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Top 5 reasons PR firms should ask clients/prospects for access to Google Analytics data

In March 2010, I gave a presentation on PR and SEO at the CIPR HQ in Russell Square, London, to around 75 senior in-house communications directors and managers. I asked how many of them used Google Analytics data from their own corporate sites to inform their PR and communications strategies. Not a single hand went up.

In the intervening months, I’ve been boring for Britain to anyone who’ll listen that asking clients for access to Google Analytics should be one of the key questions any PR should be asking.  In fact, it should be a great question to ask prospects.(*)

Either way, Google Analytics (GA) can provide a whole host of insight that can have a big impact on the communications strategies and tactics you advise clients on.

Here are my top 5 immediate reasons for asking for GA data:
1. Bounce rate (or as Avinash Kaushik so memorably described it – they came, they saw, they puked). If a client website has a high bounce rate ie 75pc or higher (and isn’t a blog) then they have some issues – there is no point driving traffic to a site if it doesn’t engage the visitor. There may be many reasons why a site has a high bounce rate. But I’m willing to bet that 9 times out of 10, that content is a key part of the the problem. If the client or prospects existing content isn’t working then it needs fixing – it also flags that using existing messages and content to fuel PR probably isn;t going to work – enter the PR firm….

2. Segmenting web site visitors based on where they come from and the intention behind their visit should provide a gold mine of insight for a PR. Take search. If there are certain key phrases that are driving people to a site, then using Google’s free Doubleclick Ad Planner tool can help determine where PR content should be pitched (hint: it won’t always be media properties that may be the most fruitful places to pitch PR content – or it may disprove assumptions about which media outlets really do matter to your audiences – based on what they actually do rather than what the media owners media pack tells you).

3. Set up goals. So often, even if a client has set up GA, they won’t have set up any goals. And they don’t necessarily have to be transactional. What about setting goals for time on site or depth of visit and putting a financial value on these more engaged visitors? Wouldn’t it be great if the PR firm could show a causal connection between PR activity and more engagement? Well, the tools are freely available…

4. Using GA Tagging Parameters. PRs can and should get a lot smarter about using tag parameters in the links they use in news releases and other PR related content. A bit of effort to work out a logical tagging strategy allows GA to give you far more accurate insight into how different tactics have performed. Hell, Google even provides a free tool to build your parameterised link for you.

5. Create multiple GA profiles. Again, very often, clients have only got a single profile view of their GA data. You’ll get kudos for advising them to at least set up a second one where they can test tweaks to the system without compromising the existing data. But setting up a specific profile for use by the PR firm should be a must-have in any case. Imagine being able to use the annotation function in GA to highlight where PR activity (both on and off-line) may have had an impact on visitors and commercial activity.

Here’s a real example. A piece of PR generated broadcast TV coverage at 11am on a Sunday morning resulted in a spike of visits to the site at that  time. Analysing those visitors showed exactly how many requested further information and/or requested a trial of the product. In other words, a clear line-of-sight causal chain between PR output and commercial outcome.

I could go on. But I’ll say it again. If you aren’t asking your clients and prospects for access to their GA data, do it now.  If only for the solitary reason that being able to show the start to finish causal impact of PR content on real business outcomes is hugely powerful – and the fact is, there is nothing to stop PR firms adopting these approaches today. If they don’t, somebody else might do it for them. And get the glory.

*What about confidentiality say some people? Sign an NDA if you have to. But if a prospect or client still refuses to share GA data with you, I’d treat that as a warning sign.

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

Are you a UK Social Media Power Player?

(This article first appeared on Marcom Professional)

Can online influence be determined algorithmically?

That’s the serious question behind the bit of fun I had last week creating the PR Week UK Social Media Power Player league table.

Using PeerIndex to determine an overall influence score (and based on PR Week’s original Power Player selection), I’ve so far listed around 283 people (if you feel you should be on the list, then sent me a Tweet – @andismit).

