Seed the Net and Await a Harvest

The following news clip features identity theft prevention expert Robert Siciliano, a longtime client of mine, discussing the dangers of identity theft posed by Skype.

By the way, did you notice, just above the clip, that I immediately preceded Robert's name with his primary keyword phrase? I did so purposely. Just now, I've again contributed to his natural search engine presence (a.k.a. organic SEO). And it's how Robert and I built his online identity (no pun intended...) over several years -- to the point that the print and television news media now call him when they need an expert on identity theft prevention. Because he's easy to find and highly relevant, there's no high-priced publicist making outgoing calls for Robert; he doesn't need one.

Last week, a SearchInsider article shared data revealing the power of natural search traffic. The full article is jam-packed with information, but if you don't have the time to read it, here's the most important piece of information: An iCrossing study on natural search has found that sites receive more than 95 percent "of all their non-branded natural search traffic from page-one results pages across all three major engines. The data included 8.9 million queries sampled over nine months, representing 10 enterprise-level Web sites in many different diverse verticals."

I'll translate that for you. They're talking about keyword phrases that is not necessarily tied to your brand language. Think of all the keyword phrases you would like people to see you associated with in the search engines. Some of it might overlap with your brand language, but there's no necessary linkage. These are the keyword phrases of yours that would have counted if your own website had been included in iCrossing's study.

Now, what if you took it a step further? What if you were to integrally and purposely associate your primary keyword phrase with your brand language? This is what Robert and I did, and we proceeded to seed the net relentlessly with this language. The harvests have been bountiful. The news media now reach out to Robert first, not the other way around.

Now that's pull-marketing. And you can do it, too.

Web 0.0

Before Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 entered the lexicon, and before talk surfaced of Web 3.0, we lived in a Web-free world, a world worlds apart from our world today.

During Web 0.0, the Web was only an Internet, and without the pretty pictures, fancy functionalities and august applications. Nobody talked about this Internet. Normal people didn't talk about it, anyway. Most didn't even know about it. The vast majority of us interacted face-to-face or via phones (many of which sported rotary dials). Truckers and other cool people used CB radios. Only geeks and the military found themselves interacting via electronic mail with others from disparate, sometimes remote locations, and only geeks and the military would have understood their lot in this way.

The Internet of yore was serious, solely for the conducting of serious business. And that serious business wasn't even business; it was serious scientific research and the serious matter of national security, both facilitated by real-time communication. Life was slower for everyone else, who also went about their business, commerce or personal, in real-time, but didn't know it was in real-time, or off-line, even though it was.

Sit there. Imagine what this world must have been like. If you're old enough, conserve those creative juices and simply remember. Civilization still managed to advance by leaps and bounds over the many years that predated the Web, and progress progressed at a breakneck pace for the many more years that predated the Internet. We don't need the Web, but it's a blessing to have.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, the Web is becoming more and more like Web 0.0. It's growing ever more organic and natural. Organic is a buzzword, of course, and natural is one of those empty descriptors that annoy professional writers. What I mean is the Web is trying to get back to Web 0.0, but with a twist. Many-to-many communication is slowly but surely achieving the same fluidity that one-to-one communication has always enjoyed without the aid of high technology. The Web is growing ever more efficient.

Think of interaction without the interference of high-tech media. It's natural and effortless. It's organic. Interaction in a Web 0.0 world -- which still exists, by the way -- is efficient, albeit archaic and constrained by inherent limitations of logistics. But the Web has limitations, too: the limitations of technology. As we've striven to render Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and beyond as Web 0.0 as possible, we've been painfully aware of these limitations.

And that's the point. In everything we do online, we pine for the Web to be as natural, effortless and organic as Web 0.0 has always been, but without the limitations that led great minds to lay the groundwork for the Web in the first place. We search for the efficiency we enjoy when we share dinner and a conversation with a friend or colleague, but on a grand scale and with the speed that technology allows.

In our quest to get back to a Web 0.0 world, we look for it within the Web. In our attempt to communicate ever more efficiently online, we create Web 0.0 redux.

Grab the microphone, or blog?

About a week and a half ago I went to an alumni event at the Boston University College of Communication (COM). Being a graduate of the school and member of its adjunct faculty, I figured I'd better make an appearance, maybe even do some networking. And it wasn't just any COM alumni event, anyway; it was the mother of all COM alumni events, a celebration of 60 years.

"Sixty years of what?" you ask. Sixty years of the world's first graduate degree program in public relations, that's what. You see, COM is the place where that happened, and the main attraction at the event, a spirited debate by a panel of distinguished alumni, quickly justified the reasons why we COM alumni venerate our school with such gusto.

A crowd of nearly 200 gathered to listen to the panel contemplate the event's title: "Progress and Public Relations: A Look at Where We've Been and Where We're Going." The panel's very composition, a coterie of industry luminaries, screamed the depth of COM's longtime influence on the profession of public relations:

• Harold Burson, founder of PR powerhouse Burson-Marsteller and inspiration for the honorary Chair of Public Relations in his name established at COM in 2002

• Carol Cone (COM '78), chairman and founder of Cone Communications, Inc. and pioneer in the cause of Cause Branding®

• Dr. Otto Lerbinger, sage of the public relations industry and professor emeritus at COM, where he has been on the faculty for almost as many years as the number celebrated at the event

• Graciously and aptly sitting in on short notice, Paul Rand, president and CEO of Zócalo Group, a freestanding division of Omnicom Group subsidiary Ketchum Inc., whose own CEO and Senior Partner Raymond Kotcher (COM '79), the originally scheduled panelist, found himself at a conflicting, last-minute meeting with a client halfway across the globe

Moderator Dr. Donald Wright, professor of public relations at COM, tossed the ball into play and then got out of the way. The panel discussion gave rise to a sprawling yet keen Q&A that meandered, just as any proper discussion of communications these days should, into the topic of online communication's effect on PR.

I found myself casing the many rows, keeping an eye on the guy at such events who mills about the audience as he carries the microphone. Fighting the urge to raise my hand and share my two cents, I ultimately resolved to refrain from speaking -- out of restraint, really. After all, I have this blog for that sort of thing. I'll share with you all some of the topics discussed, and my thoughts on them, over the next few weeks.