This is not a new discussion, but it’s certainly even more relevant than ever now that Google has just rolled out Penguin 2:0.

Just to quickly re-cap, Google has made a number of changes to its algorithm over the past few years, which has penalised websites with bad content and bought links, for example. Google is trying to create a natural and organic algorithm where good quality websites and content rise to the top of searches.

It’s no surprise that SEO, PR, social media and digital marketing are seeing much more of an overlap in methods and tactics. After all, we are all trying to achieve online visibility and awareness for our clients, and ultimately see sales and conversions due to our hard work.

It was clear during this two-day conference that SEO as an industry is evolving. Many agencies and consultants said they has changed their business proposition from SEO to digital marketing or content strategists, for example.

Two of the key points that I heard being discussed over and over again were: relationships and influence. To create outstanding content with high authority links means using the ol’ PR skills of building relationships and identifying influencers.

These skills may not come naturally to those traditional SEO consultants who are used to communicating by email and not having to build relationships with online editors and bloggers.

However, these are some of the key parts of a PR executives’ job. We are used to planning out content strategies, product launches and mail outs in great detail  and spending time creating the right package to get a journalist’s attention. We are used to picking up the phone to find out who we need to speak to and how we can best work alongside them.

I think that one of the biggest challenges to SEO agencies will be that clients may find it difficult to understand how long it actually takes to create high quality content marketing and blogger outreach programmes and gain fewer, but higher quality inbound links.

Overall, it’s clear that SEO work, content marketing and PR disciplines are overlapping even more than ever. It makes sense to really make the most of any marketing budget and ensure there is a completely integrated campaign, with every person or agency communicating with the other properly for us all to achieve the most out of what we do best.

Read my SAScon 2013 round up part one.

You can follow Carolyn Hughes on Google+ and Twitter.

This year’s SAScon (search, analytics and social media conference) in Manchester was a booming success – despite the fact I couldn’t stay for the legendary drinking session in the evening.

The majority of attendees were SEO consultants, with lots of digital and content marketing types and a smattering of PRs, meaning there was a healthy mix of discussion throughout the two day event.

Here’s part one of my highlights round up:

Keynote: Google Analytics – Clancy Childs (pictured above)

Clancy Childs, product manager for Google Analytics, explained how the analytics tool is being developed so that brands can track the customer online journey better. With most consumers now using multiple devices to search the internet and purchase goods, it is difficult to build up a picture of their behaviour by tracking page views.

A consumer might start searching products on their mobile device, before picking up the search and making a purchase on their laptop later on. Currently, there is no way to link these two searches to the same person but Universal Analytics will enable a business to give each customer a tracking number and then stitch this into its analytics. Clever stuff indeed.

Another highlight was Clancy revealing his email address to the whole room when logged into his GA account. I might just email him photos of cats every single day forever. Hi Clancy!

Keynote: Let’s Get Phygital – Jeff Coghlan from Matmi

A keynote speech by Jeff Coghlan of Matmi was yet another highlight. I’ve seen Jeff speak about his work at a couple of TEDx conferences so I knew he was a fascinating speaker.

Entitled Let’s Get Phyigital, the talk refers to the combination of the physical world and digital, which opens up a whole new possibility for engagement on the high street and various business locations.

The Matmi team created a new game for Alton Towers to promote its latest  ride – The Smiler – which fulfilled two objectives. Firstly, it’s a great way of promoting the rollercoaster and demonstrating why it’s so amazing. And secondly, it encourages people to play it in the queue for the ride, with extra levels you can only unlock by photographing parts of the ride in front of you.

Jeff went onto demonstrate ‘phygital’ in the real world with some virtual dancing monkeys, controlled by his movements, using a games console.

The implications for the high street are huge if forward-thinking retailers can utilise digital technology linked to their physical locations. If consumers can use their smartphones to play games from a shop window, try on virtual clothes with augmented reality or purchase products when the shop is closed, it’s most likely they will spend more money with that brand. The possibilities are endless – we just need to see if high street retailers will be forward thinking enough to embrace the technology.

Making it personal – Barry Adams, Pierce Communications

This session was a real head-scratcher, as it really made me think. I already know Google does personalised search, but not the extent of its ramifications. Personalised search means that that Google knows I live in Manchester and what I regularly search for, but it also knows my viewpoints from past searches, and will go so far as to give my searches a political bias.

Of course, on a day-to-day basis, this is all fairly useful stuff. If I search a restaurant then it’s really quite nice of Google to know that I live in Manchester, UK and not Manchester, New Hampshire.

But if you stop to think about this ‘filter bubble’ – then it’s a little scary. Barry Adams of Pierce Communications and editor of State of Search, had a fantastic rant about the evil forces of Google (sorry, I don’t mean that Google, please don’t penalise my blog) essentially putting blinkers on everyone.

