Breaking out of your brand bubble with Alex Hickson
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Show notes
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Alex Hickson, Head of Digital PR at TrunkBBI.
Links:
- Alex's Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexhicksonpr
- TrunkBBI: https://trunkbbi.com/
- Flaming Crap: https://www.flamingcrap.com/
- Where’s The Bride podcast: https://wheresthebride.com/
- WomenInTechSEO Festival 2023: https://www.womenintechseo.com/conference/
Transcript
Intro
Jack: Welcome to episode 39 of season two of the Search with Candour podcast. I am your host Jack Chambers-Ward, and this week I am joined by a very special guest, the one and only Alex Hickson. Alex Hickson is, you may already know, the brand new head of digital PR at TrunkBBI. You may also know Alex from his fantastic work in digital PR across many other agencies throughout his career, hosting the Where's the Bride Podcast, or from being one of the founders of Flaming Crap, the pop culture inspired and politically charged candle company. Alex and I are going to be talking about the topic of breaking out of your brand bubble when it comes to digital PR. Basically, I'm thinking this episode is a follow up to some of the things Jenny Abouobaia and I were talking about a few weeks ago, where we're talking about the importance of digital PR and how key it can be to your SEO success. And Alex and I are going to dive into a little aspect of that and thinking about how you, your website and your clients can think about digital PR in new ways, and hopefully get your clients to understand how they don't have to stick with the same thing every single time and you can actually break out of your brand bubble and take opportunities that might not be so obvious to you. So as a digital PR specialist, and Alex will go into a lot of detail, and me not as a digital PR person, I am full of questions. So that will be coming up in a few minutes.
Sponsor - SISTRIX
But before we get to that stuff, of course Search for Candour is supported by SISTRIX, the SEO's toolbox. You can go to sistrix.com/swc if you want to check out some of their fantastic free tools, such as their SERP Snippet Generator, HREFLang Validator, checking out your size visibility index and the Google update tracker.
And I actually just want to highlight something I talked about with Luce Rawlings, one of the data journalists over at SISTRIX. I had Luce on the show, a really interesting episode if you haven't already checked it out. That was a very recent episode, a couple of weeks ago, and we dived into the Visibility Leaders huge piece of data that they have dived through. And the data journalist team, as well as some of the team, in house at SISTRIX, have run through a lot of really interesting data about content hubs. And essentially what this boils down to is the SISTRIX team and the data journalism team deciding the four winners of the Visibility Leader Awards. And they are literal, actual awards. You can go and watch the videos. Steve literally gives people awards for their fantastic work in SEO, and essentially the power of their, not only the domains, but specific directories and content hubs that they've been building. And if you'd like to know more, if you'd like to get some examples of some really fantastic content hubs, I highly recommend you go and check that out. Links, of course, will be in the show notes for all this stuff. And if you want to hear it in more detail, I recommend you go back and listen to my episode with Luce Rawlings from a couple of weeks ago.
BrightonSEO October 2022
Before we get to my interview with Alex, I know I'm talking a lot in the intro. Well we'll get there in a second, I promise, you may hear it in my voice, I've just got back from BrightonSEO, that is obviously in the October 2022 version. And I'd just like to say a quick thank you basically to everyone who said hello, said they'd listened to the podcast and are enjoying what we are doing here at Candour, and enjoying what Mark and I have been doing since I joined the show.
And yeah, it was a really, really cool experience, essentially. Huge shout out to Kelvin and Joe and the team. Massive shout out to the Wix team, Crystal Carter, Kyle, all those guys, putting on some fantastic merch, some fantastic swag, a fantastic dinner as well from the Wix guys, Fantastic to meet so many people I'd never met before. So many SEO heroes of mine, some of whom have been on the podcast before. And yeah, not only was I attending a lot of really interesting talks and things like that, and schmoozing and doing some networking, I also was actually running around with a essentially Candour branded bright pink microphone recording a bunch of stuff for an upcoming episode as well. So Myriam Jessier and I are working on a Halloween special, coming up, which will come out exactly on Halloween. So three weeks from when this episode comes out.
This episode comes out on Monday the 10th of October. That episode will come out on Monday the 31st, on Halloween itself. And I've run around essentially all across the Brighton Centre recording SEO horror stories with some of SEO's biggest and brightest voices. And it was really interesting. It was a lot of fun, incredible selection of people, everyone from Andy Jarvis to John Mueller to Martin Splitt, to all kinds of different people across Brighton. It was fantastic and very interesting and very, very cool. So please do stay tuned for that.
Like I said, that's coming up in three weeks time. Myriam Jessier, Stefanie Walter and I will be hosting a Halloween special and I will hopefully be then editing in those little clips I also recorded in Brighton, so we'll essentially have a full Halloween spooktacular, is essentially my plan for that episode.
Women in Tech SEO Festival March 2023
And speaking of BrightonSEO, one of the people I actually had the pleasure of meeting very briefly in person, somebody I very, very much look up to in the industry and who I think is a beacon of knowledge and positivity and brilliance in the SEO industry is the one and only Areej AbuAli. One of my highlights, her talk about really interesting stuff, e-commerce stuff, talking about filters, which I think is going to be really useful for me, personally, for some of my e-commerce clients here at Candour. And essentially I wanted to shout out, Areej and the team who have organised the Women in Tech SEO Festival, which is coming back in March 2023. It's going to be a full one day conference. So it's 10 speakers across the full day on the 3rd of March, which is a Friday. So Friday the 3rd of March 2023. It's a full nine till five 30 conference with an after party afterwards based in London. You can go to womenintechseo.com, There is information for all buying tickets and information and all that kind of stuff there. And as you've probably heard from previous guests, and as you will hear from future guests as well, any women I talk to in the SEO industry have nothing but incredible things to say about Women in Tech SEO and the community and the event that Areej has built over the last few years. So if you are a woman in tech SEO, if you're all in SEO in general, and you're looking for like-minded people and a safe space to enjoy all the interesting, fantastic speakers, I know there is a really, really great lineup already. Like I said, go to womenintechseo.com to check all of that out.
But I've been talking a lot. I know this is a very long intro and I will now shut up and let you enjoy my conversation with the one and only Alex Hickson.
Interview with Alex Hickson
Without any further ado, welcome to the show. Alex Hickson, how are you?
Alex: I'm good mate, thanks. How are you?
Jack: I'm good, thank you. Thank you for saying that back. I appreciate that.
Alex: It's all right. Just check how you are, Jack. Just check how you are.
Jack: So we've got a very, very interesting topic. We were just talking before we start recording, we described it as a meaty topic. It's going to be a big one and maybe some controversial stuff. We'll see how we go. We'll we'll shake up some digital PR and SEO discussions as we go through. But before we get into all of that, just in case the listeners don't know who you are, who are you Alex? What are you doing? Why are you here?
Alex: Very good question. So I'm Alex. I'm currently the head of digital PR at TrunkBBI. I previously worked at John Doe, which is a creative brand agency. And before that I was at Rise at Seven for a couple of years. My main career has been digital PR really for the past five years, six years now. And before that I used to do PR for events and festivals, but ultimately digital PR is my bread and butter.
