Thanks to all of our great clients and friends of the firm that have supported us since our launch in 2009. Two years ago, we took a leap of faith that striking out on our own would enable us to focus on markets that have a passion for and we haven’t been disappointed. As we have watched our clients grow, it’s also become apparent that we’ve had a growth spurt of our own.
We’ve gone through a few brand identities and repositioning to come out the other side with a suite of service offerings clients a results driven path to success. As many of you know, we started out as Gaia Group Public Relations, but have involved beyond public relations into areas that are complementary and necessary for our clients business growth. Our services range from content development and public affairs to providing counsel as a business partner. So we have decided to focus on our core name and welcome clients to take advantage of our flexibility beyond the standard PR fare. We’re pleased to present our next phase of evolution as Gaia Group and look forward to working with each of you in the years to come.
Thank you for your business!
Originally published on June 17, 2011
Over the past few weeks our team has discussed the news that’s widely known as Weinergate. Unless you live on Mars, it’s been hard not to pay attention to the scandal that rocked Capitol Hill for the past month involving Representative Anthony Weiner and his fumbling of social media technology.
What we all know is that Weiner, by his own admission, tried to cover up the scandal and lied to the public about the lewd pictures that appeared on his Twitter feed. For those who know Twitter, he claims to have meant to Direct Message (DM) and send to one individual not the whole stream of thousands of followers (including media!). A slip of the finger, a momentary lapse of sanity or a complete lack of understanding of how the medium really works? We will never know.
What we do know is that crises become bigger when they are not met head on. Best practices in crises come in three golden rules:
Get out in front of the story – Smoke and fire go together, so if you smell or see the smoke then you know that the fire is on its way. Engage your key staff and formulate a plan for tackling the issue in the most transparent way possible. Create messages that will be used by every spokesperson including the CEO to the ground level employee who might be poached by the media at their front door. Once you have messages locked down, go public with the issue.
Apologize and offer a solution – Not enough can be said about apologizing for creating an issue that affects customers and stakeholders. Make sure its sincere and not just lip service. People will know the difference. The there’s the solution part. So you’ve identified the problem, but customers want to know how you’re going to solve for it. Make sure this is part of your initial planning. Offer a solution or the flames will be fanned.
Continue communication – While Weiner need not be heard from again until he pops up on a talk show (too bad Oprah’s gone), this is not the case for businesses dealing with crisis. Just because you followed steps one and two doesn’t mean your work is done. Trust has been diminished and it needs to be regained. Continue to communicate on the issue in order to rebuild trust. The frequency, length and channel are up to you, but make sure that you aren’t seen as brushing it under the carpet. Trust is what sells products and services.
There is at least one PR agency on the planet that wanted to engage Facebook as a client even though it meant risking their own carefully constructed decades old reputation. What happens when crisis issues arise like this? It paints a poor picture for PR practitioners as a whole.We’re also not naïve about our business. There have been thousands of years of smear campaigns by everyone from the Sumerians right on up to our current civilization. This is where we diverge – we don’t smear. Ever. We practice good business and adhere to a code of ethics and we find that most practitioners share this set of practices.We evaluate our clients based on their story. In other words – we do a lot of listening. When it’s time to engage, our role is to be transparent about our practices. We’ve all shared and witnessed the power of social media. Over the past few years social media has been the primary means of communicating revolution in the streets of Tehran to Cairo. Any tool that can fuel the flames of revolution can certainly ruffles feathers in corporate America. This week’s dust up should be a good reminder to all.
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By now, we’ve all seen the video of Bob Parsons, the outspoken CEO of domain registrar and hosting company, GoDaddy.com, speak out about his recent vacation to Zimbabwe in which he hunted and killed an elephant. Change.org got wind of the video that was posted to Parsons’ site and urged supporters to pull the plug on their business with GoDaddy. According the Change.org, the film titled Hunting Problem Elephant – My 2011 Vacation is “basically a gruesome, 4-minute elephant snuff film”.The blogosphere has exploded with comments on everything ranging from African village norms to wildlife support and corporate social responsibility. According to one blogger, a GoDaddy competitor has seen 20,000 websites move from GoDaddy to their hosting service which could mean millions of dollars per year depending on account size. If this is true, then his actions could have impacted the bottom line.The real question in all of this is whether or not this crisis has caused harm to the GoDaddy brand. The Editor in Chief of the CMO Site says, “I expect everybody involved in this controversy will score a marketing win.” The Network Solutions management team jumped on the controversy in order to wrangle a few new customers by providing a promo to new customers using the discount code “elephant”. More opportunity for brand exposure for Network Solutions and new customer revenue? Yes!Our wish as communicators is that Mr. Parsons had been somewhat more contrite about his actions. Regardless of the entrepreneurial attitude that’s built into the company, the actions of one person at the top can create harm to employees and public image. We’ve read his 16 rules and wish he had chosen to consider number 11 a little bit longer.
