In the current PRSA newsletter, former Beehive colleague Katharine Mudra published a great article about the evolution of the newsroom (download article/PDF). Her point that PR professionals must be nimble and creative to meet newsroom needs is well taken – the news community is ever faster, more resourceful and publishing in more channels every day.

But as every great PR person knows, there is a fine line between meeting the needs of the media and meeting the needs of your clients. So, navigating the evolving newsroom is only part of the game. Here are three perceptions we can change to help clients minimize fear of the new news climate and demonstrate the value of the changing coverage mix:

Perception: If we aren’t talking about it, nobody will cover it.
Reality: The days of “command and control” communication are long gone. A news tip is only a click away, so the chances are pretty good that SOMEBODY’s talking, even if you aren’t.

However, this is not always a bad thing. By monitoring both traditional and digital media (using either paid tools like Cision, Radian 6 and Nielsen’s Buzz Logic or free tools like Twilert, Google News and Technorati), you can keep an eye on what’s being said about your business or brand, as well as your competitors and any trends or issues that might be of interest. In this case, listening to the conversation can inform your communication strategies – when, where and how to participate to tell your best story and reach your most important audiences.

Perception: If we aren’t in the newspaper or on mainstream TV nobody gets our news. (Or, if we aren’t on Twitter we’ll never reach anybody.)
Reality: We are seeing a shift in the media mix, due to the economy, new tools and the changing needs of consumers. The honest truth is that there is great value in both traditional and digital media coverage. Abandoning one for the other is rarely the right choice. Looking at your audience, your goals and how you will measure success should inform your communication strategy and give you a foundation to demonstrate how PR, marketing, sponsorships and advertising are working together to meet business goals.

Perception: You can’t measure PR, especially not social media.
Reality: Yes, you can and should be measuring PR and social media. If you are clear at the outset about what you want to achieve you should be able to measure both the effort (how many placements, where, were key messages delivered, was branding included, what was the ad value, etc.) and the result (was there a sales spike, were there more visits to the Web site, what percentage of promotions were redeemed). The key is to set goals and establish measurement criteria early and integrate agency and corporate resources to arrive at the big picture.

The bottom line is that even though the newsroom and the media mix are changing, there is still a powerful opportunity to tell your story, when and where it matters most.

Nicki Gibbs
Group Director

Last night I watched the live feed for another solid MIMA event – what a great community of interactive and digital folk in the Twin Cities. The topic? Analytics (with speakers Chris Wexler, @chriswexler, and Kristen Findley, @kdfindley).

The use of data and analytics is an always-important subject – but even more so given the increasing volume of conversations happening around social media and the quest for ROI, or ROE (Return on Engagement). (Let’s remember: you can measure social media activities. More on that fun topic later this week though.) Here’s a quick recap of the MIMA event:

Analytics Aren’t for Geeks

Analytics are critical to any marketing plan. They give you a benchmark for success. And with digital/Web, you can measure it. Use that data to differentiate in a tough market.

Think about analytics in the context of, and during, an entire project, program or campaign life cycle. Consider Web site data, banners, tagging, coding, analysis and testing suggestions.

Keep the End in Mind

That means starting with the business goals. Web presence is inherently important, but what do you want it to do for you – for the business?

What do you want someone to do when they get to your site? Kristin says [paraphrased]: please don’t say “to engage.” There’s always more. Do you want visitors to complete a form? Read content? Click through to something? Be specific. Make sure the objectives are aligned the first time around so you’re not switching gears half way through the effort, ultimately creating more work later on. It’s OK to put more work upfront to save time down the road.

Remember: you’ve got program objectives that lead to Web site objectives that lead to key performance indicators to help pave the way.

Analytics are, to a degree, holistic. You have to look at the total analytics package – as in how offline activity is affected by online work.

We’re moving away from an era where analytics are all “post-” and moving into an era where data and analytics are “pre-” too.

The Speakers’ Favorite Metrics

@kdfindley “hearts bounce rates.” (And I concur. Want to improve your site’s bounce rate?) Bounce rates matter because they give an indication of how people perceive what it was that you were promising them when they hit your site. You want to keep your bounce rate low. By working on this metric, other metric improvements will improve as well.

@chriswexler likes meta metrics, particularly when you put more weight toward the things people care about on the site, such as video views or e-mail sign ups. Think about other ways of quantifying value, such as if people came to a site and blogged or went through a specific process.

While there are other important metrics, when it comes to Web analytics I’m also a fan of keyword search results (what’s driving folks to your site), referrals (what sites are driving folks to your site), site overlay reports (what clicks and calls to action are really working) as well as content (favorite, most heavily trafficked pages and length of stay). You can digest much more though through any popular Web analytics service like HitWise or Omniture.

Collaboration = Good

The analytics team can become the “objective keeper” of information – the watchdog of what delivered well and/or didn’t. Marketing teams should rely on some of this insight.

Bring the creative teams into the process so they can understand the importance of a specific objective and know what “the ask” is. Some of the best creative, yet results-oriented outcomes can come from the use of understanding good data.

Creative + technologists (and someone who can speak API) = cool outcomes.

As the analytics conversation spreads outside of the analytics group, jump common hurdles like terminology barriers with a bit of education first.

Remember: data doesn’t make decisions; people do. There’s always a story in the numbers that’s more interesting than the numbers on their own. Keep in mind that it’s 20% reporting and 80% insights.