Jack: Nice. So how was that transition for you? I think you've got a marketing and communications degree, so you went and did a masters in that, and I've listened to your podcast, spoiler alert. I did my research. How was that transition going to festival and event PR to then agency side, digital PR, where you are now?
Alex: Yeah, so in my original undergraduate degree I did politics. I thought for ages that I'll go into politics, I've always been really interested in it. And then after I graduated I worked in recruitment for a year. Recruitment is not for me. Let's just say that. It was not my favorite job in the world.
Jack: I think it's one of those jobs where you are either built to be a recruiter or it's the worst job you've ever had in your life, right?
Alex: Yeah. Literally. Do you know what? It taught me that I'm like money motivated, to a degree, but not to that degree. And so after that I realized that I actually enjoyed working with these corporations on more of a corporate communications level. So I quit my recruitment job, ended up getting a job... I'm from Blackpool originally, so I moved back to the Fylde Coast got a job at Lytham Festival. Anyone's ever been to Lytham Festival, and was helping them do their corporate PR for the festival, which was really, really cool. And then it was after that I thought, you know what? I'm going to go back and do a masters and try and learn a little bit more about this. Did that for a year and then it was through that, that I opened the door to agency life, really, started interning and then got my first digital PR job. During my masters, actually started it before I finished actually. Which is good.
Jack: And then transitioning through, going from starting now, becoming head of digital PR, that's a very cool job title to have. How are you finding that transition coming through and growing your career and ascending the ladder as it were?
Alex: Yeah, I really enjoy it. I think there's been a lot of change in the industry. I've started digital PR and working in digital agency specifically, obviously pre pandemic, and learning the ropes and getting to grips with the industry for it all to be thrown up into the air and have to adapt to it was really interested, especially from a PR perspective. I definitely started cut my teeth whilst I was at Rise at Seven. I started at Rise as a senior exec and left there as a PR lead. So I had my own team, managed my own team, was looking after some of our biggest clients.
Jack: Pretty busy high energy job, from what I understand, from other people I spoke to, who currently work there or worked there before. It's a pretty full on role at Rise at Seven, right?
Alex: Yeah. It was absolutely a bit of a baptism of fire in the best way. I learn really well like that. I'm very much, chuck me into it and we'll see if it's sink or swim person. But it was so beneficial because the experience and the clients that I worked with, and the responsibility, I think, that I was given and the trust that I was given so early on in my career, I think, was so beneficial to get to where I am now. Really quickly I understood that I love the people management side of things. I absolutely love development and trying to pull the best out of people and understanding the dynamics of a team and all that kind of thing.
And I think, now being head of PR at an agency, is really fulfilling, because I still get to be creative and think about how we can get results for clients and big names and things like that. But I also get to cultivate this amazing team of people and make sure that they're performing to the best of their ability, they're doing things that they enjoy. I love my job. It's so cringe and cliche to say, but I genuinely love what I do and I want people that I work with to feel that as well, and make sure they're getting the most out of their job. So I think just being passionate about it has helped as well. I think I am really lucky that I do genuinely love what I do every day.
Jack: And lovely to hear you're a fellow podcaster as well.
Alex: Yes.
Jack: That's always great to hear. I first was introduced you through the PR People podcast, listened to that and got to know you through that. And you now host, Where's the Bride podcast as well. You want to tell the lessons a little bit more about your podcasting exploits.
Alex: Yes, so PR people was a podcast I did with Callum Taylor who works at Kaizen and that was the first foray into doing it really. And that was obviously very similar, industry specific, talking to digital PR people, PR people, people in this space. But then recently me and my fiance, we're getting married next year.
Jack: Congratulations.
Alex: Thank you. So we are two men, and quickly, as we were wedding planning realised, do you know what? There's not many platforms out there that cater towards a wedding that's not a heterosexual bride and groom. And I was quite surprised at that really because gay people have been able to get married for a decade now and we thought there'd be a lot more out there. So I thought actually I feel like there's a space to have a conversation around this, and that's where, Where's the Bride was born from, and it's been really rewarding as well to do something that's a passion project, that's slightly outside of what I do for a job as well. I can't resist trying to PR it and all that kind of thing just because, why not? But it's been really nice to chat to different people, chat to people in the wedding industry, explore what they think. It's fun doing it with Oliver, my fiance. It's very different, and it's quite nice to have something that I enjoy doing but is slightly outside of work at the same time.
Jack: Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting mix. I got married in May earlier this year and didn't do a podcast about it because it'd been very boring. Just a straight up heterosexual couple here. Nothing interesting particularly. So yeah, it is an interesting thinking how passions and then big life events, and like you said, you've got that little inkling of your PR brain ticking away. I know I have that with my SEO brain as well, you just can't turn yourself off. Sometimes I just can't help myself. I want to tie it into something.
Alex: Yes, yes. Honestly my innate desire to build links for websites is sad, really. I was like-
Jack: That's a good habit to get into, mate. That's a pretty good habit to get.
Alex: Yeah, I know. We're doing a website for our actual wedding, RSVP. I was like, oh I wonder, Oliver, my fiance was like, we don't need that, we don't need that to rank. I don't want that to rank. I don't want loads of random people seeing it.
Jack: I had the exact same conversation with my wife, Emma. We're like, I built a website for our wedding. And she was like, "Are you going to do all that SEO crap?" I'm like, "No. What am I going to rank for, Jack and Emma's wedding? Who cares?"
Alex: Exactly.
Jack: People aren't going to Goog... We're not celebrities, they're not going to Google our wedding. You've got a podcast, you might actually-
Alex: I know. Well is the thing now-
Jack: People know you're getting married and actually care about it.
Alex: I know. I'm waiting to actually get a really good crop of listeners then we get married “Ooh, I wouldn’t have done it that way” but we'll see next year.
Jack: And people also might know you from being the founder of Flaming Crap as well.
Alex: Yes.
Jack: Again, I also saw that completely separately from the PR People podcast, which was, like I said, my introduction to you, I saw that pop up on Twitter and I was like, Alex Hickson, I recognise that... Oh my god. Yeah, this is the PR People podcast guy. Yeah. Oh my god. So yeah, tell us a little bit more about how you founded Flaming Crap and how that started.
Alex: Yeah, so that was the beginning of... We talk about passion projects but that was the very first one where I was like, you know what? I'm going to see if I can create something just based on what I do day to day. And it was basically the first lockdown in 2020, obviously very little to do, just me and my boyfriend in the house. I think we were trying to find a gift for our dads Father's Day, and Oliver started making candles out of old beer cans, and just started doing it really, as a bit of a hobby and we just wondered, oh I wonder if we could maybe put these on Etsy or we could turn it into something a bit more of an e-commerce business, and actually start to make some sort of money for it and turn it into a business.
