Turning News Into Knowledge

Undoubtedly if you’ve been following the Olympics (or you know, not living under a rock) you’ve heard about the red mittens. The absolute must-have accessory for the 2010 Vancouver games that have been selling out across the country since they were released…

Last week, MediaMiser released a report that looked at some of the fun aspects of the pre-Olympics media coverage. One such topic was those red mittens. While it was no surprise they received a good amount of media coverage, we were shocked to learn they aren’t just being talked about in Canada, but in fact, the top-three news outlets talking about the mittens were all US-based.

While we’re working on a follow-up report (watch for its release first week of March), using our Twitter Analysis tool, I noticed that chatter about the mittens skyrocketed on Feb. 13 and again on the 16th. While the spike on the 13th likely had to do with timing – the first full day of the Olympics, everyone was wearing the mittens, etc., I set out find what triggered the second spike on the 16th…

Image from USA Today article

The top mentioned link about the mittens on Twitter that day was an article in USA Today. Yep, another major US publication. In fact, none of the top links were by Canadian mass media-the majority were (Canadian) blogs hosting mitten giveaways, actually. The USA Today article even mentions the mittens are the “gotta-have souvenir” of the games and features a photo of Vice-President Joe Biden sporting a pair.

According to the article, mitten retailer, the Bay, had originally projected selling 1-million pairs of the mittens, and now anticipates 3.4-million total.

Pretty neat, eh?

Download our preliminary Olympics Report

How the Media Sees It: A fun look at the 2010 Olympics. MediaMiser analyzes the fun side of the pre-Olympic Coverage. Download now!

 

 

Olympic fever is in full swing with the opening ceremonies happening tomorrow. Here at MediaMiser, we thought it’d be fun to analyze the media coverage leading up to the games and take a look at some of the lighter issues. Here’s a taste from the executive summary:

We spent the month of January examining the lighter side of pre-Olympic coverage. Much of the information gathered and analyzed has been assembled in this report to create a fun look at the following areas:

• “Truthiness” and the Olympics
• The Olympic red mittens
• The media’s favourite Olympic sport
• Top six “hyped” hockey teams
• Olympics in the blogosphere
• Olympic Tweets

Some of the findings were surprising. For example, Canada isn’t the country whose media wrote most about our ubiquitous red mittens. However, it should come as no shock to anyone that the Olympic sport covered most by online media was hockey.

And here’s a sample chart, showing the top-10 talked-about sports:

Download the whole report free here. Have a look and let us know what you think.

For our December newsletter, we asked our employees for their top tips for 2010. It was such a hit with our subscribers, I thought I’d share it with our blog readers as well. Enjoy!

A new year is a great excuse to change your ways and work on improvement. This year we asked the MediaMiser team for tips to improve measurement efforts, here are our top ten:

“Define your company/communication values of your company, understand them and then plan your media goals based on your values. For example, if you’re planning on being proactive to consumer feedback, aim to capture and analyze the media from the feedback.”
Stephanie Luedee, Senior Analyst

“When defining your goals, make sure they can easily be measured. Ask yourself if the end product can be evaluated like the number of mentions in a press clipping.”
Sophie Jodoiun, Analyst

“Prioritize all your tasks in a numbered system to know what you should be working on at all times.“
David Kalec, Junior Developer

“Colour-code your tags and folders in your email client. In an application like gmail this makes it easy to find topic-related emails in your inbox.”
Jen Hogan, Analyst

“Leave all emails in your inbox until you’ve addressed them – once finished with them, delete or file into a folder ALWAYS.”
Sarah Smiley, Analyst

“Understand that everyone has a different definition of success, so treat each account or client individually.”
Samantha Ingram, Analyst

“Set and evaluate outcome objectives with your audiences. Also measure your outputs.  They can help you determine why you did — or did not — achieve your desired outcomes.”
Claudine Wilson, Senior Associate

“Start benchmarking your efforts against competitors, it’s not as scary as you think.”
Kelly Rusk, Manager of Marketing & Communities

“Put your PR efforts on a measurement diet. Write down results, compare over time and take notice of when you gained or lost.”
Chris Morrison, VP Client Services

“When in doubt, ask us for help.”
Bill McGuiness, Sales Director

Think of one we missed? Leave a comment below!

Don’t miss future articles like this and others on PR and social media measurement by subscribing to our monthly newsletter, MediaPulse.

Just a quick note to let you know about our open house event happening this Thursday, Nov. 26, 2009 from 4-6 pm at our new office on Holland Avenue. We’d like to welcome you into our new office and to help us celebrate a great year of growth for the company.

Hors d’oeurves and drinks will be served. Also, we’re collecting non-perishable food items for the Ottawa Food Bank, if you’d like to bring an item.

We hope you can make it!

Full details and RSVP here…

from Katie D. Paine's blog

Still winding down from an exciting day at #Meshmarketing in Toronto yesterday (huge thanks to the organizers for a great event). I sat in on four fabulous presentations, but the highlight for me was Katie D. Paine’s “Social Media Analytics – What, Why and How.”

