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Don't make 'em come looking for you
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...be everywhere on the Internet where our audiences are already...
When you are hunting for something on the Internet, you
might casually invoke your favorite search engine then type in key
words. There is nothing casual about the list returned to you. Site
managers methodically design their content and links to boost their
rank on search lists to draw more hits. There are even consultants
whose sole purpose in life is to manipulate the inner workings of a
client's site inner workings to top search engine lists.
You'd think the ultimate value of the Internet is the technology that
helps you succeed in channeling people to your Web content. Aili Jokela
has another idea.
"We want to be everywhere on the Internet
where our audiences are already. We set out to engage other Web sites
to deliver content for us, and of course we would make it easy for
them," she says. Maybe it's not a revolutionary thought; if your
audience is hailing taxis or driving down the street, you slap a sign
on the side of a bus instead of expecting just the right people to be
watching your television commercial during a soap opera at 11 a.m. Yet,
Jokela and her team took the potential of the Internet in a new and
enlightened direction.
Jokela is a senior vice president
for Fleishman Hillard, the public relations agency responsibility for
the non-advertising components of the National Youth Anti-Drug media
campaign for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
"We wanted to deliver the campaign where people are – where they live,
work, learn, plan, or practice their faith. We wanted to be
ubiquitous," Jokela says.
What teen contemplating or dabbling
in illicit drugs would go to yahoo.com, google.com or msn.com and type
in the key words: "anti-drug PR"? If you were trying to reach kids with
anti-drug messages, would you create a site and hope they use a search
engine to come looking for you?
Or would you provide
content with anti-drug, interactive, relationship-building messages to
the sites teens and pre-teens frequent? From the official *Nsync pop music site to a teen TV site
with all the scoop on The Osbournes, anti-drug content developed by
Fleishman Hillard is free and easy for the site developers -- and fun
and ubiquitous for the visitors. Even the NASA site, one of the most
visited sites by youth, includes a "micro site" called "Explore Space...Not Drugs" that includes games plus advice on taking care of yourself if you are interested in being an astronaut.
According to Jokela, more than 18,000 of these partnerships links have
led to more than 480 million non-paid online impressions.
Consider it the public relations equivalent of banner ads.
No doubt, it's easier to establish partnerships when the content you
are offering is as noble as preventing illegal drug use among teens –
and it's a non-profit effort. I would guess that the likelihood of
finding Huggies content on the Gerber site will be a long time coming,
even though the audiences for both are the same.
Yet some businesses do thrive on partnerships. Take Avis
rental cars, for example. From its Web site you can click on a tab
called "Partners" and get information about earning Avis points with
travel partners as varied as Hilton Hotels, Singapore Air and Eurostar
passenger trains. You can even click through to the home pages of those
partners, leaving Avis behind. Not all Internet site managers would be
open to such an idea.
If linking disparate commercial
interests online poses a challenge, don't overlook the opportunities on
an extranet or intranet to meet your audience where it is. Think about
ways to provide news and information content on sites for related-topic
transactions or on sites for other departments, job functions, or
communities. Today, you may have a link to bring readers from these
various extranet or intranet sites to your news site. Tomorrow, you may
put your information directly on the sites people visit daily.
© 2002, Sheri Rosen. This article first appeared in Communication World, August-September 2002, published by the International Association of Business Communicators.
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