And then the more that we were looking, instead of going down the Etsy route, I just was actually, there seems to just be a massive gap in the scented candle market in general, for a bit of humor. I was like, it is all very serious and you can spend 80 pounds on a really luxury candle that has all these hints of all these amazing smells, but sometimes you just want a candle that smells nice without all the pomp behind it. So we started to think of some funny ones. I think I mentioned before, I'm quite into politics. We've got some quite politically charged ones, quite left wing. But then we were thinking, do you know what we need to try and launch this? We had no budget whatsoever because we were skint in the middle of lockdown. So I was like, I'll try and create a digital PR campaign, just a story really to try and sell it.
And then that's when we created the 2020 scent candles. It was a candle that had four different layers, four different smells, it smelled like different elements of 2020. So one part of it smelled like Joe Exotic from Tiger King, one part smelled like hand sanitiser, one was banana bread, because that's what everyone had been baking in the lockdown and stuff like that. And it did really, really well. It launched the business, it got us to where we are now. We got some profit from it. It was really good and it was also really affirming, because it was the first thing I'd ever done by myself that used the skills I'd learned over the years and pushed it. It's just been quite fun to do because it's something we do on the side as well. There's not necessarily that pressure. We've been really lucky and really benefited from it being successful. But I like the fact that over the summer, if I'm honest, we've barely touched it because we've learned after a couple years that people don't necessarily buy candles in the summer, and that's fine, we can sort of take a few months off it and revisit it and come up with new ideas and stuff as we head into Autumn. But yeah, it's basically a candle business that sells very odd weird scented candles in a nutshell.
Jack: Well I'm going to be buying one for my wife for Christmas. She doesn't know about it yet. I'm definitely going to be getting a couple because we are big candle burners, candle users, what's the correct term?
Alex: Yeah, I guess, candle consumers. I don't know.
Jack: We want to consume it.
Alex: Yeah, yeah, true. That's true actually. Especially some of the weird scents we've got. I wouldn't try-
Jack: Exactly. Yeah we go to local fairs and stuff here in Norwich and there'll be, like you said, some weird scent I've never heard of, a combination of a flower and a thing and a mineral I've never heard of. I'm like, "Okay cool. Yeah sure. Don't know what that is." And I love you that guys are just Gays against Rishi and I'm like, hell yeah.
Alex: Yeah. Yep. Exactly. And the thing is, is that it's, again, it's a market that we thought, oh it'll be a laugh. But actually people love it. And I think that's the thing is that the scented candle industry... I'm probably going off on a tangent there, you can either go to your local supermarket and get really, really, all right, but low price, necessarily low quality, and then-
Jack: Again, yes. Yeah.
Alex: Yeah there's a massive end of the spectrum where brands will charge a hundred pound for a candle. The branding's so good that you'll pay it. But you can play around with it. And I think where we have sat Flaming Crap's quite a fun space to play immediately.
Jack: Yeah, definitely. Again, literally had that conversation with my wife the other day because we were in, I think it was Card Factor or Clinton's, or one of those things, and they had a scented candle section and I literally turned around and went, "Who gets their scented candles from Clinton card? What a weird place to get you scented candles." And two weeks later we'd been in Harrods in London and saw one for 150 pounds. I was like, "Who can afford that?" I was like, Oh yeah, I'm the guy in the middle. I'm like, yeah that makes sense, honestly.
Alex: But it blows my mind, especially now I know how you make candles and the scents you have to put into them and the oils and everything. It's just fantastic branding, that's what it is. Because now I realize the actual how you make them, and you can make really good quality candles at the price you can. And we are a tiny business. We do it in my basement. We don't have a workshop, we don't have a warehouse. My basement is literally a candle workshop. So yeah, it's a really interesting industry, I think, to parody a little bit as well.
Jack: Yeah, definitely, definitely. So we've touched on a couple little things. We touched on branding, so let's dive into our topic shall we? The big meaty topic we teased at the top of the show, and you came up with a really, in true style, you came up with a very catchy title for it as well, which I very much appreciate. That saves my job of creating the title for the podcast episode, which is Breaking Out of Your Brand Bubble. I think we can come at it, because I'm very much an SEO guy, you're very much a digital PR person. So we can come at it from two different angles, and hopefully the listeners will learn a few ideas and pick up on a few things, and maybe share some horror stories from our experiences on agency side stuff as well. So where do you want to start, Alex? Should we talk about how brands originally approach their digital PR and how so many brands get stuck in their bubble? Should we start with defining that bubble, and then we'll try and break out of it as we go through the show?
Alex: Yeah, yeah it's a really interesting one to dissect, I think. I think from my experience and the way I wanted to try and talk about it and dissect it, it's because there is so much to unpack. But I think what's really interesting is that working in digital PR and especially recently with my time at John Doe, working more on this traditional, creative brand size, brands come at it from two sides of the coin. So you get brands that come to an agency and say we want digital PR services, we want links, and we want them because we know it's going to impact our SEO value. Some brands that I've worked with that have an amazing insight into their SEO goals, they have a great internal team, and can really work with them the based upon that, the links that you want to build and the relevancy of them and all that kind of thing.
And then often you can work with brands that maybe aren't as clued up, smaller businesses, and just want links because they know it will benefit them and they know it will have some positive SEO impact. And that's where it's left. And then I think on the other side of the coin is you get businesses and marketing teams that obviously are thinking about their branding, and what are their brand values, and their brand identity, and their brand sentiment. And it's all about how do consumers take in their brand, how do they receive it and what do they think about it, and how can they change that and what effect does that have on their sales or the services that they offer, or their products and all that kind of thing. And I think what's really interesting is that at the minute there's not really, I think, a really comprehensive space in the middle that a lot of agencies or a lot of in-house brands, just from my experience, do in terms of linking them two things up together.
So I think a lot of businesses will come to an agency, for example, and be like, okay, we want links, we want to do some digital PR campaigns because we want to increase our rankings for these keywords, or these pages or whatever it might be. But at the same time they're not really working closely with their brand goals. They might be wanting to do that, but also what is their brand strategy for the next six months and have they considered how their consumers, what they think about their brand anyway? We might be wanting to increase a certain products rankings in order to drive sales, for example, but actually has something happened in terms of their brand that is going to negatively impact their sales regardless of where they rank on Google, and vice versa. You can get brands of businesses that will come wanting, what I guess you'd consider in our industry traditional PR methods.
So they want to do a big stunt, they want to do a big out of home campaign, they want to do something that really captures people on the street and makes them think about that brand and that product and that service. A consumer might walk past this amazing event that's going on in Covent Garden or whatever and think, oh that's a cool bottle of water, I'm going to Google that and look to buy it. They go to Google it, they can't find that website because they don't rank very well. Or actually you can't buy that product off the website, you have to get it through a third party vendor and all these different things. I think often brand goals and SEO slash digital PR goals for businesses aren't necessarily interlinked in the way they could be. And I think it's important for brands that have a very clear, I guess what you call a brand vision or brand strategy, to step out of that, saying, yes, we want to do this because we want to improve brand sentiment amongst our demographic of people aged 18 to 30. But they don't always work hand in hand with, say, an SEO team or a UX team or something to understand how are then consumers accessing your channels, your website, your products, your services. Because ultimately the user journey has to flow neatly throughout all those things, if that makes sense.
