Turning News Into Knowledge

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…

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.

The CPRS National Conference, “On the Edge” is coming up quickly and MediaMiser will be there in full force. We’ll be making a big announcement, and to get you excited, we’ll be giving away free stuff throughout the conference! All you have to do is follow @MediaMiser and watch for clues.

We’ve got TONS of cool gizmos and goodies to give away… So don’t forget to follow us, AND if you’re really eager to win-you can set up your mobile device to get a text message every time we tweet!