Phillips D., Young P. Online Public Relations
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Everybody’s public relations
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to a�ract more traffic, especially unrelated traffic, then it is likely your
website rank will go down significantly and it is possible that your site
could banned from the search engine for life.
SEO is a PR issue. The basics of good SEO is not rocket science; the best
SEO will rank your site highly but is much harder, so use an expert.
WHAT ARE SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICE SITES?
MySpace.com, Bebo.com and Facebook.com are the three most recog-
nized social media services. They are micro-websites that allow people to
exchange interactive, user-submi�ed content among a network of friends
through personal profiles, blogs and comment discussion lists. They are
very quick to set up, and don’t require the writing skills or pose the chal-
lenges of content creation of a website or blog; it is easy to add photos,
music and videos. They are very popular with a wide range of audiences.
The UK marketing magazine Brand Republic reported that 10 per cent of the
UK population accessed Facebook in 2007.
In 2006, MySpace was the world’s sixth most popular English-language
website. Facebook, a near rival, was said to be generating advertising rev-
enue of over $1.5 million per week in 2006. The speed at which Facebook has
grown in the United Kingdom (in May 2007, it gained 527,000 new users)
gives a graphic example of just how quickly the social media landscape can
change.
Music was the first sector to recognize the potential of social networks,
with many bands building a fan base through MySpace. Facebook is built
around networks of special interest groups, originally based on the uni-
versity or college the member a�ended, but now including thousands and
thousands of niche groups. In addition, users can add a range of applications
to incorporate other forms of rich interactive content.
Figures from Nielsen/NetRatings suggest that Facebook received 6.5 million
unique visitors in August 2007, compared with 6.4 million for MySpace.
Both sites are now visited by one in five UK surfers.
There are many other such sites and it is possible for the practitioner to
create networks for client activities both in-house and for wider audiences.
Ragan Communications, a PR services provider, and Melcrum, the research
and training business, both offer social networking sites exclusively for PR
practitioners.
PR is just waking up to the potential of social networking but – more than
almost any other part of this book – few would predict with any confidence
quite how MySpace and Facebook will develop.
The geography of social media
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WHAT IS VIDEO-SHARING?
Video-sharing hit the big time when Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube in
2006. It grew from there. comScore reported that 27.4 million British internet
users viewed 3.5 billion videos online in March 2008, with almost half seen
on YouTube. There are many such sites that allow people to upload video,
edit content, add tags, create groups and share videos to a wide or narrow
audience. It is possible to have your own video-sharing facility inside a
firewall and in closed groups, wikis or on websites. Ideal for newscasts,
lectures, conferences and embedded in presentations, online video is an
important channel for communication. Production cost and expertise does
not always have to be ‘top drawer’ because typical screen size is small.
BBC Radio Berkshire’s website was inundated with hundreds of pictures
and videos from the public after floods swept the area in July 2007.
Broadcast journalist Oliver Williams used Google Maps to create an inter-
active map, plotting pictures and YouTube videos being sent in by the
public to the locations around the county that they referred to. Over
100,000 newspapers, blogs and other websites highlighted this BBC web
‘mashup’.
There is a lot to be considered when it comes to video. BBC iPlayer, which
accounted for between 3 and 5 per cent of internet traffic by mid-2008, is
obviously a popular channel (the first episode of The Apprentice was watched
100,000 times via iPlayer). User-generated content can be broadcast live
using services like Seesmic (h�p://seesmic.com), which adds to the range of
video options available.
Our tip: use online video to support relationship building with key
audiences – they will like it and share interesting content. Be very careful
with copyright material. Check first.
WHAT ARE VIRTUAL WORLDS?
Second Life was the first of many online virtual worlds to catch the interest
of the mainstream media. Virtual worlds come in many forms, o�en in-
cluding so�ware on a PC that allows the participant to enter a graphical
representation of an online world.
People create a virtual image of themselves (called an avatar) and can
explore a virtual world, meet other ‘residents’, chat, and participate in
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individual and group activities. They are able to create virtual properties,
trade with one another, exchange information and lectures, or enjoy a wide
range of social activities.
To be able to get best advantage from these online properties you will
need a reasonably fast computer with a good quality graphics capability
and a good (5mg plus) broadband internet connection.
A lot of virtual worlds are used in commerce, including simulation
so�ware (for example, to learn to fly an aeroplane), but development of
online versions is only just becoming a reality for public relations activities.
There are so�ware services for practitioners to develop 3D virtual reality
programs for creating room interiors, including kitchen, bathroom, bed-
room, study, retail store and office space designs. Some programs are used
in architecture and for ‘visualizing’ a wide range of locations, with the
ability to ‘fly round’ buildings and locations.