Jack: Yeah, definitely. I think it's a key thing because we talk about it so much in SEO, is search intent, and understanding your audience and what are people actually searching for to find your website, whether that's your product, your services, your homepage, it doesn't really matter, but what are people actually searching for to find? Because I find a lot of times people think they would be ranking for certain things or think they are targeting a particular thing even through digital PR and SEO as well. And actually people are not searching for that kind of thing, and people using very specific wording in completely different ways they didn't expect, and you realise, oh the idea of our audience personas might be slightly different online than it is in person. Like you said, if you see something on the street, there's a bus ad or a PR stunt in a town square or whatever it is, that's probably going to capture a very different audience to people that are searching on their phones to people that are searching on desktop.
There's a whole different variety of audiences there, and I think that's such a key thing for me, coming from a SEO perspective and I'm sure it is for you from digital PR is, who is this for? Are you trying to grow your existing audience? Are you trying to capture new eyeballs coming into the brand? And I think that breaking out the bubble kind of thing is really about trying to capture those new people even you already have a clear idea. Say you're doing, like you said, we work with some people who really know what they're doing, they've got great idea of what they want to do from their strategic point of view, got their PR plans, they've got their SEO strategy, it's all tying in together. You want to really grow and build that and expand out of that. You got to think about who you're actually targeting with this information and what people searching for, and maybe even literally what publications and stuff like that, because that's such a key part of digital PR as well, right?
Alex: Yeah, that's absolutely massive and I think that's one thing that, again, has changed, I think, as we move into more of a digital world. I think one thing that I find really interesting is you'll still have big brands, big corporations, big businesses, that have an idea of the audience that they want to target, for example. And they will say, we want a big national spread in one of the papers, and even if it's not print, we want a big couple of online national pieces of coverage. So the Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, et cetera. And that's doable, and that obviously has its value because they're well trusted, high authority sites, all that kind of thing. It has its place to do it.
Jack: Yeah, I guess it is weighing the, like you said, the literal, again, wobbly terminology, but the value of that link in terms of SEO just straight up building links without any regard of audience and just building the authority of your own site through that way. And then, like you said, coming at it from the other perspective and trying to tie that into what are high authority sites that are actually in your niche, in your industry are relevant to your audience. You can do it both ways, I guess. There are certainly different ways of doing it, but have you found there's been more of a shift, especially now with the pandemic and Covid and more people moving online and all that kind of stuff, has there been a shift towards more specific industry specific stuff or has it gone more broad over the last few years?
Alex: I would say it's become more niche, just from my experience. I love working with a client, for example, or a business that works in a particular niche, and I love challenging all those what say their branding team thinks would be great coverage for them. So for example, if they are looking to target, say it's a sports brand, and they want to target young men or people that identify as male at between 18 to 30, and they think the way that they are going to do that is through national coverage in the sports sections. Obviously there's a whole other debate about getting that in print. Is an 18 to 30 year old going out and buying a Sunday newspaper for the sport? No, they're probably not. And then also are they actually going to BBC sport? A lot of them might be, but there's so many other niche channels.
So what I've found is that if you are going to, for example, a certain football club's own news site, or a forum, or Reddit. All these are the channels which they might not consider as weighty or as quality as a link in the Guardian sports section. Actually what you can prove, if you have good analytics set up, is okay, we've driven loads of traffic to this specific product page for example, based on this link that was quite a niche sports site. And I think what brands are learning more and I think the industry's trying to do, is basically just understand that, especially Gen Z consumers and younger consumers that really are getting their news and trends and everything from other platforms like TikTok for example. They're consuming news where it's available to them and they're not bound by the fact that it's not a UK newspaper, or it's not a reputable site like Cosmopolitan, not that they do sports, but titles that we've all come to know and respect. There is newer sites out there that specifically will write about the business of football, and it has a really loyal readership, and it might be US based, for example. That's another thing to consider. They think, Oh we only want to target UK consumers so we want UK publications. I live in the UK but I still pore over the New York Post and CNN and things like that. It's understanding the breadth, I think, of where people are consuming their news now, and also that there's a place, there's a niche on the internet for everybody and everyone's different interests, and you need to understand where your audience is accessing that, and it's moving away from traditional formats, and also traditional publications, I guess, that you consider.
Jack: Yeah, I think we're having a similar conversation in SEO recently. We talk about long tail keywords so often on the show. Obviously Mark did a talk about it at BrightonSEO earlier this year, and we've talked about it a lot here at Candour and in the industry in general. It's almost a similar vibe for me in that way of, you want to go for, oh yeah, this keyword's got 15,000 search volume and all that kind of stuff. Or you want to go, yeah, I want to go for DR 93, I want to go for this huge high authority site. Again, wobbly metrics. Don't just judge everything on just numbers, we know this by now. But going for those more specific niche publications and on the other side going for long tail specific search volume of keywords, you're getting more engaged audience members. A person who finds your particular sports brand on a sports section, might be a rugby fan or a boxing fan and you're a football brand so you don't get the click. Whereas if you land on a football specific website and you are targeted to that specific team or whatever it is, I don't know football.
Alex: Neither do I, I don't know why I even uses that example, to be honest.
Jack: I don't know why you picked sports, we're in the wrong lane. But yeah, that totally makes sense. You would have a more engaged audience, they're there for a specific reason, you're more likely to drive that conversion to eventually click through, maybe even purchase products and all that kind of stuff. Building that engagement is such a key part of that, and I think that's where a lot of people lose their way. And again, I'm talking sort of big brand executives and all that kind of stuff. Go in with, we know we can rank for this 15,000 volume keyword, or we can be published in the Times or the Telegraph, whatever it is. Sure that might bring you 10,000 visitors to your site, but if five of those 10,000 convert then was that really worth it? Whereas you could have 500 people who are more engaged and you get a hundred out of 500 and you get that conversion rate much higher. It's weird you have the parallels there in SEO and in digital PR as well. Like I said, I think we're moving in the right direction, like you were saying, I think more people are being switched onto this stuff, especially with people using TikTok as you were saying, Gen Zers and all that kind of stuff. We're more aware of how the digital world works, how online works, all that kind of stuff. And hopefully, fellow agency workers out there, your clients and all the brands you're working with and stuff like that are becoming more aware of that. If they're not go and educate them like Alex has been doing.