If we only get search results that reflect our own beliefs and experience then how will we ever be challenged? And having our thoughts and beliefs challenged is how we learn and develop as individuals.

It’s one thing if you know it’s happening and deliberately search different viewpoints and newspapers for a rounded view (yep, that’s why I read the Daily Mail online as well as the Guardian, honest). However, the majority of people don’t know that websites or Facebook, for example, do this – so how can they step outside the ‘filter bubble’?

I must also throw in this great quote from Betrand Russell, which Barry quoted: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

I do recommend you read Barry’s slides for this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/Badams/sa-scon2013-barryadamspersonalisedsearch

Part two round up coming atcha in a day or two…

You can follow Carolyn Hughes on Google+ and Twitter.

Over February and March I was commissioned to put together a new business brochure and website copy for Broadstone Mill in Reddish.

This is a fantastic building, which at one time was the largest and most modern mill in Europe. Around 10 years ago, it was bought by a business man and has seen massive amounts of regeneration. Along with Houldsworth Mill, there is now apartments, office space, a gym and a discount clothing outlet.

You can tell I really enjoyed researching the history of these important mill buildings as well as writing about them. I particularly enjoy writing corporate copy, but making sure it’s readable and interesting.

I saw Mary Ann Hobbs as one of the speakers at Manchester Tedx a couple of months back, where the theme was passion. This was one of the talks that has really stayed with me, as she tells a great story and shows how through sheer determination and passion you can get to where you want to be. Take a look.

The theme for this year’s TEDx in Liverpool was The Future of Mobile. Although the focus was from the technology and design point of view, my personal interest is from the marketing and PR standpoint.

Taking place at FACT, this was a really well organised and thoroughly interesting event. For those who are not familiar with the name, TED stands for technology, entertainment and design. These conferences in California have become so popular that they lend the name to independently organised events, which are denoted by the ‘x’.

More than 300 people were gathered together because those devices that each and every one of us possesses have untold potential. Mobile technology has developed so quickly. Internet enabled phones have been around for a while, but it was Apple’s revolutionary iPhone touchscreen, launched just four years ago, that was the game-changer.

Smartphone sales have already overtaken that of PCs and there are many countries where large percentages of smartphone owners have never used the internet on a desktop.

Talks were kept short, which kept the whole afternoon fresh and interesting as ideas and new concepts were thrown around. Talks ranged from the futuristic vision that our mobile phones will talk to chips in our bodies monitoring our health, through to Mill’s concept of ‘succailure’. This was his account of which iPhone apps have failed in popularity, and those that were massively popular but still didn’t make any money, which was really interesting.

But what I wanted to think about was how do these changes in communication and internet use affect the PR and digital marketing industry. Many people in the industry are still discussing the most effective ways to do digital PR, develop content marketing strategies and utilise search, as well as the best way to measure the effectiveness of these. Of course, it doesn’t mean these things just disappear overnight – they’re all still valid. So essentially it means that people are consuming information differently when using a mobile device.

In some ways, this could be a positive for the marketing industry because there are increasingly diverse ways to target consumers. Along with desktop web use, there is now mobile and tablet use, which gives us three channels to communicate our messages.

But then again, are we going to be given three times to budget to roll out our communications to these different platforms? Unlikely, so we’ll have to figure out good ways to tailor the marketing to each platform.

One of the points raised at the conference was that Google has a smaller role in internet use for the mobile user. They are much more likely to use social networks to search and learn about new content because the screens are too small to use Google exactly as you would on a laptop or desktop.

Overall, it was useful to find out just how fast mobile is growing and how the market is developing so fast. It’s something we all need to integrate into marketing strategies and understand the needs of the mobile user.

As I’m returning to work as a freelance PR consultant after producing a baby, I thought it was a good idea to get some snazzy business cards and a logo made.

In the past, I’ve just used a cheap online printer to create my own – but let’s face it, they don’t really cut it. If I’m working in the creative industry, then I need to showcase myself in a more creative way.

So this is where my good friend and business associate, freelance graphic designer Annie Carpenter comes in. Annie designed my wedding invitations as she knew I wouldn’t like something classic or plain. The results were rather funky and trendy, so I knew I wanted my business cards to be the same. Then people might think I’m funky and trendy too :0)

Now I just need to go and hand them out!

Carolyn Hughes is a freelance PR and copywriter in Manchester. 

TEDx Liverpool is on November 7 and although now sold out, were £15 each. The title of this day conference is A Mobile Future which will explore the rapid innovations in mobile communications.

Obviously as a freelance PR and marketing consultant, this is of interest to me and hopefully it won’t be too techy for me to follow!

Next up on November 24 is the SAScon mini-conference at The Hive  in Manchester. I went to the first SAScon two years ago and it was really well organised and interesting. Tickets were £10 + 90p fee, which is a bargain, but sadly this event is also now sold out.

I’m sure both events will be live tweeted and blogged by many attendees, so if you missed out on buying tickets you’ll be able to follow online.

