Gearheads: The Sterling Communications Blog

SEO: The Ultimate Cover-Up

We've all seen how bad press can effect a client's reputation. You can't make that press disappear completely, so what's the best way to cover it up? Mark Hopkins provides a good example of how Miley Cyrus is using SEO tactics and social media to shape her reputation after having scandalous photos published on the Internet.

Though Mark doesn't attribute the success of her PR campaign to SEO, his quick scan of Google News proves the effectiveness of the tactic. By pushing out recent positive news on Miley's "Dance Battles," they've been able to remove the bad press from the front page of Google News. 

Is SEO changing the face of crisis communication?

Has the social media backlash begun?

Jonathan Fields talks about how the constant need of the connected to document every facet of their lives not only takes them out of the moment, but can spoil the moment for others. Our own Lisa Hawes blogged about the same thing recently.

Fields asks:

When we tweet everything we are experiencing in a conversation, concert or gathering of likeminded people, does the very activity of tweeting somehow take away from our ability to enjoy the bigger activity? Does it diminish our ability to be fully present in a way that lessens the power, the value, the enduring impact of the live experience? Does it stop the core conversation about which we’re reporting from going to the next level? Does it place documenting over experiencing?

TV=Peanuts?

When I was growing up, our TV repairman was named Paul. Is anybody on a first-name basis with a TV repairman these days? Does that job still exist in the USA, land of planned obsolescence and disposable everything?

I was thinking about this because, I confess, I’m among the approximately 20M “over-the-air dependent” households that still receive TV programs via analog signals, i.e., an old-fashioned rabbit ears antenna. (There are an additional estimated 20M households who are cable or satellite subscribers, but also maintain analog sets.). Orson Welles compared television to peanuts: He hated them both, but couldn’t control his appetite for either. I control mine by controlling my access. I’ve never felt the need to sign up for Comcast, as I figure I spend too much time in front of the TV as it is — and especially when cable prices have risen 77 percent since 1996.

Get social at PodCamp Seattle

Calling all Seattlites!

Got Saturday plans yet? If not, you should check out PodCamp Seattle, taking place at UW tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The free event, aimed at new media enthusiasts, marketers, PR and advertising people and technologists, will focus on new online social tools such as blogging, podcasting, video blogging, Twitter, wikis, etc., and is open to people of all social media skill levels.

Need another reason to attend? How's this: Sterling's very own Kevin Pedraja will be speaking about "Communications in an Always-On World" and how new social media technologies are changing the way that we work. You can catch him at 1:30 p.m. in Room 302 in the Communications Building.

Should be a great opportunity to learn and network with fellow social media gurus (or gurus-in-training)! Interested? Register here.

Increased Video Usage Poses Problems

There's been a lot of news lately around increased video usage and the strain it continues to put on the network. I've noticed this problem not only exists from a mobile & wireless perspective, but also from fixed broadband angle as well. Regardless of how one chooses to access the Internet, whether it be from their homes or mobile handsets, Internet video usage is an ever-growing problem that isn't getting any better.

Deal or No Deal?

Let's just say I wouldn't want to be Jerry Yang right now. Class action lawyers are licking their chops. Carl Icahn is lashing out at both Yang and the board. And there's that ugly continuing slide in the price of Yahoo stock ($23.32 at last check-in). In one of my earlier posts, I opined that some people just just can't take "no" for an answer. I still believe that. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Microsoft's "banker" come back to Yahoo with another offer, albeit at a price substantially below the last offer. (Hey, some of the big money suitcases aren't on the board anymore...and prospects for a big deal are dwindling.)

The big question is: Who at Yahoo will get to answer the "deal or no deal" question when it's asked the next time?

Update:  Many folks smarter than I am see the MS deal as dead, dead dead. They're probably right, but only time will tell. 

Can Co-Owned Comments Improve Online Conversations?

I feel for the clients and PR pros tasked with finding, following and fueling relevant conversations on the Web. Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang nails the problem:

"Social Media is disparate and fragmented, making the conversation difficult to track, find, and use."

Owyang foresees brands using tools such as FriendFeed as a social media press release "to aggregate their social assets, and then to spur on a conversation." PR pro Steve Rubel claims FriendFeed is far more than an aggregation site or a community layered on top of others:

"It's a recommendation engine that surfaces content (both pro and amateur) via your peers...."

I'm as willing as the next geek to sign up for a useful, free service. However, FriendFeed, SocialThing and others are niches of niches without the scale or usability to affect most companies' bottom lines. There's hope, however.

Twittering from Mars

The Phoenix Lander is pretty chatty. It sends updates to nearly 10,000 followers via Twitter. Well, when Twitter is actually, you know, working...

A home free of boxes and clutter?…

According to the Chicago Tribune, consumers will soon be rid of their cable set top boxes and the multiple TV controls… finally a home with less clutter. What makes this announcement interesting to me, is not only that I'm passionate about this industry, but that I won’t be locked into renting a box from the cable provider. I will also have fewer technical issues with the cable card and more importantly, I will be able to enjoy "two-way" cable features such as pay-per-view movies.

And, believe it or not, for the first time, the cable companies, all six of them, (e.g. Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Brighthouse) and the leading consumer companies, like SONY, are actually playing nice… what a win-win story. 

A Chicken in Every Pot, A Router in Every Home…

Parks Associates just published its annual phone survey on the Digital Divide and found that 22 percent of US heads-of-households have never used e-mail. Got that — NE-VER. Sure, a lot of those people are John McCain’s age, but maybe he’s the problem. The average age of Congressional leaders puts them into a demographic group where flag-burning seems a bigger issue than municipal Wi-Fi access, high-speed Internet, and reducing the Digital Divide.

I think we need national leadership on addressing the Digital Divide, and on improving our communications infrastructure so we can stay at the forefront of a knowledge-based economy. Ah, leadership! I was reminded of this the other night as I watched an “American Experience” documentary on PBS, about FDR. He tried his hardest to deliver on Hoover’s promise of a chicken in every pot. Under FDR, the Works Progress Administration built roads, dams and public buildings. The interstate system was developed in the Eisenhower era. I’d hate tax time less if I saw great public works as a result. I’m not sure what my taxes buy these days, apart from a $3 trillion war.

Companies such as my client NETGEAR are working furiously to improve local area networking technologies and devices to support a higher quality work and entertainment experience. But no matter how fast voice, video and data can whip around your home or office network, once those packets move onto the “series of tubes” known as the Internet, they slow to a crawl.

Have the presidential candidates said enough about their plans to address the Digital Divide? Many parts of the USA could use something similar to the One Laptop Per Child program. Maybe appointing a Technology Tsar would draw some attention to this neglected subject. Or would people scoff as they did when Jimmy Carter created the Dept. of Energy? As Olga Kharif of BusinessWeek points out in her blog, we have to “reach out to people who’ve been completely left out of the Web revolution.”

Where’s a Decider when you need one?