Why PR is losing the social media battle: Day Three

Argh, is it really only 3 days since I started mobilising people to #fixPR?

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

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