Turning News Into Knowledge

There is probably a lot of handwringing at the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal over the so-called “wafergate” incident…

A story published on July 8, reported that Prime Mister Stephen Harper may have pocketed a communion wafer at former Governor General Roméo LeBlanc’s state funeral.

Three weeks after the fact, the Telegraph-Journal issued an apology and both the paper’s chief editor and publisher were apparently fired.

The Telegraph-Journal is one of New Brunswick’s most prominent and trusted newspapers.

There are people now questioning what led to the story and the motivation behind the apparent firings.

Whatever the motivations may be, I believe the reputation of a newspaper is its most valuable asset. This may or may not have been a factor in the apparent firings, and either way, I’m not personally judging the paper or their staff.

However, from a business perspective, newspapers must protect their brand and reputation.

Some believe that newspapers are dying and that you won’t need a paper to publish information.  Anyone will be able to do it online.

However, not everyone is a trusted source and we crave trusted sources.

Newsprint may disappear, but the masthead won’t if the paper is run properly and the journalistic professionalism is safeguarded.

A newspaper’s greatest asset is not the presses, the computers, or the paper it’s printed on, but the reputation of its brand.

So part of my job at MediaMiser is to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the PR/social media measurement industry. Fortunately for you, I’ve handpicked some of the best stories from the past week and packaged them all right here:

• Is Twitter’s media coverage worth $48-million? That’s if Twitter had to pay for all the media coverage it’s been getting. That’s almost as much as the total invested in the company ($55-million).
• KDPaine asks “What’s wrong with this picture?” in response to a the latest attempt to automate social media measurement. She brings up some great points-yes, it’s *possible* to automate the process and come up with a neat little number that sits on a scale, but will it *really* satisfy business objectives? If it’s not entirely accurate, does that matter at all? Keep reading…
• Shel Holtz writes  “Analysis shows social media releases generate double the coverage” of that of a traditional press release. But before you get all exciting and think it’s time to dump the press release, CEO of RealWire–the company who did the research–says there’s a good and specific reason for the results that may skew the findings. Get the whole story…

United Airlines just got a brutal lesson on the viral nature of media.

According to Canadian musician Dave Carroll, United Airlines broke his $3,500 Taylor guitar.  For nine months, he unsuccessfully tried to get United to pay for the repair costs.

So, he took his case online to Youtube with a pretty slick music video called ‘United Breaks Guitars‘.

The video has had over 500,000 views since it was first posted Monday and now United is scrambling.

I was first referred to the video via a story in the Ottawa Citizen by Sarah Schmidt and Blair Crawford.

The term viral in the Ottawa Citizen story was in relation to Youtube and the Internet. However, ironically, as have already stated, I first heard about the story from the Ottawa Citizen – a traditional media outlet.

At last count, the story has appeared in over two hundred traditional outlets and thousands of blogs, which now includes this one.

Also, to add another layer of complexity for United,  when viewing the video on Youtube, you are given other anti-United videos to chose from, including a pretty funny Madtv skit.

Viral stories can jump medium to medium and organizations need to be more effective when monitoring and analyzing media as a whole and they need to be able to correlate the different media to one another.

In the case of ‘United Breaks Guitars’, all United can do is apologize and show humility, which they are doing. The video is too well done and has momentum.

I would also recommend that they analyze the ongoing situation and aftermath, so they can better understand what happened and try to figure out how they can repair some of the damage.

That said, they seem to be saying the right things to the media and they need to make sure they stay on message and show humility.

Again, to make sure they are being successful with their attrition, they should be constantly monitoring and analyzing all media, new and traditional.

Public relations often gets a bad rep as the department that makes ‘warm fuzzies’ since it’s hard to put the value of managing relationships into dollars and cents. (Sometimes PR can be to blame as many in the industry are ‘math-a-phobic’, as Dave Fleet points out)

Although there’s no doubt—at least in the PR practitioners mind–that getting an article in the New York times is good for business, it’s certainly a challenge to communicate that within your organization.

Fortunately PR practitioners can use measurement tools (like MediaMiser Enterprise) to measure and analyze news coverage. Technology now allows you to measure impact and your efforts by tracking the tonality, prominence and issues in your media coverage. You can also break down metrics including top authors and/or publications talking about you, the frequency of mentions over time, demographics of readership… All these metrics help PR manage relationships and essentially do its job better. This is definitely something that should be communicated throughout the organization, but what if you took it a step further?

PR professionals can demonstrate the value of their news coverage, by doing some simple calculations to put their success in terms executives understand… $$$!

• Calculate ROI/Sales increase – Though it’s more difficult than say, marketing and sales, publicity efforts can be given a ROI dollar amount. One example—if you track conversions on your web site, you can tie an increase in traffic (possibly directly, if it’s an online article with a link) to an increase in conversion. Similarly if you have an inbound sales team, asking “How did you hear about us?” could be part of the process and tracked
• Establish benchmarks – How can you establish how well you are doing now if you’ve got nothing in the past to compare it to? Be sure to tie your benchmarks into company goals and your specific audiences, even if it seems obvious you want to demonstrate to others that you know what you’re doing. Although this does not necessarily give you a dollar value, most executives understand more=better. Alongside your ROI measurements, these work beautifully.
• Ad value equivalencies (AVE) – AVE involve calculating the ad value of a piece of publicity. For example, if you get a full page article in a national magazine, you would compare that to the cost of buying a full page ad in that publication. There’s a lot of controversy in the industry around AVE as a useful metric–after all–can you really compare ads to articles? Any PR pro knows that’s apples to oranges, but the reality is outside the PR department that distinction is not always obvious. While it may not be the best indicator for your own evaluation, it can help persuade the value of PR to those outside of the department. In these days of tightening budgets and shrinking workforces, I wouldn’t totally discount the value of AVEs.

Now, of course, once that’s all in order, don’t forget to communicate it back to co-workers and most importantly, the C-level. Consider a monthly (or quarterly, whatever makes sense) report or internal newsletter that describes and celebrates your efforts. And—if things aren’t going as well as you would have hoped—don’t ignore it, do an analysis of what might have gone wrong, and particularly what you are going to do to improve.

Demonstrating and sharing the value of your PR efforts is what will help make you and your job role an invaluable resource in your organization. While it’s certainly front-of-mind during a recession, it’s always important.

Happy Canada Day! Being headquartered in the Nation’s capital, Canada Day is big day for many of MediaMiser’s staff.  The photograph was taken near the MediaMiser Ottawa office on the Lemieux Island bridge just up the river from Parliament Hill. You can see the Peace Tower in the background silhouetted by the fireworks.