Sony has used virtual worlds to promote its technologies, and Sony Home
is a 3D interactive virtual world.
Our tip: keep a close eye on these developments, because they offer rich
content and will develop into a very significant part of online PR.
WHAT IS VOIP?
The protocols that allow people to speak to each other using computers
languished in the background for a long time before a group of programmers
in Estonia came up with Skype. They were lucky. They brought their product
to market as broadband became common. Now it is possible to make calls
between Skype users free, and to make calls to ordinary telephones as well
from the same computer or equipment.
In 2007, there were 30 million users of VoIP services in Europe, with
1million VoIP BT users in the United Kingdom.
VoIP has many other uses. It can be embedded into blogs, wikis, games
and websites as web widgets; it can be used for conferences and broadcast
and can include a wide range of facilities for voice and video communication.
Many organizations now use VoIP instead of the more common telephone
and PABX systems.
WHAT ARE WEBSITES?
The first website was put up in 1991. Most websites have a ‘home page’
or common root URL from which other web pages cascade in a hierarchy.
Sites can comprise one or many web pages, images, videos and other digital
The geography of social media
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There are many uses for websites. Most are used to aid business trans-
actions for government, commercial and not-for-profit organizations, and
personal websites. The most common personal websites are social network-
ing service sites such as social networks, blogs and wikis, but the basic tech-
nology is used in many applications in addition to traditional websites.
Websites are most commonly accessed by people using computers,
mobile phones and local area networks by means of a ‘web browser’ such as
Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google’s Chrome. However, a lot of platforms
for communication will render web pages in other formats, including
Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), the common television standard across
Europe.
There is a significant industry that supports the web. Vendors range from
organizations that transmit content, host and provide security of service to
designers of applications and websites and pages.
The evolution of the internet and its technologies is such that almost
anyone can create a website and it can be available worldwide by a hosting
service for free.
There is a wide range of so�ware systems that can be embedded into
websites, such as JavaScript and many others that are available to generate
dynamic web systems and dynamic sites. Sites may also include content
from one or more databases or provide access by using technologies based
on XML (eXtensible Markup Language), such as RSS (see above).
Plug-ins (o�en called web widgets) are available to increase the rich-
ness of user experience and are rendered by the web browser. Technolo-
gies include Adobe Flash, Shockwave and small bits of code wri�en in
assets. Most sites are kept as a file on a computer (called a web server).
Some sites are maintained on several servers for security and to ensure that
there is no interruption of service.
A web page is a document, typically wri�en in HTML (Hypertext Markup
Language), that is almost always accessible via internet protocols known as
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).
The first web project proposal was written and circulated for comment in
March 1989, with the first web page published in 1991 by an Englishman,
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee. In 1993, CERN announced that the world
wide web would be free to anyone. By 2007, there were over 8 billion
web pages. There were more than 100 million websites on the internet
in November 2006. This included 3.5 million new sites created in the pre-
ceding month. Collectively, these millions of sites comprise the ‘world wide
web’.
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To discover the indexed pages of a website, the service by Yahoo! is valuable
(h�ps://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com). It also shows who is linking to the
website (which media publications, blogs, directories and other sites are
linking in).
Our tip: it is worth going to one of the many evening courses in website
design for beginners.
WHAT ARE WIDGETS?
If there was a ‘year of the web widget’ it was 2007. Typically using Adobe
Flash or JavaScript programming languages, widgets (called gadgets by
Google) are small pieces of code that can be inserted into a blog, wiki, social
media site, web page or other HTML-based property. They have a capability
to bring together different information and combine it (‘mashup’) to present
added richness.
JavaScript. Dynamic HTML (DHTML, a collection of technologies used
together to create interactive and animated websites) also provides for user
interactivity and real-time updating within web pages (ie, pages don’t have
to be loaded or reloaded to effect any changes). The most commonly used
plug-ins include the ability to add video (eg a YouTube video) to a website
(such as a blog). At the time of going to press, Google had 8,000 of these
plug-ins for use in its service, which are also available for any HTML-coded
web page such as a blog.
Much of the coding in hypertext mark-up language (HTML) is not visible
to most people and is not used by the public. Having a simple idea of what
lies behind a web page is useful for practitioners.
To understand what goes on behind a web page (the HTML code) is
easy. In Internet Explorer, click on ‘View’ and then ‘Source’. It is important
to know what is going on there so that you can add things to your blog
or wiki or website. The best way of doing that is to edit a blog by using its
HTML capability. Creating a blog is simple and free, and you may just use
it for experimenting so that you can understand how websites work. Your
challenge, should you wish to undertake it, is to create a blog and embed
a YouTube video in it. A simple tip to help your understanding is to find
someone young enough to have done it, because most have.