Alex: Yeah. That is the thing though is that, I think what is striking is that if you solely are working with a brand and you have a really good relationship, and you're probably working with, they might have an in-house digital PR team, or a content marketing team, or an SEO team, you usually are just working with those people in those roles. And often what I think happens is that internally, in a lot of, especially bigger businesses, there could be a disconnect between those teams and the branding team. And I think that's where bridging that gap and working a lot more cohesively together works if you are the agency that's working with all those people, because your brand goal and SEO/digital PR goals often are working towards a very, very similar thing. And what I think, especially is as we've come through the pandemic, and who knows what's happening at the minute, but there's all talks of a recession and things like that, money's going to be tighter for businesses. It's making sure that if you are putting on a big brand event, what is the evergreen content that you're getting out of it? Is that being hosted on site? Are you going to spend a million pounds on an amazing event pop up, which then people have nowhere to access to if they read about it three days later? It's that long lasting ability to take a brand exercise and position it, whether it's on your website or in another form, to make sure that consumers can revisit that and then go through and engage and convert with your product or service. And I think it's that marrying up between branding and brand goals, and the SEO and digital PR goals that there's still work to be doing, I think.
And it's, I think, an agency job as well to help bridge that, because ultimately, especially my job, I think that's where you have the most fun, being able to marry those goals up together means that, yes, you might be working on some digital PR activity that's very, very closely linked to its SEO goals, but then if you're also working towards a brand goal of driving X amount of customers or X amount of sign-ups or sales, then you can employ a massive out of home stunt, as you would call it, and make sure that it lines up, and that we're building links with it and that we're driving traffic to specific products, product pages and things like that. It's just doing it in a way that answers both goals I think.
Jack: Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine who worked in more traditional events stuff. So the company they work for sponsors big conferences and all that kind of stuff, and I jokingly teased them about using a QR code, and they went, you would be amazed at how many clicks we get from the QR code rather than people reading ww.brand.co.uk. Nobody goes into Google and types that stuff in when you're at the event, but people will go, Oh yeah, great. Snap and just get the QR code while they're there. And I'm like, really? I don't know if it's me just being cynical and being very online and working in it, living in it all that kind of stuff, and I'm just jaded, a jaded old man in SEO at this point, maybe that's the case. But I found it fascinating that it was that blend of, like you said, the real life traditional PR stuff. People are in person going to an event, and it's post pandemic. It was recently, it was a couple of weeks ago. And also using a thing I thought people didn't even use anymore. It was like, Oh yeah, we go on Bebo or something like. What? No. QR codes is still a thing, really? He was like, yeah. I think it was, again, completely anonymous source of all this kind of stuff. I'm trying to remember the numbers off the top of my head. I think it was like 60% click rate on QR codes and less than 20 on people actually visiting the site with the link on the banner or the poster or whatever it was. That is fascinating to me. Have you had much experience blending those with your previous work and events and stuff? Blending digital PR, trying to convince, like you said, trying to break traditional PR people out and get them more involved in that digital side of things?
Alex: Yeah, I think if I'm honest, I think it's probably one of the biggest challenges, I think, especially recently. So the reason it was really great to work at John Doe is because we were trying to fuse those things together. An example you've just said is that ultimately, I think, consumers, we want convenience at the highest degree and are lazy. So if you are in an event and it's, access more information at www, people can't be bothered. They can't be bothered to remember it, They snap a photo, they're not going to go back and look at it. A QR code is one way in.
But there's really good examples of brands that do, do brands building stuff really well and do really good SEO digital PR work, is that... Do you know what, I think it might be Virgin Media. And I was driving the other day and in front of me was a Virgin Media van. On the back of the van was search fiber optic to see our new deals or something like that. And I was like, that's interesting. Searched it and Virgin Media ranking number one for fiber optic broadband and things like that. That's a really good way of, they want to capture someone's attention quickly. People are lazy. If you can just search two words. They know-
Jack: I like the confidence in the SEO as well.
Alex: Exactly. I was going to-
Jack: We know we're high ranking. Screw you.
Alex: Yeah. Exactly. It was like-
Jack: You'll find us.
Alex: It was that pure confidence to know that they are keeping that ranking as well, that obviously doing something to maintain that.
Jack: Must be incredibly competitive keywords.
Alex: Yeah, so I thought that's really clever because it's not asking the consumer to do a lot, and it does blend those things together really, really well. And I think it's clever because also I think I talk a lot about the user journey and the product purchase journey and stuff like that, but I think it's really important that you have to understand, I think, as a digital PR, I know what people care about, and I think a lot of brand activity misses the mark of that sometimes. I think it's so good to put on an event or some big stunt, or even something that does live online, that's seen as a brand building activity, but it's very much like brand has launched X product, or launches new service, or brand does this, brand does that, and you just think, why should I care? Why should I care that that brand has released that new product?
And it might be wrapped up in a really nice out of home stunt or whatever it might be, they might have floated something down the Thames, as everyone says. But ultimately I still don't know why I should care. And outside of getting maybe some media coverage in one or two nationals, that market in specific press, something like that, the buck stops there. And I think actually, all right, they might have hit that KPI of the client wanted 10 links, they've got them 10 links, and it might be in Ad Week and it might be in publications like that, but they wanted to target a really specific consumer, aged 30 to 40 living in US, wherever there might be these really nailed down demographics, and getting in those publications aren't going to... People that read Marketing Week are probably marketers. It's not going to marry up to your business goals and your brand goals. And I think it's really important to try and think, okay, well brand's launched X product, but what problem are we solving? Why do people care? What are people searching? What are the problems that people are turning to Google to solve for them? And I think that's where digital PR and SEO and everything marries in more, is that we should be basing more of our ideas and campaigns on insight.
I always say the campaign or the activation should be in response to a user problem or some sort of buffer or something. Or even if it's just an emotional gap that it plugs. It doesn't have to necessarily answer something all the time, but I think too often there's brand building activity that brands will spend a fortune on and ultimately it exists, it might do well for a couple of days and then it dissipates. And a really good one people will remember, but not always. And if it doesn't live online, and if it's not digital PR and SEO, hasn't been considered as a part of it, you can create something that's amazing and then it doesn't have any long lasting effect.
Jack: Yeah, I think that's a key thing we talk about in SEO all the time as well, is the golden rule of, don't do anything for the benefit of search engines that doesn't also benefit the user. I think that ties really well into that as well because you've got to think about, as we keep talking about, who is actually clicking on this thing and coming through to your website, who is actually going to read and remember, like you said, search for blah blah blah and you'll find us, or a QR code, or a URL, or whatever it is. Who are those people that are actually going to see that place? Whether it's placed on a site, a link in a article, on a poster or a banner, an event or whatever it is. Who are those people coming into it? And I was really interested, because to go behind the scenes here, listeners, Alex did some fantastic work on the show notes by the way. I can instantly tell you're a fellow podcaster because you just filled the show notes of really cool stuff and I was like, Yeah.
Alex: Love to be prepared.
Jack: I'm a huge show notes person and people often are irritated by how much show notes I write out and stuff. And by the time I got to the doc I'd sent it over to Alex, you'd already filled it out. So I appreciate that. And one thing you touched on is, like you said, going for that data led approach and understanding stuff from Google Analytics, from search console, maybe some third party tools. But let's focus on the first party data we get from Search console, the analytics data there as well. What can, I guess, us as marketers both coming from SEO and PR, think about how we can use that data to better understand our audiences, better understand who we're going to build those campaigns for, whether it's SEO or PR?
