Using Social Media: Part 2 – Search Feeds

Update: I’ve edited this post to provide a more objective view of social media and how it can be applied.  

This is the second post in a 6 part series on using social media. In this second installment, I look at search feeds.

Search Feeds

There are several tools that you can use to monitor your company. I previously wrote about Trackur, but I prefer to use search feeds via Google and Twitter Search – at least for now.  

I recommend using a reader to have a single place for reviewing your feeds through the day vs. having mutliple emails in your inbox.  

• Online Reputation Management: With search feeds, this helps you to track mentions of your company throughout the Web, in blogs and Twitter. Depending on the content of the blog posting or tweet, consider commenting or tweeting back respectively. While the response may be a couple of hours or even a few days later, people appreciate that you have responded. It demonstrates that you’re listening to your audiences.

• Competitive Intelligence: While you set up feeds for your company, also set up feeds for your competitors’. This way, you can stay on top of any media, blog or tweet mentions regarding your competitor. And when appropriate, participate in the converation with your company’s perspective or introduce your company to the blogger and twitterer.

• Industry Trends: Set up searches for key terms within your industry. This will help you to stay on top of industry trends that you can share with your colleagues or uncover additional reporter/bloggers/twitterers within the industry.

Conclusion

Setting up RSS feeds with specific search keywords is an easy way to monitor your company’s online reputation while keeping tabs on your competition. The search results can also uncover new reporters and bloggers who may be interested in your company, further expanding your relationships with key influencers.

Other posts in the series:

Using Social Media: Part 1 – Microblogging

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@csalomonlee writes about using social media:post 2 of 6 – search feeds: http://twurl.nl/2jkors

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PR Pitching 101: Is Personalization Gone?

 Last week, I noticed a tweet from Andy Beal about Google PR sending an email on masses to a list of reporters and a few bloggers. His tweets were:  

Google PR just sent me an email. the CCd instead of BCC – I know have email addys for all major journalists! Woohoohaha   

Wow, this journalist email list is GOLD, shame I’m too ethical to do anything with it   

 I was surprised that Google PR didn’t personalize the emails based on the reporter/blogger and beat. Andy’s response was that this was typical depending on the PR person within Google. 

  Don’t get me wrong, Google is obviously doing something right. I barely read any negative articles about Google. But this non-personalized approach surprised me. I was always taught to personalize my pitches. Here are my top don’ts for pitching reporters:    

1. Don’t Misspell Names – Misspelling names turns off the reporter before he or she even reads your pitch. 
2. Don’t Use Nicknames – unless you’re absolutely sure, I would err on using the reporter’s full name. Make sure you remember point 1.
3. Don’t Generalize Pitches – research the reporter to make sure that you target your pitch to his/her beat. Using a general pitch can backfire as it’s obviously a mass emailing.
4. Don’t Mass CC Reporters – this one refers to what Google PR did. If you have to mass email reporters, at least use the BCC line. Otherwise, you’re advertising who you’re pitching and possible competitors in the email.

 Any thoughts or other recommendations for PR Pitching?

When Google Penalizes You – Robin Good’s MasterNewMedia Story

 Last week, Robin Good of MasterNewMedia suddenly experienced a drop of incoming traffic. As an indepedent online publisher, Robin relies on organic searches (primarily Google) for his business. Unbenownst to him, his site somehow ran afoul of the Google’s guidelines, and his research via Google’s Webmaster Central yielded some clues to why his site was penalized by Google.

According to ComScore, Google has nearly 50% of the search market share as of May 2007 of this year. If you inadvertently do something that goes against Google’s policies, you could lose a significant portion of your audience. And if traffic to the blog is how you are measuring success to your client, then how do you manage this?

I strongly advise any PR practictioner advising clients on blogs to read the full story – Google Nightmare is Over. Links to the series of articles are located at the bottom of this posting.