All day, there were lots of questions about social media ROI and what to measure, both in the presentations, and in talking with other attendees. Katie’s presentation at the end of the day wrapped it up perfectly: The main point was “yes, you CAN measure social media ROI”

She explained the seven steps to social media ROI, you can find all this and more in her presentation, but in short they are:

1. Define the “R” – What are the expected results?
2. Define the “I” – What’s the investment? (She also points out that social media is not, in fact, free–”Do you work for free?” she asked)
3. Understand your audience and what motivates them
4. Define the metrics  (what you want to become)
5. Determine what you are benchmarking against
6. Pick a tool and undergo research
7. Analysis – because research without insight is just trivia

The best part about these steps is that they don’t *just* apply to social media, but any type of measurement.  The challenge with social media is it’s not yet widely adopted, but now you’re equipped to go out and lead the way, so what are you waiting for?

If you missed Mesh Marketing, but were in Ottawa, I hope you were able to catch Katie at Third Tuesday Ottawa. If not, I encourage you to check out the slide presentation or follow her blog.

We’ve finally settled into our new office at 11 Holland Ave. in Ottawa. (view news release), so it’s about time we shared some photos!

First, some before and after shots… followed by a few extra shots of the new place:

Old office

New office

Old kitchen

New kitchen

Old office

Analysts

Brett

Pragya

Boardroom

e-Marketer today published a study saying that social media measurement lags adoption. The difference was quite large: while 86% of respondents had adopted social technologies, only 16% were measuring ROI.

Shocking, yes. But does this tell the whole story? While ROI is a great metric for tying efforts to a dollar value… It’s not the be-all end-all of social media measurement. In fact, if it is the only metric you’re looking at, ROI is actually poor measure of social media efforts.

If you are using it to its full potential, the real value of social media is in the relationships you build with customers and potential customers. The stronger these relationships are, the more likely they are going to turn into money–either directly or through referrals. This is what is often referred to as community building, and why many companies are hiring community managers. The downside to community building, from a measurement point of view, is it’s not an immediate gain… It’s not easily measureable and it’s definitely not easily turned into an ROI figure.

How can you measure community building? Engagement–Look at who is talking about you and how often. Sentiment–Are people talking about you positively or negatively? If you do it well and track these relationships over time, you’ll likely see them turn into dollars.

It should also be mentioned that community building is not just about posting to Twitter/Facebook, blogging and creating Youtube videos. It’s also essential you have a solid product or service and excellent customer service to succeed. This is another measurement obstacle, because you can have the best community manager in the world, but still fail if your offering is not up to par. This problem can’t necessarily be captured in ROI or any other metric unless it’s overwhelmingly obvious (it’s often not).

I can’t comment on whether or not the respondents in the study are measuring more than ROI, but I would hope so. What do you think? Should I be more worried about the lack of ROI measurement?

First-if you’re an RSS subscriber, please click through and check out our blog re-design!

However, this is more than just a “come look at what we’ve done” post. Although this is the first time MediaMiser has re-designed this blog, I’ve been through the process several times before at previous jobs. I’ve also re-designed my personal blog many times. So I thought I’d go through some of the reasons why you should re-design a blog, or more specifically, the benefits of a re-design… In no particular order:

1. Usually leads to an increase in traffic and/or subscribers
   I’m not exactly sure why this is, perhaps because when you re-design, you may consider new or updated SEO tactics that help drive traffic or perhaps you’re so excited about it that you start pumping out great content that gets people interested. Whatever the reason, more traffic and subscribers usually follows!
2. Re-energizes your company about the blog
   Especially if it’s a multi-author blog, a re-vamp can get contributors excited about blogging again. Complacency is social media’s worst nightmare and it’s no different on your blog. Also it gives you the opportunity to promote it internally and get employees excited about your corporate blog. This, in turn, could lead to point # 1.
3. Helps you keep up with the times
   Things change so quickly online… Re-designing the blog helps you stay current by thinking about what could and maybe should be present on your blog. For example, we’ve now integrated our @MediaMiser twitter feed in the sidebar. We’ve also put the option to re-tweet posts, and to follow the individual authors on this blog.
4. Creates some buzz
   If people like what you’ve done, they may talk about you! While it’s no guarantee, it’s got a better chance of happening vs. not re-designing!
5. It’s a lot of fun!
   Maybe not for everyone, but at least from a PR or marketing perspective, it’s an opportunity to look at your brand and be a little creative. We believe the look of a blog should be inspired by the company web site and brand, but not identical, so it’s a great opportunity to have some fun and experiment with your branding.

So that’s it! Please let us know, either via comments (or email me directly) what you think about our re-design or share some other ideas about why it’s great to re-design. Or what about the other side of the argument, is there a downside to a re-design?

I’d say a very important skill in the field of PR measurement is to not be complacent. The industry is constantly changing–especially when you factor in social media and start measuring alongside your other PR efforts. If you feel it’s time for a refresher on what’s hot and what’s not in measurement, see this post from the Metrics Man, which is a fabulous compilation of great advice for PR measurement.

Happy measuring!

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…