Turning News Into Knowledge

I’m currently reading Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik, and while the book is aimed at marketing folk, every page I turn, I think in my head: “Every PR pro should read this book too!”

It perplexes me that web analytics is not taught to students of PR–in fact I’ve met more than a handful of very smart and talented PR people who didn’t even realize that measuring their website’s activity was even possible! Hopefully that’s changing…

However, the other side of this, is web analytics can be pretty complicated stuff. There’s so much *to* measure that you can waste an entire day trying to determine what you *should* measure. Also I’ve been interested and learning about analytics for about three years now and still don’t feel like I have a solid grasp on what I need to be measuring, how often and why. (That’s where the book comes in! I’m about half way through but already have pieced many puzzles together.)

If you work in a larger organization, chances are, someone, somewhere is already tracking analytics. There are quite a few tools available ranging from free (Google Analytics, Yahoo! Analytics) to paid (Omniture, Coremetrics). If you don’t have anything set up-what are you waiting for? I’ve used Google Analytics with five different websites (ranging from corporate sites to my personal blog, to the site of a charity I volunteer with) and I can safely say it’s more than sufficient for most analytics needs. However if you’re running a complicated eCommerce site or have very specific needs, a paid solution might be right for you.

So, if you are ready to go with analytics and want to know how you can leverage these tools to complement your PR measurement, here are three simple metrics you should steal from marketing (or “share” if you prefer to be civil!)

1. Keyword traffic

It’s always interesting to analyze the keywords people are searching to find your web site. However, where PR is concerned, one area you’ll definitely want to pay attention to is people searching for you by your company name. This is particularly helpful as a common PR goal is increasing awareness and the more people searching your company by name, the more aware they are that you exist.

Here’s how I do it*:

1. Establish a benchmark/pre-campaign

To do this, I recorded all searches that included “MediaMiser” or “Media Miser” I looked at three-month period and averaged it by month. The magic number: 445

The reason I averaged over three months is because looking only at one month may cause inconsistent results. For example, traffic was overall lower in December due to holidays, and overall higher in November due to an event we hosted which received a good amount of exposure.

2. Measure against a different time period/after a campaign

Next I looked at a three-month period, six months later (i.e. six months after the original third month) and did the same process of averaging. This time I got 610. Optimally, you’ll have a campaign to measure before and after, but if you want an overall measure, this can work too.

3. Calculate the difference

610-445=165 (See? Math is fun sometimes! If not, no worries, this is the only math in this whole post)
This equates to a 37% lift.

Now if you can pair that metric with other traditional metrics for measuring an increase in awareness (i.e. by doing surveys, cross referencing with media mentions/reactions etc.) you probably have a pretty compelling story to tell of increasing awareness. If the results are not positive, you can do an analysis of what didn’t work and start again.

*I’m no analysis-ninja yet so there may be better way. Feel free to weigh in if you do something different.

2. Top content

Some topics are more popular with the masses. Whether you’re tailoring a pitch for journalists, planning a theme for a corporate event or developing content for a newsletter, you may find inspiration by studying the top content pages of your site. Especially if your site has a resource centre or blog, you’ll get great clues into what people are interested in. Hey-you may even be able to use this info to help persuade a journalist that the topic you’re pitching is of interest to many.

Chances are your homepage is going to be the most popular, also if you have a client login page, that’ll likely be up there to but pay attention to content-based sites that rate highly and also seek out the not-so-popular pages, what’s different?

Also… very important here: when comparing, pay close attention to the bounce rate. This is the rate of people who landed on your site and left after only one pageview. While perhaps you drew in their interest via keywords or incoming links to that page, you lost it when they landed on the page and chose not to go anywhere else. If a top page has a high bounce rate, you may conclude that the topic was interesting-but the content did not execute it well. This can also help you plan future content.

3. Referring sites

One of the most powerful web metrics is referring sites-this is because much of how Google measures the relevance of your site is dependent on links you receive from other sites (and how relevant those sites are themselves). So the people who link to you are not only doing you a favour, they’re also potential allies. PR is all about building relationships and this metric can lead you to the right people. Alternately, if people who should be linking to you are not, maybe you’re not targeting properly or not reaching your audience. Now you know.

This is just barely scratching the surface of how PR can use web analytics for measurement. If this post has been successful in whetting your appetite for analytics, I strongly suggest the following resources to learn more:

• Occam’s Razor (Avinash Kaushik’s analytics blog)
• Web Analytics Demystified – Eric T. Peterson is another recognized expert on analytics
• Complete Web Monitoring – O’Reilly Media book by Sean Power and Allistair Croll
• Jim Sterne’s blog -  expert on eMetrics and marketing optimization
• Institute for PR Whitepaper on PR using Web Analytics - a more in-depth overview of why it’s important.