By Karissa MarcumIt could be the most valuable formula ever devised, the most guarded digital recipe ever brewed. Yet, despite Google’s efforts to protect its search engine algorithm, their secret sauce has been discovered and most recently, exploited, by retail giant JC Penney.The New York Times recently published a damning story outlining how JC Penney allegedly gamed Google’s PageRank algorithm. The strategy, which is not uncommon, artificially made the company the number one search result in categories that it wouldn’t normally own.The headlines echoed what Google execs might have been feeling: “gamed,” “tricked” and “dirty.” No one has said that it was illegal, but the collective conscious of the internet seems to be decrying the move as a blatant disregard for the unwritten rules of the digital age, with Google opting to punish JC Penney by manually burying its search results.Google came out strong in defense of their approach, noting that JC Penney had also violated its webmaster guidelines, “When someone is looking for information on Google, we want them to find the most relevant answers possible. Our search algorithm relies on more than 200 signals to help people find the answers they’re looking for, and when websites violate our published webmaster guidelines to try and game the system, that’s bad for users and we are willing to take manual corrective action,” a Google spokesman said.Despite firing its SEO agency, JC Penney claimed that it was unaware that the so-called “black hat” technique was used: “JC Penney was in no way involved in the posting of the links discussed in the article. We did not authorize them and we were not aware that they had been posted. To be clear, we do not tolerate violations of our policies regarding natural search, which reflect Google’s guidelines,” Vice President of Corporate Communications Darcia Brossart wrote.But beneath all that lurks the question, “Can we blame them?”After all, the top search results of a Google search typically generate four times the traffic than the next highest result. In fact, more than two thirds of internet users don’t go beyond the first page.Online, the front page of Google is the front line. The fight—for millions of eyeballs and billions of dollars—is won and lost there. No more valuable piece of digital real estate exists.So all of this begs the question: “Is the online community upset that JCPenney broke the rules or just jealous that they didn’t discover the formula first?Perhaps, after the dust is settled, the answer will be found in the top search results of a Google search.
During our team meeting this week, we brought to the table hot topics that can be shared and discussed. It’s a bit like The View, but without Babs and Whoopie and a lot of PR shop talk. This week’s discussion touched on language and how we’re communicating in a new digital universe that has a plugged in global audience. The old language of PR was couched in terms of press releases and lofty organizational speak that only insiders would know or care about. New PR language is all about delivering the news in real (and plain) terms so that the average Joe/Jill can understand it. Reporters and bloggers are looking for news in real terms.As a result, communicators face the new challenge of thinking in terms of 140 characters. We used to think in terms of elevator speeches and time frames of 10 – 30 seconds, now the wired world is demanding more of us and we’re happy to have the challenge. As natural wordsmiths, we will be prepping clients for the conversational universe. Ready or not, it’s no longer a one-way street.
The best days start out with a client stopping by to let you know that the article that ran in the Washington Post (Tom Heath’s Value Added column) has already generated a new business call. The article was posted last night to the Post website and the call came in first thing this morning. Did I mention that it’s not yet 8am?Last week this same client, Karlyn Lothery of Lothery & Associates, was nominated for the Washington Business Journal’s Minority Business Award and was cited as one of the top 25 movers and shakers in the DC area. In a major market with a load of talent to compete with, our client stood out from the crowd.We wish Karlyn all the best and look forward to assisting her garner both ink and accolades!
