Why I'm not worried about Google Search Plus Your World ... and why you shouldn't be, either

So Google is on the hot seat today over changes to its privacy policy, terms of service, and user data mining.  Users, privacy watchdogs, and politicians alike are screaming because Google revealed it is going to intensify its aggregation of your personal data in its databases, and you can't opt-out of the process.

Never mind that Google's been collecting your data for years and using it to personalize your search and advertising results. Never mind that Google reads every email message you send or receive in Gmail. Never mind it scans every document you put in Google Docs. Never mind it knows about every appointment you put in Google Calendar. Never mind it has a record of every single query you ever entered on Google search. And never mind that, now, Google also indexes your social network if you're one of the 90 million people using Google+.

These changes come on the heels of Google integrating Google+ data with Google Web search results. That move, dubbed Google Search Plus Your World (or Google SPYW for short, ironically just a few characters short of SPYWARE) also caused an uproar among search and privacy watchers, as well as freaking out competing social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Worse, Google SPYW might just be the straw that breaks the trust busters' backs.

Now, I'm the first guy to cry "foul" when Facebook or other services change their systems and expose my private data without my permission. But Google's changes don't fall into that category. Here's why Google is NOT being evil, why I'm not worried about these changes at Google, and why you, and regulators, should climb down off the ledge.

The roles of skepticism and persuasion in PR

Years ago, before the era of all things digital, an entrepreneur came to me with an enchanting idea. At the time, CD drives were rare and exotic extravagances. As is often the case with new technologies, few of us realized how omnipotent, and eventually antiquated the CD-ROM would become.

But his dream was to make CD-ROM gaming available to the masses by opening walk-in gaming centers where consumers would buy time to play on massive CD-ROM servers.

Oh, how naïve were we, now that gaming is streamed in real time to your iPad and available on cable TV. But back then, CD-ROMs cost thousands of dollars, games hundreds, and playing Freddie Fish was the rarest of treats for young children. To bring his idea to fruition, he partnered with Intel, built a beta store, and turned to us for media coverage of the idea in advance of franchising.

New employees answer, "What did you learn during your first year at Gregory FCA?"

One of our 2011 goals was to formalize our commitment to ongoing training of our employees. To that end, we've grown our culture of knowledge sharing among our teams and ramped up our focus on mentoring and hands-on training, especially with our new employees.

We've also developed and instituted a training workshop program we call Gregory FCA University. Leaders in the firm present an interactive session every month about a given topic in public relations, social media, or investor relations.

The sessions are followed by quizzes to test employees' absorption of the information. We also video record all the sessions, and make them available in our digital library for employees to watch anytime they're looking for insight or advice from their peers on a particular subject.

A year now on the books, we wanted to see what our 12 new employees have learned so far from being embedded in the industry and engaging in our training initiatives. So we asked them, "What did you learn during your first year at Gregory FCA?" Here's some of what we heard.

Kate Ritinski

Kate Ritinski, Account Coordinator

It's hard to believe that less than a year ago, I was still a college student, enjoying my last semester of senior year and figuring out how to tackle the "real world." Now here I am, eight months later, as an Account Coordinator at Gregory FCA. Needless to say, these past several months have been quite a whirlwind.

Before I started, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what PR involved: having good time management, keeping clients happy, and securing media coverage. As I began my work at Gregory FCA, however, I quickly learned PR was much more than I ever thought it could be. Here's a sampling of what the last eight months have taught me:

5 key PR takeaways from the 2012 CES

The real news from last week's 2012 CES in Las Vegas had less to do with the gadgets, devices, and shiny new things being introduced by the world's leading technology companies and more to do with the way those companies told their stories during the four-day extravaganza of all things technology. The convergence of social media and hand-held devices has created an entirely new way of gaining notice, interfacing with the media, building traffic, and leveraging the costs of attending any show, let alone the world's largest consumer technology show.



This year, four of us made the trip, some to support, some to sell, and some to simply learn more about what's new and hot. And no matter how exciting the technology, what really caught our eye is how companies are using digital communications and building their own channels of content to win, persuade, enlighten, and engage on the showroom floor. Here's the new bible of how it's being done:

1. Be the media. Texas Instruments helped show the way with a video team that traveled from booth to booth, interviewing partners and demonstrating how TI technologies power the coolest products. B2B customers throughout the show snapped to when TI showed up, a great way to build buzz and relationships, and celebrate their common ground.

Still can't ignore the basics in investor relations

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with a member of the board of directors of a troubled company. This company had once been a high-flyer, but has since fallen on hard times as a result of the financial and real estate meltdown. The company is losing money and under intense competitive and regulatory pressure. As you can imagine, the stock has been pummeled and is trading at multi-year lows.

During our conversation, the director shared some of the company's investor relations challenges with me, and expressed frustration that Wall Street did not recognize the intrinsic value of the company. But as we chatted, I realized that the company had lost sight of some fundamental principles of investor relations:

Guidance matters

In this age of transparency and accountability, it's essential that public companies provide guidance. When public companies don't give guidance, it signals one of three things to Wall Street, and none are of them good: first, that management has no visibility into the business; second, that the business is in free fall; or third, that management just has no desire to be shareholder-friendly or accountable.

Social media trends in 2012: Orchestrate this!

Over the past few days, we've been sharing our predictions for what we think will be the trends to watch in public relations and social media in 2012. Yesterday, we featured our Social Networking Manager, Kwan Morrow. The day before that, we heard from Mike Lizun, Senior Vice President of Public Relations.

Today, I'd like to share the thoughts of our Editor-in-Chief and Senior Vice President, Rich Levin. Rich has been in the content game since the mid-80s and he's been involved in social media for just as long -- long before the term social media became de rigueur.

Our crazy Editor-in-Chief
mugging for the camera

Here are his thoughts on what will be the important trends in content-driven social strategies in 2012. And although we promised 15 trends to watch, we always go above and beyond for our clients and readers. So in all, we are sharing 17 PR and social trends to be on the lookout for in 2012.

1. Orchestration will be the big challenge in 2012 for companies that got started with social within the past two years. They have built their basic platforms and skill sets, and are now realizing that, in order to scale and be fully engaged, they need to orchestrate their activities in real-time, yet remain authentic and transparent in their engagement with customers. This is a big challenge, and there are no easy answers. Companies will try and fail, but they must get back up and keep trying until they figure out the orchestration model that works best for their organization. PR agencies that have developed best practices in this area are the ones to lean on. Agencies that promise the moon via outsourcing should be avoided. Social media cannot be outsourced. Social media must be integrated with all communications activities. Orchestration will be the issue that breaks many client-agency relationships, because it demands a highly integrated relationship. The outsourced model won't fly.

2012 public relations trends you need to be ready for

In continuing with our predictions for the 2012 public relations trends that need to be on your radar, we turn to Kwan Morrow, our Social Networking Manager. Here are his four predictions for what will be hot on the social networking, content marketing, and content syndication fronts next year. (In my last post, I promised we'd share two predictions from Kwan. But what can I say -- the wheels kept turning after we published that statement, so here are two more.)

Gregory FCA's Kwan Morrow

1. Content kings will forge empires. In 2011, content was king. In 2012, the kings with the best content and syndication methods will consolidate empires -- meaning the companies that truly understand content marketing will become the go-to resources of their industry. They will benefit handsomely from this positioning because they understand that if you're not solving your audiences' problems, answering their questions, or providing just-in-time content that helps them make an educated purchasing decision, your content will remain unread, unclicked, unshared, unliked, and most importantly, unused.