Formula for Saving Newspapers: Cut Costs, Reorganize and Focus on Organic, Local SEO

Phil Aurbach told me about the layoffs at the Las Vegas Sun this morning. Newspapers nationwide are under serious pressure.

In my opinion, the best bet for them is to cut costs, reorganize and focus on organic, local search engine optimization. But even if they can capitalize on local search, they’re still going to be forced to swap their analog dollars for digital pennies. The trick is to SEO their archives and cume those digital pennies, a la long tail.

Here’s an article about the SEO training conducted at the NY Times a few years back. When will they learn that drastic times calls for drastic measures?

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Interview with Ashley Houghton at the 2009 PRSA International Conference on Social Media Outreach

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On the Record...Online Podcast Interview Schedule at PRSA09

Got a question you'd like to ask any of these guests? Leave it here as a comment. If I use it, you get credit.

Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009

10am - Gary Goldhammer, V.P. Interactive Solutions, Edelman Digital who be speaking on a panel about how to Leverage the Power of Pull: How to Make Your Brand More Digitally Discoverable

10:30am - Lt. Col. Ann Peru Knabe, APR, pblic affairs officer, Pentagon War Court spokeswoman, U.S. Air Force Reserves who will be speaking on a panel about the High-Stakes Consequences in a Low-trust Environment: Lessons Learned From Guantanamo Bay’s Battle of Reputation

11am - Marco Herrera, president, Grupo Publico who will be speaking on a panel about Mexico and the United States: Public Relations Realities, Pitfalls and Opportunities

12pm - Rob Key, founder and CEO, Converseon, who will be speaking on a panel with Peter Himler and Lee Odden about the Nexus of Social Media and Public Relations

1pm - Bob Hastings, Northrop Gruman and former assistant secretary of defense for public affairs who will presenting a case study about Wounded Warrior Care: Practical Applications in Strategic Communications

2pm - Mike Smith, CEO and founder, Michael Smith Business Development; executive vice president, client services, Nielsen Neurofocus Research, who will present a case study called Barack Obama: A Case Study in Public Relations and the Citizens’ Campaign

3pm - Don Wright, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA, professor of public relations, Boston University and a member of the PRSA Measurement Working Group, who will present Trends in Public Relations Research

4pm - Michael Cherenson, PRSA Chairman and CEO

5pm - Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, APR, U.S. Navy, who will be speaking on a panel about High-Stakes Consequences in a Low-trust Environment: Lessons Learned From Guantanamo Bay’s Battle of Reputation

Mon., Nov. 9, 2009

9:30am - T.L. McCreary, rear admiral, U.S. Navy, retired; president, Military.com; vice president, Monster Worldwide who will advise service members on how career strategies for applying their experience to the commercial sector

10am - Dierdre Breckenridge, president and director of communications,PFS Marketwyse, author of “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations”, who will present on a panel about Social Media and the PR (R)evolution: It’s Not Just PR Anymore

11am - Joe Jaffe, president, Crayon, author of “Join the Conversation” ,who will present on a panel about Social Media and the PR (R)evolution: It’s Not Just PR Anymore

12pm - Denis Wolcott, president, The Wolcottt Company and PRSA09 Conference Co-Chair

1pm - Col. Rudy Burwell, director, Army Reserve Communications, Army Reserve who appear on a panel called Social Media: Learn From the Armed Forces and Associations How to Leverage Technology to Meet Strategic Communication Goals During a Down-Sized Economy

3pm - Karen Horn, founder, Horn Communication LLC, who will speak about Ground Zero on the Financial Crisis: Internal Communications and the Collapse of WaMu

4pm - Gary McCormick

So if there's something you want to know from anyone listed here, leave it as a comment.

On the Record...Online is the official PR Podcast of the 2009 PRSA International Conference in San Diego.

All conference podcast interviews will be available online, via RSS and via Twitter.

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Truth through Numbers with former White House Economic Policy Advisor Todd Buchholz

(Oct. 2, 2009) Former White House economic policy advisor Todd Buchholz talks about whether numbers are inherently more objective than language at communicating facts, communicating through raw data and number crunching truth in the digital age.

in reference to: Home (view on Google Sidewiki)

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Crisis Communications Opportunity for FEMA.gov

The future of local, incident-based crisis communications during natural disasters and emergencieas could largely be the creation and distribution of geodata (KML, KMZ and GML). FEMA social media extends the reach of their efforts at FEMA.gov already, but serving geospatial information is probably the next frontier. I wonder when we'll see FEMA start to publish their geodata?

in reference to: Data.gov - Geodata Catalog (view on Google Sidewiki)

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State Has No Data Sets at Data.gov

(Oct. 6, 2009) I realize it's a new platform, and these things take time, but given the global challenges we're facing, and the reams of hard data that could be used to support our positions on human rights, energy and the environment, it's disappointing that as of this Sidewiki entry, there's not a single raw data set from the US State Dept in the catalog.

in reference to: Data.gov - Raw Data Catalog (view on Google Sidewiki)

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The Credibility Gap Between Social Media and Your Website

A new podcast interview I did with John Shea, public information officer at FEMA, about social media crisis communications confirms one of the conclusions of the 2009 Digital Readiness Report, which is this:

While social media channels are a great way to connect people with relevant information, there is a credibility gap between what organizations say about themselves via social media, and what they say about themselves on their own websites.

According to Shea, who runs new media at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, if people find FEMA's information via Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, they're often not convinced it's entirely valid unless they can click through and verify that the same information is at FEMA.gov.

In the Digital Readiness Report, which was designed to determine which online communications skills are most sought after in today's job market, we found that while hirers are demanding that candidates have social media communications skills, they are considerable less interested in web content management skills. In the report, we said we thought that was because most hirers are looking at social media as push or mass media channels, when in fact, they are emerging more as channels more making content discoverable online

What Shea confirms, is that distributing status updates via social media is only half of the equation. Unless FEMA "back-ends" their social media efforts with more, in depth content on their own website, people remain skeptical of whether FEMA's tweets are officially sanctioned. If it's true, why isn't it at FEMA.gov, they wonder. And so now, as a result, it is.

Shea says FEMA's off-network social media status updates are only seen as credible when they're back-ended with links to on-network information (on their own website), so recipients can verify information by means of the authority of the FEMA.gov domain. As we said in the Digital Readiness Report, looking to hire social networkers who can't manage content on your own domain is short sighted, since distributing links back to content hosted at your domain is a common use of status updates in social networking services.

It also suggests that organizations that decide to leverage a Facebook presence for social media engagement, without recognizing at least those discussions on their own domain, might also be seen as hypocritical or arrogant, by trying to isolate criticism from the place their brand calls home online.

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