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Which journalists aren’t worth engaging with on Twitter?

Consider the following argument:

Most journalists are on Twitter.

PRs should therefore spend more time “engaging” with journalists on Twitter.

Seems to make logical sense (from a PR standpoint).

Except that just because a journalist has a Twitter account, loads of followers and Tweets for Britain, doesn’t mean that PRs should attempt to interact and engage with every relevant journalist on Twitter.  The reason being that some are far more likely to share your content and actually talk to you than others.

But how do work out which is which?

One way is to use a tool like Twitonomy.

For example, look at the following analysis of Charles Arthur, The Guardian’s Technology Editor.

charles1

Over the last two months, he has Tweeted (on average) nearly 55 times per day. From an engagement standpoint, he certainly seems to mention other people a lot – and 74pc of his Tweets are actually @ replies to other people. So as a PR, you might think this is a good way to have a dialogue with him (better still of course, would be to get him to follow you – then you can have private DM conversations).

However, Charles hasn’t shared that many links in the last two months – so the chances that he is going to share that press release of yours is going to be pretty low. He doesn’t ReTweet that much either – so don’t get your hopes up on that front.

Going back to Charles’ propensity to reply to people, Twitonomy also reveals who has had the most conversations with in the last two months:

charles2

Not may PR people in that group (Charles himself has already pointed out that he doesn’t think this tells us much – other than that the community of people he has talked to via Twitter over the last two months is pretty broad).

If you were determined to have a go at interacting with Charles, Twitonomy also reveals those times when he most likely to Tweet (and thus presumably be online and on Twitter):

charles3

Based on this analysis, 11pm on Friday night.

Clearly, you need to use these metrics with caution. These stats only relate to the last two months. Even if they did range over a wider time frame, how much you can actually infer from this is a moot point. And a cynic might argue that rather than poring over this kind of data, someone trying to get Charles’ attention would be better off investing their time in actually coming up with a decent story angle.

Having said that, I do think tools like Twitonomy – when used appropriately – can be a useful guide to PRs who want to work out the propensity of target journalists to share links, engage in dialogue and/or RT content.

And armed with this knowledge, PRs can allocate engagement resources appropriately. If the end result is better targetting and more effort in giving journalists more relevant and timely information, surely that can’t be a bad thing.

What do you think? Is there something in this? Or is it complete hokum? The comments box awaits your answer.

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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).

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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).

Converstion Segments in Google Analytics

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.

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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.

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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.

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Using Zendesk to power a PR consultancy website

Anyone who has looked at the escherman site recently will have noticed it has changed.

We’ve ditched Squarespace and taken the bold step of using Zendesk as the framework for the entire site.

Why did we do this?

Zendesk is a brilliant web based helpdesk software product (disclosure: client).

However, the more we looked into it, the more we realised that the help desk metaphor could be applied to many familiar aspects of both traditional and online PR. So we thought we’d go the whole hog and build our entire site around Zendesk. We’ve been very pleased with the results so far.

Here are some of the things we really like:

Easy customisation: Zendesk provides a very easy way to customise both the look and the functionality of the site. Adding extra functionality via widgets is very simple. We particularly like the ready made integrations with a variety of 3rd party products such as Salesforce.com

Social media integration. We can monitor Twitter within Zendesk – any relevant Tweets can be instantly converted to a ticket – and assigned to the appropriate individual. Or can form the basis of an instant comment thread that can be posted in an appropriate forum.

Voice integration. We are beta testing Zendesk Voice.  Already available in the US, this will be arriving in the UK in the not too distant future. In simple terms, it allows us to have an integrated call handling system set up in minutes. Imagine PR firms being able to have a complete and automatic log of every journalist call and interaction.

From a training perspective, being able to hear how account execs and account managers deal with journalist enquiries could be very valuable. Or experienced media handlers could share how they deal with journalists on the phone.

The possibilities are endless. We’ll keep you posted on how we get on in the coming weeks.

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Recycled Friday: Is £2.5 billion really spent on press releases in the UK?

I was inspired by the following comment from @adcontrarian in his latest blog post:

Because I am a lazy bastard and the thought of writing five posts a week is a constant source of terror, I have decided to introduce a new policy around here. From now on, on Fridays,  I’m going to recycle old posts that I like and that are still relevant. Today is our first Recycled Friday.

What a great idea. Having nearly 600 posts over 7 years gives me a good back catalogue to plunder.

Without further ado, here is a post I wrote five years ago – has much changed? You be the judge.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

New survey conducted by Benchmark Research on behalf of Glide Technologies has thrown up some interesting, if not entirely unsurprising, results about the PR industry in the UK today.

The full report is here:

Glide PR survey

However, the one item that caught my eye was the calculation that  £2.5bn is spent on press releases in the UK. This based on the survey finding that 39pc of PR professionals time is spent on creating, distributing, and following up on press releases – and the estimated total size of the UK PR industry at £6.5bn. Couple that with only 32% of releases received by the media being of genuine interest, then I calculate that means £1.7bn is being wasted on irrelevant press releases.

Although I’d take this calculation with a pinch of salt, it would be fair to say that an awful lot of money is still being spent (and wasted) on the humble press release.

The survey also highlighted a clear discrepancy between journalists desire to be contacted by email and PRs who still overwhelmingly use the phone.

I know the reasons for both sides views. Journalists have been jaundiced by too many wasteful phone calls along the lines of “did you get my press release”, or are you attending exhibition X (see Phil Muncaster of IT Week vent his spleen re: the pre-InfoSec deluge of calls asking him whether he was going – Muncaster InfoSec rant )

On the other side, PRs often feel that they will get more “attention” by actually talking to the journalist. Though of course that still means you need a good enough story to give them.

