When we brainstorm ideas to pitch to the media with clients, one of the obvious things that comes up is, “What data or information do you have that no one else does.”
Akami, which is a company that has thousands of specially-equipped servers, handles 20% of the world's Internet traffic, making it somewhat unique. According to Lost Remote, the company has launched a new section of their site that tracks real-time Internet traffic, as well as logs what important events in retail, news and music caused significant traffic spikes.
Previously, they had given this data only to customers, but by openly releasing some of this data (which is very topline) to the world at large, they put themselves on the map, so to speak. It is is a very good public relations strategy.
Some of the things that I learned in just a few minutes at the site:
- RETAIL: In the last 24-hours, online retail worldwide was 2% above normal (I bought some blinds for my house this morning, so that must have contributed)
- MEDIA: The most compelling news event over the last year (Internet traffic-wise) was when the U.S. was eliminated by Ghana in the World Cup on June 22, 2006, when Internet peaked at 7,283,584 visitors per minute at 12:00 PM EST
- MUSIC: Today, people must be jamming out since music consumption is 15 percent above normal.
Akami, besides having a very cool name (aKAMI), also is making good use of its assets to draw media and blogger attention about its leadership by giving some of its knowledge away for free — a savvy public relations strategy.
What services or information can your organization provide that would position it as a thought leader?
As for Akami, the only thing I would suggest is that they “widgetize” their branded content. Meaning, come up with some way for people to share some of the relevant data on their own sites, then watch it spread.
tags: Akami, PR, Public+Relations, PR+Brainstorm, My+PR+Pro
