Welcome to the Escape Blog

Chances are, the first place you look to find out about something new that comes along, is the web and, more precisely, Google.

Well, journalists are no different. I remember a national newspaper journo once telling me that he thoroughly Googles every company and spokesperson he comes across before even starting to consider writing about them.

So if a journalist Googles you or your company, what are they likely to find? It’s certainly worth checking out.

And once they are on their website – will they be able to easily find what they want?

Website usability and optimisation is nothing new. We work with a number of clients who have sophisticated skills and technologies to help you push your online visitors towards a conversion point.

The way you treat journalists on your site should be no different.

Usability-guru ‘Jakob Nielsen has written a great post on ‘Press Area Usability‘, looking at some of the key considerations you need to remember when optimising your website for visiting journalists.

For example:

• “Websites must be painfully clear about a company’s purpose, products, and services”
• Avoid buzz-language, marketing-spiel and overly technical jargon
• Don’t use plugins and avoid forcing downloads in order to view specific information
• Don’t use PDFs
• Keep the site ‘clean’ with a clearly defined press or media section
• Make sure search engines know you and know where you are (read: SEO)
• Press section should include: links to supporting (independent) evidence, links to coverage, PR contact information, financial information, images, logos,
• Write in language journalists themselves use – it helps them to imagine how you would ‘fit’ in their publication
• Embrace multi-media (video, webcasts, podcasts), but make it easy to use

As we all know (PRs especially) and as Jakob states, journalists work to very tight-deadlines so making life easy for them is likely to benefit you and your relationship:

“If journalists can’t find what they’re looking for on a website, they might not include that company in their story. Journalists repeatedly said that poor website usability could reduce or completely eliminate their press coverage of a company.”

Jakob concludes:

“Ultimately, PR-related usability comes down to a simple question: Why spend a fortune on outbound PR (trying to pitch journalists) when you neglect simple steps to increase the effectiveness of inbound PR (satisfying journalists who visit your website)?”

The 287-page report on Designing Websites to Maximize Press Relations (3^rd edition) is also available for download.

It’s been hard to avoid Obama-mania this week – and for good reason. In the tech space, Obama has already made great strides with more exciting developments planned for the future. Here is a round-up of the key Obama-technology stories and articles from the last week:

Obama and the internet

• Campaign by the net, govern by the net – Jeff Jarvis (Guardian)
• Google’s inauguration searches show a changing Internet – Computerworld
• Obama to .gov agencies: More Internet openness – Cnet

Obama and the Blackberry

• Why President Obama needs to keep his BlackBerry – LA Times
• Barack Obama: America’s first BlackBerry president – Guardian
• Obama Gets His BlackBerry, but What About Facebook? – PC World

Obama brings the internet to a halt

• Barack Obama’s inauguration greeted by frenzy of internet activity – The Times
• The inauguration of Barack Obama by the numbers – Econsultancy
• Google searches down during Obama arrival – Tech Radar

Obama plans for technology

• Barack Obama and Cloud Computing – Cloudave
• Barack Obama’s technology presidency – Computer Weekly
• Bloggers give Obama marching orders for the IT industry – Computerworld

Obama’s new wesbite

• Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face, And a Blog – TechCrunch
• New White House website angers conservatives with dig at Bush – Telegraph
• White House increases SEO – Brafton

Our round-up of what was hot online this week:

• Twitter use in the UK explodes by ten times says Hitwise – TechCrunch UK
• The Wired Presidency: Can Obama Really Reboot the White House? – Wired
• New phone features ‘baffle users’  – BBC
• Blogging your way into the big time – The Times
• iTunes for news? That’s the last thing the newspaper industry needs – Guardian
• Channel 4 and Five held secret talks over possible merger – Guardian

Missed anything?

Rumours are circulating that Precision Marketing and Brand Strategy magazine are soon to close. Job losses and restructuring is on the cards. This only months after Precision Marketing launched as a monthly title.

Let’s put this in perspective – Centaur still has a number of big titles, read throughout the industry. But, for me, they have been to slow to really ramp up their web presence.

The report in the Guardian suggests that a new model (for them) will be to focus on feature-led content in the printed publication and focus the website on breaking news.

This makes sense. It’s what they suggested would happen with Precision Marketing. And, it’s what’s happened elsewhere – with the brilliant revamp of Revolution for example.

There is definitely still room for incisive, investigative journalism in the trade press but online delivery models need to be positioned correctly in order to survive. And no, a simple website and an email newsletter doesn’t count.

Today is a much anticipated day in America. I actually think today is a much expected day in the whole world, as Barack Obama becomes the USA’s 44^th president.

