Google changes the game for marketing amateurs
The recession for PR folks actually began in 2000 when non-marketing professionals figured out that by posting a news release on a wire service, they could show tons of "clips" to their bosses that stated, verbatim, the corporate crap in the releases. They no longer needed press relations budgets and had become their own "news outlets." Google did that to the PR profession. But recently, Google did a big favor for the hacks when they changed their algorithm to cut out hits on content farms . This, effectively, eliminated the budget benefit of bad-press-releases-on-wire-services strategy. I haven't done any press releases for companies for a while because they are really useless exercises, but I got roped into a contract with a company, after getting promises that they wouldn't have me do the same old thing, that forced me into that really bad strategy once again. I noticed very quickly that when the release hit the wire, It showed...