Category: online pr

Lissted adds sentiment scoring, trends and data export. Creates integrated press monitoring and reporting platform for Twitter

Realwire’s Lissted platform has added yet more interesting functionality.

First up, sentiment analysis. Each journalist Tweet now gets an automatic sentiment rating (courtesy of the Lexalytics salience engine). This means that you can now filter your journalist monitoring in terms of sentiment as well as by time and/or Klout score – in real time.

In practical terms, this means that you can monitor, say, a particular group of journalists who are talking about your brand or relevant topic – and immediately understand where the most positive and/or negative comments are coming from – and take action accordingly.

Secondly, Lissted now provides automatic trend analysis. At a generic level, you can see at a glance the current most popular topics that the press are talking about in real time. Better still (if you are a Lissted Pro user), you can analyse trends within a defined subset of journalists. So you can monitor trends within a media group that is specifically relevant to you. Certainly takes the guesswork out of what the media really is talking about on Twitter.

Finally, you now have the ability to export data out of Lissted into a spreadsheet. From a reporting standpoint, this really is the jewel in the crown. For example, you can define a specific group of journalists over a particular time period – and then export not only the Tweet content and associated data, but also Klout and sentiment scores for offline analysis. I can see this being an immensely powerful tool for determining which content has the most relevance, reach and impact. Smart PR pros are going to be able to use this to spend more time refining their content and engagement strategies rather than wasting countless hours just struggling to gather the requisite data.

Coupled with the recent announcement of dynamic Twitter lists, Lissted has evolved rapidly into a robust monitoring and reporting platform for looking specifically at the media on Twitter. Given media relations remains at the core of much PR activity, Lissted certainly seems to provide a powerful means of providing real time insight into the conversations that journalists really are having on Twitter (as well as the content they find most worthy of linking to).

Any PR who has an interest in remaining ahead of the game in media relations would do well to check it out.

Digital marketing digital pr Featured online pr

What counts as a good ReTweet level? And what impact does RTing have on clickthrough rate?

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date September 13, 2012
No Comments on What counts as a good ReTweet level? And what impact does RTing have on clickthrough rate?

Every social media guru will tell you why getting retweeted is a good thing.

RTs mean your message is being amplified.

Getting your message amplified means more people are exposed to your message and content.

And that surely is a good thing, yes?

However, I haven’t come across any stats on what constitutes a good, bad or indifferent level of retweeting.

How many RTs should you be aiming for? 5, 10, 100, 1000?

Clearly, who is doing the Retweeting has to be factored in.

Getting a single RT from someone like @stephenfry is going to gain you a lot more exposure than 1000 RTs from people who only have 1 follower each (assuming of course Stephen Fry’s follower base is a relevant audience for you).

Still – I thought it would be interesting to see what the average RT levels were for certain high profile Twitter accounts. And where possible, see if there is an impact on clickthrough rate.

I used as one of my test examples the New York Times (@nytimes) – not least of which because they still use the bit.ly URL shortener. So we have publicly available data on clickthrough rates.

Using FavStar, I could see that the all time highest RT’d @nytimes Tweet was this one, with 3776 RTs. FavStar also provides a measure of the amplification effect. It has a limit of 1000 RTs – by this measure, this particular Tweet reached at least an addiitional 317,000 Twitter users via RTing.

Bear in mind that New York Times has 6.1 million followers (without getting into the fake/inactive follower debate again here). So the ratio of RTs to followers for the NYTimes best ever RT’d Tweet is 0.06pc. (Over the last month, the average RT rate for all NYTimes Tweets is 70 – many thanks to the rather nifty Nixon McInnes ReTweet tool that allowed me to work this out very quickly).

Over the last month, the most RT’d Tweet for the NY Times has been this one. And looking at performance, it has gained 6776 clicks so far.

If we take one of the least RT’d Tweets in the last month – this one – we can see it has a substantially lower click through rate – 249 clicks.

