Author: andrewcareaga

Former higher ed PR and marketing guy at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) now focused on freelance writing and editing and creative writing, fiction and non-fiction.

Measuring PR effectiveness: your ideas wanted

Every so often (usually as the end of the fiscal year approaches), someone influential asks about how we measure our effectiveness in placing news stories in major media. These types of requests usually come our way after some big suggests that “We aren’t getting enough press,” or comments that “We’re the best-kept secret” in all of higher education. If you’ve been in PR for any amount of time, you know the drill. (Funny that these folks never offer any insight from their line of work on how their companies measure PR effectiveness.)

Anyway, a conference call on this topic looms. If anyone has the magic bullet to kill this sucker once and for all — and I mean kill it dead — please advise in the comments. Or if you just wish to commiserate, you’re welcome to leave a comment to that effect, too.

Friday Five: search engine alternatives

As usual, something significant event occurred earlier this week about which I was oblivious. That event was a day without Google, which occurred on Tuesday, June 12. The idea, as promoted by Alt Search Engines, was to go a day without using one of the major search engines — Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, or Ask — and to use one of the many alternative search engines instead. Since I missed the occasion, I offer five alternative search engines for you take for a spin. All are listed on the Alt Search Engines site.

  • Mahalo. This site is billed as “the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven’t yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.”
  • GigaBlast, an engine that’s been around since 2000.
  • Twerq. This site is one of the advertisers on Alt Search Engines, and it now boasts 70 new features and enhancements. (How many enhancements can one make to a search engine?) The site, currently in beta, officially launches on June 20, and one lucky Twerq searcher could win a cool thousand bucks on that day.
  • Scitopia, “the free federated search portal to the digital libraries of leading science and technology societies.” This one’s a keeper.
  • knuru, a search engine that focuses on the business sector. “We like to call knuru a research engine,” proclaims the site’s about page. “Using short descriptive sentences, you can find deeply relevant business information from top-tier academic and institutional sources that you might not otherwise have access to.”