DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

We've launched a PHPR video channel on YouTube with a short piece on clear messages in 'PR for Technology' by Penny at: http://ping.fm/GCuof

Labels: clear communications, online video, PHPR, PR for technology

Google's wonder wheel does not seem to be well known, yet it is an incredibly versatile tool when you are in need of ideas.

The wonder wheel arranges Google's search results in a mind-mapping style wheel. Each spoke of the wheel shows a key search term relating to the natural results for your search - the full results are shown on the right hand side.

The mind-mapping display lets you see your search results at a glance. Click on a spoke to drill down into an area of your results and another wheel pops up.

At any time, you can refine your results to select images or videos relating to one of the spokes on a wonder wheel. Those results are then shown as a regular Google search results display.

Using a combination of the wheel and a refined search, you can spot gaps to fill, as you'll see in the following example.

Technology PR agency search spots a gap:

To use the wonder wheel, key in a search term.

Just below the Google search box there's a blue bar and inside that bar on the left click on the words "show options".

A list drops down to the right of your search results, currently arranged in 4 groups. The second last group, called "standard view" contains the option. Click to get your results displayed as a wonder wheel.

Click on a spoke of the wheel and another wheel appears with a further 10 results. Each wheel shows the number of pages indexed on the main term and 10 related search results.

A few clicks on the spokes and you'll be full of ideas for your blog piece or article.

It's also good for showing up opportunities. For example, I followed the spokes of a search on "PR"(UK pages) and clicked on the spoke "technology PR agencies" because we do technology PR. Then I went back to the list on the left and chose "videos" - and got no results!

Awesome!

It's about time there was a technology PR agency video and I'm off to make one!

Labels: article, blog, Google search results, Google's wonder wheel, mind map, mind mapping, online video, PR, search, technology PR, technology PR agency, videos, wonder wheel

posted by Penny Haywood Calder  # 15:27 0 Comments

Total viewing time for online video is approaching the time we spend watching TV. TV ads are outside smaller business' reach, but the audience for online video is a great opportunity for SMEs to punch beyond their weight.

That means every smart business spokesperson needs to develop clever presentation skills to take advantage of this most powerful medium.

There's free communications training resources on a new blog from an excellent Scottish company, VoiceBusiness: www.voicebusinesstraining.co.uk. They walk the talk with videos - see http://vimeo.com/6007276 for a quick pre-speech exercise.

Or join a Toastmasters International (TMI) club. TMI is a not-for-profit organisation. They have trained >4 million people in public speaking and leadership skills world-wide. Their website has good free presentation resources and a local club finder at http://www.toastmasters.org - scroll past the map to see the local clubs in your area.

And speaking skills that work on video are also great for networking, giving talks and pitching for new business.

Picture created from the words in this blog piece at www.wordle.net.

Labels: communications skills, online video, presentation skills, public speaking, speaking skills, TMI, Toastmasters, VoiceBusiness