Social Media has made communicating layoffs a top priority

As I flipped through the papers today, it’s almost always guaranteed to have layoff news on it. It’s never easy to communicate something like this, especially in such terrible times.(The company will always be the bad guy!) However, it’s interesting to note how companies are going about announcing the lay-offs. (This is purely from an external perspective and I have no idea how the internal comms are handled)

Let’s start with DBS. I did a post on them a few weeks back and the people’s bank really went through a terrible time with the High notes issue being linked with Lehman brothers. To compound their problems even further, DBS was going though layoffs for some of it’s senior staff. How did they go about handling 2 problems? Focus on the layoffs to appease the shareholders that costs are being cut and use lousy customer service to answer the investors who invested in the high notes.

Then there’s Yahoo! who had the recent layoffs of 1500 staff. Every knows Yahoo! has been going through a horrible time because of declining profits and the whole Yahoo-Microsoft saga. I interned at Yahoo! and i know they’ve got excellent internal communications. I’m sure those that were being laid-off would have known well before hand and would have been properly compensated. It doesn’t help that with Yahoo!’s current situation that the economic crisis had to occur leading to cost cutting via layoffs.  The communications to the media and online blogosphere was open and honest.

As i read about the lay-offs, i was wondering why the comms folks in Sunnyvale didn’t try to steer the media towards their new product launches. I mean you have an article from Mashable that says Yahoo! might be the next great app platform and an article from ReadWriteWeb which says Gmail struggling with Email wants to be your task manager too. Both articles came out on the same day. So why focus so much on the layoff news when it might be possible to push out other news which can enhance your reputation at a time like this? In fact, why not keep quiet about it?

I point the finger to social media but more importantly micro-blogging and citizen journalism. This article from MarketingVox, Yahoo layoffs draw more blog coverage than ad campaigns, nicely sums up why today’s companies should be tackling layoffs more seriously. However, it was also nice to know that showing your pink slip online allows others to know that you’re ready for your next job! Tokbox showed how it was able to leverage from Yahoo!’s layoffs.

So it’s inevitable to make a layoff private. It’s also not very smart to focus on something other than your layoff. It should be a top priority because you’re now the Lich King. (WOW analogy for being a bad guy). You can check out this post here, You’re Fired: 7 Public Relations Tips for HR managers in an age of layoffs. on how to communicate a layoff

How to make Microsoft not part of the game

I’m sure many of you have heard of the ad partnership btw Google and Yahoo! which was announced a few months back and will be going live in October. While there have been loud protests by netizens saying this partnership effectively allows Google and Yahoo! to dominate the ad partnership, I sure don’t see whats wrong considering they have been doing a pretty good job. In fact, considering that the starting point for most user’s hompages are a search engine page, this deal really makes sense to both companies.

However, while i don’t want to get into the debate of Google and Yahoo! ad partnership, i want to address how they’ve actually responded to all the protests and trying to quell users dissatisfaction (and possible lawsuits from the American Antitrust authorities). You can also read about what some sites think about the deal here and here

Seems like Google is coming out short on this deal… But thats not my concern

They’ve set up a mini site here which you can check out and they basically state and i quote:

In June 2008, Yahoo! and Google announced a non-exclusive advertising agreement that will provide Yahoo! with access to Google’s AdSense advertising programs on their U.S. and Canadian web properties. Here are the facts:

• This is a non-exclusive deal that will strengthen Yahoo!.
• Ad prices will continue to be set by competitive auction.
• The deal is win-win for consumers, advertisers and publishers: more and better ads.

I’m just glad they did this to avoid further controversy. Most companies would have just kept quiet and carried on with the deal. The openess of the web giants is great and i think they might’ve avoided a whole lot of trouble. What was interesting was how they showed other examples of suppliers in the slide show…

So kudos once again to Google and its corp comms team to address the protesters of the deal and the law ppl, would’ve been nice if u came out with this a little earlier rather than just before the launch…

But the best part of the deal? It effectively ends Microsoft hopes for online ad money… wahahahahaha….

Increasing Search Engine Ranking??