The Speakers’ Favorite Metric Tools

Omniture (Test&Target)
Google Analytics
Atlas
Mediaplex
Webtrends

Final Thoughts

Marketers don’t make brands – consumers do. Marketers and companies influence what people think of a brand and push them in a certain direction. It’s important to know the perceived truth (and analytics can help). And that is where social dashboards can come into play – to hear what people are saying about brands. Beehive uses Radian6 to monitor the conversations for clients, but there are other good options like Nielsen BuzzLogic, Biz360 and Visible Technologies. Pay attention to sentiment though – the industry is exploring that more and more. Services that cover sentiment/insights well are lithium and Harvest, among others.

Oh, and there was this: “Data can provide serendipity.” Well said.

Katharine Mudra

Account Supervisor

The PR, social Web and e-marketing predictions continue to roll in as we head into the New Year. Everything from social media indigestion to escalating online video ad and mobile marketing spending to collaborative location mapping have all made the prediction lists.

To top them off, Peter Kim has done a fine deed in soliciting the thoughts of fourteen great minds and well-respected leaders when it comes to social media.

Check them out.

2008 has undoubtedly been a year of social media explosion – and overload. Over the last few years the changing media and technology landscapes have made for fascinating observations and experiences for public relations professionals and the brands they represent. We’ve had the continued opportunity to learn from and interact and engage with others in new ways.

But we’ve been inundated with social media too. Sarah Perez pointed out Wednesday that in 2009 entrepreneurs pitching social media toys may need to focus on “come try this, it helps” rather than “come try this, it’s new.” Let’s hope that’s the case. (And, really, that approach aligns with what as good PR counselors we should do every day for clients – you have something new? So what? What’s the benefit? Why would your customers care?)

So, as I review the prediction lists, I’m both relieved and very excited to see many of the world’s social media and social technology experts include phrases like content filtering, synchronization, auto-categorization, aggregation, better metrics (woo hoo!) and simplified measurement. Cheers to that!

Happy (almost) 2009!

Katharine Mudra

Account Supervisor

Kids born today will possibly not know what it’s like to be lost, learn how to read a map or even ask for directions, thanks to advancing and ever-present GPS technology. This same technology-savvy generation also will be faced with distinguishing the difference between paid product placement, product integration and the “old fashioned” commercial.“For younger kids, it’s not even clear what the distinction is between ads and regular programming,” says Robert Weissman, director of a watchdog group called Commercial Alert. Since the 1980s when product placement became commonplace, consumers and audiences have, for the most part, had the luxury of identifying and determining the products being marketed to them through commercials and blatant product placement.

Now, with the popularity of Tivo and DVRs allowing viewers to skip through commercials, the lines are becoming blurred as consumer product companies are increasing their spending (up 13 percent in 2007) on product placement and integration. The “you can run, but you can’t hide” theory is becoming a battle cry in c-suites of Fortune 500 companies. American Idol is the king of product integration with 4,349 placements during its’ 2007 season. Can you guess which brand? If you guessed Coca-Cola you are correct, and it’s exactly what the folks in Atlanta were determined to do – have the consumer associate their brand and product with TV’s most popular and “coolest” show. This is not product placement, it’s product integration.With product integration becoming more prevalent and better “hidden,” it begs the question of whether or not disclaimers are needed every time we see a product placement on television. It’s possible, but how do you run a disclaimer during live television – like an interview with a NASCAR driver after he gets out of the car and just happens to be thirsty for a Mountain Dew while on camera?

Is it okay for the next generation to not know when they are being marketed to? I can’t see constant disclaimers being the appropriate fix (unless we’d like to see a permanent scroll while watching American Idol), but in this age of political correctness and full disclosure, we can expect to see some significant changes in how our children’s nightly viewing experience is presented to them, the consumer.

Matt Hansen
Account Supervisor

Do you know someone who has a Nielsen metering device connected to his or her television set? I don’t. So how accurate are these ratings and what do they mean? A Feb. 21 article published in the Star Tribune recently sparked my curiosity on how the metering system works and its overall reliability.

According the Star Tribune article, the Minnesota Wild’s TV ratings have grown “145 percent from a 1.1 rating and 2 share to a 2.7/5 through 33 games” on Fox Sports Net North. Now, granted the Wild are having a better season this year, but 145 percent? Really? I have a hard time believing the average viewership went from 18,000 homes to over 46,000 homes. My question is answered further into the article (after the positive quotes from those involved with the station and the team) when we get this explanation:“FSN’s increase is a bit misleading. An engineering mistake by Nielsen Media Research meant that last year at this time 40 percent of the Twin Cities homes with Nielsen boxes were not measuring potential FSN North viewers. That problem wasn’t identified until the spring.” So why is this newsworthy if the numbers are admittedly faulty?

You would think the organization responsible for these “critical” numbers would monitor millions of TVs, right? Well, according to the Nielsen Web site they “collect information from approximately 25,000 metered households starting at about 3 a.m. each day, process approximately 10 million viewing minutes a day, and make more than 4,000 gigabytes of data available for customer access the next day.”

Does anyone believe 25,000 households accurately represents what America is watching on a daily basis? It seems like a bit of a stretch to me. There are over 301 million people living in the United States – meaning Nielsen is measuring what .0083 percent of the population is watching (assuming they all have televisions). That figure doesn’t even include restaurants, bars, airports, hotels, etc. Even if we tried to represent the estimated 113 million television households, we’d still only get a .022 percent representation.

I’m only scratching the surface on this issue, and while new technology continues to be developed, Nielsen ratings are as good as we’re going to get for now in terms of large-scale audience measurement. And, as long as it’s good enough for the networks, advertisers, and all of us buying the products they advertise, we probably cannot expect any major overhauls soon. Let’s just hope networks and advertisers are not making decisions based on a faulty 145 percent increase in viewership.

Matt Hanson
Account Supervisor