Category Archives: Blog Updates

Breaking the hiatus

Posted on by Bruno Amaral

Photo by Pedro Moura PinheiroIf you visit this blog you will notice two things. One is that the last post dates back to April 3rd. The other is that it looks plain and boring, with little or no design.

I never planned to stop blogging for so long and I have a strong belief that blogs will endure. Yet, simply openning up the “new post” screen and typing away is not enough for me right now. I want more.

So to go along with the new promise of a post, this blog is getting a new design. But that is not the reason why it looks so plain and boring as it does now. The new design will come built into my personal WordPress Framework, built in html5 thanks to the toolbox template and using the 960gs.

Only when the new design is in place will this blog see some new features such as the Google+ share button and a greater link between comments and social network services.

What does this have to do with Public Relations? The point of taking the time to build a whole new framework is to make blog templates easier to build and to customize. If I want to spend more time writting and less time coding, then it makes sense to go for the long run and build something that will adapt to what the future brings in terms of online communication.

Stay tuned and feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

How Technology Impacts PR And How We Can Respond

Posted on by Bruno Amaral

I have been meaning to write this post for a while now. But as all landmarks it needed undivided attention.

A week as passed since I had the great pleasure of speaking at the Annual Conference of the Croatian Public Relations Association.

During my stay I had the opportunity to share a few key notions on the Values Systems School of Thought. The first of which was the idea that technology evolved in such a way that the it is easier to use and easier to adapt to our needs and whose spread is in fact unstoppable.

On a different idea, it is important to understand that the Web does present Public Relations with a new set of challenges, most of which refer to the need for a precise monitoring and evaluation.

Monitoring per se can be seen in two lights. First, it is important to have tools and methods in place that allow for a Bird’s Eye View of what is being said online about:

  • Our Organization
  • Our sector
  • One or more sensitive issues

But campaigns and other projects require a new level of detail. Real time monitoring is a possibility, and we can apply it by summing up the whole online discourse into its most relevant Values, measure sentiment and identify which instruments of communication are being used for that dialogue.

This should of course be coordinate with traditional web metrics, such as pageviews, Click Through Rates, Referal links and concrete actions being performed by Online Publics.

These are exciting times for Public Relations, and I am very thankful for having the opportunity to share these ideas in Zagreb.

What is the Value of 35 000 Words?

Posted on by Bruno Amaral

As some of you are aware, part of this blog is dedicated to the issue of Public Relations and Values Systems. If you search for it, or look at the Values Systems category, you will find a few posts about the theme.

Simply put, my dissertation puts into question what are publics and how we can identify publics online. This theoric basis is made complete with a case study using the website for the British Olympic Association. There is an executive summary available as well, and you can find the presentation on slideshare.

With a bit of extra work I believe that my research could be made into part of an Online Communication Course.

Recently I have been giving some serious thought in making the whole dissertation available. The problem is “How”. For personal and professional reasons I don’t feel I can afford to simply share the file on the blog for all to read and use.

But I don’t have a publisher interested on my work and I have never really looked into self-publishing options.

The reason for this post is to know two things:

  • If you are a PR professional / academic, looking at the executive summary of the book would you buy it? And if so, is it something that you might recomend to others?
  • If you have any experience with self-publishing services, would you mind sharing it so I know where to begin?

The 3 Areas of Search Engine Optimization

Posted on by Bruno Amaral

When managing a website, one of the goals is to be listed as high as possible on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). Working towards this goal is what is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

In Public Relations we need to divide the practice into three areas, Programming, Content and Relationships.

Programming

I do not mean that we as communication professionals should take charge of programming a website, or even optimizing the software on our own.

I do however mean to say that it is important to have a small grasp of the technology which powers a website, how it works and what alternatives are available. There are also several features of a website that make it more accessible to search engines, such as readable URLs, sitemaps and a careful semantic structure.

Content

Most of the time, PR practitioners will focus on building good Content. In fact, great content is still of the utmost importance. We can divide this area into two main concerns, one is providing Content with a good structure and organization, in which case Matt Cutt’s videos on SEO are a great help in understanding how content must be written for the web.

Another concern is in building relevant content. This means first and foremost to be aware of the publics that surround us and what their interests are. The next step is in finding common ground, and if it doesn’t exist we must take charge in building it.

Only we know to whom we are reaching out can we look into ways of building relevant content and becoming relevant to them.

Relationships

We build relationships of all forms and sizes, some positive, others neutral or negative. And the truth of the matter is that the Web was built to allow relationships to form, specially those relationships that lead to collaboration and cooperation.

When we create a website and publicize it, it ripples through the web resonating to a greater or lesser extent with its constituents. If the content is actually useful and valuable, it will be linked too, and while it is being linked to, in an underlying and sometimes unconscious process it is being given a set of psycho-sociological values.

We can reinforce this effect with advertising, relevant link exchanges, sponsored links in SERP, or any other artificial means. However, these tactics will prove less successful if our online discourse lacks relevance to a number of publics and to a certain context.

A SEO plan will only prove effective if it includes these three areas, focusing on just one of them or simply not taking the time to coordinate efforts between the PR department and the Webdesign team will result in erratic results.

A clean slate

Posted on by Bruno Amaral

Some of you may remember a different blog, Relações Públicas.

Written in Portuguese, It is still the blog that ranks second for google searches on the portuguese translation of Public Relations. Positioned as the best place for dialogue on PR, it stands as the result of three years of work.

It reached 550 RSS Subscribers and an average near 5000 visits per month and I believe that in time it would continue to grow. But times change and I began to regret the language barrier for a number of reasons.

So I decided to take on a new domain name, and start over. With a new blog, a new strategy and new challenges. Aggregating the dialogue being one of those challenges. (Hopefully, as soon as I have the time, you will see a good mix of blogging and microblogging.)

At the same time, I could not simply leave the first website un-attended. With a great google rank also comes great responsibility. That means that the pulse for Relações Públicas will still beat, just at a slower pace.

As for this new place of dialogue, I will try to focus on research and insights on Public Relations that applies to the discipline and not simply to a new platform for online communication.

Stick around, it will be interesting.