Turning News Into Knowledge

Today there are far more “influencers” than ever before. An influencer is simply someone with an audience who can influence the buying behaviour of that audience. The ultimate example is Oprah—when she endorses a product or service, millions flock to it.

As magical as that would be for any business, it’s definitely not easy to be endorsed by Oprah. The good news, however, is influence isn’t just for celebrities anymore. There are hundreds and likely even thousands of influencers blogging and on social networks who can get the word out about your product or service and in a beneficial way. Think of it as an extension of media relations.

However, it’s not exactly like media relations—influencers usually aren’t journalists, and many don’t take nicely to an unsolicited pitch. So how can you reach influencers and get a positive return? Here’s a few pointers:

• Make sure it’s the right influence: Don’t be fooled by numbers—these days people can build up large numbers of Twitter followers, but still not carry a lot of influence. Influence involves a lot more than big numbers. Google the person, find out what others say about him or her and most importantly make sure his/her audience is relevant to what you do!

• Forget pitching, build real relationships: If the influencers you’re targeting are involved in your industry, you should have no problem finding common ground. Invite them for coffee, seek them out at trade shows, stop pitching and take the time to really get to know them first!

• Create a spark: When people talk about products they really love—it’s obvious and that passion is what attracts others to follow suit. So instead of asking an influencer to talk about your product, consider giving him/her access and guidance. Hopefully she/he will fall in love and want to talk about it. Also, look to your existing user base for influencers, if they’re already there and in love, approach them about making the love more public and offer to help.
  

• Be weary of paying for influence: Many do, and I’m not saying it can’t be a successful strategy, but know what you’re getting into first. Last year, the FTC passed a law stating that bloggers are required to disclose payment or other perks received from companies. The reason for this is because readers are less likely to trust an endorsement if money is involved (and probably rightly so). If you do choose to go the pay route, make sure you know the law and won’t get yourself (or your target influencers) in trouble. Also be sure to measure the impact and ROI of paying for influence and make sure it’s worth your investment.

• Measure your success: While it’s important to measure the buzz generated from an influencer’s endorsement, make sure you can trace it back to your bottom line as well. A great way to do this, is to offer a discount to the influencer’s readers and provide a unique discount code. Or simply ask the person to use a custom URL to measure traffic and how it converts.

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.