Alex: Yeah. I think really, I say easy, but there's still a load of people that I think struggle. I think a lot of, say, branding teams look at something like Google Analytics and think, oh God, that's something that we don't deal with or can use and can utilise as pieces of insight. But I think the biggest one that I would look at is your referral traffic. Where are captivated audiences coming from? So if you look at people that are coming onto your website and buying from them, buying products or whatever it is, wherever you set up your conversion to be, where are they coming from? So if it's a case of they're coming from the publications that you are trying to target with your PR efforts, then fantastic. Because you know that if you are wanting to build links in the Guardian and the Independent and people are engaging, clicking through and buying something, then that's working really, really well and you can consolidate what you're doing. But also I think once you've got that consolidated audience, this ties it back into breaking out that brand bubble, you know can be confident that you have a captive audience there and you are hitting them in the right places with what the activity that you are doing. If you are noticing, for example, that you are getting a big influx of, say you're a food brand and you're selling a lot of vegetarian, vegan products, all of a sudden, you think, okay, there's a demand there. Yes, we're going to the same publications that we know we get interested parties from, but have we considered doing PR to either target vegnews.com or Plant-based News and all things. You wouldn't consider them huge, amazing publications in the same respect you consider The Guardian, but you can look at your analytics and think, okay people, there's an interest here and you can work on it that way. And I also think the channels in which they're engaging as well.
Jack: That's going to exactly going to be my next question. You beat me to it.
Alex: Yeah. But I think where they're coming from is really, really interesting. I was working on, they were a drinks brand basically, and they wanted a, basically it was just a rebranding project. It wasn't necessarily a digital PR project, but they wanted a rebranding project and they wanted to redo their brand story and ultimately appeal to consumers in a more authentic way. And from a quick look at their analytics, I was like, okay, well we have created a lot of long form content, we have a lot of content that's posted on Twitter, on Instagram. But then if you look at the past year, I think for even longer, they had loads of people that were really interested and had come through from their YouTube, and they had a few pieces of YouTube content, wasn't very well updated, but these videos were a couple of years old and they were still getting regular views, regular traffic. And I was like, that's really interesting because it's an area that you can see consumers are coming through from. They're obviously liking what they're seeing on YouTube. Let's think about a content strategy. Can we utilise YouTube in a different way? Is there something more we could be doing to it? I think that's what I found really interesting. Because that isn't necessarily the digital PR side, but I think you can use all these tools to think this is our big PR strategy, but actually we could build a link here that's going to get you X value. But looking at your analytics, your search console, everything else, there's other channels in which we could be doing that. Or we could even be sending people through to your TikTok. If a big query, for example, on their search console is, say they own a product and a big way people find them is how to do this, and the product answers that.
If we are seeing that there's other phrases or the keywords that make it clear that people still aren't getting how to do that certain task, why don't you help the consumer? Is there a blog you could do on how to do that specific thing? Could you be creating a TikTok to show them literally how to do it? And it's just kind of using those SEO, those digital PR techniques and think, okay, we've kind of done one job, as in we are driving people to our website through this activity, but consider the other ways in which people are doing that as well. And those are the channels. And I think TikTok is obviously a great example because obviously it's exploded in the past couple of years, but the way in which now if I want a product review of something I go to TikTok straight away.
So if you see that people are wanting content around a product that you sell, and you might have fantastic content, whether it's on a blog or whatever on your site, and you might be getting regular traffic, have a play in your analytics and search console and see if you can spot any of those trends or patterns and think, okay, there's actually demand for us here that people are coming to our website, reading our blog, leaving it, and still not having that question resolved. So is there another way in which we can do it through a different channel? So there's loads and loads of ways I think you can learn from that kind of stuff. And I think it makes for just a better well rounded strategy, because you also then can create campaigns and create things, to say, rank pages at your website that you might not have considered previously. It's just like that. So yeah, there's loads togo out with it really.
Jack: Yeah, I think that's really interesting. Coming on that kind of multi-channel approach, again, trying to break brands out of, oh yeah, we really focus on SEO. And when a lot of people think of digital PR, you think of reactive PR where you submit a quote or whatever it is and you get the Jack from canada.co.uk, blah blah, blah, and there's a little quote in there like, Oh yeah, there's the link with canada.co.uk, there's a little hyperlink. That's it. But there are so many different ways of doing it, shareable data and infographics, interactable stuff. And I think TikTok has become such a huge part of it, tying background to SEO and to digital PR as well.
Because again, I talked with Annie-Mai about this on our TikTok episode a few weeks ago, talking about how, if you think your audience could be there, like you said, if you're getting that data to suggest, oh, there might be people who aren't getting the answers to their questions, or there is a way to show our product in a new way rather than just some nice photos or a nice product description, there is a way to show it actually being used by, whether that's real customers or somebody on your team or whatever it is, there is an opportunity there, and why not take it essentially.
That's the whole kind of crux. If there is interest there, then take advantage of it, I guess. You just got to give them the nudge to actually get on there. And I think, like you said, TikTok has become such a huge thing recently, and we talked about TikTok as a search engine previously on the show and talking about how, exactly like you said, if you want to go somewhere or try a product for the first time, how does this work on TikTok or blah blah, blah, review, blah, blah, blah restaurant, whatever it is, you get the answer in 30 seconds. You don't have to read a SEO driven 1500 word article that gives you all the lovely little keywords and all the different headings and stuff. You get an answer in 25, 30 seconds, a minute, maybe. And yeah, I think a lot of brands, like you said, get stuck in one, but maybe just need that nudge to go off and try different things. YouTube being a great example that we know is huge. We know YouTube is one of the biggest websites in the world. It's consistently ranked as one of the biggest search areas in the world as well, and now TikTok is kind of creeping up in there as we know, like you said, over the last couple of years. So I guess what is your approach to have that conversation with the brand from you as the head of a PR department? You're coming in from a manager perspective, talking to your team about it and then pitching it up to whether that's your clients or if you're working internally, perhaps, going up to the directors and executives and all that kind of stuff.
Alex: Yeah, I think the first question I always try and gauge is, usually it's during the pitch process, not even the onboarding process, but it's what are your business goals? What are your business and your brand goals that you want this SEO, digital PR retainer, for example, to support? And you can gather loads of stuff from that, because often it might be just brand awareness, general brand awareness, or we want to increase sales, we want to increase signups, whatever it might be. I try and gauge what that is, and then what I try and do is, is just understand the way in which they work internally. I think, if they're a very big business, often there can be a lot of decision makers, there can be a lot of red tape to go through to get things signed off. And often what you find is that it can be challenging to be more challenging in the content that you want to create. So I think it's really important when I'm chatting to a brand for example, is to say, okay, we want to target this demographic and we want to increase sales. The problem that we've got is that the kind of PR, for example, that you're wanting us to do is very much, we are this brand, we have done this. There's no story. And I think it all relates back to stories. What story are you trying to tell? And it's a massive trust process. The brand has to trust you as an agency and us as people and vice versa. It's a massive trust exercise, but it's all about the story. What story do you want to tell? And I think brands can be really skeptical, if we think, okay, we want to do this campaign which potentially tells this story, but it doesn't necessarily include a product or doesn't talk loads about who you are as a brand.