Clearly there are some big caveats here. Factors such as the timing and content of the Tweet surely have some bearing on whether it gets Retweeted – and thus increases the likelihood of a link being clicked.

I appreciate this is hardly a scientific study – based as it is on one example. But at the very least, it should put some broad parameters on people’s expectations. If even the most followed media properties on Twitter don’t see the RTs for their Tweets reach into three figures, then the likelihood that run of the mill of accounts (ie most Twitter users) will see RTs reaching double figures is low. Then again, by focussing on those quality users whose reach and relevance has the most meaningful impact for your audience, low RT rates don’t have to be such a disappointment.

Digital marketing digital pr Featured General PR online pr tech pr Technology PR

Dynamically updated Twitter lists now possible with Lissted

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date September 6, 2012
4 Comments on Dynamically updated Twitter lists now possible with Lissted

We all know that Twitter lists can be very handy. One of the benefits of a list is that it allows you to keep track of what particular people are saying without actually having to follow them. Monitoring multiple lists in Tweetdeck or Hootsuite is certainly easier than having everything piling into your home stream

However, the main beef with lists historically has been the pain involved in maintaining them. Sure, there are some lists that you can “set and forget” (for example, if you have a fixed list of people that you know will remain stable for some time).

But what if you want to create a dynamic list? Imagine you want to maintain lists of people who match certain criteria? So long as they meet the criteria, they stay on the list – if they don’t, they get removed. PR professionals, for example, may wish to keep tabs on certain journalists because they may have Tweeted or written about things relevant to a particular client. The problem with this is that more often than not, there is a shelf life to the journalists interest and/or relevance to the list the PR person creates. Trying to manually update a list in this way is a dull, unproductive bore.

Unless I’ve missed it, I’m not yet been aware of any way of automatically maintaining Twitter lists. At least ones that might have meaning for a PR professional.

Until now that it is.

Realwire’s Lissted tool, launched back in June, already provides a neat way of both identifying relevant media for PRs to target as well monitoring journalist conversations on Twitter.

Built on a robust database of over 12,500 individual journalists and media outlets, Lissted lets you have see exactly which journalists are Tweeting or writing about any topic or issue.

Let’s imagine you want to know about any journalist mentioning your client’s name in the last 24hrs. Realwire will happily show you those journalists that have either mentioned the client in a Tweet – or referred to the client in any content they have linked to. You can also view the results in terms of Klout score (handy if you are looking at a lot of results and want to focus on the ones that potentially have the biggest reach and impact). You can also get automatic email alerts when any journalist Tweets or links to relevant content, based on the keyword parameters you set . Having used the tool in anger over the last two months I can vouch for the usefulness of this feature (here are some screen shots of the results in Lissted itself along with what the email alerts look like).

Now, Lissted has added the ability to create dynamic lists of journalists.

You can see how this can be a real time saver. Here are some sample dynamic lists created by Lissted.

Cabinet Reshuffle

iPhone 5

Take the iPhone 5 list. This is a list of technology journalists and media outlets who have mentioned the iPhone 5 in the last 3 days. If someone stops talking about iPhone 5, then they drop off the list. Conversely, any new journalist talking about iPhone 5 will be added. You can see how this can be useful. Depending on the criteria you set, you get an automatically updated Twitter list. Being able to keep a rolling track of relevant journalists in one list that requires no manual intervention is really rather good. And if you import the list into Hootsuite, you can further filter on the list by keyword and/or Klout score (so you could filter further on journalists within the list based on additional criteria).

I gather from Lissted that there are additions and enhancements planned for the tool over the coming weeks.

Any PR professional who wants to spend more time on having meaningful conversations with relevant journalists rather than fiddling around trying to maintain Twitter lists would do well to have a look at this new Lissted feature (or Lissted generally if you haven’t done so already).