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!!!

As we get down to the short strokes and anticipation builds, the question is, who will light the Olympic Cauldron?

Chances are, this decision was made long ago and it’s one of the best kept secrets of these Olympic games.

Speculation has run rampant in both traditional and social media. A poll conducted Feb 1-2 by Angus Reid and commissioned by TSN and the Globe and Mail, found the most popular choice to light the cauldron was hockey great Wayne Gretzky at 25 per cent. Paraplegic athlete Rick Hansen was next at 17per cent, followed by Cindy Klassen and then Nancy Greene.

Betty Fox, mother of National hero Terry Fox, was 6th at 10 per cent.  Recently, however, there has been a big push through social media for Betty Fox to light the cauldron. A group created on Facebook urging organizers to pick Betty Fox has nearly 120,000 members and support on Twitter is growing.

So why was Betty Fox 10 per cent in the survey if there is such an outpouring of support on Facebook and Twitter?

Well, first it’s important to note that Betty Fox was 24 per cent in her home province of BC. Also, the survey was done at the beginning of the month and support for her has recently started to take root.

Therefore, the issue seems to be that Betty Fox and her son Terry, have just recently started to creep back into our National consciousness.

During the month of January, leading up to the poll, Betty Fox received less than 2 per cent of the new coverage Gretzky received. However, during this time the lighting of the cauldron was also the furthest thing from the media’s focus. Of all stories that dealt with Betty Fox and Gretzky, less than 2 per cent of the combined stories focused on the lighting of cauldron.

Justifiably, the media’s focus was pointed at issues such as disaster relief in Haiti and, coincidentally, Gretzky was involved with a telethon to help provide support to Haiti. In the month of January over 25 per cent of coverage that Gretzky received was in regards to the telethon.

Also, being in the throes of hockey season and the World Juniors you don’t require analysis to see where the lion share of his other coverage went.

However, with 5 days to go until the lighting of the cauldron, all of a sudden, people and the media started to take notice and the issue has become a hot subject. During the last 5 days, Betty Fox has received 12 times the amount of coverage.

Betty Fox's print coverage for the Month of February.

In my opinion, if a poll was taken today, Betty Fox would be the overwhelming choice, because of the influence that traditional media has and the polarizing effect social media has to change opinion.

Also, the reason why most people chose Gretzky back in February was the influence of the media, simply because at the time, because of other coverage, he was more in our National consciousness. However, as we get closer to the lighting of the cauldron, people will think more of who will light it.

The decision that I believe was already made long ago, will be what most people would have ultimately chosen once they had time to discuss and think about the issue, and I believe it will be Betty Fox.

As usual in any community, debates are standard fare.  In the PR measurement community, two ongoing discussions centre around the use of advertising value equivalencies (AVEs) and the term ROI.  (More on the latter at a later date.)

Where AVEs are concerned, there seem to be two extreme views – they’re useless as effective measurement tools or they serve as a valuable evaluation methodology.

I, like many others I’m sure, tend to fall in the middle.

I believe AVEs can be very useful if they’re used to measure outputs, i.e., to evaluate the practitioner’s abilities and capabilities in attracting media attention. The information gathered also can help direct subsequent campaigns.

More importantly, perhaps, is that high AVEs can help justify publicity expenditures to organizational bean counters.  In other words, they produce a figure that can help budget holders see the value in spending money to garner media publicity.

One example of this is the space trip Guy Laliberté (Cirque de Soleil) launched (literally) in 2009, partially I’m sure for his own enjoyment but also to promote his One Drop Foundation, a nonprofit organization he created to increase awareness of the millions of people who don’t have access to clean water.

Was it worth the $35 million he spent on his own personal star trek?

He and many others, I believe, would say “yes.”

According to Montreal’s Influence Communication, the media coverage (television, Internet, radio, and newspaper) generated by his space visit  reached a media audience of 878.8 million people in 71 countries. Computed with no weighting or factoring, the AVE was valued at more than $592 million. Where the foundation is concerned, 92 per cent of the coverage was earned between Sept. 30 and Oct. 14 when his Poetic Social Mission in Space show was broadcast.

To a bean counter, this is the equivalent of a juicy porterhouse steak!  .

However, and here’s what puts me in the middle, while the measurement of the outputs show great value, what about the outcomes with target audiences?