As I explained in my original Storify piece, I was simply testing out the new group creation feature of PeerIndex. However, little did I realise the Pandora’s box I was opening.  If I’ve learnt anything this last week, it’s that PR folk love a league table and are hugely competitive. The clamour to be included on the list was astonishing (as of this morning, the list has been viewed nearly 7,500 times). And clearly some people have begun obsessing about their rankings.

Inevitably, some have questioned what meaning – if any – a PeerIndex score has (or a Klout score for that matter).  I’d have to agree that an absolute rating like the overall PeerIndex tally probably doesn’t really provide much insight – other than being a modest diversion for PR people. However, PeerIndex clearly has plans to provide a rating relative to specific topics. That to my mind is far more interesting. Being able to have insights into which people may have more or less influence in relation to specific subjects is far more worthwhile for PR and marketing people.

Of course, that begs the question as to how PeerIndex arrives at its scores.  Like Google, they aren’t revealing the details of their People Rank algorithm. Some might argue that it is impossible to determine influence algorithmically. And I’d agree that PeerIndex isn’t perfect. At the same time, I applaud the effort to try and do it. Given the choice between attempting something and doing nothing I’ll always plump for the former.

So the debate about PeerIndex and its ilk will no doubt rumble on. But I can’t help but feel that this kind of algorithmic approach to determining online influence will play an ever increasing role in  21st century PR and marketing.

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

Are you suffering from the endowment effect? (Marcom Pro)

Stop sniggering at the back there.

The title of this week’s Marcom Pro Round-Up has nothing to do with Viagra-related spam e-mails.

The endowment effect was an expression coined by American economist Richard Thaler to describe our tendency to set a higher selling price on what we own (are endowed with) than what we would pay for the identical item if we did not own it. In Peter Bernstein’s excellent book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story Risk, there are numerous insightful examples of this effect in action (not to mention a host of other intriguing principles such as Prospect Theory and backwardation).

As Bernstein points out, the endowment effect arising from the nationality of the issuing company is a powerful influence on share valuations. Even though international diversification of investment portfolios has increased in recent years, Americans still hold mostly shares of American companies and Japanese investors hold mostly shares of Japanese companies, And yet, the US stock market is equal to only 35pc and the Japanese to only 30pc of the world market.

In a similar way, is marketing suffering from its own endowment effect? Are we still so heavily invested in the sunk costs of our traditional skills and tactics that we are failing to match our marketing investment with the reality of the world today?

According to Mary Meeker, the answer is yes.

If you look at only slide presentation online today, make it this one.

And in particular, look at slide 25. Look at the disparity between print media consumption and marketing spend. Proof positive of marketing’s endowment effect?

(This post first appeared here).

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

Why fungibility is the PR industry’s biggest problem (Marcom Pro)

As the head of WPP, Martin Sorrell’s pronouncements on any aspect of marketing are always worth paying attention to.

Back in December, he suggested that the PR sector’s biggest issue was the lack of talent – at least by comparison with other industries such as investment banking and management consultancy. According to Sorrell: “professional consultancy firms such as McKinsey and Goldman Sachs continuously hire the best people. Our malaise as an industry is that we don’t – we just nick them.”

On a related theme, Speed Communications joint Managing Director Steve Earl had a great post this week talking about how recession is the overriding factor dominating how PR businesses are run, how they’re developed, what their aspirations are and how PR is bought at the moment. Says Earl: “What I’m getting at is whether agency management teams are responding wisely, transparently and fairly to helping their personnel through a recession. Many of the job applicants Speed has seen through its doors in recent months talk about how many agency staffers are being asked to do jobs a level above their pay grade.”

Sorrell’s views are related to Earl’s observations. But these issues are nothing new. Professional services consultant David Maister identified the symptoms (and cures) for this malaise over 20 years – his books on Managing The Professional Service Firm and Strategy and the Fat Smoker should be required reading for senior PR management.

So what would Maister’s advice be to Sorrell and Earl?