Books Digital marketing digital pr Featured online pr

Book launch – Share This: the Social Media Handbook for PR professionals (CIPR)

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date July 19, 2012
2 Comments on Book launch – Share This: the Social Media Handbook for PR professionals (CIPR)

Last night saw the official launch of Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR professionals at Google Campus in Bonhill Street, London. It was the icing on the cake for a great collaborative process that has hopefully delivered something of real value to PR people in the UK. And beyond. CIPR CEO Jane Wilson (see below) revealed last night that the book will be published in the US in August.

Big plaudits also go to my old chum Mr Stephen Waddington (pictured below) for pushing the project forward. Without him, this wouldn’t have seen the light of day. And of course, huge thanks to all of my fellow co-authors who are all, I think, justifiably pleased with the outcome: Katy Howell, Simon Sanders, Helen Nowicka, Gemma Griffiths, Becky McMichael, Robin Wilson, Alex Lacey, Matt Appleby, Dan Tyte, Stephen Waddington, Stuart Bruce, Rob Brown, Russell Goldsmith, Adam Parker, Julio Romo, Philip Sheldrake, Richard Bagnall,Daljit Bhurji, Richard Bailey, Rachel Miller, Mark Pack, and Simon Collister.

And in case you were wondering, here’s what we got up to after the launch party – a curry in Brick Lane. Outstanding.

And here’s a quick video of yours truly giving a flavour of one of my chapters in the book: What has Google Ever Done For PR?

[wpvideo 95BktlLj]

I do hope you’ll buy and read the book. And of course, I think we’d all welcome any feedback!

Digital marketing digital pr Featured General PR online pr SEO

One trick ponies make good glue (CIPR Conversation)

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date May 25, 2012
No Comments on One trick ponies make good glue (CIPR Conversation)

(This post first appeared on the CIPR Conversation).

The debate around PR and SEO refuses to go away. However, recent Google algorithm changes seem to have pushed the discussion to the fore again. A common theme is emerging – namely, that, more than ever, high quality, relevant content on trusted, high authority sites is crucial to good SEO – and PR professionals may be better placed to create that content than many SEOs.

Simple, yeah?

Well, not quite. As ever, reality begs to differ. I was particularly reminded of this by Dr Peter Meyers of the Chicago based firm User Effect who has written some excellent blog posts recently on the subject of SEO.

Specfically he points out that: “Every week, without fail, I hear someone ask where they should put their SEO budget – in on-page tactics or in link-building. Unfortunately, there are plenty of SEO companies and consultants lining up to give them the answer – and that answer just happens (“coincidentally”) to be whatever the company/consultant is good at. When you’re an expert with a hammer, you start to think you can nail anyone (wait, that’s not right).”

And of course, these kind of comments could equally apply to PR. If your expertise lies in media relations, then naturally you’ll find it hard not to recommend to a client that a media relations solution is the way forward.

But I agree with Dr Meyers when he says that the honest answer is: “It depends”.

And of course, that is the answer that no client wants to hear. They want “an answer”. Or more specifically they want “THE answer”. That someone is going to take the pain away and deliver the silver bullet solution.

In a similar vein, people sometimes view training as a quick fix. Send someone on an SEO training course and they’ll come back with “the answer”.

Clearly, you have to start somewhere – and for PR professionals, the CIPR already offers workshops and webinars that will provide a rapid fire introduction to SEO basics (as well as other areas of the digital marketing mix such as social media and analytics).

But this is merely the first part of the journey. You can spend your entire life just reading about SEO or attending training workshops. However, there comes a point when you actually have to start doing it.

So rather than waste our energies arguing over whether SEO firms should be doing PR and vice versa, the only real way to find out is as Dr Meyers so eloquently puts it: “Do The F*cking Work.” Sticking with the same core set of skills that may have worked in the past is no longer an option. As I’ve opined before, one trick ponies are going to be a liability. Or as Dr Meyers more colorfully puts it: “One trick ponies make good glue”.