Barack Obama has many firsts to his name, he is the first African American president of the United States, and he is also the first president to have a Facebook page and a YouTube channel. As such, it is clear that Obama is the first president that will truly be able to communicate directly with his audience in a way that previous presidents could not even dream of doing.

During his campaign, Obama has been savvy in the use of social networking websites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, and judging from that, we can expect to see a president who will be able to reach out to citizens directly, and will no longer rely solely on the media to get his message across. He will be able to watch the way people react to his government, and he will be able to respond immediately, giving democracy a whole new meaning.

Unlike his predecessors, Barack Obama is expected to have an interactive White House website for his presidency, where users can be immersed in the political experience and where they can truly feel close to their commander-in-chief. Not only that, but he makes use of his personal website (www.mybarackobama.com) to let visitors know which events he will be attending, to rally their support and raise money.

It is not difficult to find millions of Obama supporters on the internet, as you can befriend him on MySpace or influence millions posting your support on a blog. And Barack Obama knows that, which is why he makes every effort to reach his audience wherever they might be. It is no wonder that he has so many younger supporters, who were ignored by candidates in previous campaigns. Barack Obama sees the value in each and every citizen, and he wants to communicate with them regardless of political affiliation, age, race, sex or age.

Obama has quite a challenge ahead of him. Being able to communicate and truly get the national (and worldwide) sentiment has never been so important, and I am sure that his enlightened view of technology will be one of his many marks as the 44^th president of the USA.

The top links this week:

• Why Steve Jobs’ leave of absence from Apple won’t matter – but everyone will think it will – TechCrunch UK
• Celebrities on Twitter – plus a few MPs and porn stars (updated) – Guardian
• Good list of SEO blogs – Vertical Leap
• Norwich Union marketing director explains name change in video blog – Brand Republic
• Growth of UK online shopping starts to slow – FT.com

Missed anything?

Steve Rubel has noted that Google has started adding a time-stamp to SERPs (search engine results pages):

“As of right now you can’t sort Google results by time. From the advanced search page, however, you can limit results just to those that have been indexed in the last 24-hours. You can’t get more granular – at least yet. Date-filtered advanced queries are not a new feature but I believe the time stamps are.”

He also mentions a 2009 prediction from Louis Gray that suggests the real-time web is going to be a major development this year, especially with the increased popularity of blogging and micro-blogging.

As Steve notes, this has a big impact for (online) PR and, I guess, SEO.

It also places emphasis on ‘new’ content, which in turn will surely increase the prominence of the aforementioned blogs, social networks etc.

This is surely a natural progression for Google and sees yet another move towards universal search.

The plight of the print media and newspaper industry is one I find fascinating, so it was interesting to hear Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, and the Independent’s first editor Andreas Whittam Smith discuss the issue on Radio 4’s Today yesterday morning.

If you missed it, here’s the link to listen again.

There’s nothing like a new gadget to wipe away those January-blues and so its with great excitement (and slight jealousy of those who attend) that I always look forward to the tech-tastic first week of the New Year that brings Macworld and CES. [Disclosure: I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy]

Part 1 was always going to be overshadowed by (the lack of) a certain Mr Jobs and his death hormone rumours reports. And to be honest, I’m not surprised he stayed away as Macworld 2009 won’t really be remembered for anything in particular [although DRM-free music will have quite an effect on the music industry], even if previous years had set a high-precedent.

So…it wasn’t the keynote itself that was interesting me, it was what the announcement did to Twitter.

Twitter has continued to draw attention over the Christmas period with yet more celebrity additions and a fair amount of national media exposure [albeit mainly written by journos who really don't understand what it is all about and driven by the aforementioned celebrity interest].

And so, my not-particularly-ground-breaking/jumping-on-the-bandwagon prediction is that 2009 will see Twitter hitting the mainstream or reaching ‘tipping point’ as us digital/marketing-types prefer to say.

But it wont get there if what happened last night continues.

From the start of Macworld, Twitter started only showing comments that were posted 15 minutes before. Not good. Ok, ok, to be fair, it didn’t just collapse as it probably would’ve this time last year. But it creaked, and this creaking went on for some time.

Now, us techy, early-adopters tolerate this (and we’ve tolerated Twitter more than most) but the general populus wont.

And, at the end of the day, live community events like a Macworld keynote are exactly where a network like Twitter should come into its own. It is where it should shine. Having a undercurrent of comment and dialogue on Twitter whilst following the live event is what gives that added dimension.

So here’s to Mr Ballmer and CES. And here’s to a good year for Twitter. Let’s just hope they don’t follow the damp-squib precedent set by Macworld 09.