According to Maister, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey are both “one firm firms”.  The emphasis is not so much on hiring the best talent as developing it from the ground up. Maister contrasts this with what he describes as “warlord firms”, where the productive senior members operate as chieftans presiding over their own territories, “occasionally collaborating but generally acting without a long-run commitment to the institution or each other. The past and the future are not often items high on the agenda.”

Consequently, over time, the performance of extreme warlord firms often swings through peaks and valleys. Much management energy is expended in modulating the politically charged environment.

As Maister presciently observed some years ago: “many warlord firms have reduced or eliminated entry-level recruiting, purportedly because of the short term cost of hiring and training such people. They prefer to hire laterally from other firms, to avoid the costs of investing in junior people.”  Or in Sorrell’s vernacular, nick them.  As far as Maister is concerned, “such firms are sending two uncongenial messages: the people we hire are fungible and there is nothing special about us. As a result, they fail to develop the loyalty and cohesiveness needed during periods of both prosperity and stress.”

And recession and stress go hand in hand. As Sorrell said in December of the PR sector: “we are supposed to be in the differentiation business”. In which case, the apparent “fungibility” of its most prevalent commodity may well be the most urgent issue that needs addressing.

(This post originally appeared here).

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

If PR was no fun in 1985, what is it now?

David Maister’s 1993 book “Managing The Professional Service Firm” is still the gold standard by which all other management books aimed at the legal, accounting, PR, marketing and consulting sectors should be judged.

A round up of material he’d been writing since the early 1980s, re-reading it again reminded me how much truth is still contained within its pages. There is very little that has dated.

Every chapter still contains golden nuggets of wisdom – not just for those in senior management positions in PR firms, but for those who are starting out on their careers.

For example, if you think the “motivation crisis” among the younger generation in PR is a new phenomenon, think again:

“PR is just not any fun any more. Today’s clients are demanding, cynical about the value they receive, and treat you less as a professional and more like an ordinary vendor. The pace, intensity and workload are greater than ever, and the firm atmosphere is competitive rather than supportive, and certainly less collegial. With all this concern about profitability, it seems like we’re being asked to work even harder for less money.”

And that was in 1985!

However, if the issue hasn’t gone away, then the solution offered 25 years ago is broadly similar. In other words, the problem isn’t one of too much work, but too much meaningless work. The role of management is to explain why work is important rather than just telling people what needs to be done. In addition, it is a function of the knowledge and skills that the firm has to offer that will give it the best chance of long term success. As Maister says, knowledge and skills are assets that left untended will depreciate in value. And quickly. And perhaps even more so in this day and age.

The PR sector as a whole clearly needs to invest in developing new knowledge and skills.

The future is bleak for those who continue milking yesterday’s assets.

 

 

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Digital marketing digital pr General PR marketing Media online pr tech pr Technology PR Web/Tech

Automated sentiment analysis? Yes, it is possible. And it’s here: Glide Intelligence

Glide Intelligence

The concept of automated sentiment analysis has pretty poor reputation. Not least because expectations have been raised in the past by vendors only to be dashed on the hard rocks of failed promises.

Glide Intelligence – launched this morning to group of 50+ senior comms professionals at the CIPR HQ in Russell Square – thus enters the market with a hefty hurdle of cynicism to overcome.

However, having been involved in the beta testing of the product over the last 12 months – and having sampled many rival attempts at sentiment analysis in the past – I’m very optimistic that Glide Intelligence really does take a major step towards the holy grail of genuine, real time automated sentiment analysis.

So what sets Glide Intelligence apart from rival sentiment analysis systems?