No single blog post or one day workshop is of itself going to solve all your problems. This is your profession and your career. Not only is continuous learning and development a pre-requisite, actually making the time to apply it is mandatory. Even if you can’t immediately find opportunities within your own work to apply these things, then make the opportunities yourself. It costs next to nothing to create your own blog, install Google Analytics and set up a Google Adwords account. Don’t just read about SEO and nod sagely when people stand up at conferences and say that PR professionals COULD have a valuable role in SEO. Actually do it.

Tags advertising, business, dr peter meyers, marketing, social media, technology

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Why conversion segments in Google Analytics are sexy as hell for PR (#pranalytics, #CIPR)

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date March 26, 2012
No Comments on Why conversion segments in Google Analytics are sexy as hell for PR (#pranalytics, #CIPR)

I had the pleasure of presenting at the PR Analytics Conference in London last week along with a number of big names in the field including Pleon’s David Rockland and Jim Desler, Worldwide Head of PR for Microsoft.

There was a large audience of senior PR folk in the room. My presentation was about how PR pros could use Google Analytics (GA) to better effect. I had 25 mins to cram in as much as I could.

One of the things I highlighted in my talk was the use of multi-channel funnel analysis in GA. In simple terms, it allows you to determine the direct and indirect contribution that various digital marketing channels make to your site conversion goals.

However, I didn’t have time at the conference to go into the use of conversion segments.

Which was a shame because they really are very sexy (no, really).

Here’s a simple explanation for those unfamiliar with the concept.

GA allows you to see what mix of site interactions deliver a conversion eg sale of a product, video view, whatever. It also shows you the value of those interactions relative to the conversion.

Here’s an example. This is for a small (but real) e-commerce site selling a simple £11.99 product (normally you’d have a whole range of different products and different prices – but hopefully you can extrapolate from this).

For this particular web property, it would seem that the most common conversion path for a sale is for people to arrive via one single search before purchasing. There are more complex interactions (not least #8 here which saw the person revisit the site 18 times directly before finally buying something!).

As part of my PR Analytics presentation, I talked about the problem of attribution in marketing and PR with relation to goals and objectives (most sales or comms processes have multiple steps – but which one should get the credit for the final transaction? Should the first step in the process get 100pc of the credit? Or the last step? In the absence of giving fair credit to all relevant steps in the conversion process, many people have opted for the last step ie the step immediately before the conversion.)

In PR terms, that typically means that much PR work would get no credit – because it rarely contributes the last step in the process. Its role is generally assistive to the overall process. However, the introduction of multi-channel funnels into GA last year allowed marketeers (and PR pros) for the first time to see both the direct and indirect value being delivered in relation to a defined goal.

SlingshotSEO recently produced an excellent whitepaper which showed how you can combine conversion segments with a multi-touch attribution analysis to determine which channel you may be overvaluing or under valuing if you are using a last attribution model.

They also had some great insight into the most common conversion paths (based on an analysis of over 23.5m transactions). Two organic searches seems to be the most popular conversion path with two or more interactions. And referrals and organic search are consistently undervalued as conversion channels.

Which brings me back to the relevance to PR (at least online PR coverage).

Traffic from links in relevant online editorial coverage fall into the referrals bucket. If referrals are consistently being undervalued on a last attribution basis, it does seem to lend credence to the theory that PR does contribute indirect value – and now we have a way to determine exactly what the value of that contribution might be.

But here’s the thing. You have to define at least one goal in order to make this work. No goals, no insight.

Brings in to sharp relief the fact that without defining concrete goals, you are almost certainly creating unnecessary pain and heartache for yourself. And your online PR efforts are almost certainly not getting the credit they deserve.

I’ll be looking in more detail at multi-channel funnel analysis and conversion segments in my strategic management presentation at CIPR headquarters, Russell Square, London, on Wednesday 28th March on using web analytics to inform communications strategy and planning.

Tags cipr, google analytics

Books Digital marketing digital pr online pr tech pr Technology PR

Influence Engine Optimisation (IEO): the future of PR?

