Turning News Into Knowledge

If you’re not already into measuring and analyzing your traditional media coverage and social media mentions – or if that task never materializes thanks to other things getting in the way – then you should rethink your approach to media campaigns.

Whatever your reasons for potentially holding off, it’s time to make 2012 the year to overcome your measurement phobia.  After all, if you track and know what kind of impact your PR efforts are making, you can then  make those efforts more efficient and cost-effective through the implementation of appropriate measures.

In my experience, the most common obstacle executives or PR practitioners have is not knowing where to start. And that’s not surprising, given the ever-growing and complex landscape of traditional and social media, questions of copyright and licensing, archiving all your content and, finally, finding the right people to help connect the dots.

But don’t let this deter you. There’s always a first step, and for this post I’d like to focus on that.

The first step to your PR or media analysis program is defining your objectives: why do you need to conduct a media analysis?  What do you hope to accomplish? What actionable results will come out of the analysis?

If your objectives are clear, the rest will follow.

In order to define your objectives, start by asking some basic questions:

1)      What is it that you need to measure?

2)      Why do you need to measure it?

3)      What will you do with the results, and who should see them?

4)      Where are you currently spending your money?

5)      How often you want to measure?

Your answers to each of these questions will lead to more clearly defined objectives. If you’re from a brand-oriented company, for example, then there’s a range of measurements which may interest you:

- Share of voice for your brand vs. competitors’ brands;

- Share of voice among all of your company’s brands;

- What people are saying about the brand and in what tone (positive, neutral or negative);

- Are key messages being conveyed and who is talking about you and your competition;

- Which media channels (broadcast, print, social, etc.) are most effective for you; and

- How is the brand spokesperson perceived by the public.

And so on. You can then use this information to better target those in your space, and create strategies to better communicate key messages to the people that matter to you – this information is vital not only for communications staff, but also for your marketing and even sales departments. It takes the guesswork out of planning and allows you to determine ROI and outcomes. As a result, your approach naturally becomes more scientific and data-driven.

Depending on your organization and its objectives, you‘ll all have different answers to the above questions. The good news is these answers will help you determine your objectives, which will then lead you to the next steps in your measurement program (which I’ll discuss in an upcoming post).

Last week I was at the Third Tuesday kickoff event in Toronto. Joe Thornley did an amazing job putting a great agenda and excellent panels.  The one day seminar, titled Social Media Measurement Matters, focused on latest thoughts, tools and most importantly, metrics relevant in social media measurement.

I was in the panel discussing, “How to set-up your social media command centre.”  Moderated by Martin Waxman, we discussed the different aspects of setting up command centre. Be it the intricacies of keywords or the technical tools that are needed to support your monitoring program.

In my talk I focused on what is the conceptual framework we need to create a robust monitoring command center. This blog summarizes the essential elements needed to set-up your social media monitoring command centre.

Based on the studies of successful campaigns in social media and from my own experience with clients, I believe that the single most factor contributing to their success is their belief in the power of social media. They believe that social media is critical to their company’s or brand’s success and they dedicate money and resources to it because they believe it is worth every penny and ounce of energy spent on it.

Your belief in the power of social media is the very foundation upon which you will set up your Social Media Command Centre. That thinking is going to motivate you to approach the set-up and running not as a piece meal or responsive unit but as a strategic unit.

Now that we have the foundation in place, what are the pillars we need to put in place to sustain our command centre? There are three important pillars that we need.

• Understanding the needs. Each audience will have a unique set of requirements.
• Setting up the goals, processes and resources to effectively monitor and measure both goals and results.
• Delivering customized outputs that meet the identified needs.

Set-up your needs pillar by asking the basic questions. The questions you ask are important because your questions will define your framework including your goals, processes, resources and outcomes.

Ask around your questions, who wants them, why do they want it, what they will do with it, what are they trying to achieve with it, how will they access it, how often will they access it and very important, what is their comfort level with technology.  Ask them well, ask them from everyone, ask them again and again and make sure you have good answers, and make sure you understand these answers well, because in answer to these questions lies the success of your efforts.  Because only when you understand the needs, you can create customized solutions to meet their needs.

Which brings me to the next important point, how important it is to create customized outputs? And the answer is VERY Important.   I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to create outcomes that are customized.

The requirements of a VP, a CEO, A junior staff, a community manager, a product manager, a marketing manager, an HR manager are very different. They have different constraints on their time, they make different decisions and hence they need different information.