My take on the survey as a whole is that is shows the same old values still apply to PR in terms of media relations – journalists will give the time of day to a trusted source – but even that doesn’t guarantee they will use a story. Perhaps some of that wasted £1.7bn could be spent on training PR professionals to get better at becoming trusted information sources.

Other findings below:

81% of Journalists on a desert island opt for laptop over a phone

Email remains the most popular delivery format for journalists. Fax, post, newswire, PDA and SMS all decline. RSS and IM emerge.

76% of journalists more likely to use press communication with photos etc.

89% of journalists will visit an organisation’s website most of the time when writing about them

Journalist Complaints

Poor use of email (e.g. sending large attachments) accounts for the two greatest online deterrents to journalists

Only 32% of releases received by the media are of genuine interest

73% of journalists think an organisation is ‘not media friendly’ if its online press information is poor. 60% think they’re ‘lazy’, 50% that they’re ‘incompetent’.

Research conducted by Benchmark Research.

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What has Google ever done for PR?

The CIPR’s Social Summer season kicks off next Thursday, May 26th, at Russell Square with a session presented by yours truly on the subject of What Has Google Ever Done for PR?

This is an updated reprise of the presentation I gave (twice) last year. The main thrust of my argument remains the same – that the PR sector has a lot to thank Google for, not just in terms of the technology it provides for free, but how we can learn and be inspired by its business approach and culture. I hope you can make it along.

On other matters, one of my recommended books this week is Douglas Hubbard’s Pulse: The New Science of Harnessing Internet Buzz to Track Threats and Opportunities.

I’ve waxed lyrical in the past about Hubbard’s earlier book, How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business. In this latest, he explores the opportunity offered by massive and publically available Internet data sources to help better understand customer sentiment and opinion – or as he calls it, The Pulse.

As Hubbard says: “The Pulse actually is a far faster and cheaper predictor of economic activity and public opinion than traditional methods in many respects and it is also often a better one.”

Given that one of the aims of PR is to shape public opinion, we ought to devote more attention to the biggest and best source of sentiment ever available.

Hubbard also makes the salient point that most of the big Web properties such as Google, eBay and Amazon provide APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow anyone with a modest amount of development skills to access immense amounts of valuable data for free. Why should PR people be interested in this? He cites the example of being able to analyse sales data on Amazon as a predictor of economic trends – it is this kind of data driven approach that PR needs to get its head around.

However, let’s not get too carried away. A more cautionary view is taken by Douglas Rushkoff in his latest book, Program or Be Programmed. He argues that that we are in danger of sleep walking into a world where we are programmed by the technology we use rather than the other way round. He makes a passionate plea that we need to better educate ourselves about how these technologies are really being built or programmed – or else we will be programmed by them.

As he puts it: “We are intimidated by the whole notion of programming, seeing it as a chore for mathematically inclined menials than a language through which we can re-create the world on our own terms. In a digital age, we must learn how to make the software, or risk becoming the software.”
You have been warned.

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MarCom Professional is dead. Long live the CIPR Conversation.

Since July 2009, I’ve been a regular contributor to the popular Marcom Professional site. Indeed, every fortnight, subscribers have been regaled with my peculiar thoughts on all things PR and marcom related via the Friday Round Up e-mail newsletter (every other week, the inimitable Mr Philip Sheldrake has done the honours).

As of next Monday (April 11th), Marcom Professional will be no more. But shed no tears. It is transmogrifying into the CIPR Conversation. This is good news. It brings a hugely expanded potential audience for contributor content. I also hope that it will provide CIPR members and the wider PR community with an excellent platform for learning and debate about the issues that really do matter to our profession.

I ‘d like to  end by saying a big thank you to all of our existing Marcom Pro visitors and Friday Round Up readers. Our e-mail newsletters have a satisfyingly high open and click through rate – I hope you’ll continue to enjoy the content (and the conversation) – as well as benefitting from the expanded community that the new site will deliver.

Enough gushing – see below for the official announcement from the CIPR. Let The Conversation commence.

________________________________________________

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) is launching ‘The Conversation’ at its social media conference, 11 April. The Conversation is your one-stop shop for great blog posts by practitioners, consultancies, academia and students, from the UK and further afield. Syndicating your personal or company blog couldn’t be easier, allowing the wider PR community to find your content, find your personal, business and consultancy profiles, and respond to your news and points of view. Everyone is welcome to register themselves and their organisation.
In the spirit of The Conversation, the CIPR has invited some of the UK’s keenest PR bloggers to break this news.

There will be no need to ‘make friends’ all over again on The Conversation. Simply give your existing social networks permission to allow us to take a look at your network, your social graph as some call it, and we’ll make sure those relationships are established immediately on The Conversation (ie you won’t need to share your passwords with us). Hey presto, instant social glue.

The Conversation promises to be an exciting addition to the CIPR’s website, at least it will be with your input. It won’t match Facebook for functionality or LinkedIn for seeing who’s connected to whom, but it will be the first such attempt by a professional body to our knowledge. We hope you’ll jump in, and work with us as we iron out the inevitable glitch or two.

Following the successes of the CIPR social media panel – CIPR TV, ‘Social Summer’ events in 2010 and 2011, social media measurement guidance and input to ASA regulation – it’s apt that The Conversation will be launched at the CIPR social media conference. We hope to see you there.

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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.