#fixPR: The Doctor is in

I was kind of hoping by mid-week some other people might’ve chimed in with best practice and ideas to #fixpr, which a few have. Here’s what I’ve spotted so far if you want to add your #fixpr posts/all-time favourites  in the comments I’ll keep updating the list:

Tone

• Hannah J ‘When trying to fix PR, why should you think of the Golden Gate bridge?‘

Blogger outreach

• Kerry Gaffney ‘Proactive blogger engagement – Should PRs bother?‘
• Jed Hallam ‘Blogger outreach: why you must do it‘
• Chris Nee ‘Blogger outreach: A bloggers view‘

SEO

• Paul Sutton ‘SEO for PR: Understanding keywords and backlinks‘

Image: denise carbonell

Where did it go wrong and how can we fix it….?

Measurement

PR agrees to be measured by some really dumb things sometimes

Before I even continue I have to reference Measurement Camp as probably the best group looking at this issue and pro actively solving it with industry-wide collaboration. They have an excellent wiki and hold regular meetups. This will probably be more useful to you than anything you’ll read here.

So listen, PR is not a Google Adwords campaign. Yet time and again PRs agree to, and dare I say even suggest, that a campaign’s success hangs on whether it drove traffic to a website or microsite. While I’m not saying that social media measurement shouldn’t look to drive traffic, it doesn’t have to be the be all and end all for a few reasons:

• PR activity will never drive comparable volume traffic like Search and Advertising campaigns
• A link resulting from PR activity is online ‘forever’ so, unlike a Search campaign you shouldn’t be evaluated within a set time
• PR links don’t have conversion rates like online advertising does, that’s because they’re supposed to do very different things, so why apply the same measurement?
• Sometimes a website or microsite isn’t the core offering, so consumers ultimately aren’t very interested to go there

You'll never win comparing apples and oranges

I know it’s not uncommon for a Marketing Director to say “Well I’ll get more bang for my buck by putting money I would’ve given towards PR into online advertising and SEO.”

Come on PR! You don’t need to compete in that way. You are well versed in how to debate the old PR vs Advertising issue. You just need to update the script to a social media version. [In fact, one advantage to online PR activity is for the first time the traditional PR metric of  word-of-mouth can actually be measured by a host of “buzz monitoring” tools.]

Ok, so what *should* you measure? Well you *should* set some objectives first. We know it’s bad practice but it’s amazing how many social media drives are initiated and then everyone gets to the end and isn’t sure (or even worse, disagrees) whether it was successful.

In addition setting an objective means that you may not know exactly what to measure but you’ll know what you want to achieve and can check a range of data to see if you’re doing that.

Let’s use an analogy that three different businesses wanting to start something in social media are like three people who decide to take up running.
Person 1 – wants to run a marathon
Person 2 – wants to be fitter for their 5-a-side team
Person 3 – has just moved to the city and wants to join a club to meet people

All three will approach learning to run in different ways because they have very different objectives (i.e. you wouldn’t all jump on Twitter and try and grow to as many followers as possible)

Imagine if we said at the end of a couple of months “Ok, who can run the longest and furthest. That person’s the winner”. Obviously  Person 1 would’ve been trained for endurance and perhaps completed a marathon by now, it wouldn’t be fair to hold the other runners to the same measurement when they wanted to achieve different things.

Let’s say Person 2’s five-a-side team had won every game and they’d managed to play each game the whole way through without alternating with other players. W00T, they’re a winner!

Person 3 may not be a great runner at all, but have made lots of friends in the process, which was their key aim in running in the first place. Yay, they’re a winner too!

What about if Person 2 also found that they’d lost a stone and reduced their cholesterol? That would be a happy side benefit, no? You’d be mad to say “sorry, that’s not of interest”.

My point is…are you still with me… you have to measure what’s important to the business and you also have to include positive and unexpected benefits as part of learning what works in social media for a particular brand.

If you’re realistic about what’s possible from the outset (remember you wouldn’t measure offline PR directly by sales, don’t make the same mistake online) then you can define your own benchmarks and success metrics from a range of options.

Being facetious I propose the following social media measurement scale. I call it the “Ahrens Scale”a.k.a “The Good Thing, Bad Thing scale”

Here’s how you would apply it.
Drove traffic = Good Thing
Resulted a in a lot of negative commentary and formation of a hate group on Facebook = Bad Thing
Got a link from a blog or website = Good Thing
No increase in online conversation in any way = Bad Thing
Your online content re-purposed and re-used by online fans = Good Thing
Data capture = Good Thing
Rich media content like images or video was submitted by users = Good Thing
You created a Microsite = Bad Thing (Just kidding, I have a love/hate relationship with microsites)

Who could fix this?