Customization sounds like lot of work but we have some very good products that can with minimal effort offer these customized solutions. We at MediaMiser thrive on that concept. It might appear more work but that’s more apparent than real. It’s totally worth it and it also brings to fruition all your work till this point. If you don’t take that one last step of creating customized products you risk losing all your good work so far.

When your audience gets a customized product to their needs, it makes them more efficient and focused on their objectives and then they value what you have to offer to them. They become dependent on you for their success, and then they will support you in your quest for resources and money.

So, take a look at your social media command centre and see if it has the right foundation and pillars in place. Let’s not add another blogger or tweeter to our monitoring because they wrote a negative or positive piece, and let that not be the sum of our social media strategy. If you have the right foundation and pillars then that blogger, should it be relevant, will automatically fit in your framework and that is how you want to approach each piece in your monitoring framework, not by accident but by plan.

How do you run your social media command centre? I am interested in hearing from you.

The recently concluded IABC World Conference (June 6-9, 2010) brought together an amazing mix of PR practitioners from world over. Though primarily North American in flavour, bumping into PR professionals from the other side of world was not uncommon.

The event organizers deserve a pat on the back for pulling off a massive event like this without a hitch. The welcome reception at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) was a great idea, I was really excited about the seeing the museum but couldn’t weave my way out of meeting people. The Dinosaur skeleton was as far as I could make in terms of exhibit

The sessions were well planned with relevant topics and right strategic focus and was well supported by top-rated speakers. I really wished I had a time machine that would allow me to attend in parallel all the great sessions. I hated to choose one over another. My absolute favourite was Max Brown’s session on “Real Leadership: what’s love got to do with it”. Max is great speaker and while conceptually the ideas were nothing that you haven’t heard before, his passion and examples chosen to deliver the concept were exceptional. His delivery style had the audience both laughing and crying.

Another session that I found full of practical tips for budding PR executives was by <Cyrus Mavalwala and Adrian Cropley. Cyrus and Adrian very articulately highlighted the tool set all PR professionals need to have and their “Communicator – Client Relationship Model” is easy to understand and implement. What resonated the most with me – “Define your own self as a brand, don’t leave this important task to others.”

The IABC 40th Anniversary Cake c/o BusinessWire blog

On the fun side, MediaMiser’s Rockets added lot of fun to the exhibit hall, OH Canada! party was lavish. And, I was literally wide-eyed seeing the widest cake ever (that I have ever seen), to celebrate IABC’s 40^th anniversary. I am still wondering how they transported that cake!!!

Last couple of decades, technology has more or less taken over our life, it dictates how we access information, how we make decisions – be it about buying the next pair of shoes or meeting our potential life partner, how we do business and how we socialize. No aspect of our life has been left behind.

The dependence on technology is even more intense in our business life. There is a drive to automate as much as possible. In countries where manpower comes at premium, automation is defined both by innovation and by need.

While there are many benefits to automation and undoubtedly a move in the right direction, caution needs to be exercised in its implementation.

Talking specifically, in the context of media measurement and analysis, there are many sophisticated tools to choose from and these tools and software no doubt improve the reliability, efficiency and have the ability to crunch mass volumes in minutes.

However, for any meaningful analysis the contribution of an analyst to understand the context, tone and to simply judge the relevancy of media coverage cannot and should not be underestimated. The tools are helpful aids, but that’s what they are. To assume that an automated software will pick up the right media coverage based on keywords; will judge the tonality of the coverage based on positive and negative word recognition; will gain the understanding of the context or will understand the dynamics of the various forces in play would be a harmful assumption.

A recent post by Katie Paine highlights some of these issues especially the reliance on automated sentiment analysis or the reliance on web crawlers to pick up the right content.

At MediaMiser we believe, “computers compute and humans analyze.” That is why when we sell our software we also have a strong analyst team backing up the software.

Sure our software does a great job of picking up all your keywords but it is our analyst which filters the relevant content from all the junk that is pulled in which sometimes as Katie Paine rightly points out could be 90% of the content. When it comes to toning the articles MediaMiser analysts read through each article based on pre-determined toning parameters discussed with the clients.

Time and again we have received feedback from our clients as to how valuable they find our contribution of manual vetting, toning and analytical insights. It is ultimately the thinking of humans and not the logic of machines that gets the “job done right.”