And they think, Oh, but what is the benefit going to be to us if people don't recall our brand or recall that element of their comms that they want to push. And I've used it as an example before is, we mentioned Flaming Crap and that 2020 Candle. These are really good example of story led content winning out. To this day, I think it's still the best campaign I've ever done ever. Probably that's not a proper blog, it's more just that it was a funny story that landed at a right time. We had no brand, we had a name, we didn't have anything. Our website was terrible and built on a free builder. You'd probably cry if you saw the state of the SEO at the time. There was no preexisting idea. And it wasn't even pushing the product, even though sends that it's a brand launched product.
It was the story around it and that's what captivated the press. It's what captivated consumers, and ultimately did lead to sales, which was amazing. But I think brands that are so well established and have a great idea of what their brand identity is, and know that they want to appeal to a certain demographic, that through research or audience insights they think they know really well, I think there can be a lot of hesitancy to break out into doing something that's a little bit outside of their field. Or for example, if we identify that, yes, you might be thinking that your audience is predominantly over fifties, but your analytics, which is cold hard data, is showing us that these over fifties are finding you through YouTube. They might be finding you through TikTok. There's loads of old people that use it, all these different channels.
Just because you have a successful profitable business and it's something that you can for a while, it's never too late to really change how you're approaching it. And I think being story led is the most important thing because that's ultimately what, first of all is journalists want, they want a story. There's very few journalists that will write about a product launch. Obviously there is journalists that do, but you are very limited and it depends on the kind of brands that you are. So they want a story. So it has to be something that actually appeals to a reader. Are you going to scroll through Cosmopolitan's pages and you'd be bored shitless if you saw product review, after product review, after product review. It needs to be a story, and products can be weaved into that story and that narrative. It just has to be done cleverly.
And I think for a lot of brands that have a goal to promote X or want to maintain this brand identity that they've obviously worked really hard to cultivate, it can be scary. And I think the biggest thing is getting a brand or business to trust the fact that, often as well with digital PR you can test different topics, different themes, different niches of the press and it's not going to ruin potentially a hundred years of brand history. Depends on what it is. You've obviously got to be sensible. But I think it's a massive trust exercise. I always try and convey to a brand that to get really good PR coverage, it needs to be story led first and foremost. It's called earned media for a reason. If we earn it through, the brand has done something that warrants a press story. It's in the name, it's press story.
If it was advertorial and they just wanted to promote that product and pay for ad or run a TV ad or whatever it might be. And that is obviously part of your marketing funnel, there's a place for that. As much as there's a place for owned media that you create that might solely live on social, there're obvious crossovers where you can have a campaign that you know can launch, you can get amazing good media with. You might put some paid ad spend behind certain part of it, it might perform really well on social as well. But ultimately if them wanting good PR coverage with actual measurable benefits, you want to create a story that feels true to the brand that is relevant for all those SEO goals and SEO metrics that we know exist. But from a brand perspective, you don't want the existing brand identity and what businesses think about that brand and those restrictions in that red tape to get in the way of delivering something really valuable to your existing customer, to a new customer, and also potentially helping those SEO goals as well. So I definitely say just that trust process and having businesses come on board with the fact that you want to create a great story led piece in the story led content. Because often I think, it can become too advertorial often, which is why it can become a challenge to get earned media and I think often the lines are blurred too much and things like that. So I think just making sure that they understand if they're asking for PR coverage, they're asking for something that is earned through a narrative or a story and not necessarily a product push.
Jack: Yeah, definitely. And I want to finish off on two things. I know we're coming up to our time limit, form about phrase. Try and keep these shows fairly short, but if we've got an interesting topic, we're going to go a bit longer. Hope you enjoy it listeners, you're welcome for the extra content. So a couple of things you touched on now, I really want to drill down into and then we'll finish off with these. One thing I very much live my life by, I like to think, is don't take yourself too seriously. I think Flaming Crap is the perfect example of that. You could have gone, as we said, down the very serious, here is a perfect combination of scents and we have perfectly tested this with whatever the professional name of person who does smells. I don't know what that is. Are there sommeliers for scents and stuff?
Alex: Yeah, it's a scent expert.
Jack: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Alex: But then my favorite thing ever, the candles, sorry, diversion again, is that you can't trademark a smell. So all this, it's the best thing ever. You could create a complete copy of all of these using the same oils and the same things. It would be exactly the same but you can't trademark or patent or copyright a scent.
Jack: So that's how you get all those fragrance dupes and stuff, right?
Alex: Yeah. They might use in less quantities but they will be pretty much real because you can't-
Jack: Chemically identical kind of-
Alex: Yeah.
Jack: Interesting. There you going, there you going. But yeah, how have you found getting brands to take themselves a little bit less seriously? And where I want to go with this is where this can go wrong and some of the mistakes brands can make. But let's start with the positive side, I guess, and start with the humor side of things. From my experience, that's been a big part of trying to sell that a lot of the reactive PR stuff and a lot of the quicker funnier stuff is trying to get them to be like, No, no, that is a thing. Like you said, story led, data led. Merging those two together. If you have data that tells a story that can be engaging. If users are reading an article or watching a video and they don't even realise they're being sold a product until, if on YouTube you have to stay sponsored by blah blah blah and hold the little thing up or whatever. But if you can tell a story and be funny and engaging without somebody even realising they're being marketed to, which is, I think, quite difficult. Cause a lot of people are very switched on nowadays. I know I am, as I said, very cynical, very skeptical when it comes to, I feel like I can see through the BS straight away of, yeah this is a campaign. Yeah I can see the SEO behind this thing. Have you found that trying to convince brands to take things a little bit less seriously and do you think that's a benefit in a lot of ways? Obviously that's not true for every brand, let's not say that's like a one size fits all thing, but have you found experience with the outside of the huge success story of Flaming Crap, of course?
Alex: Yeah. And mixed. There's brands where we've done campaigns. A favorite of mine was for money.co.uk And they wanted to approve authority, build links to their mortgages vertical. And I wanted to create the world's first how to get a mortgage on the moon piece, a proper pastiche style article. And at first we're like, it is silly, because we wanted to position it as something serious. There's always that risk of, are people genuinely going to read this think they can get a mortgage on the moon, and they complain if they can't? We had a great relationship with the client anyway, which always makes it better, because you can just have those open conversations of, yes there are risks involved but these are the potential rewards and this is how we can mitigate those risks. So there were certain things that we did to just mitigate people thinking that it was in any way real, it almost became the sillier that it was the more obvious it was that it wasn't real. But at the same time we used really solid data behind it, where we used data from NASA, from SpaceX. Basically the truest data we could find on how much it would cost to build a house on the moon and move there and get a mortgage. It was really silly and stupid but actually you could read it and have that opinion, but you could also read it and think, oh actually it was actually verified in a way. It was backed up as much as it could be, and it did really, really well because people thought it was funny. It was a bit silly. It was really, really shareable across social, which did really well.