With more than two billion videos being watched on YouTube every day, it seems natural to think that someone should find your video content. Data released this month by Comscore shows that 34.7 million Internet users in the UK watched 6 billion content videos in November 2010. If a small island has those numbers in just one month, then imagine what US users are up to. Unfortunately, this doesn’t guarantee that your video content will be found.It’s important to have multiple communications channels for any organization – including video. Thanks to small and accessible hardware innovations such as the Flip cam, it’s cheaper and easy than ever to create content, edit and have it live in a matter of minutes.All this being said, how can you ensure that the noisy marketplace doesn’t drown out all of the important content that you’ve thoughtfully produced? Here are some recommendations on effectively driving traffic from YouTube to your website or business through the tips below. Feel free to write us with your best practices – a good online experience includes feedback and comments (grin).MonitorYou can’t fine-tune content if you don’t know your viewer and reach. YouTube Insight is a free “self-service analytics and reporting tool” that enables account users to view detailed statistics about uploaded videos such as demographic information on viewers and drop rate. This type of information is critical to follow in order to ensure content is reaching the intended target and drop rates are minimized. The less of a drop rate, the higher the likelihood of content being absorbed.Monitoring comments from your subscribers and your video pages is also important. Trying to be subjective on feedback is sometimes hard so having another pair of eyes review these comments will help with fine-tuning.Word PlayThrough the use of elements such as keywords, video description and tagging, the content you want to be viewed has a better chance of floating to the top. Keywords involved the title of a video and are critical to success with getting found by the search engines. The title should offer up language that directly relates to your organizations mission, products or services. In other words, don’t be cute with titles and get right to the point.The video description is another factor in getting picked up by a search engine. Make sure that the keywords and description are in sync along with the content of the video. Think of it as a complete and streamlined package of messages. Finally, tagging is allowed much like in a website. It’s the third opportunity to tie everything together and align with the keywords and description. Tags enable each video to maximize search results.PromoteUsing the keywords, description and tagging you will be well on your way to being found. Now it’s a matter of promoting through different channels such as business partners (cross posting), blog sites and LinkedIn. The Chamber of Commerce page in my city allows anyone in the group to post business related content that goes out to hundreds of potential readers and viewers.Much like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube allows users to respond and interact with each other all while driving traffic to each other’s sites. YouTube allows users to upload a relevant response video to already existing videos through its Video Response feature. Before and After TV does a great job a walking you through the process. Note that tags and titles are important to a response just as it is to a post. Organizations can target high traffic video pages and respond thoughtfully. This is a quick and easy way to instantly expose your video content to new viewers in your target audience.Last but not least, don’t forget to promote the link in other channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Creating an integrated web of communications overlaid with consistent messaging is optimal for getting the traffic that you seek!
It’s been far too long since we last sent out an update and that’s because we’ve been busy taking time off and then checking back in. In June, we set off for the Pacific Northwest – British Columbia and Washington State to be exact. However, it didn’t take long for the news from Washington to stop us in our tracks and tune in to the BP hearings on the Hill. We watched along with the rest of the world as Joe Barton apologized (head slap) to a stunned Tony Hayward and every Member of Congress possible queried Mr. Hayward for more than a whole work day. We’re now past day 100 of the spill with a new BP CEO (Bob Dudley is wayyyy more media savvy than Hayward) and a cap on the well, things have gradually improved.July brought a new, smaller and geekier scandal that I like to call Apple’s “Antennagate”. The media thought Steve Jobs was arrogant and unapologetic about its flawed iPhone hardware. Let’s face it – how long can anyone really be mad at Steve? We will still buy iPhones and everything Apple and his PR team will have to figure out a new way to handle the godfather of the i-generation.August is knocking on our door as we watch energy legislation move through Congress, but nothing energy related got passed before the summer recess and Members find their own hammocks to reflect in and gear up for a busy election year season. This means that the big news might just be who will replace Simon Cowell on American Idol. So we’re begging August to deliver some kind of news that will trump Idol and offer us some intrigue or a fresh perspective.Until next month…
By Karissa MarcumIt could be the most valuable formula ever devised, the most guarded digital recipe ever brewed. Yet, despite Google’s efforts to protect its search engine algorithm, their secret sauce has been discovered and most recently, exploited, by retail giant JC Penney.The New York Times recently published a damning story outlining how JC Penney allegedly gamed Google’s PageRank algorithm. The strategy, which is not uncommon, artificially made the company the number one search result in categories that it wouldn’t normally own.The headlines echoed what Google execs might have been feeling: “gamed,” “tricked” and “dirty.” No one has said that it was illegal, but the collective conscious of the internet seems to be decrying the move as a blatant disregard for the unwritten rules of the digital age, with Google opting to punish JC Penney by manually burying its search results.Google came out strong in defense of their approach, noting that JC Penney had also violated its webmaster guidelines, “When someone is looking for information on Google, we want them to find the most relevant answers possible. Our search algorithm relies on more than 200 signals to help people find the answers they’re looking for, and when websites violate our published webmaster guidelines to try and game the system, that’s bad for users and we are willing to take manual corrective action,” a Google spokesman said.Despite firing its SEO agency, JC Penney claimed that it was unaware that the so-called “black hat” technique was used: “JC Penney was in no way involved in the posting of the links discussed in the article. We did not authorize them and we were not aware that they had been posted. To be clear, we do not tolerate violations of our policies regarding natural search, which reflect Google’s guidelines,” Vice President of Corporate Communications Darcia Brossart wrote.But beneath all that lurks the question, “Can we blame them?”After all, the top search results of a Google search typically generate four times the traffic than the next highest result. In fact, more than two thirds of internet users don’t go beyond the first page.Online, the front page of Google is the front line. The fight—for millions of eyeballs and billions of dollars—is won and lost there. No more valuable piece of digital real estate exists.So all of this begs the question: “Is the online community upset that JCPenney broke the rules or just jealous that they didn’t discover the formula first?Perhaps, after the dust is settled, the answer will be found in the top search results of a Google search.