Carolyn Hughes is a freelance PR and copywriting consultant based in Manchester. 

I’ve been experimenting with two websites – About.me and Flavours.me - where you can create your own homepage or ‘splash page’, and integrate all your social media in one place. This is ideal for anyone new to the freelance world who hasn’t yet got their own website.

Here’s my two tester pages I made:

http://about.me/manchesterisace

http://flavors.me/manchesterisace

As you can see both are very similar and just as easy to use. Both of these profiles only took me about 15 minutes but you could spend a lot longer faffing around with layout and images to make them look even better.

With Flavors.me, you can also upgrade for more options and also better link juice.

Definitely worth a look!

Carolyn Hughes is a freelance PR in Manchester.

I am just looking at starting up my work again, having been on maternity leave since February.

You read a lot of negativity about companies not wanting to employ women who may leave to have children or who already have children in case they need a lot of time off.

But after looking after a baby for the last six months, I’ve discovered that it give you loads of new skills and really polishes up the skills you always put on your CV but were never sure how good you were at them.

Here’s what I mean:

1. Multi-tasking
Right, you have a baby, which needs constant feeding, rocking, jiggling and entertaining. BUT you also have to get a wash on, make the tea AND do the washing up. Oh, and it might be pleasant to get a shower at some point during the day.

You thought you were good at multi-tasking before? Well now you’re a true expert.

2. Staying calm with a demanding client
You’ve winded, fed, changed nappy but still they cry. However the trick is lots of deep breaths and staying calm otherwise it just makes them worse. Hmmm rather like a difficult client, non?

3. Forward-planning
Whether it’s just boiling the kettle in time to make a bottle and cool it, to getting all your carefully prepared purees out the freezer, or planning where you can go to the toilet and change a nappy in the next half hour, planning ahead is essential.

A skill that will certainly come in useful when I’m back juggling PR, copywriting and marketing projects all in one day!

4. On the go with little sleep
Work is hard, especially when you’re self-employed. It’s not a nine to five job. Many times it’s a seven to seven job, if you’re lucky.

But hey, being a parent is a 24/7 job, so working for a mere eight hours a day is a BREEZE!

5. Getting ready quickly
I used to struggle to get to work for 9am whatever time I got up. Washing hair, shaving legs, faffing with hair and putting on make-up all used to take ages. But when you’re looking after a baby you learn to get ready super-quick! Run through the shower, clean teeth and get dressed. So really, you only need 10 minutes. Great skills learned for getting back to the office nice and early in the morning!

Obviously this is a tongue in cheek post – I adore having a baby. But I’m also looking forward to starting work again as I’m lucky enough to do something I really enjoy.

Give me a shout if you want to talk to someone about copywriting, PR or marketing.

Happily I have since discovered that this lack of good grades has never been a problem in the course of my career, nor I have actually been asked what my grades were.

So I thought I’d whip together a blog post with some advice on how to get a job in the media and PR industry (which is the only industry I know about). I know for sure it’s not about getting good A-level results.

1. Do work experience

Getting qualifications may well be essential but having paper certificates to your name is just part of the package. Get out there during your time at university and do as much work experience as you can.

Most companies will give work experience placements as long as you’re happy to get stuck in and help out. You may not be given the most glamorous jobs (any good at shredding documents?) but it’s a good idea to make friends with someone friendly and ask if you can help them out with some of the more interesting tasks.

2. Do your time

It’s great to come out of university raring to go, but sadly the chances are you’ll have to start at the bottom and work your way up. You may get a job at an PR agency but end up making the boss’s coffee and photocopying, but if you’re keen and you’re good you will get noticed.

If it’s a good company, you will absorb masses of knowledge and expertise just by listening to those around you. Soak it all up – and use it yourself!

3. Get your online profile sorted

You young ‘uns today have it sorted. When I went to university only a couple of rich kids had brick-sized mobile phones and I had yet to write my first electronic mail. But these days, we’re all using Facebook and Twitter on our smartphones and what-not.

Make sure you’re on LinkedIn and consider setting up your own blog or online CV to showcase your skills.

4. Check you’re Google-able

Ok, Google-able *perhaps* isn’t a real word, but it’s certainly one I use a lot. Following on from the last point, do a quick Google check of yourself. Make sure there’s no public Facebook photos of you mooning or passed out with regurgitated kebab all over your shirt.

Employers will Google you to find out what you’re been up to so make sure there’s no nasty surprises lurking out there in cyberspace.

5. Ignore the news

Forget about the doom and gloom out there telling you how hard it is to get a job. There was a recession when I finished my A-levels as well – it’s always tough for school-leavers and graduates.

BUT these are good times, people.  All you need is your laptop and an internet connection and you can do anything. Start a business, start freelancing – just go for it!

Carolyn Hughes is a freelance copywriter, PR consultant and journalist based in Manchester.