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date March 23, 2012
No Comments on Influence Engine Optimisation (IEO): the future of PR?

(This article first appeared on the CIPR Conversation)

Mark Schaefer’s recently published book – Return on Influence – is a good primer on the emerging world of social scoring. He looks in great depth at the various social scoring platforms such as Klout, Peerindex and Kred as well as some case studies about how brands and individuals are using (and misusing) these new tools.

Schaefer’s view of social scoring seems to be that – love it or loathe it – it isn’t going away.

As he says: “The implication is that a numerical marker of authority such as a Klout score can have a legitimate impact on people’s opinions about status and influence even if the score doesn’t necessarily reflect offline reality or the system can be gamed. The whole philosophy is that your online reputation, or your capacity to influence, your probability to influence, is going to be increasingly defined by metrics. There’s no doubt about that trend.”

He advocates that although Klout and its ilk are by no means perfect, they are getting better all the time. And it ill behooves those in the worlds of PR and marketing to ignore it.

He also has an interesting definition of online influence as measured by Klout. Namely, that a Klout score is a reflection of an individual or brand’s ability to move content and initiate action amongst an online audience.

He uses the example of Justin Bieber. Many critics point to the fact that Bieber has a Klout score of 100. Barack Obama by contrast scores 91. Does that mean the young entertainer is more influential than the President of the United States?

No, says Schaefer. It simply means that Bieber’s ability to move content through his online network is supreme. When he says click, his audience clicks. The President’s audience doesn’t quite respond in the same Pavlovian manner (which may be no bad thing).

Whether you accept this definition of influence, it does perhaps suggest that it would be unwise to dismiss the concept of social scoring out of hand in this context.

But what if we take this a step further. Klout has been described as an Influence Engine. Schaefer muses in the book about the potential rise of “Klout coaches” – individuals or agencies who will provide services to help improve your Klout score. In which case, will we see the emergence of Influence Engine Optimisation consultancies who will perform a similar role to an SEO agency in the world of natural search rankings? Will PR professionals be tasked with managing reputation via influence – and thus turn themselves into Influence Engine Optimisation specialists?

Or is it the case as Brian Solis argues this week that Klout and PeerIndex don’t measure influence at all? You decide.

Digital marketing digital pr General PR online pr

Is PR still living in the 1980s?

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date March 9, 2012
1 Comment on Is PR still living in the 1980s?

(This post first appeared on the CIPR Conversation site.)

Someone showed me the slide deck for a new business pitch from a very well respected PR firm this week.

The thing that surprised me was that other than one token slide about SEO (which clearly betrayed a lack of understanding of the subject) and a reference to blogging, the kernel of the proposition boiled down to writing press releases, pitching stories to journalists, and organising press meetings. Social Media? What’s that? (I was also bemused that nearly a quarter of the budget was going to be allocated to “account management” – even though there was absolutely no detail as to what that actually meant or entailed for the prospective client).

This proposal could have been written 30 years ago – maybe even longer.

But is that necessarily a bad thing?

On the plus side, the agency concerned is clearly doing well (as attested by their recent financial performance). And if this pitch proposal is representative of their approach, then it would seem there are plenty of client companies out there still happy to consider this kind of traditional PR approach.

So are skeptics right to argue that they don’t need to be paying attention to the calls from people like me to invest more in new skills based around social media, SEO and analytics?

I think the honest answer is: no.

For a start, the agency above are clearly an exception not the rule – certainly in the sense of continuing to be profitable by ostensibly selling the old wine of traditional media relations in a new bottle (with a thin digital label). The more prevalent message I hear from the world of PR consultancy is that clients are shying away from media relations-only solutions – or at the very least, they aren’t prepared to pay as much for pure press relations as they might have done in the past. Digital expertise and integration is needed now – and the demands on PR consultancies and in-house teams will only get ever greater.

