I was quoted in a story in Forbes yesterday about BP’s use of search engine advertising as a crisis communications tactic.
The manner in which the reporter found me is as interesting as the subject matter of his story. On May 6, I recorded and uploaded the following screencast examining search engine optimization activity in the wake of British Petroleum’s oil spill disaster:
The video was long forgotten until Tuesday when I got an email from a Forbes reporter asking if he could talk to me about British Petroleum’s use of search advertising and he included a link to the screencast in his email. I, of course, agreed and the rest is in the article.
The reporter had clearly come across me when doing research for his article. I took a look at my YouTube analytics for that screencast to try and figure out how he found me. From 5/27/10 to 6/8/10, the video got views from the following searches within YouTube:
During the same period, the video got views from the following searches from Google:
The search results pages for all but one of the aforementioned searches include my screencast.
It appears that the reporter used one of the searches listed above to find my video, viewed it and satisfied himself that I knew what I was talking about, followed a link in the description to my Twitter account, and followed a link from my Twitter account to this blog, and used the contact form on this blog to email me.
So how’d I do it? I provided useful information that was relevant to his story and optimized for search phrases he was using during his research, the video built trust with me as a credible source, my blog provided him further assurance of my competence, and I reaffirmed that trust through the answers to his questions during the interview he conducted with me.
Easy!
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