Today, my JUST FOR FUN will be postponed because a problem has been bugging my mind and i cant seem to shake it off even after walking Remzy.

I need to know how to push up a page ranking in search engines such as Google and Yahoo ( who cares about msn really…)

Anyhows,I just figured out how Google works their search Engine results. Being lazy and pressed for time because of the finals on Friday, i just cut out a caption of an article on Google algorithm.

Google algorithm. It is this algorithm in which Google uses to index every webpage on the Internet. This indexing then ranks the pages based on importance on a scale of 0 to 10, with one being the lowest and ten of course being the highest.

This importance is tracked by the number of of other web pages that link back to it. The algorithm goes into more depth than that, but basically that is how it works. Your goal to build up your website or blog should be to increase its rank. Increasing its rank will invariably display your information higher on the list during a Google search for keywords that your site includes.

So this same article includes 4 points to increase your rankings. While i probably knew that already, I’ve started a thread in friendfeed to harnese the power of social media.

So do let me know any way i can increase a webage’s ranking on Google or Yahoo! Much Appreciated!!

What’s hot in the blogosphere!!

Yahoo! Saga

What a crazy year it has been for Yahoo! It’s almost like a drama… and for the PR in Sunnyvale, this must be a bloody nightmare… First we had Steve laying a siege at Yahoo!’s doors with a $44.6 billion take over in Feb, which Yahoo! declined. It was all over the news for 3 months (poor PR folks….) until Microsoft made a final offer with an ultimatum of a hostile takeover. Yahoo!’s response was still a no… and the response from Yahoo!’s blog was amazingly extreme… At the same time, the rumors of a Google partnership was adrift

Then Carl comes bawling like a baby about how Yahoo! doesn’t have the best interest in their shareholders. Luckily, this time, Carl was seen to be the bad guy on the Yahoo!’s blog response. (Hell, that kicked ass!) But throw in that with the lawsuit of the severance program, man, talk about being in the limelight for the wrong reasons… Managing company rep like this is a nightmare…

Now Microsoft and Yahoo! opened up talks again with Yahoo! in my opinion throwing a red herring to Microsoft saying

we remain open to pursuing any transaction which is in the best interest of our stockholders

And Yahoo! shocks the world by saying it has partnered rival Google for online advertising. Man, and what a bunch of mixed responses on the Yahoo! blog, although not as extreme as the rejection of the Microsoft deal… Of course, this is still with the legal side breathing down their necks…

You can read more about it here, here, and here…. (Many more but i’m kindda lazy… lol… )

It’s crazy the amount of media attnetion this saga has generated. How does a PR handle this? Not just with the anaylyst, media and other partners. How do you handle the bloggers? It’ll be interesting to see how this develops.

Although some might think this is the start of the end for Yahoo!, i gotta admit their internal comms has been fantastic. Don’t know if I’m allowed to say much about it but i think in this day and age, to rally a battle cry based on trust is hard. But if Yahoo! can get through this, it’s gonna make an awesome case study for managing rep! (I’m so gonna do that course next sem!)

Social networking sites

Facebook has surpassed MySpace!!! Well, most ppl seem excited about it, and it just shows how fast Facebook is growing…

I think Sarah presents a good look into the future of social networking sites. The important takeaway is that social networking sites provide another medium. Although the nice market is gone and making way for the masses as more ppl join social networking sites, this medium is a good consideration for spreading your message should you do a integrated media campaign.

However, as more ppl join social networking sites, masses will demand niches again. What do i mean? It seems to be a vicious cycle. When a niche turns mass, masses will break out and go into niches again. Facebook was for college students, now its for the masses. Throw in the Google’s open social, (which i think that post didn’t take into consideration) and social networking sites aren’t just going to be popular cause of fancy widgets and apps. It’ll boil back down to the ppl and the ‘long tail’ theory will prevail… who knows though where we’ll go…

Anyways, these 2 topics just kept coming up in my blog and i tot i share m y2 cents worth of what i tot about them…. Have a good weekend! Citizen journalism is interesting!! Stay tuned!!