The canonical attritbute is part of a link tag, in the section of your HTML page.

This code allows webmasters to help Google identify pages that are similar in content. This could include pages with the same product description with different options for styles or colors. Using the tag helps save you from duplicate content penalties on Google. As of late, Google has extended its support at the server level. Go Google!

Parting is such sweet Joy?

Once in our lifetime each of us will experience the career that didn’t quite work out as planned. I’m here to tell you that sometimes it’s okay to say goodbye and that you can experience joy in parting ways. It could be that the decision was not yours or that you made the decision on your own. In either scenario, parting ways doesn’t have to be filled with sorrow.

In the case of a recent colleague, parting ways was bitter but sweet. Bitter in the sense that the company was close to home and offered flex hours. That aside, there wasn’t much to be desired. Failed attempts to rebrand the company, a management team from previous failing companies that never turned around and a culture of rewarding employees who exhibited poor behavior and made bad decisions versus those that exemplified a strong passion for positive change, teamwork and REAL marketing.

Whether you decide(d) to take the leap or you are forced to move on, know that you are not a failure. Spending our days getting along with a myriad of personalities in our career is part of being a professional and is critical to success. However, if you’ve reached your limit or realize that the atmosphere is toxic, it’s ok to move on whether you are in the driver’s seat or not.

Give it a few weeks and a little soul searching, and I will bet you will find that you are better off. It’s not only ok to say goodbye sometimes, it can be empowering and critical to a sense of well being.

Today I stumbled upon a very interesting website called sevenponds.com. At first blush, the site appeared to be dedicated to educating people about why the subject of dying doesn’t need to be taboo. That left me wondering what this company’s revenue model looks like under the hood. After some poking around the site, it became clear that the site is more of a “digital window” to what is actually a traditional business - cremation and burial services! The “call to action” so to speak (yes, planning your burial), is so well hidden amongst beautifully written blog posts, sad and happy stories about real people, and some of the world’s best quotes about dying. So instead of taking a brick and mortar approach to marketing, i.e. postcards to elderly neighborhoods and to hospices, these brilliant and creative people are leveraging the power of the Internet, SEO, SEM and social media to not only spread the word about their services, but to virtually hold the hands of people who are dying and those that are close to them. There’s a job opening and while I’m not an expert on dying, I do think it’s a very creative team that I’d at least enjoy meeting.  

I’ve had the pleasure of playing highly strategic roles when a corporate shift is in order, as well as the pain of being left in the dark. As a PR/AR practitioner, I’d have to say that the later is not a good place to be. The role that PR plays when a company determines the need for a major shift is critical and PR-analyst relations should never be considered an afterthought for it can truly hamper the results of the impending programs that follow the transition.

Take for example, company X who is planning a complete shift in a new direction. Involving the AR function early on in the process can help obtain buy in from a whole new set of industry analysts who will quickly become either advocates or naysayers based on the company’s new position. Starting to involve them early in the process can ensure they’ve given their strategic guidance which in turn is more likely to ensure a true advocate. On the flip side, attempting to get them on your side 2 weeks in advance of a major shift can inhibit the positive results you are seeking. Industry analysts will always know more about the space you are in than you will. It’s a fact. Give them a chance to express their opinions and strategic ideas.

When is it time to involve PR and AR? Even when the shift is major and the executives are concerned about news leakage, the PR and AR functions should be treated as a true insiders and alerted as early on as possible. Giving an early “heads up” to these roles can help them better plan for what is to come and can result in a higher rate of success.

So don’t be afraid to bring in your most trusted internal advisors early on. Engage them in the process so that they have time to digest what is changing and are able to effectively communicate those changes when the light turns green.

Questions to Ask of Your Social Media Agency

Having worked on both the agency and client side of PR and marketing, I can see why agencies may have a difficult time making the most of social media for their clients. If you are on the client side, here are a few questions to ask of your agency before signing on the dotted line.

Can You Create Rich Content on a Steady Basis? The traditional agency model for delivering PR programs includes having an average of 2-5 people on an account, each of whom perform specific tasks e.g. media pitching, lower level administrative tasks and day-to-day account management. Each of these people is not only servicing your account, they are also servicing from 2-4 other accounts as well. This means they are spending roughly 12 hours per week on your business and the remaining 28 hours on several other clients. The question begs, how familiar can you become with my business and product(s) and are you able to understand our offering deeply enough to create meaningful content on a regular basis? Don’t just take “yes” as the answer. Ask them to provide a sample blog post and how much time it took them to create it. You don’t want your agency spending hours creating a single blog post at an hourly rate of $120-$220. If the frequency of your posts is 1-2 per week, the fees can quickly add up if the agency is well steeped in your subject matter.  

Can you Ditch the Pitch? PR people have been trained to “make the pitch” and “sell” the story to reporters. Unfortunately this doesn’t translate well in social media where content and communications should consist of opinions, education and neutrality. Ask your agency to provide you with a few ideas for tweets and blog posts to see if they are able to effectively ”ditch the pitch”.

More than blogging? Blogs are clearly an effective inbound marketing tool, but can your agency go beyond blogging? Ask your agency if they have the capability to create videos, Linkedin groups and how they have been effective at leveraging Facebook. In the case of B2B companies, I’ve found that Linkedin and Facebook are a bit more challenging, but there are ways to make them become more effective.

Lastly, if you aren’t getting the warm fuzzies from your agency, look elsewhere. There are plenty of agencies and consultants who have proven skills in this area.