Was there an increase in awareness of the foundation among key publics and stakeholders?  If so, did this awareness generate positive perceptions?  Did more potential donors and key opinion leaders engage with the foundation?  Did donations to the foundation increase?

If nothing happened back here on earth to benefit the foundation, the trip and that wonderful AVE add up to a lot of sizzle – but no steak.

Claudine Wilson is a senior associate with MediaMiser. This post was re-posted from her own blog, PRHunter, with permission.

Please take this post with a grain of salt. However, this has been a really weird week in both the world of sports and the Twittosphere.

This week, we had cases of politicians and public figures tweeting stuff they shouldn’t, which of course made it to the mainstream press, making the person who made the inappropriate tweet look foolish and requiring them to make an apology.

In the world of sports, the FIFA World Cup (Soccer/Football) is reeling from an extremely contentious goal scored by the French National team over Ireland, knocking the Irish out of the upcoming World Cup in South Africa.

So, what do these two things have in common? Well today, Thierry Henry, the French player who passed the ball with his hand (which should have negated the goal, sending Ireland to the World Cup) was reported by the Telegraph to have apologized on Twitter. You can see his apology on his Twitter page.

Now, I’m not saying it was inappropriate of Henry to say he’s sorry on Twitter. In fact, I believe this is a very good forum to do so, and many politicians and public figures may want to take note. That said, for the mainstream media reporting on Tweets of this nature, let’s be honest, it’s made for an interesting and very weird week.

Therefore, in the spirit of this very weird week, I suggest we develop a terminology for issuing apologies on Twitter.

I went to a Twitter glossary and found terminology for almost everything, except an apology. Since Twitter is now broadcasting apologies and, in many cases, is creating reasons for people (or tweeple) to apologize, we need a Twitter term for an apology.

Do you have a suggestion? Leave a comment below…

Resources:

• Nearly a third of the members of Parliament are on Twitter bandwagon (Canadian Press)
• MP tweets herself into hot water (Sun media)
• Halak agent faces Twitter backlash (CBC)
• Thierry Henry apologises for handball on Twitter (Telegraph)
• Thierry Henry’s Twitter page
• Twitter Glossary

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.

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.

Being the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) at MediaMiser, I’m constantly having to prioritize projects. Developing a successful application is about solving real problems and constantly being weary of cool ideas that add no value.

MediaMiser has been successful, in part because we’ve avoided features that add no value to our customers — features that are more cool than useful.

That said, six months ago we had to make a decision on whether or not to leverage Twitter content. The hard questions were asked:

• Was Twitter a flash in the pan, or is it here to stay?
• Does Twitter provide real value, or is it a forum for vacuous banter?

To figure that out, I had to experience Twitter first hand. I had to become Jane Goodall living with the apes — hence my user handle icon.

I registered myself on Twitter and decided to act like a good monkey and play nice with the locals.

What I found is that Twitter has real value and fills a void that other social media have problems addressing. Soon after, we started developing processes for collecting and analyzing twitter content in the MediaMiser platform.

What communication problem does Twitter solve?

Many refer to Twitter as a micro-blog. Twitter has a text limit of 140 characters–imposed so that Twitter could be made compatible with SMS messaging on cell phones.

That said, cell phone compatibility is not the only value of Twitter. Twitter has developed into a communications platform that addresses many different issues more efficiently than other media.

Blogging alternative

Blogs are a great way to share and broadcast information. However, maintaining a blog can be a challenge for the average person and many times people have only a little bit to say. The 140 character limitation of Twitter provides a less formal and time-consuming medium for the self-conscientious writer to update the public.

Many business professionals are turning to Twitter because it’s less time consuming than a blog. Blogs have to be well-thought out (especially for executives) and, in many cases, executives don’t have the time. Transparency, however, is important in maintaining the trust of staff and clients.

An easy to use two-way RSS feed

RSS feeds are an excellent way of providing and consuming news information. Many people use RSS feeds to keep up with techniques specific to their professional field or areas of interest. RSS feeds, however,  don’t allow for instant and two-way communications.  Twitter does.

Sharing news

Whether it’s from your website, blog,  or a news site, Twitter provides an excellent forum for re-broadcasting or sharing news information.

Forum for Corporate and Consumer related issues

Twitter offers consumers a forum for elliciting product information or providing both positive and negative feedback on products or services.  Conversely, Twitter also provides companies and organizations a mechanism to respond quickly to issues and get feedback to improve their company or organization. At the same time, companies and organizations can demonstrate and project transparency to the public, which evokes trust.