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Our tip: look up ‘web widgets’ online and use all the creativity you can
muster to use this vast array of communications devices.
WHAT IS A WIKI?
A wiki is a form of website. Wikis are mostly used inside organizations to
allow a group of people to create, reference and edit web pages to form an
evolving body of knowledge for the group. Wikis can be open to view by
just a few people, or made publicly available. Editing rights can be given to
everyone or to a few, and these decisions are made by the owner or ‘wiki
master’.
Wikis have become popular for PR people because if you want to know
more about any channel for online communication it will almost certainly
be described in some detail by a number of experts in Wikipedia.com.
Wikipedia is a wiki – a wonderful example of how social media works.
Imagine, 10 or 15 years ago, you were talking with a group of friends and it
suddenly occurred to you that each of you was an expert in something the
others knew li�le or nothing about; Jill was a film buff who knew a great
deal about French cinema, Susan had read a lot about rhinoceroses, and
Peter collected Commonwealth stamps. You say: ‘Hey everyone, together
we could begin to write an authoritative encyclopaedia that would be used
every day by people all over the world. Let’s go home and start typing!’
Jill, Susan, Peter and the others would melt away and leave you to your
ravings. But that is pre�y much what happened with Wikipedia, which was
launched in 2001.
Embedding a YouTube video into MySpace is common among teens, and
the YouTube code is a widget. There are some very sophisticated widgets
and some that are very relevant to PR practice, such as those that can embed
news coverage in a website or wiki driven by RSS to ensure immediate
updating of news. The authors use a widget to present slideshows and
video (Jumpcut and Eyespot are used with and without voice and music),
and videos embedded in a wiki.
Showing how web widgets can be used to spread rich content, the
publisher Forbes launched eight separate widgets in July 2007. Covering
topics ranging from ‘technology’ to ‘lifestyle’, Forbes.com encouraged
users to embed the widgets in their blogs, social media pages and home
pages, thereby spreading its content across the web.
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Simply by tapping into people’s enjoyment of creating content, Wikipedia
has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites. There are more
than 75,000 active contributors working on some 5,300,000 articles in more
than 100 languages. As of 2008, there are 2,037,274 articles in English; every
day hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world make tens
of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to enhance the
knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopaedia; these statistics were, of
course, taken from Wikipedia’s own ‘About’ page (on 6 October 2007).
The same processes can be used to bring together and develop know-
ledge and expertise in any size of organization. Examples of commercial
applications include Dresdner Kleinwort bank, which has set up a pro-
prietary wiki system that has 5,000 pages and over 2,500 users worldwide.
Students studying for their PR degrees at Bournemouth University created
over 800 pages of content for their year-long ‘Online PR’ module in 2006
(this remains available and is continuously updated to this day).
Wikis can be plain, like Wikipedia, or can be colourful, dynamic, rich and
interactive. Contributors can add or edit pages at any time with text, and can
embed videos, pictures, diagrams, voice files and polls. VoIP telephony can
be embedded to allow people to interact by voice or video conference direct
from a page or sidebar. Documents (including Word, PDFs, spreadsheets,
etc) can be uploaded and accessed from inside a wiki. Wikis can include
their own blogs and discussion lists, indeed almost anything that can be
added to a website – and without having to learn HTML.
Wikis can be hosted in-house on an organization’s own system or by
one of the many online services, including PBWiki. Some very useful wiki
hosts are free, and others offer services at a low cost. Modern wikis are
edited online through a web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome
or Opera).The editing process can use a specific wiki language but some of
the most popular services use an interface that looks like an ordinary word
processing package.
Our tip: although wikis are ge�ing more user friendly all the time, they
are a li�le harder for the beginner to master than, say, a weblog. If you are
going to use wikis, it is worth appointing someone as wiki master who can
tidy up the stuff that people can’t quite manage. Wikis are easy to use but
take time to master (for a useful list of available wikis, visit h�p://www.
wikimatrix.org/).
We have dealt with some of the more popular channels here. Many of
them are available for practitioners to build themselves so as to provide
comparable services for their own publics. Most are ‘mashable’: that is to
say, they can be embedded into each other (o�en using ‘widgets’). This
makes the new media fun – the limitations are no closer than the extent of
our imaginations.
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33
Having earlier examined the commercial significance of the internet for
organizations, we have now glanced at the new channels for communication
that are important for the practice of online PR today.
Note
1. Holtz, S and Hobson, N (2007) How to Do Everything with Podcasting,
McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
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Part 2
A shift in culture,
communication and value