I hope this has helped provide more insight into questions to ask of your agency for social media. For more information about UmbrellaPR, please visit www.umbrellapr.com

There’s still hope for BI http://bit.ly/fBpLHp? I certainly hope so. I agree that the landscape is changing with the evolution of self-service or agile BI, but I also know from my experience in working with these companies that the need for VARs won’t necessarily go away. Even the most integrated and easy-to-use tools require some sort of deployment mechanism. It’s not as if a GM of a business unit can download a BI tool and be up and runningin minutes. That said, I agree that for VARs to really add value, they will need to look to add-ons in either verticals or other areas such as mobility. In any event IMHO, BI is here to stay and still has huge value to offer.

MagCloud is one of HP’s latest inventions, offering any average joe the ability to become a publisher and print their own magazine (barring the person can write). The publisher will still need to use a layout tool for the copy and any photos, but once the issue has been saved as a PDF, the file is ready for uploading to MagCloud. A proof is printed (I guess by some people behind the scenes) and mailed to the publisher for their review/edits. Once the issue is complete, it sits on MagCloud until copies are ordered by the publisher. One thing to note is all of the magazines hosted by MagCloud are searchable so if you really love art or photography, you can search on those terms and explore the many magazines users have created.

One of the things that made me think twice about the service was calculating the economies of scale. At .20 cents per page for printing, a 30-page magazine would run me $6 to create. Who on earth could I get to pay me any more than $6 for a magazine? I guess it all depends on the topic and the value of the content. 

www.magcloud.com

In the world of PR, clients typically leverage major user conferences as a means to getting their message across. They keep their product announcements and customer news close to the vest until the opening day of the conference. But as of late, I’ve been questioning if that is the right strategy for the smaller players in hotter technology categories. 

During a major customer conference, the hosting vendor who I will call the Goliath, and all of their big partners typically announce their news, and reporters are chartered with covering that news. Even if the vendor’s story hasn’t evolved much from the prior year, the David’s of the world (smaller vendors) appear to be of less importance, even if their news is truly compelling. If that is truly the case, does it make more sense for smaller vendors to distribute their news prior to the event or shortly thereafter? Or should they stick with what they’ve typically done - distributing their news during the event?

Over the past week, I’ve spent countless hours pitching my client’s news to reporters who are preparing to attend a very large user conference - the same conference my client is attending. I understand the need to cover the Goliath’s of the world, but what about the David’s? If they have superior technology and a truly interesting story, don’t they deserve an interview? I certainly think so or I wouldn’t have spent the last week pitching.

Some have been amenable and many simply haven’t responded. I realize that during a user conference, reporters are inundated with emails and phone calls from hundreds of vendors who want their stories told. However, it’s par for the course and requires that they sift through the piles of information to find some golden nuggets (like our news of course).

For those reporters who have responded to my pitch and were amenable to a pre-brief on the news, I am grateful for their ability to prioritize and squeeze it all in. Thank you!!!

That’s right, tax em? The city of Philadelphia has decided it will tax its bloggers $300 for a “lifetime business privilege. Why? Well, according to city officials, bloggers are making money from their advertising space and should pay taxes.

I beg to disagree at least as far as I am concerned. I have a blog and don’t make a dime from any ad sales. TN e e d l ess to say, the city’s bloggers are up in arms and rightfully so. According to a the writer of a BusinessWeek contributed article writer who’s name I won’t mention, , bloggers should be fined and more than $300. The author’s feeling is that this tax would help weed out the bad bloggers and promote the good ones.

To summarize his points, he feels that small business owners shouldn’t be wasting their time blogging. They should be spending their time meeting with customers and helping their employees do a better job.

I don’t disagree that customers and employees are important, but blogs represent a freedom of expression and can be used as viable sales tools. If you run a smoothie shop in Phili, why not tweet about the newest flavor and offer a limited time discount to try it? Then blog about what ingredients were used and the various health factors associated with drinking smoothies? If were a local I might just read it.  

Now would I want to pay taxes for blogging about my smoothies? Absolutely not! If I’m using a wonderful tool like Tumblr, I’m not reaping the rewards of advertising income. Only a tiny percentage of the world cares what I have to say on my blog so I couldn’t charge even if I had the opportunity to do so.

Now for those more popular sites that do have the benefit of advertising income, I suggest they pay taxes on that income like any small business would. There is no fine line. It’s plain and simple.

What do you think?

The Death of Traditional PR Distribution? Not So Fast!

Back in 1906 the first press release was created by Ivy Lee, the so-called founding father of modern PR. For almost 100 years the press release didn’t change but thanks to the proliferation of the Internet, new online wire services such as BusinessWire and PRNewswire came into play. These online press release distribution services reduced and in some cases, eliminated the need for the fax as method for distributing news.

Over the past few years we’ve witnessed a move towards what some are calling the “social media release” (SMR). Services like PitchEngine, PressLift, PRX Builder, and MindTouch() are bringing the press release into the new millennium with embedded multimedia and easy distribution through various channels, including social media and e-mail.

So will these new innovations in press release distribution eliminate traditional tried and true methods? Today I believe them to be complimentary. Solid PR pros know that there is nothing more powerful than having a highly targeted media list comprised of reporters who want to hear your client’s latest news. But being able to augment that list and reach other potential targets through social media tools is definitelyworth exploring. I think the emergence of the SMR enables clients to more effectively tell a complete and compelling story to a wider audience. The addition of keywords/tags for SEO is promising. Being able to automatically tweet the news and upload to Facebook and Linkedin with the click of a button saves times, and the ability to showcase video and images on the same page as the release helps give the reader more context.

So will the SMR be the end of the traditional press release and traditional wire services? In my opinion, not today.

Does anyone use editorial calendars anymore?