1. Monitoring providers: Need to sell their products based on measurement benefits “you can track and measure X, Y, Z”
2. Agencies: Update your social media knowledge, study good practice, so you can lead on metrics

Solution? Become expert in what can be measured, then apply relevant metrics to pre-defined objectives. Shout about unexpected side benefits which result from activity.
Crib notes:

• It’s a no brainer: Set objectives before activity starts
• Don’t measure by non-PR measurables
• Look for side benefits and then perhaps use as benchmark or KPI for next time
• Don’t build microsites (Kidding again!)

Image: Dano

PR doesn’t understand the internet

PRs, I love you, but you still don’t understand the internet. I don’t mean in the way that my mum doesn’t understand the internet, but basic stuff like Google.

A few years ago we worked with a national newspaper to get a write up on a client, this included that all important link from the publication’s website to the client’s website. Links are good right? Between patting ourselves on the back I called the client

Me: “We got [national newspaper] to write about you and they linked to your site!”

Client: “Meh. Yeah we only got about two traffic referrals from the article so big whoop. BTW I just spoke to our SEO agency, could you instead get us coverage from [other major news site] and [another niche site]?”

After smashing the phone in frustration while dying a little inside hanging up I decided to call my client’s Search agency. SEO is considered as evil, if not more so, than PR. I didn’t know what to expect but here’s how it went…

Me: “We do PR for CLIENT and I need to know what you need us to know”

SEO: “Wow! Thanks for calling! It’s so great to hear from a client’s PR agency. You guys do great work which is very valuable to us.”

The internet: Revolutionary but not evolutionary

I’m sorry -  Great work? Valuable? The SEO agency went further than stroking our egos. They sent over a list of the top sites, ranked in order of importance, where it was important for our client to be mentioned or linked from. They also sent us a list of keywords we should be including in all campaign activity and offered to check over press releases and make sure they were optimised.

Basically they’d handed me an online media target list, tweaked our messaging, and profiled our target audience in some detail. And they weren’t just being nice [Incidentally they were nice but were mainly giving me the info to support their work].

That’s when I realised that for all my lofty ideals about social media and communities, influencers and engagement; I didn’t really know how the internet really worked, yet I was trying to harness it for clients.

At the heart of this point is Search, but also the ways people use the web to collate and share information once they’ve found it, and online purchasing processes where E-Commerce is in place.

Nothing illustrated more to me recently that PRs still don’t get important concepts like Search more than a recent PR week debate around SMNRs [SMRs. Worth they paper they're printed on?]

Some PRs were talking about SMNRs as if they were just a paper press release on the internet. Many looked at it with an old PR mentality without considering how they might be part of a wider online marketing mix. Of the six opinions captured, and a host of comments, only a few showed an understanding of how an optimized and online release might fit with new PR methodology (Adam Zand, Ian McKee, Mark O’Toole, Ann Krauss – you stood out to me).

Yeah, yeah, I’m no expert but I have tried to broaden my knowledge of the web and internet marketing over the years.

What I know now can still only fill the back of  a napkin but here it is:

1. When PR and SEO aligns they maximise each other’s value
2. PR actually creates content (great for Organic vs. Paid Search) which is beneficial online over time -  not just the duration of an Adwords campaign
3. The internet is tracking lots of useful stuff, go find and use that data
4. Social media activity can work with online sales [Just don't use it as the only yard-stick. More to come on measurement]
5. Most social features aren’t just ‘nice to have’ web add-ons but powerful tools which serve important functions
6. Knowing how to do even a basic Boolean Search has to be learnt I’m afraid
7. There’s usually a tool, service, or application that can make your job easier. Example: Nobody has to read 50 blog posts a day, use an RSS reader people! (I’m not joking it still kills me how many PRs don’t know about this) Paid or free,  9 times out of 10 there is a tool you could be using – and where there isn’t, well, you might have identified a potential revenue stream by creating it and reselling to others

Who could fix this?

1. Agencies: Invest in extensive internal education. Don’t stop there, create partnerships with specialist service providers who complement your expertise
2. In-house: Internally, make sure you’re working with your web team. Externally, connect relevant agencies to work together

SOLUTION? Gone are the days of keeping everyone in their boxes. If we’re going to benefit from everything the internet has to offer, we have to use everything the internet has to offer.

Crib notes:

• At a minimum PR and SEO should be working together
• The data’s out there somewhere. Find it and use it
• The web’s  a wonderful place, your PR team’s knowledge should reflect that
• You can’t do it all on your own: use good tools and work with good people

Image: ChrisL_AK

This frustrates me immensely as not only is it often true but I’ve always thought the PR industry has the most potential to rock social media strategy. PR is all about word-of-mouth right? [Reference great ad explaining the differences between PR, Advertising and co.]  So, why the bad rap?

I’m dedicating this week to a series of posts on where it went wrong and how to fix it. Starting with…

Campaign strategy vs. Brand strategy

Social media has tended to be funded on a campaign by campaign basis – short term activity.  Social media work by nature relies on building community and generating conversation – longer term commitment.

