When it is, it is often spoke of as being better than none at all. As Oscar Wilde once said “the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” What is meant by this is If you can ride the difficulties there is the opportunity to emerge with your rise drawing substantial attention and interest which, accompanied by that already generated by the negative coverage, can lead to further success.

How accurate though is such an assumption? Is it better to be discussed in any light than not at all or is it simply good fortune that brings future accomplishments after an unfavourable spotlight?

Media coverage of BP’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico can hardly be described as promotional. Huge financial costs and a drop in confidence has seen share prices plummet. The terrible loss of life in the initial disaster and features showing the effect on iconic, helpless wildlife has even led to BP Chief Executive Tony Haywood being labelled as the most hated man in the USA.

BP’s response has been to document its attempts to rectify the leak but this has been somewhat undermined by its failure to do so and the emergence of details accounting the accident to BP negligence. Its most recent attempt to null the criticisms has been to allow journalists access to the company’s crisis centre. Although showing it is working hard to fix the leak it has not come early enough and its effect will be limited amongst the allegations of cost cutting influences.  

The severity and length of the problems means there is very little for BP to attain from the situation unlike suggested by assumptions valuing all communication. It is hard not to speculate though that had the leak been swiftly stopped, it would have drawn valuable public and business interest despite the severity.

Presentation of BP as being a company which valued and put procedures in place to ensure and reflect its social responsibilities rather than being driven solely by profit margins at any cost, as commonly thought of the oil industry, would have recovered some of the reputation lost by the initial disaster if it had been done in the early stages. This could have prevented them being dragged through what can be described as a lengthy, hostile media portrayal. 

With its communication of attempted solutions being out weighted, BP’s recovery will be reliant on its previously strong identity. The extent to which its identity and reputation can be recovered however remains to be seen.   

Establishing a strong, well known identity is not an easy task but the gains of successfully doing so are prosperous. Recent weeks have seen Apple overtake Microsoft as the most valuable technology producing company thanks to its extensive profits.

Effective communication of Apple’s identity and product lines means very few would fail to recognise their logo, associate them as a leader of ground breaking home and office technology or name any of its products. Mass enthusiasm surrounds Apple’s identity as consumers aim to get their hands on the technology and suppliers compete to sell it. 

The question that dominates in the current economic climate is where do you prioritise your marketing communications spending to raise the profile of your organisation? An especially tough decision when tight budgets increase the pressure for clearly visible results.  

Such budget management is even more difficult with specialised communication agencies competing for a large share. Full service agencies offer an attractive means of consolidating marketing, advertising and public relations under one roof with many also having a digital arm to coincide with the expanding opportunities offered by interactive media thus offering multi platform reach.

Using such agencies allows all areas of your marketing strategy to be easily co-ordinated to communicate consistent, clear and direct messages. These are key to any branding campaign as the profiles and values expressed build a relationship between the audience and your corporate, product and/or service identity; an awareness that encourages future business.

The communication of success stories and strong products and/or services through PR, advertising and marketing alongside an establishing identity further enhances brand strength. A strength which continues to grow as awareness of your brand does, opening more opportunities for future business and expansion.

Such growth reflects the need for the continuous management of your identity and brand positioning. Once established, they need to prosper through regular up to date communication rather than fade into the background if they are to be successful.  

This is as time consuming as it sounds but it is essential. Again a full service agency can be of great use here as they can tailor and progress communication activity across all areas with this purpose in mind.  

Although just the roots of marketing activity, it offers the foundations from which future campaigns can be built. Once established, corporate identity is further enhanced by all positive future communication increasing business opportunities and therefore providing significant returns on investments in it. 

Thanks to an effective combination of print, website design and website development, the Woodland Trust was inundated with strong, high quality applicants. This proves the internet has not yet completely outdated print and that the qualities of both can be used to great affect.

What is clear is the power of our, the public’s, perceptions. Reputation management, whether it be how you market services or products, present your current affairs and the way in which you recruit and expand is crucial for success especially in such a tough economic environment.

One slip, even of the tongue, could be very costly!

The Leicester-based firm approached us to create two animations based on the straplines, “Forward Thinking Advice” and “Leading the Way - Personally“, plus a third for its careers page.

As well as being used online, the animations also feature on a big information screen located in the client’s reception.

Designers have known about it for some time now. Developer’s have known about it for years.

Internet Explorer 6 - still one of the world’s most popular browsers - continues to cause web design headaches nearly a decade after it was released, and remains the bane of a developer’s bug-fixing workload, and hindrance to a designer’s creativity.

Sluggish, with broken implementation of standards, lacking advanced CSS support, no PNG alpha-transparencies… the list is long, and the list is painful. Over the years as a developer I have learnt the hard way the tricks and hacks required to get Microsoft’s ageing browser to play nicely, to the point where (in the most part) IE6 bug-fixing is no longer as confusing and daunting as it once was.

But in 2009, with a wealth of better, alternative browsers available (not to mention Microsoft’s own IE7 and now the new IE8), an almost vigilante attitude has appeared, as a whole new anti-IE6 movement is steadily gaining steam.

These designers and developers are essentially saying “That’s it. Enough is enough“. To them, there is no excuse for this lame browser to have such prevail, and to continue to hold power such that it does, slowing and hindering web design and development. Their reasoning, of course, has several points that are hard to disagree with.

My own point of view on this isn’t quite so straight forward, though. Yes, it would be lovely if tomorrow everyone stopped using IE6, and the benefits for developers and clients would be seen almost instantly (you’d be surprised how much influence Microsoft products have on the limits of how certain aspects of a website have to be designed). But it’s nieve to assume people willingly choose this browser over others - they often don’t, or simply don’t have access to anything else.

As someone who believes passionately in accessibility and a positive online experience for all who use it, I feel it a priority to serve content to as many people as possible, and that means I will continue to optimise websites for IE6 as best as I can, for the foreseeable future, however frustrating that is. At the end of the day, the bottom line should not be the browser: but the user.

What the down-with-IE groups are doing that is positive is raising awareness. It’s already getting exposure, in magazines and other mainstream outlets. And that’s a really good thing. IE6’s days are numbered, that seems for certain, and that’s something I think we can all look forward to, as clients, designers, developers and forward-thinking web people.

What’s your browser of choice, and how did you come to choose it?

Be bold. Use the <b> </b> tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. 

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page.

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way.

Article exchanges. You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text. Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name othertimes.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar.

There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings!!!