Google is Your Permanent Record

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This post will go on (W)right On's permanent record.

And so will just about anything you, your employees, friends, enemies, and family post to MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Del.i.cious, etc.

Critical, unfavorable or downright bad search engine results that appear in your top 10 Google returns can easily become a stain on your record.

There are ways to manipulate search engine results so that favorable items recieve higher rankings, eventually relegating undesirable results, which are often inaccurate or really old news, to the second page of results.

While your online marketing team and SEO experts work hard to move your site up to #1 in the rankings for your category, be sure you have an online PR team working just as hard to keep the other nine results aligned with your desired image and pushing that cheapshot blog post to #11 or higher. (If after reading this, you're unconvinced of the power of 11, please be sure to watch the video primer that follows below.)

Google is essentially your company's home page and first impression. But there's also now a web project called the Internet Archive and, if Google is your permanent record, Internet Archive is your high school yearbook.

Thought you took down that embarassing webpost or terrible first attempt at a website? Think again and surf over to the Internet Archive: you'll find it there in all its former glory. While this can be painful, it can also be an excellent tool for research if you are looking for an old news release or other data that is no longer cached in the Google results. But it could just as easily be a liability to an organization that thought it had rid itself of a bio from a bad hire, content that it was sued over, or similar material. The bottomline is your overall online reputation is more important than a fleeting TV news story or traditional print coverage, except where that material is indexed by the search engines and becomes a part of your online image.

In the event that you've found this post a bit heavy, we will leave you with this excellent primer on the benefits and advantages of eleven, which is not simply restricted to unwanted search engine results but is also a great asset to amplification technology.

Best Thing School can Teach you These Days is to Adapt

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I co-chaired a breakfast session this morning for the Leadership North County Alumni that tackled the topic of education. Gary Moss of the San Diego Workforce Partnership kicked off the panel and his presentation (borrowed from www.thefischbowl.blogspot.com) contained these three slides and an 'aha' moment for me...

In the business of communications today, we are doing things and using tools that were never part of my generation's academic curriculum or early job experiences. But, as with the emergence of the Internet and email as new communications tools just over 10 years ago, social media is something I'm excited to be embracing and incorporating into our agency's toolkit.

Our ability to pick up these new tools and practices and put them to work is aided by our adaptability. We don't fear change and are excited by 'what's new.' That's essential to our business. In fact, the same skills that allow us to meet with a new client and understand their story, their business and their industry so quickly allow us to recognize shifts and adapt to the changing landscape in our own industry.

Getting back to our schools, the best thing we can do for today's students is to teach them the critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, communication, and organizational skills they'll need to adapt to whatever the world of work--five, 10 or 15 years from now--throws at them.

The fundamentals--good writing, solid math and science skills--are necessary to equip students for communicating, calculating and comprehending their worlds. (May b im oldskool but what passes for English in text and instant messages shouldn't carry over into other written communications.)

But if a student has the fundamentals down while having learned to be adaptive and resourceful in their outlook, their future will always be bright.

P.S. If you're a bright young thing and this last statement sounds like you, please email your resume to info@wrightoncomm.com.

Prepare to be Flashed by Esquire Magazine Cover

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The Christian Science Monitor website reports that in October, Esquire magazine will feature a battery-powered digital cover that flashes the tag line "The 21st Century Begins Now."

The cover is embedded with an E Ink display, the same setup used by the Amazon Kindle book reader. However, Esquire commissioned tiny custom batteries to fit into its paper-thin front page.

It required a six-figure investment by Esquire executives who hired an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover. Ford Motor has helped underwrite the cost with an ad on the issue’s E Ink inside cover.

You'll only be flashed for 90 days; after that the batteries die. And only if you buy at the magazine stand because the cover is limited to 100,000 copies to be sold to new potential subscribers at magazine racks.

Clearly there is significant PR value in this promotion that is the bigger outcome than just the 100,000 winking covers. Millions of potential Esquire readers will read about, hear or see this story through other media than will see the covers on newsstands.

So it's not a six-figure investment in 100,000 covers; it's a six-figure investment in the brand. It's bold and different, and in magazine publishing, it's a Purple Cow move!

I don't know about you, but I'm an Esquire subscriber and will be tempted to buy the magazine stand version anyhow if I can get my hands on it!

Taskus Interruptus: the new mode of work

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You probably already suspected this about yourself, but if you're anything like the IT workers studied by Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatics at UC Irvine; you shift your focus to a different task on average of every 3 minutes and 5 seconds!

Half of those switches are caused by interruptions. And, what's worse, most of them are you interrupting yourself! i.e. Checking email while you're doing something else.

This seems like a good counterpoint to our last post about Twittering, which is taking off in popularity exactly because it's just the type of thing you can read or post in 3 minutes and 5 seconds!

