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Sometimes all it takes is the right image to become an integral part of a successful PR campaign.

Our author provides tips to help ensure your content — irrespective of how it’s produced — gets Google’s attention and drives long-term traffic for your clients.

From AI failures to SOTU and corporate labor meltdowns, there’s been a bit of bad behavior for PR professionals to deal with. 

Companies and communicators require data to gain insight about consumers. In theory, the rise in online shopping during the pandemic should be a boon for data gathering. The reality is more complicated, especially as consumers rebel against ‘data stealing’ and Google, among others, is set to better protect browsing history. Still, there are options to gather data transparently and insights gained have never been more important.

The bar is raised when a company prides itself on its open culture and encourages employee feedback. Google is discovering that corporate culture is a living creature that needs care and feeding. Some of the activities the company is alleged to have done seem to run counter to the image Google seeks to create.

Transparency is important in all areas of communication, but particularly in health care. The need for transparency has focused on consumer communications, yet a transparent internal culture is necessary to provide safe, effective care. Google’s decision to hire Dr. David Feinberg to lead its health care effort is a vote in favor of transparency.

An exclusive Associated Press investigative report on August 13 revealed that “many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so.” The investigation was confirmed by computer-science researchers at Princeton.

Following a report based on leaked internal Google documents about plans to launch a censored version of the search engine in China, some Google employees are less than impressed. The project (code named Dragonfly in confidential documents) was started in the spring of 2017 and had been confidential within the company, save for a small portion of Google’s large, multinational workforce, until this week.

Though many don’t realize it, SEO is influenced by every department that touches digital content in a given organization. While you don’t have to be a technical genius to understand how that impacts your marketing and communications efforts, it’s important to be aware that even if you hand off SEO to your resident SEO expert or to an agency, your actions with your brand’s digital content are already affecting your search rankings.

More than 3,100 Google employees have signed a letter asking the company to halt its work on a Defense Department initiative. While the letter has made headlines, it also raises an important question for professional communicators: How should a brand prepare for the possibility that part of its workforce has a political or moral objection to some of its activities?