Brussels, Belgium. June 29 2010 – The Worldcom Public Relations Group, the world’s leading partnership of independently owned communications counseling firms, today announced results of a survey of its partner offices around the world that projects a rise in social media and research and a decline in media relations and advertising services over the next three years. More than 70 of Worldcom’s 104 offices responded to the survey.

“The results of this survey clearly demonstrate that public relations has moved multi-channel,” said Stefan Pollack, chair of the Worldcom Americas Region and president of The Pollack PR Marketing Group, a Los Angeles-based firm. “From a trend perspective, clients are looking for firms that can deliver immediate impact with sustainable value. These results provide insight to our partner firms about how to gear their client programming and to determine how best to continue to grow services and in what areas.”

According to the survey, the services respondents expect the decrease to include: media relations (19 percent), advertising (17 percent), and direct mail and marketing (11 percent). In general, the majority of firms are optimistic about business increasing in the next three to five years.

Moreover, an increase in multichannel services is a critical indicator for firms to move beyond media relations as a major source of revenue. For example, more than half of the respondents expected social media, interactive/web development and search engine optimization services to increase – 93 percent, 73 percent and 61 percent, respectively. Yet obstacles still remain for firms to determine how to increase revenue from these services; particularly search engine optimization – for example, no agency reported more than 10 percent of revenue from SEO.

In addition, one-third of the Worldcom Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region and Asia Pacific region firms expect the percentage of work from their home countries to decrease. This represents an opportunity for global firms to acquire clients from beyond their home countries. Additional key findings included investor relations and influencer/stakeholder relations as other significant areas of revenue, and 37 percent of firms in the Americas targeting specific cultural demographics. The most commonly cited was Latino/Hispanic, with 10 percent.

Methodology
The online survey was sent to 104 Worldcom firms regarding services provided by their firms. Seventy-four firms responded, a response rate of 71 percent. Padilla Speer Beardsley’s research practice facilitated the survey.

About the Worldcom Public Relations Group
Worldcom Public Relations Group is the world’s leading partnership of independently owned public relations counseling firms, with 104 offices in 91 cities worldwide. Established in 1988, it was formed so that the strongest, most capable independent public relations firms could serve national, international and multi-national clients while retaining the flexibility and client-service focus inherent in independent firms. Through The Worldcom Group, clients have on-demand access to in-depth communications expertise from professionals who understand the language, culture and customs of the geographic arenas in which they operate. Visit www.worldcomgroup.com for more information.

Worldcom EMEA currently comprises 34 agencies with strong expertise in consumer, healthcare, travel & tourism, technology, energy & environment, financial services, investor relations, public affairs and crisis & issues management. Clients include Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Panasonic, Sony Ericson, LG Electronics, the EU Anti-Tobacco Campaign, Verbatim and Palm. Visit www.worldcomprgroupemea.com for more information.

Yesterday June 16, 2010, the Obama administration announced that BP had agreed to its request for a $20 billion escrow account to be setup to aid victims of the oil spill.  The fund that’s set up will be run by Kenneth Feinberg the lawyer and mediator who ran the fund for victims of September 11.

This is welcome news considering the fact that there has been significant uncertainty about the future of BP.  Its stock market value has been cut in half since the initial onset of the spill, and it was rumored earlier this week that a certain bank had warned its employees not to issue debt contracts to BP that extend beyond a year.   Then you take into consideration that FEMA the federal government’s disaster recovery arm has yet to recover from the barrage of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires that have depleted its funds over the past five years.

It goes without saying that the federal government needs BP just about as much as BP needs the government right now.  The agreement by BP to the demands of the Obama administration should not come as a surprise to anyone paying close attention to what is at stake.  However, by being readily agreeable to the President’s request, BP effectively killed multiple birds with one stone.  In order for BP to survive they were already going to have to pay for the damages from this tragedy.  So by acquiescing to the  the administration’s demand, BP was able to cast itself as compassionate, while at the same time enabling the administration to show some stealth and build some political capital in the process.