Jack: I remember seeing it going around the socials at the time and being highlighted in the PR campaigns. We love newsletters and all that kind of stuff.
Alex: Yeah. And it was really fun to do, and in the end it was something that was that I just wanted to do because I'm a bit of a space geek anyway. Thought it would be fun to do.
Jack: I've got an astrophysics degree. I'm right there with you.
Alex: Oh. Amazing. Oh you have a lot more than me then. You might read it and think this is an absolute load of rubbish but the client was, not necessarily skeptical, but it was look, realistically, we want to get people onto the mortgages and then move on to looking at advice and things like that. Went with it, convincing them of it, it was like, okay, it's a bit of a punt, it's a bit of a risk, but I was passionate that it would work, and the data team that we had at time was fantastic and really made sure that it was verifiable. So it was a risk but it was a risk that paid off. I think one of the issues you've got all the time is, is the campaign that you're doing that might be a little bit more out there, a little bit silly, or something that's less safe is who are the people that it could affect? I think a really good example at the minute is the cost of living crisis. It's something that's affecting every household too much. And then yesterday, obviously this isn't necessarily a digital PR example, but yesterday, I don't know if you saw, you've got Phil Schofield and Holly Willoughby on this morning doing spin to wins for people to win their energy bills.
Jack: Oh yeah, it's that Mitchell and Webb sketch, right? It's the dystopian game show.
Alex: Yeah, that's the thing. And you know that whoever has had that idea to do that has done it from the right place. They're wanting to help people out.
Jack: They're still offering to give people money. The intent is-
Alex: Exactly.
Jack: ... positive, I guess.
Alex: Is good. Yeah. But then however it's the way in which it's been perceived is seen as quite obviously tone deaf, and it's something that everyone... There's an audience of millions that can take offense to that because a lot of people are in a similar boat. So I think they're the horror stories that put brands off doing often stuff that is like that. But I think ultimately it's mitigating the risk that could happen, is making sure that if you're going to do something, do it with sincerity. If you're using data for example, even if it is for a building house on the new campaign, do it to the best ability you can, and make sure that it's not just stuff that's made up all, whatever. And also it's just understanding as well whether the brand really has a position to talk about that topic. I think that's a big one that comes into it. I always remember, I think it was on International's Women's Day, I think it was Burger King tweeted about women belong in the kitchen and that was it and that was the tweet. And then under the tweet there was a whole thread about, actually that was a quote and it was all to do with them donating money. The sentiment was okay, but the execution, which was obviously designed to shock and designed to be shared. I bet it did get whatever social metrics they probably attributed to that tweet. But the sentiment that came off it was really tone deaf. So it's kind of that-
Jack: And that was then ratioed with quote tweets and stuff, I can only imagine.
Alex: Exactly. And I think that's where tying it all back around SEO, digital PR and brand shouldn't be viewed as two separate teams, two separate verticals. They should work together because, for example, I think it was Zizzi restaurants, I don't even remember, it was a couple years ago, Salisbury Cathedral, was it Salisbury Cathedral poisoning or something, of those Russians? Yeah. For example, there's loads of links, people writing about Zizzi restaurants and from an SEO perspective, oh we've got all these links from the BBC. Well they're getting linked out from a story about these poisonings because that's where it happened. It is in a local Zizzi restaurant. So there's obviously those more quantitative like SEO goals that they map, things might be meeting but look up the brand side of it. For Zizzi, that's probably a bit of a PR disaster.
Jack: We were joking about this in the office the other day. We'd seen a brand who had gotten, like you said, those mentions in a bunch of stuff and we were just doing some research having a look at their back link profiles, like wow, this is incredible coverage. And it was like, and they failed at their job, they were a partner of a much bigger thing. I think it was some cybersecurity thing or something like that, and they've lost millions of dollars. And I was like, ah, okay, I wonder who's the poor SEO that is sending out the emails? "Hello, you mentioned my brand in that article about us being terrible at our jobs. Could you include a link please?" Have you got the balls to send out that email? Is it worth the shame and embarrassment to try and get a link from bbc.co.uk?
Alex: Yeah and then literally that's what I find so interesting in the whole brand versus SEO is, because you Google Zizzi, if all that's happened and then the first things you'll see are news articles about poisonings. All right, Zizzi might be ranking, it might be three articles about poisoning at Zizzi restaurants, are you going to read three articles about poisoning and then want to book? Probably not.
Jack: You might get the newsfeed at the top because you'll get latest news on top of your Zizzi that even arrives before the organic ranking, so sure zizzi.com will rank and stuff but you'll get those, like you said, the snippets at the top there.
Alex: Yeah.
Jack: That could be-
Alex: Exactly.
Jack: ... very damaging.
Alex: Yeah. But then this is where a brand team working well with a digital team, there's a massive brand job there to repair brand sentiment, but obviously the first things people might see are the paid ads. So what paid ad strategy could they start to employ to mitigate that? Is there a really good campaign, a digital PR campaign we could do to start to affect some of these rankings for some of the words? Is that married up, I think, that is a really good example and why digital teams and brand teams should be working hand in hand in my opinion.
Jack: Well, there you go. I think that is the perfect note to end on. Well done, Alex.
Alex: No-
Jack: Perfectly brought everything back round full circle.
Alex: Cool.
Jack: So if the listeners haven't found your stuff already, where can they find you across the internet? And of course listeners, links for all this stuff will be in the show notes at search.withcandour.co.uk?
Alex: Yes. So I'm on Twitter, @alexhicksonpr. If you fancy a scented candle, they're at flamingcrap.com. And yeah, any questions feel free to drop me a DM.
Jack: Nice. Slide into Alex's DMs, but not for Long, HE'S going to be married soon, so you've only got a few months to do that. Awesome. Well thank you for coming Alex, I really appreciate it. I know we've run long, I know we've asked a lot of questions and covered a lot of stuff, so I very much appreciate you coming on the show. Well that wraps us up for this week. Thank you again to Alex for coming on the show. Please do go and check out Flaming Crap. It is a fantastic idea for looking for candles, for gifts. I know we're coming up to Christmas fairly soon, so highly recommend you go and check out Flaming Crap. You can of course find the links for everything Alex and I have talked about and everything I talked about earlier on in the show, as well by going to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Like I said, I've got a Halloween special coming up in a few weeks as well. So please do stay tuned for that. And I've got some incredible guests coming up in the next few weeks as well, including the likes of Jamar Ramos, Daniel K. Chung, Olga Zarzezcna and plenty of other fantastic interviews. And Mark and I will be doing more of the monthly live streams as well. So please stay tuned for all of that stuff. Spread the good word of Search with Candour. If you have any questions or anything like that, you can, of course, reach me on Twitter. I am @JLWChambers on all the usual social media stuff. But until next week, thank you very much for listening and have a lovely week.