  1. The product hasn’t been knocked together in five minutes. As Glide CEO Sam Phillips said this morning, the project started nearly 5 years ago and has seen a 7 figure investment in its development.
  2. One of the key brains behind the project is Keith Woods-Holder, who, if anyone, is entitled to the moniker of godfather of automated sentiment analysis. He began his career 25 years ago creating advanced mathematical models for the UK Government’s Advanced Planning Unit, followed by 3 years as Research Director at Saatchis. He was then recruited by IBM to set up KWHR, on of the first ever firms to build a commercial sentiment analysis model which was subsequently adopted by brands such as Kodak, Dell, Sony and NASDAQ (Keith does a good line in Michael Dell anecdotes). The man has form.
  3. The technology is based on 4th generation advanced NLP sentiment analysis. It is also context-based, rather than keyword or dictionary based. This means it gets over one of the major traditional objections, namely, that automated sentiment analysis can’t handle irony, sarcasm or slang.
  4. The breadth of sources. Glide Intelligence will monitor broadcast, print, online and social media all at once – and in real time.  For example, you could have a real time, minute by minute, monitor of brand sentiment – and be able to spot where comms issues are developing in real time (just think what Peter Morgan at Rolls Royce could have done with this). An example was given this morning about how the tool could be used to monitor reaction to tube strikes – and where the sentiment is developing and how that is translating across media platforms. And what comms action could be taken – in real time.
  5. It can also be used to trace how a story developed eg if a particular article generates reaction across Twitter, broadcast, etc – and which could provide a blueprint for dealing with a similar issue in the future.
  6. Glide Intelligence provides multiple perspectives – in other words, not only can you view sentiment for your own organisation, but you can see how the world looks through your competitors eyes. The implications of this kind of analysis for comms professionals is obvious.
  7. Full transparency – you can pretty much drill down as far as you want to an original Tweet or article.
  8. The reporting capabilities are immense. More charts and tables than you can shake a stick at.

As you can guess, I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen so far. If Glide can deliver what’s on the tin, then perhaps the long awaited promise of automated sentiment analysis may finally have arrived.

Form an orderly queue for your demo now.

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digital pr online pr Pocket Video Video Web/Tech

A Tinie (Tempah) bit of magic – DynamoTV episode 1 – Panasonic TA1

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_hxh0SBeSg]

How does he get the Panasonic TA1 pocket video recorder into the bottle?

10,000+ views on YouTube in half a day.

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Digital marketing digital pr online pr Video Web/Tech

Eye popping magic from DynamoTV over the next few weeks: Panasonic TA1

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR0GXYrPxN4]

If your image of a typical magician is Paul Daniels, think again.

Dynamo has certainly brought a breath of fresh air to the traditional world of sawing assistants in half and pulling rabbits out of the hat.

And over the next eight weeks he’ll be amazing some of the hottest names in entertainment with his eye popping magic. As well as the rest of us watching it on YouTube.

As the YouTube promo copy says: “Stay tuned for an AAA pass into Dynamo’s world, all captured in full HD on the Panasonic TA1 pocket video camera*.”

Anyway – keep an eye out for some mind bending magic from Dynamo over the next few weeks. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

And don’t forget to follow him on Twitter. Or Panasonic UK for that matter.

*Disclosure: Panasonic is a client

Panasonic TA1

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Digital marketing digital pr General PR Media online pr

New York Times on Twitter: “The Conversation begins here”. And ends here it would seem.

Looking back over the last 24 hours, the New York Times Twitter account has Tweeted around 56 stories. An examination of the click through rates on these stories (which you can see for yourself by simply appending a ‘+” sign to any link as the NYTimes is using a customised bit.ly domain) shows that each story typically gets between 200 – 400 click throughs. Even being generous and assuming that each story gets a unique set of people clicking through, that suggests that, at best, Twitter generates around 22,400 click throughs to the site per day.

Even the “conversation” around NY Times stories on Twitter doesn’t seem too lively. The number of Retweets of each story is low, rarely getting into double figures.

According to Google Ad Planner, the New York Times site gets around 170 million visits per month and around 650 million page views. Based on the above analysis, Twitter based traffic is accounting at best for around 660,000 of those visits.

Clearly, 660,000 visits for most people would be a stonking triumph – and it could be that visits from Twitter result in people who spend longer on the site and read more content. But it suggests that the bulk of NY Times traffic is coming either directly or via search.