Despite the staggering sum being set aside, some have speculated this amount would be insufficient to cover the long-term costs this disaster is bound to run. To offer some comparison, BP had gross earnings of $246 billion in 2009 with net profits being $17 billion.  So in actuality, BP is putting up all of last years profit and some change as a show of goodwill to the administration and the American public.  It is safe to conclude that we need BP to be alive and well in order to not only preserve 23,000 jobs, but also to ensure that our nation recovers from this catastrophe.

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example:  Ask, Excite, Yahoo, Bing and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

For additional information, please visit our partner agency at www.ideafolder.com, thank you.

It is worth cataloguing the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

For additional help with this and other SEO issues, please contact our partner agency  at www.ideafolder.com or contact me at hector@carrenogroup.com

They use viral marketing by e-mail as a marketing tool… what did you think I meant? Viral marketing can work well for B2B providers, as long as the following is true:

The product or service has to add value for the sender, as well as, the receiver.

1. The offer has to be deliverable. You don’t want to offer a product that you can’t deliver if demand grows rapidly.

2. The offer has to be easily transferable to others. E-mail and Web pages provide the best medium to facilitate this.

3. The vest viral marketing campaigns use existing networks to move the message along.

The basis of viral marketing has been around for a long time. The idea is that you incite your customers or referral sources to pass on something about your business to their network of colleagues and friends. Those that pass on your information get something in return. The something might be a gift or service related to your business.

Using e-mail makes it incredibly easy to pass information on to a friend or colleague, especially if it involves something fun or free. With millions using the Internet worldwide, the potential for exponential growth is tremendous. The great things about viral marketing are that it is free and works virtually by itself. Once you make an offer and provide the facility for referrals, viral marketing spreads like… well… a virus…but the good kind.

To implement viral marketing at your business; first, start with your customer base. Incite existing customers to refer new ones. Second, go to your referral sources. Service providers, your outside network and colleagues can be encouraged to provide referrals that lead to business.

If you need help in creating a viral marketing campaign, feel free to contact us at hector@carrenogroup.com.

Over a month has passed since the initial explosion that claimed the lives of 11 British Petroleum workers, and created possibly the single greatest disaster in the history of oil exploration.  The initial response of the companies involved was to placate the citizenry by assuring that the damage and impact would be minimal, estimating that about 1,000 barrels a day is what was spewing into the gulf.  However, a month later, it has become clear that the initial estimate missed the mark by an order of the magnitude of 40.  Then there was the blame game as BP, Transocean, and Halliburton sought to deflect responsibility from what could potentially be a huge long-term liability.

Early in the wake of the disaster, several industry experts asserted that controlling the crisis would rely primarily on BP’s, who has led the efforts, ability to determine the best method by which to plug the hole.  Efforts to control the spill have been unsuccessful up until this point, despite varied attempts at utilizing a multitude of techniques to curb the spill.  The lack of progress has led to increased frustration and calls for President Obama and the administration to take over the efforts to control the spill. The administration, however, has taken no formal position on whether or not they intend to take control of the situation with the spill.  Last week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar went as far as saying that BP had to either control the situation or prepare to get out of the way, but he has since had to backtrack from his earlier statements.

The growing calls for the federal government to take charge are now being uttered by several lawmakers including Ben Nelson (D) of Florida, who think that the oversight of the response and cleanup can be handled by the military.  The question as to whether or not the administration ought to take over is one that most people are split over, and the response depends in large part on who you talk to.  Residents of the gulf coast boiled over with frustration are urging that the administration needs to step in and take over the process, as do a host of legislators including members of the President’s party.  Industry experts and observers, however, continue to insist that the only option is to let BP continue with its ongoing efforts in hopes that it comes up with a solution.

Neutral observers like myself are more inclined to believe that the best path forward is to let BP continue to spear head the efforts.  It is no secret that the US government has no expertise in oil exploration, and as a result is not equipped with the technology, knowledge, or tools that it takes to operate an oil rig, much less contain a catastrophe such as this.  The administration’s main focus going forward has to be on monitoring the effort to control the spill, ensuring that the affected areas receive the appropriate assistance, and that the accountable parties own up to their social and financial responsibilities.  Most importantly, the administration needs to step in and give the public a sense that they are taking charge of the situation, and will protect the public’s interest.

