After the Wenchuan earthquake last year, a well-known herbal tea disaster relief operation in Guangdong became an "internet hype" that spread all over online forums and QQ groups, making "online promotion" an instant hit. The financial turmoil that started last year has led many companies to choose online public relations, making the entire industry suddenly emerge in the economic downturn.
Internet promotion became popular overnight after the "ban on herbal tea" incident
A Ren is quite famous in the industry. As early as 2004, he had established his own Internet promoter company and was one of the first people in the industry to start studying Internet promotion, operations and Internet public relations. He told reporters that the terms Internet promotion and Internet public relations were rarely mentioned by outsiders in the past. It was not until last year that a well-known herbal tea brand in Guangdong became famous through an Internet hype after the Wenchuan earthquake, and the industry really became popular.
“That promotion event was a turning point,” he said. Not many companies had truly understood the role and effectiveness of online public relations before, and the herbal tea event was the biggest advertisement for their industry. Since then, significantly more companies and brands have come to our door.
Aren said that the earliest promotion and hype began in 2005, and his company began to launch online promotion services in 2006, and has a few customers. By 2007, there were more and more promotion models, and the number of customers was also increasing. After the Wenchuan earthquake last year, the successful promotion of a well-known herbal tea has greatly increased the popularity of the entire industry, and the demand has also continued to increase. Subsequently, the global financial crisis hit, and many companies began to feel that compared with traditional public relations, online public relations and promotions had "low investment and high returns", which made the entire industry suddenly emerge in the economic winter.
Behind every "hype" lurk thousands of promoters
"The most important thing for positive promotion is to grasp the hot spots." Xiao Mo is the person in charge of an online promotion company in Beijing. He showed reporters a promotion plan the company made last year. The customer was a new solar water heater brand. . At that time, the "Shenzhou VII" was successfully launched into space. Xiao Mo grasped the characteristics of the water heater's use of solar energy and linked it with the "Shenzhou VII", which was also powered by solar cells, so that the public's enthusiasm for the "Shenzhou VII" could be extended to the water heater. Based on this promotion theme, he planned more than 10 versions of posts, each of which also contained 15 to 30 replies.
"It is necessary to evaluate all aspects of the event and introduce the product step by step without letting others feel an obvious tendency." He said that in order to achieve the purpose of promotion without leaving any trace, post planning requires a lot of skills. Sometimes, one or two sentences that seem ordinary to outsiders are only produced after repeated scrutiny by public relations. To write such a plan, it will take at least three to five days.
After the planned posts are finalized, it’s time for the posters and upvoters on each network to show off their talents. As soon as the project leader gives an order, a group of promoters "lurking" on major websites, forums, blogs, QQ groups, and video websites will immediately take action and quickly launch a grand publicity campaign.
"The cycle of positive release is usually half a month, and if it's fast, it can be done in a week," Xiao Mo said. He has more than a thousand promoters who are lurking on major portals and popular forums. More than 60% of them are part-time posters and likers, while only 40% are full-time promoters. Within about a week, posts about the water heater were posted to more than 100 forums.
To judge the effectiveness of an online promotion, the only thing customers believe is the sales volume of the product. "Only when the sales volume increases, it is most convincing." It is said that after a month of promotion, the sales volume of the brand's solar water heaters increased by 40% year-on-year, and it firmly ranked first among its peers from January to May this year. Due to the good promotion effect, the company has become a long-term customer of Xiaomo Company. Moreover, the top three companies in the solar energy industry are currently their customers.
Due to the melamine incident, customers are welcome at the critical moment
Companies that want to engage in online public relations and promotion must also have certain "qualifications." Mr. R, a senior Internet public relations officer, said that not all companies that come to us are accepted. Generally, before taking an order, they will comprehensively evaluate and consider the company's strength, operating history and other aspects. One basic standard that must be met is that it must be an enterprise and product recognized by the state.
Despite this, it is inevitable that sometimes we will encounter some more difficult cases. For example, a famous dairy company that collapsed last year in a series of milk powder scandals was once a client of Mr. R. Since 2007, Mr. R’s company has been doing long-term maintenance and online public opinion monitoring for the dairy industry. Later, after the melamine incident, before the situation escalated, the customer hoped that they could eliminate the bad influence online. Mr. R's professional sensitivity allowed him to smell the danger. Faintly aware of the seriousness of the situation, they took the initiative to terminate the contract with the other party. As expected, not long after, negative news about the dairy industry began to pour in.
Intervene in search engine results to ensure that positive information enters the top ten pages
"Direct deletion of posts is a common practice of most small companies," Mr. R said. If it is an individual, it is usually easy. They will directly delete an article or post according to the other party's request. For corporate customers, they suggest that they also perform search engine "optimization" while deleting.
“Let positive news enter the first ten pages”
What is search engine optimization? Mr. R explained that compared to simply deleting a certain piece of news or a certain post, more powerful online promotion and online public relations companies generally prefer to use "technical means" to "eliminate negative news." This technical means refers to "search engine optimization", also known as "SEO", which means working hard on search engines.
Search engines are now an important channel for people to obtain online information. For example, if you search for a certain company or brand on Baidu, the results that come out are all negative articles, then you can imagine how netizens will feel about the company or brand. If the searcher is a potential customer or partner, the impact on the company will be even greater.
"Search engine optimization is not deletion in the true sense," Mr. R explained. Instead, it uses specific SEO technology to artificially "intervene" the results from search engines such as Baidu and GOOGLE, and "optimize" positive information into search results. The first few pages of results. It is said that it can generally ensure that positive information appears in large quantities in at least the first ten pages of search results, and at the same time achieve the effect of "diluting" negative information and "suppressing" negative information to the back.
Positive publicity articles are sometimes provided by clients, but more often than not, they are purposefully planned and written by online public relations in response to the company's current crisis. Mr. R said that searches on GOOGLE and Baidu are based on "keywords". As long as you grasp the "keywords" that are easy to be "captured" by search engines, add them appropriately to the article, and then make good use of them. Some SEO tips, such as adding some external links, etc., can easily control the search results. Not only can these positive information be included in the search engines, but they can also be ranked before the negative ones.
Annual maintenance fee is 50,000 to 100,000 yuan
"Smart companies know how to prepare for a rainy day, but many companies always come after negative news." A Ren, a senior Internet promoter, believes that online public relations is a part of Internet promotion. Even in Internet crisis public relations, deleting posts is only one of them. a small part of. But nowadays, many people simply think that if there is something negative, they just “delete it”. He said that if companies and brands want to gain a lasting good reputation, this approach of "fixing holes only when they are broken" is far from enough.
Some companies believe that by deleting and optimizing once or twice, it will be done once and for all, and they can ensure that there is no negative voice on the Internet. A Ren said that such an idea is unrealistic and that deleting posts is just a last resort. If you want the positives to always "get ahead" of the negatives, you need to pay attention and accumulate them over a long period of time. The maintenance period they give customers is generally a minimum of one year. The maintenance cost for a term and a year is 50,000 to 100,000 yuan. Under normal circumstances, one or two nouns such as the name of the company and the name of the product can basically cover all the news and articles involved.