Traditional PRs cultivated their community, a.k.a. journalists, year round. A skilled PR could have a useful conversation any day of the week with a handful of key influencers they’d established a trusted relationship with.

Social media comes along and boom, the list of potential influencers suddenly grew by hundreds.  The tools needed to identify, sort, and categorise them are slow to appear

Slow and steady wins the race

On top of that,  categories fragmented further. Instead of being able to talk to people who broadly cover ‘Consumer Tech’, ‘B2B tech’, ‘Mobile tech’,  or ‘all of the above’, you need to be able to recall contacts with an interest in location-based service applications specifically for Symbian devices with a love of LOLCats and such like.  Sometimes there’s entire communities you’ve never heard of and it’s hard to define who, if anyone, would even be interested in a new Symbian LOLCat app.

It’s not possible to build trusted relations and have brand conversations in the short-term. Three months, the traditional quarterly budget or common campaign cycle, is not long enough.

If PR does succeed then what happens after the campaign has gone? Who looks after the abandoned profile or answers requests from a new blogger ‘friend’ who has suddenly moved down the list of importance?

The effort it takes to conceive and execute a social media campaign vs. investing in a longer-term brand strategy strikes me as a false economy.

I personally turn down a lot of short-term project work these days because I think it’s not possible to achieve much beyond securing a few blog posts. I also don’t like hearing from bloggers and community contacts that they weren’t looked after beyond the life-cycle of a specific campaign – I’m not in this industry for the short-term.

PR agencies with numerous mouths to feed don’t necessarily have that luxury but for their own sanity I hope they’re moving clients away from achieving short-term online objectives now. For in-house PR … what are you waiting for?!

Who could fix this?

1. Clients: Stop giving piecemeal social media projects to agencies
2. Agencies: Don’t let being competitive hold the industry back. Be brave and say ‘No’ sometimes

SOLUTION? Banish the term “can we get it out to some blogs?” from your vocabulary. Identify your most relevant communities [and not just blogs] from the start of your social media strategy and make that strategy brand-wide. Later you can build out to support campaign tactics.

Crib notes:

• Develop ongoing and long-term brand relationships
• Suspend traditional expectations like coverage
• Add value: Ask not what can my community do for me but what can I do for my community?

If your business needs to change direction and target varying communities manically throughout the year then your problems are probably bigger than social media.

Image: Rennett Stowe

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!

Al Ries, Jack Trout

I’d heard this book was a staple for PR & Marketing professionals, but then when one of my favourite authors Tim Ferris recommended it as one of his top 5 must-have books, I finally decided to grab myself a copy.

What’s to like about it:

• Easily digestible chapters
• Tonnes of real world examples
• Doesn’t rely on extensive previous knowledge of Marketing, Branding, or Public Relations

What’s not to like about it:

• While the examples are great they are very US-centric and many desperately out of date as to sometimes even counter-illustrate how the rules work
• Some people get put off by the first two rules.. I don’t, I’m just saying *some* people do

Tim Ferriss says that he uses these rules as a sanity check before launching and marketing any new business and I can see why – Sensible, reliable and easy-to-understand advice makes this a great reference book I often refer to before I start planning.

For a sneak peak of the content there is a free summary here.

At the risk of being throttled for saying this here, I thought the content was great but the lack of any interactivity (aside from a Live Chat option which was closed) seemed sadly absent and a bit of a missed opportunity.

The best part of the information is the carefully sourced and collated peer-to-peer observations from NZers who’ve been through it:

“I had massive reverse culture shock when I returned. Probably bigger than when I first arrived in the UK. Things I noticed: very slow nasal accents.. to name a few” – Loic Taylor-Bizet, Quarantine Officer

“I was shocked at the media – newspapers and television. So many ads!” – Vince Powell, Lawyer

These kind of personal observations are invaluable and inherently shareable. I would’ve thought it a no-brainer to at least whack a forum on to this section of the site to further enable people to intereact with and answer eachother’s questions.  Or what about the potential for a Social Networking element to help people connect with those who have or will be returning – again this could’ve been as simple as integrating Facebook Connect?

In fairness the Career Services parent site this content is connected with doesn’t incorporate any UGC. It may have  been decided as not appropriate or too costly to manage once in place. Or maybe there’s a Phase II? Anyway I better pipe down or I won’t be welcome back any time soon.

Image: kevindooley

Recommended Reading:

VisitBritain and user generated content by Richard Britton. Slideshare presention on the process VisitBritain went through when it decided to integrate UGC into the website

Social Media gives more returning visitors than Search by Joshua March. Suprising stats on visitor loyalty when referred from Social Media, and in particular Social Networks.