Perhaps some in PR are suffering from what psychologists call hyperbolic discounting: taking what you see as the sure thing in the present (media relations) over the caliginous prospect some day far away (biting the bullet on digital). Or perhaps the affliction is “present bias” – being unable to grasp what you (your clients) want will change over time, and what you (your clients) want now isn’t the same thing as what you (your clients) will want later.

Either way, I strongly suspect that the kind of new business slide deck I saw this week doesn’t have as long a shelf life as some might think (or want).

Have a hyperbolic weekend.

Andrew Bruce Smith and The Conversation team

Please note, this Conversation Roundup is written in my own capacity.

I am not a spokesperson for the CIPR.

Tags cipr, pr consultancies, social media

Digital marketing digital pr General PR marketing online pr tech pr Technology PR

PR = reputation management. Really? Who are we kidding?

Post author By Andrew Smith
Post date January 27, 2012
4 Comments on PR = reputation management. Really? Who are we kidding?

(This post originally appeared at the CIPR Conversation).

The launch of the VMA Group’s Business Leaders in Communications (BLCS) 2012 study stirred up some heated debate this week. Much of the ire was directed at the apparent lack of interest in social media by senior communications directors. According to the survey, a miserly seven per cent of these senior PR people felt social media was a major communication challenge and less than 15 per cent seek social media skills in candidates.

Speed’s Stephen Waddington blogged about the survey results and his excellent Storify round up of live Tweeting from the launch event captured the flavour of attendees views on the attitudes in the room.

Simon Francis was so incensed he issued a call to arms to have these comms “dinosaurs” outed.

And yet, isn’t this turning into a cracked record?

Peter Morgan, Head of Communications at Rolls Royce was also labelled a dinosaur back in May 2010 when he (in)famously declared that “social media was a waste of time”. He subsequently recanted – but only after Rolls Royce had endured a major comms crisis that caught the company on the back foot with regard to social media.

And as Si Francis also reported from the BLCS 2012 launch event: “David Bickerton from BP admitted his organisation was left reeling from the social media impact of recent events. And, he added, as a result, the company was now ensuring ALL staff have a role to play in the reputation management of the company on social media.”

Is it the case that comms directors only begin to appreciate the need for taking social media seriously when they suffer a major communications crisis?

But if the potential threat from a comms crisis isn’t enough incentive for action, what about the latest Edelman Trust Barometer? According to Vikki Chowney at EConsultancy: “This year UK CEOs again face a major hurdle in convincing the public that they should be listened to: they were the least credible public spokesperson for a business or organisation, with only 30% of respondents finding them reliable. More credible were academics or experts (by 73%), followed by a ‘person like me’ (60%), a technical expert (56%), or a ‘regular employee’ or ‘financial/industry analyst’ (55%).”

“People like me” are increasingly to be found having conversations on social networks. Does that not suggest that social media might need just a modicum of attention?

However, the thing that irked me most about the BLCS survey was the fact nearly two in three communications professionals see reputation management as their most important function. I had to stifle a yawn.

Reputation management has been ranked the number one priority for years now. Matthew Freud was quoted in The Economist in January 2011 as saying that “the future of PR is bright because of the growing importance of reputation management.”

In which case, if reputation management has been so important for such a long time – and PR is supposed to be about reputation management – why is PR and comms representation still largely absent from the board room of UK plc?

According to the BLCS survey, a third of respondents say that advising the board/CEO is one of their most important roles, Which means two thirds don’t. And fewer than half report having a major influence on board level strategic decision-making.

If reputation management really is that important then perhaps we need to up our game in terms of understanding how reputation really is mediated today. And proving our value to senior management and the rest of the business. Taking social media more seriously would be a start. As would a more robust approach to measurement (as Stephen Waddington noted, the subject appeared to be absent form the BLCS survey).

Or perhaps we should stop talking about PR being all about reputation management.

Have a reputable weekend.

Andrew Bruce Smith and The Conversation team

Please note, this Conversation Roundup is written in my own capacity.

I am not a spokesperson for the CIPR.

Tags reputation management