discovered when an advocacy group called Action Network criticized the search giant for “participating in China’s Propaganda.”

What does it mean for us as PR and marketing professionals? Here are the new facts of life in the Google universe:

• There really is no such thing as a secret anymore.
• Your key audiences get information about your company as quickly as you do.
• Google’s perspective, your corporate information is a commodity, with no more inherent value than any other information its spiders pick up in their Web trolling.
• The media is now using Google as a primary news source—and often the only one—in its coverage about you and your company.
• Blogs can report—or distort—information about you, your company and your products in ways that are nearly impossible to prevent or, once posted, take down.

What can PR professionals and marketers do? At a minimum, you need to consider these three things:

• Do an immediate and thorough audit of how your company and its products are represented in the search engine database.
• Start a holistic campaign that surfaces good things about you, your company and your products. Use press releases, media coverage, speaking events and bylined articles to get the word out.
• Leverage the power of the new media. Can a well-placed item on YouTube help sell more product? Can a sponsored blog support your litigation strategy? Is it time to think about Google Ads? And don’t forget the piece of new media real estate you directly control—your company’s website.

Greg Miller is president of Marketcom PR, a Greenwich, Conn.-based public relations agency that designs and implements communications initiatives that combine classic media outreach tools with market-oriented thought leadership vehicles to help clients communicate better with their key audiences. For more information, visit www.marketcomPR.com .