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. When a topic is typed for search, nearly instantly, the search engine will sift through the millions of pages it has indexed about and present you with ones that match your topic. The searched matches are also ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Remember that a prospective customer will probably only look at the first 2-3 listings in the search results. So it does matter where your website appears in the search engine ranking.

Further, they all use one of the top 6-7 search engines and these search engines attract more visitors to websites than anything else. So finally it all depends on which search engines the customers use and how they rank your site.

It is the Keywords that play an important role than any expensive online or offline advertising of your website.

It is found by surveys that a when customers want to find a website for information or to buy a product or service, they find their site in one of the following ways:

• The first option is they find their site through a search engine.
• Secondly they find their site by clicking on a link from another website or page that relates to the topic in which they are interested.
• Occasionally, they find a site by hearing about it from a friend or reading in an article.

Thus it’s obvious the the most popular way to find a site, by search engine, represents more than 90% of online users. In other words, only 10% of the people looking for a website will use methods other than search engines.

All search engines employ a ranking algorithm and one of the main rules in a ranking algorithm is to check the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Don’t forget that algorithms also give weightage to link population (number of web pages linking to your site). When performed by a qualified, experienced search engine optimization consultant, your site for high search engine rankings really does work, unless you have a lot of money and can afford to pay the expert. With better knowledge of search engines and how they work, you can also do it on your own.

You have mere seconds to capture a prospect’s attention. One of the single most powerful tools you have to accomplish this task is your headline. There are several keys to a compelling, and selling, headline and a few tips to help you get the job done.

#1 Tap into Your Prospects’ Emotions – According to psychologists our buying decisions are based first and foremost on our emotions. Use headlines which offer your readers a strong emotional benefit or reaction. Some possible emotions are:

For example, Five Step that Will Make You a Business Genius taps into readers’ desires to feel smart and powerful.

Other emotions you can tap into are a desire to feel:

1. Attractive

2. Assertive

3. Confident

4. Energetic

5. A sense of belonging

6. In control of their own destiny

7. Wealthy

8. Proud

9. Respected

10. Safe

#2 Make it Active – To compel it’s important to use active language – language that shows movement and commands attention.

For example, “Stop Your Sugar Cravings Today With This Simple Step,” is a fine headline however it doesn’t command action nor does it really tap into any emotions. However, “Conquer Your Sugar Cravings With This Simple Step.” Conquer is an active and emotionally powerful word. Readers receive the benefit of feeling powerful and in control and it commands action.

#3 Let Your Reader Know They’re Important – The word YOU is a very powerful word. It let’s your reader’s feel as if you’re talking to them specifically and interested in solving their problems, issues and helping them achieve their desires. Instead of using I, Me or We in your headlines, use You.

People want to know what’s in it for them and when they can assess that information in the headline, they’re going to be compelled to continue reading your copy and making a purchase.

So now you have some ideas about what types of headlines sell, how do you begin to write those powerful headlines?

Step One – Get to know your audience intimately. What are their hopes, dreams, desires, and problems? Understanding your audience will help you create an emotional and powerful headline directed specifically at your audience.

Step Two – Determine how your products or services are going to make your prospects’ lives better or solve their problems. For example if you sell fitness equipment and your audience struggles with feeling attractive then you can create a headline that highlights a specific benefit your fitness equipment offers to solve that problem.

Step Three – Write ten to twenty, yes twenty, possible headlines. Not only will this give you practice writing compelling headlines, it’ll help you hone in on that perfect headline. And if you think you have a few winners you can always test them for conversion rates to find out which headline is more effective.

Marketing and copywriting experts consider your headline to be the most import element of any effective marketing piece. Take the time to craft a compelling, and selling, headline and you’ll reap the benefits for years to come.

Tomorrow is election day for the Houston City elections runoff. It is important that we all come out and vote.  I would would ask that you vote for my good friends Annise Parker for Mayor and Alma Lara for HISD Trustee #1. It only takes a few minutes to vote so please remember to do so tomorrow.