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 One
of the big attractions of blogging is the ability to have a personal (web) space
where you can post
your thoughts and ideas without repercusions. Well, you can drop that last
part of the previous sentence, especially if you are using your blog as a legitimate
news source.
WebProNews' Jason Miller posted a great article looking at a number of court
cases where bloggers were implicated and the majority of them were found to
be at fault. The punishments hit these guys where it hurts most - the wallet of
course.
Does this mean bloggers aren’t protected by free
speech? No, not at all. It’s just if you are going to post something about
a person or company, you had better make sure you have the documentation to back
yourself up. I’ll tell you what this signifies to me: since the blogosphere got
rolling a couple of years ago, many bloggers have been calling for what the same
treatment as the mainstream press gets. If these court cases are any indication,
it certainly looks like we got what we were asking for.
It’s good that the bloggers are starting to be treated like big media, however
the bloggers must be ready to follow the rules… or face the consequences.
>>> Agree? Disagree? Let
Us Know How You Feel
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Friday October 13, 2006 |
That a labor union at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Columbia was accusing the
company of hiring paramilitary groups to torture and assassinate union leaders
is just an interesting side note; the real story, as circulated by those in this
ecommerce industry, is how Coke turned the tides on its accusers with targeted
keyword public relations.
Editor's Note: What can we learn from Coca-Cola? 1. Whatever you
do, don't get accused of funding paramilitary assassination squads. 2. When things
go right, brag about it using SEM. 3. Don't forget the most important
keywords when trying to protect your rep. 4. If writing about ebusiness, the
back story doesn't matter - cut to the chase about what it means for search marketing.
Let us know at WebProWorld.
Since Media Post and Danny Sullivan wrote about the incident, it appears, at least from this side of the servers, that Coke is no longer running an AdWords campaign aimed at assuring those searching for [killer coke] that the lawsuit was dismissed.
Media Post's Shankar Gupta calls the labor union pleading for Coke to stop killing its leaders "critics," whom Coke countered with search ads. Sullivan skipped the critic angle altogether, focusing on the "bad PR" and the strengths and weakness of Coke's approach to search marketing.
Of course, they, like I do, write for an ebusiness publication. So I guess, I'll need to cut to what it means for the emarketer as well. The Internet's a little busy.
What To Do If Your
Foreign Employees Accuse You Of Torture and Murder
1. Keep the story quiet in your home country. Look: Google News results for the term [killer coke] yield 57 links, not all of which actually refer to the lawsuit, even though the suit was filed in 2001. This is good because you don't want too many links to the list of bottling plant union leaders tortured, kidnapped and/or killed.
2. When the federal judge dismisses the lawsuit, not because of the merit of the case, but because accusations were "vague," bid on little-used negative keyword and launch AdWords campaign with text reading [Accused Company] Lawsuit Dismissed so that all looking for the information know.
3. Get marketing and PR industry writers and experts to comment on company's new PR strategy. Buzz is buzz, especially if it's diversion buzz.
4. Before the bad part of the story starts really gaining critical mass, launch a new diet drink. Look: Google News results for Coke's new calorie-burning green tea bring back 131 articles, more than double the results for [killer coke]. Besides, as Sullivan illustrates with a Google Trends chart, hardly anybody's searching for [killer coke].
Though Coke is the new case study in how to use AdWords to bolster PR spin, they made one crucial mistake. They didn't bid on the keyword [coke]. KillerCoke.org is the number three result for that search term, which is a huge blunder.
From SearchEngineWatch:
But c'mon. This is Coke being savvy? A regular search for coke on Google doesn't carry this ad. That means plenty of people are seeing the Killer Coke site ranking well but not getting a counter message from Coke itself.
Perhaps it is an oversight, though it might be intentional -- trying to target those specifically searching for "killer coke" with a positive message without trying to be too in the face of those doing regular searches who might not know about the allegations.
The lesson here, then, obviously, is when you're beating back an image problem centering on paramilitary assassination accusations, it's important to have your search marketing campaign ducks in a row. The marketing gods at Coca-Cola should have known better.
About
the Author:
Jason Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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Google,
YouTube Face Potential Opposition
 By
Joe Lewis
Staff Writer | WebProNews
Dick Parsons, Time Warner CEO & Chairman, revealed in a British newspaper
that the company will continue to pursue copyright infringement complaints against
YouTube. This is the first potential pitfall for Google, who acquired YouTube
for $1.65 billion on Monday.
Time Warner appears poised to offer Google its first real test in the copyright infringement arena regarding the search provider's latest acquisition, YouTube.
In an interview published in Friday's issue of The Guardian, Parsons stated: "You can assume we're in negotiations with YouTube and that those negotiations will be kicked up to the Google level in the hope that we can get to some acceptable position."
Parson's denied that the Time Warner's decision to continue pursuing copyright issues against YouTube was influenced in any way by Monday's acquisition of the company by Google.
Parsons went on to defend Time Warner's position by elaborating, "We were going to pursue it anyway. If you let one thing ignore your rights as an owner it makes it much more difficult to defend those rights when the next guy comes along."
Time Warner has not ruled out the possibility of a distribution agreement with the social video provider. Parsons adds, "We'd like to have our content displayed on these platforms, but on a basis that it respects our rights as the owner of that content."
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Do Certification Badges Make Visitors Feel Secure?
If you are shopping around with a couple of sites, looking for that certain something,
do you get a better feeling of security if you see things like the W3C badge certifying
the site "works"? Or are you just looking for the best deal you can
find, so much so you almost disregard the sense of safety when it comes to giving
sites your personal information, usually consisting of credit cards numbers and
addresses? Or do you strictly go to sites that have badges like the W3C offers?
Let us know in WebProWorld.
Subscribe
to the WebProWorld Feed 
|| Chris||
W3C
Badge: Is it Really Worth Flaunting?
I think we've established on this forum on more than one occasion that it is imperative
to use clean code when building a web page. But does anyone here actually display
the W3C badge on every web page they have built?
My client base is mainly small businesses and although I make sure that my recent
projects are W3C compatible, I personally would not go as far as to put the badge
of approval on each page. Mainly because I feel that not many of my clients would
know what it is (and why should they?) resulting in confusion, but I also don't
think its necessary. If someone really wanted to know if it was compatible, surely
they would check it themselves.
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Meet the Members: |
 User:
carol
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Location: New Jersey
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cybergnarus.com
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