Networking and facilitating business

Twitter provides a platform for people to foster relationships and businesses to promote their brand through simply having a Twitter presence. Also, as mentioned before, Twitter also allows companies and organizations to broadcast news.

Many journalists and opinion leaders are also using Twitter to cross-promote themselves. In many cases, journalists will leak information on Twitter to create a buzz or communicate live events. During the 2009 NHL entry draft, I followed Darren Dregger and received news and draft information before it was officially published on the TSN web site.

Furthermore, using the courts, a law firm attempted to prevent a British daily newspaper from reporting a question in the British Parliament. However, outrage ensued on Twitter and other social media. The publication ban was later rescinded, partly because of the outrage on Twitter and partly because of the realization that even if there was a ban, there was no way of censoring Twitter.

Final thoughts

By leveraging the Twitter information within MediaMiser, we were able to perform competitive analysis and issues management, and identify pending issues for our clients, etc…  However, most interestingly, we were also able to correlate news information and measure the viral effect of a news story. We successfully demonstrated  the viral relationship between traditional and social media by analyzing the United Breaks Guitars issue.

Will Twitter continue to be an important communications tool? Only time will tell. It’s possible it could be displaced by a newer medium that more effectively addresses the same issues as Twitter.

That said, even media that Twitter has supplanted have not disappeared, and the same will probably be said of Twitter when other new media emerge.

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?

Have you ever jotted down an idea for a blog—then let it swirl around in your brain for awhile to get your thoughts in order? I do this all the time and quite often never get around to writing the blog in the end.  I’m trying to find a cure for this laziness, I think it’s called Twitter.

This was just the case a few weeks back when I read the first half of a feature story in the August (print) edition ofVanity Fairabout Politico–a politically obsessed news organization that reports every whisper heard in Washington on-demand.

On the first go around I had only read page one of the feature and I was already thinking about the great blog post this story was going to make about how Politico could salvage the future of newspapers.  You see, the sub-headline read as follows

Four old-media veterans may have solved the future of news with the Politico Web site, whose audience of six million obsessives and insiders consumes–and feeds–a real-time download of power data. The twist? Politico’s print version is what’s helped make it profitable.

few paragraph’s into the story I was extremely intrigued.  Four mainstream print guys had bucked the institution, created their own gig, figured out what their audience craved, and were profitable…and get this: it was the print edition that was helping them roll in profits.

They had 100 staffers, 6.7 million unique monthly visitors for politico.com, and seemed to scoop all the mainstream media on a daily basis.  What was the secret to their success that they could share with the rest of the media world? I was curious to find out and blog about it—but got pulled away from the story with something more pressing.

A week later I finished reading the article, and to my dismay, there was no secret.  There were no profits. Just projections of perhaps breaking even according to the CEO.

‘it appears….according to C.E.O. Fred Ryan, that Politico, paying its staffers at nearly the level that The Washington Post pays (starting salaries for reporters at the Post are about $45,000 per year), has hit breakeven.’

As the story unfolds we find out the online advertising wasn’t strong enough to keep it afloat, so a print version with almost verbatim copy is being produced as a freebie. The additional ad revenue from print is bringing in just enough to help keep it going.   Unfortunately, despite how much politico’s love Politico, they had not as I hoped figured out a secret business model for media to thrive.   All of their ideas have already been tried by mainstream media in attempts to survive:

• • Pay journalists peanuts. Check.
  • Build up our online audience. Check.
  • Help journalists become trusted brands. Check.
  • Scoop the competition. Check.
  • Try a freebie print version supported by ads. Check.

I’m definitely being a little unfair to Politico; building an online audience of 6.7 million people with a century mark of employees is a great success story.  But the sub-headline of the story had promised me so much more—it had sparked a good idea for the blog and I thought I knew what the message would be.  And there’s the saving grace and an actual link back to media analysis. You can never judge an article by just the headline or even the first few paragraphs.  To properly assess an article the full story needs be taken into account, and inherently that is problem with automated sentiment analysis the way it is being done today. It can take words and phrases out of context (or in this case in context) and not properly relay the right information to decision makers in an analysis report.

Over the years we’ve relied on our analysts to provide clients with a human touch–including toning and sentiment analysis. I’m a big believer in automation – and I think there are strides being made to increase accuracy and insights – but any proper media analysis program needs to have human intervention at various checkpoints to ensure the information being shared can be trusted and acted upon.  Otherwise you might just think that the solution to the newspaper industry’s woes have been solved…I’m still waiting, but hopeful.