Turning News Into Knowledge

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!!!

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.

Made a list, checked it twice, and now the MediaMiser office is busy stuffing envelopes and licking stamps to get our holiday cards out the door.

In the meantime, we thought you might enjoy this Snowman Skiing game, which was part of last year’s gift to our clients. Be careful though–it’s highly addictive!

Happy Holidays from everyone at MediaMiser

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…

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