Other findings reported in the Fast Company interview with researchers:

"We found about 82percent of all interrupted work is resumed on the same day. But here's the bad news -- it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task."

"I argue that when people are switching contexts every 10 and half minutes they can't possibly be thinking deeply. There's no way people can achieve flow. When I write a research article, it takes me a couple of hours before I can even begin to think creatively. If I was switching every 10 and half minutes, there's just no way I'd be able to think deeply about what I'm doing. This is really bad for innovation. When you're on the treadmill like this, it's just not possible to achieve flow."

That's why, from time to time at (W)right On Communications, we shut down our email and close our doors to make the needed time for creativity and strategic thinking.

However, there's an upside to interruptions and multitasking too. Often solutions can come to you when you're thinking about something else. And task shifting gives you the chance to leave a tough problem and incubate it until the right answer or idea pops into your head.

Twitter, Follow or Get out of the Way.

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Twitter.com lets you post 140 character mini-blogs from your computer or mobile device and monitor those of your friends, professional colleagues or thought leaders who tend to share what they're reading or working on.

Yes, there are some people who Twitter what they're eating for lunch. Don't do that (unless you're a foodie and then it's ok and expected).

Simple rule: If you wouldn't want to read it, don't post it. To follow what we're doing at (W)right On Communications, there is www.twitter.com/juliewright and www.twitter.com/betsybrottlund. You simply visit the page and click to follow the Tweets of people who share your interests (you'll have to join and become a Twitterer before you can be a follower).

We find Twitter extremely useful. We enjoy scanning the Tweets of the people we're connected with through Twitter. But, as with LinkedIn, we're not just connected to the people following our Tweets but to their followers as well. You see, if something we Tweet catches our followers' interests, it could be reTweeted, posted to their blogs, and shared in many other ways -- thanks to the beauty of social networks.

But don't take our word for it. Read this article from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, written by the chief political correspondent for Slate:

Don't Fear Twitter

Using moment-by-moment observations, 'Twitter entries
build a community of readers who find their way to longer articles ….'

By John Dickerson

If I were cleverer, this piece on Twitter and journalism would fit in Twitter's 140-character limitation. The beauty of Twitter when properly used — by both the reader and the writer — is that everyone knows what it is. No reader expects more from Twitter than it offers, and no one writing tries to shove more than necessary into a Twitter entry, which is sometimes called a Tweet, but not by me, thank you.

... For the rest, follow the link:

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/08-2NRsummer/p05-dickerson.html

Hear the Buzz, Be the Buzz with Twing.com

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Twing.com is a free service that searches opinions, information, and conversations online —however obscure that particular interest may be.

In our last post, we said that Internet purchasing behavior showed that people still tended toward mainstream buying decisions, but the Twing website was designed to encourage people to find communities relevant to their interests.

We took it for a test drive and searched 'Autism' and 'Nutrition' (since our client Global Health Trax sponsored an autism benefit hosted by actress Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey last weekend. GHT's CEO attended their exclusive autism fundraiser. (Yes, the one where Britney Spears made a rare appearance.) (W)right On supported GHT's sponsorship with an online campaign that we pushed through in about three weeks to prepare and execute.

Here's what Twing.com told us about online conversations:

• 1,559 results
  
• 2,349 views for the top most relevant result: Autismtalk.net


• 942 views for next result: Forum Garden, which had 13 'replies' to Autismtalk's 3. So less traffic but more involvement.


• When we sorted by 'date,' it was clear that right now everyone is talking about radio blowhard Michael Savage's recent assertion that most autistics are fakes and brats.
  
• With one mouse click, the site also produces a graph charting the number of threads and posts for the past week, which is cool.
  

But, best of all, the site has a 'buzz chart.' So we inserted 'Global Health Trax' and 'autism' to track our PR effort in July for GHT. This is a great feature and allows you to visualize the impact of a campaign like the one we launched only a few weeks ago.

Twing.com just got added to our list of Favorites at (W)right On Communications!

And to reward you for reading this post, here's a photo of gorgeous Hollywood types from last Saturday.

Marketing's Long Tail and YouTube 'murketing'

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In 2007, there were 91 million songs available on iTunes but 91% of them sold only one copy each. The theory of the long tail was supposed to show how the Internet allowed consumers to find and indulge in their niche interests. But research like this on iTunes and similar research on movies shows that consumers continue to 'nibble' on their more obscure tastes and gorge on a small number of mainstream hits.

Read more here: http://www.slate.com/id/2195151/

And while you're visiting Slate, another great article is "Things are not what they Stream: Have corporate pranks gone to far?" It's a look at YouTube fakes, 'murketing,' and the value to the brand in the big 'reveal' when the brands are found out.

Here's the article: http://www.slate.com/id/2195687. Now go watch the video they're talking about where the cell phones pop corn kernels: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V94shlqPlSI