The Nightmare before Christmas

It’s a Saturday morning and 7 days until Christmas. You get a call that your client (who you are not retained to manage crisis communications for) has been involved in a major transport fail. Reports are rife online that passengers went without food and water for hours, babies couldn’t get clean diapers, and information was almost non-existent. Twitter is aflame with criticism including attacks on a Twitter profile @Eurostar_UK which is in fact not in use by your client’s organisation.

To find out how We Are Social dealt with this nightmare scenario Robin Grant has posted a detailed write-up. I encourage you to read it and file as an example of “Best practice when the sh*t hits the fan”.

Why Best Practice?

I am astounded at the number of attacks which have been levied at We Are Social’s handling of the situation which has descended in to some nasty critiques of the agency’s work in Social Media in general. [Like most, I know many of the people employed at the agency and have also worked with them indirectly via client work with Attentio and Tempero].

Firstly, I think the guys at the agency performed admirably under the circumstances. It’s easy for people jump up and down saying “if these are experts they should’ve done better”. If you’ve never worked in a service based industry it might be hard to understand the cold-hard facts which are:

- You can only perform the services you are retained to do

- Just because you advise a client, doesn’t mean they always act on your recommendations

The situation with Eurostar is not an unusual one. In my experience 90% of brands hiring a service provider to manage some sort of Social Media activity do it with a specific campaign in mind before looking at their brand strategy as a whole. Should we continue to say that all agencies are rubbish because this is the current culture? Nope. Couldn’t we just keep working as a whole to show brands Best Practice in the industry instead of continually focusing on what hasn’t worked?

Secondly, as Rachel Clarke has already pointed out, most of the criticism seems to be focused on the use of Twitter rather than the overall communications problem. Why are people getting excited that it was a “social media fail” when the entire situation sounds like a balls up from the moment the trains broke down.

Blood on the tracks

I imagine if I, or someone I knew, was stuck on the train I’d be really irate and probably venting on whatever media possible – Twitter or otherwise. But what’s making me irate today is that some have used this as  another opportunity for petty sniping and criticism of those working in our industry.

We Are Social are not perfect (probably) but in my view they’re still one of the good guys. To Robin, Nathan, and the team, keep your chins up. Unjustified criticism does pass.

Image: austinevan

Recommended reading:
How to prevent your own Eurostar moment by Andrew Grill “…information is so freely available, sites like twitter can completely bypass armies of PR people. The public can now easily sense if information is being withheld and therefore start to criticise those withholding it (or anyone else close by).”
Social Media as a crisis management tool by Matt Rhodes. 5 Observations on how others have managed past crises.

Anyway, I’m back now with a simplified category structure and a few new things that I want to write about – Book Reviews for one. I am a business & industry book junkie and constantly telling people to read stuff. I thought I’d start collating my thoughts here to save you time & money finding out which ones are best.

My old site was on wordpress with a redirect from www.grapevine-consulting.com. Hopefully everyone has found me again here and updated their RSS readers with the new feed.

After half a day, and about £60, my long-awaited plans to improve the look and feel of my blog have resulted in, well, I’ve actually made it worse.

It’s not that I underestimated the complexities of installing wordpress and messing about with it but after having conquered the free version over here http://grapevineconsulting.wordpress.com/ well over a year ago I wanted to move things on a bit.

I could’ve paid someone but find it’s useful to try this this stuff at least once  so I understand it a little better if it crops up in client work. Well, I can admit when I’m beat. Please bear with this ugly looking site until I can find someone to rescue me.

Well, that’s what I always tell PRs when I run training sessions. Why? Because I find it impossible to explain to twitter newbies exactly how and when it *might* be OK to do so. But am I too hardline?

Maybe.

I mean when I run training sessions most people are new to Twitter full stop, forget the marketing applications (ick) of the service. But could PRs have an authentic and relevant conversation about a client on Twitter? Hmmm…

Willing to accept I am not the Social Media equivalent of a Delphi Priestess I instead asked some of my on- and offline writing contacts to “B*tch about the Twitter Pitch”. Over to them……

The majority said:
“Not at all” or “Not unless I know you”“

However some pointed out that if you know eachother, you already know how they prefer to be pitched, and would have their email/phone contacts to do so.

Of those who were fine with it (and I’m not listing their names to avoid them getting inundated) they advised:

• DM’s preferable
• Further to the above, ONE DM ONLY, preferably with a link to further info
• Once you’ve said it,  then leave it with them, don’t pester
• Relevancy is still important! Don’t just pitch them because they have a lot of followers…
• Works best if you can see they’re online and having a relevant conversation, otherwise email would be better

In general Twitter feels quite personal to people, they would prefer for you not to try and start a “business” conversation with them unless they open themselves up to it, for example with a request for information via Twitter.

Oh, and most said the personal nature of Twitter went double for Facebook. So don’t switch your pitch to there.

Good luck out there.