Of course, the overhead of running a broadcast style Twitter account for the NY Times is trivial. So perhaps in that context, the click through rates should be judged a raging success.

Then again, given the recent E-Consultancy survey which showed that most businesses are spending next to nothing on social media, you wonder if the NY Times experience is a possible explanation – namely, if the NY Times – with 2.7 million followers – finds it hard to get more than few hundred people to click on a link, what hope do we have?

What do you think?

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Digital marketing digital pr General PR online pr tech pr Technology PR Web/Tech

Guest post: The Myth Of Press Release Syndication: Kelvin Newman, SiteVisibility

FX: Fanfare

This the very first Guest Post on In Front Of Your Nose. And I’m delighted to welcome Kelvin Newman from SiteVisibility for this auspicious debut with his take on The Myth Of Press Release Syndication. His views on the subject are highly pertinent – not least because he knows what he is talking about when it comes to SEO – and the PR world on the whole has a very distorted view of what they can, could or should do with regard to press releases and search.

Kelvin is Creative Director at SiteVisibility (without question, one of the top SEO firms in the UK), as well as editor and presenter of  iTunes most popular marketing podcast (again, along with a sub to Econsultancy, people could save themselves a lot of pain and heartache by simply listening to this every week).

Anyway. I’ll shut up. Kelvin, take it away….
Guest post: The Myth Of Press Release Syndication: Kelvin Newman, SiteVisibility

“We all understand that Google’s algorithm is trying to mimic the real world. Google’s reliance on links to determine authority is based on what happens offline. If a trusted person or media outlet recommends a product, the more I trust the recommendation. And the more likely I am to believe them. Makes sense, doesn’t it? So why do so many people believe that Press Release Syndication services (who will shill for anyone who hands over the cash) are going to be good for your rankings?

In my opinion, rather than just being a benign distraction for the naive, I’m genuinely concerned that huge swathes of the PR industry think that in order to ‘get’ SEO they just have to start adding a few keywords into their press releases, bung them on a wire. And their clients will  automatically shoot up the rankings.

The links that have the most impact are those that are hardest to achieve; genuine editorial mentions on relevant pages of sites with huge trust. Press release syndication will never enable you to do that. All it does is get you a link from a website which no real person ever visits. There are no real editorial standards being used. So the chances are even higher that really low quality spammy sites are being linked from and tainting your clients by association.

Some people occasionally justify this process on the basis it might help a website get at least some links and coverage from journalists who subscribe to the release wire service concerned. Personally, I can’t see it. When I used to work on Zoo and Arena,  journalists were swamped with releases by email. I doubt they’re going to go out of their way to sign up to get more.

Some services even charge you more to get some shiny social media buttons on your release. What a complete waste of money. I can count on one hand the number of times a press release has been shared in my social networks. And in those cases, it was only because what was contained in the release was hugely news worthy. The latest “me too” product launch or made up survey is never going to get shared socially.

And do you think Google, with their sweat shops of PHDs, haven’t twigged that these websites will link to anyone who pays? It’s not a huge leap to assume that they might have tuned out any minor value that these websites might have had years ago.

So why do people still think it works? Well, it’s easier than actually wrapping your head around how link building really works. It’s a small nod to SEO without actually having to drastically change approach.

However, I can’t be completely against the technique.  It can be a great way to open up communication between whoever is responsible for PR and SEO. It shows that on both sides of the table, we’re starting to understanding that we’ll get better results if we work together.

Of course, it is beautifully ironic that in the area where you most frequently see collaboration between PR and SEO currently, the outcomes hardly justify the effort. The real value of PR and SEO working in unison is in creating stories and content that appeal to the people who have the power to link to – and influence – a site’s reputation in a positive way.  This is where PRs and SEOs should be concentrating their efforts.

In summary, my attitude is if the news release has already been written, it’s mad not to try to eek out a bit of SEO value by publishing it on a wire. It’s not going to do any harm. But anyone who thinks press release syndication is an important link building strategy needs their head testing.”

What do you think?

Comment below like your life depends upon it.