So to question ‘Can technology think?’ I have only one answer… “NO”

Fresh from the recent hiring spree, we thought it will be a good idea to do an informal “qualitative” check on how MediaMiser is perceived by the budding Mediamites on our Client Services team. Caught amidst the memories of prior work places still lingering on their minds, and the silent mental appraisal of the new work environment, our newest staff sure had some great insights on our work culture and atmosphere.

Here’s a peek at some of the thoughts:

“There are a lot of opportunities to be creative in this constantly changing media landscape, and innovation is definitely embraced at MediaMiser, which is what makes it such a great place to work.” – Jayna Hart, Media Analyst

“There is a great sense of team unity which is embraced at MediaMiser. Anyone lucky enough to join this great group really wants to be a part of the work ethic and values that all MediaMiser employees demonstrate towards their clients and each other.” – Greg MacDonald, Media Analyst

“The first thing I noticed as an intern starting at MediaMiser, is how everyone immediately made me feel welcome and part of the team. MediaMiser is a very comfortable and easy going place to work.” – Tiffany Bleackley, Media Monitoring Specialist

“From day one, the staff and atmosphere at MediaMiser made me feel right at home. The people who work at MediaMiser are very friendly and extremely easy to get along with. The beautiful, modern office provides a comfortable environment for employees to conduct their work. Besides the great people, stimulating work, and elegant office, the abundance of coffee and cake definitely makes working here that much better!”    - Paul Koziara, Media Monitoring Specialist

“MediaMiser is as much, if not more, about the people as it is about the software. Getting to know the people behind the company has greatly helped me understand MediaMiser and what they offer. The fun-loving people behind the scenes are what make this company great and I am delighted to be a part of that growing family.” – Peggy Prahl, Media Monitoring Specialist

MediaMiser is a solutions company founded by PR professionals. We are always interested in dynamic self-starters from the public relations and the technology industry. If you feel you can help make a difference on the MediaMiser team, you could be the person we are looking for. For updated information check out our careers page

Perspectives is a blogging series written, researched and compiled by teams of MediaMiser staff from Client Services, Sales, and R&D. This post was contributed by Pragya Dubey, Tiffany Bleakley and Greg MacDonald

As PR and social media measurement gains strength and focus from experts and various audiences, bashing eyeball count, or reach numbers, and advertising value equivalencies (AVE) has become a favourite sport.

While I am in full agreement with the new measurement theories and understand the importance of starting with your objectives and measuring outcomes that meet the set objectives, I would insist that eyeball count still plays a part in the overall picture and here are some reasons why:

Connecting is the first step

If you are putting out a press release, tweet, blog post, podcast or any message, your goal obviously is to communicate with your desired public, engage them and generate the desired outcome from that engagement. The fact that they have seen (eyeball count) is the first step towards this process. The higher the eyeball count, the higher the probability of engagement. There is an old saying “the beautiful peacock danced in the jungle, but who cares no one really saw it.” It’s the same here, you might have the best concept, but if nobody read it or saw it then you’re not going to go much further with your campaign.

Hence measuring the reach is your first and important step in the process of measuring the campaign success. If we stop at this step, (which traditionally we have been doing) then it does not mean much. But it’s an important foundational step to further build upon the full picture of impact and measurement.

Create departmental synergies before you knock off the eyeballs

Conceptually, any campaign, when created, involves top management, marketing, sales, PR and other departments. Ideally they should all be talking to each other through implementation to measurement. In reality, due to time and resource constraints or simply poor management, the implementation and measurement happens in independent silos. This prohibits percolation of original concept and messaging to all decision makers, especially when external PR and marketing consultants are involved.

Now the task of truly measuring the impact of a campaign in a cohesive way is an even bigger challenge. In the end, each unit ends up highlighting results for their individual efforts instead of focussing on the objectives of the campaign and company goals. So while sales have its numbers to show, marketing has its branding and advertising results, PR (and specifically the media relations unit) often is left with showcasing the reach and AVEs as a quantitative measure of its efforts. So until we get to the utopian world of perfect communication synergy, eyeballs are here to stay.

I absolutely love all the discussions and focus on new measurement concepts, and it’s just the right kind of thinking that will help elevate the importance of communicators, but in doing so, I would be careful to not step on to the media relations people and discount their efforts. Eyeballs and AVEs aren’t the be-all, end-all of measurement but they have their place in the big picture.