2009 February | davefleet.com

Archive for February, 2009

Macro, Not Just Micro

09.02.13

In a digital world where more and more focus is (rightly) being placed on analytics and measurement, it can be all too easy to lose sight of the big picture.

Focus less on the trees – remember to think about the forest too.

Take this blog, for example. If I glance at the daily analytics for this site, I see this:

Micro

Up, down, all over the place. Useful to an extent, for reflecting on posts that resonated, but it doesn’t give me any real idea of what’s going on overall. Contrast this with the picture I get when I step back a little and look at trends over months:

Macro

With the exception of a dip during the holidays and a freakish StumbleUpon event a few months ago, there’s a consistent trend here. I can see that, overall, traffic is going up. That’s one of the metrics I look at to determine whether I’m going in the right direction with this post.

So, your client was featured in the Globe & Mail today, or you got them a hit in Engadget. That’s great, right? Actually, it could be irrelevant if it has no bearing on their goals, or if the tone of the piece wasn’t positive.

The point? Try not to focus purely on the little things.

Posted in: pr, public relations, strategy

Tags: communications, focus, strategy, trends

4Comments

Sort Your Digital Presence Out!

09.02.11

This post stems from a conversation I had with Ed Lee tonight (we agreed). Before anyone gets all upset, I’m a big advocate of social media… in the right situations… with the right foundations. This post is about those foundations.

Ever been in a meeting with a colleague, friend or client who has an idea or business, has a basic web presence, and wants to use social media to enhance that presence? What’s your reaction?

I’ve encountered this a few times over the last few years. My initial reaction to those conversations is fairly consistent. Something like:

“It’s great that you’re considering adding social media to your media mix. We’d love to help you with that. However, while we’re planning that, you might be better off spending your time and money strengthening your existing digital presence.”

Here’s the thing – social media has the potential to be powerful, if used in the right situation, in the right way, with the right other tools. However, given that social media tactics occur largely online, if they’re successful they’re likely to drive people to your website. It may not be the end goal (which might be feet through the door of your physical store), but it’s a likely step along the way.

If your digital marketing isn’t up to scratch, your social media investment could be largely wasted.

Rather than (or, long-term, in addition to) fostering or developing an online community, I would rather we help a company to bring its main website up to scratch; to sort out their search engine optimization (SEO); or perhaps develop a useful email marketing program.

I would rather they invest money in the unglamorous foundation now rather than try, and fail, to turn things on their head with a social media program that drives people to a 1990′s-esque brochureware website. Fortunately, I work at a company with people who are talented at both social media and “traditional” digital marketing, so we have that option.

Of course, while this is happening, we have the opportunity to listen and learn about the conversations that are occurring online, and to plan an effective approach using some of these new tools about which I write so frequently.

Foundations first, then experimentation.

What do you think?

Posted in: communications, social media

Tags: communications, digital, marketing, social media, website

13Comments

The Power of Pith

09.02.10

Media relations is a funny business. So often we talk about how we need to find serious, substantial stories to pitch to reporters, and it’s true. In general, you’re much more likely to generate interest with something newsworthy than with fluff.

Sometimes, though, fluff works.

Why?

Timing - There are certain times of the year – Christmas, Valentines, Mother’s Day, Back-to-School etc, when outlets are scrambling for content. Christmas is perhaps the biggest of these times – reporters are away for the holidays and readers have an appetite for lighter stories.

Relevance – If you target your pitches to the right audience at the right time, you could be in luck.

Fun! – It’s worth trying the occasional fun story. Sometimes it’s just the thing journalists are looking for to fill a few column inches or give a different angle on things.

This past Christmas our team pitched a light-hearted story for one of our clients. We targeted the story to the time of year, picked the journalists carefully, brought a different angle to the topic, and pitched it in a light-hearted way.

The results? Coast-to-coast coverage, largely pulled directly from the pitch; 20 million impressions, an MRRP score of over 90 and a cost per contact of $0.0002.

I should state, though, that I would strongly recommend against using this approach frequently. Substantial, news-worthy stories need to make up the vast majority of your media pitching or you’ll be at risk of burning all your bridges with journalists.

Still… sometimes, just sometimes, pithy can be powerful.

Posted in: media relations, pitching, pr, public relations

Tags: media relations, pitching, public relations

4Comments

3 Steps To Better Objectives

09.02.09

“Increase sales” isn’t a good objective.

Neither is “increase web traffic,” or “increase awareness,” or “more customers.”

Why?

Because you have no way of measuring success. If you can’t measure success, then what use is your goal?

I have to bite back a visceral reaction whenever I see vague goals in a communications plan. They’re toothless, they’re meaningless and they turn what could be a selling point for us (compelling objectives) into a waste of space. Sure, they provide a vague focus for work, but there’s no spine to them.

Let’s say your initiative – your communications; your ad campaign; your promotion – resulted in one additional customer. Is that success? Maybe if you’re Boeing or Bombardier, where one additional customer means multi-million dollar deals. If you’re McDonalds or Lays then perhaps not.

While the the kumbaya/let’s-all-get-along discussion inside the blogosphere might find that kind of objective acceptable, if you’re competing in real life with marketing/advertising agencies and other corporate departments for limited dollars, you need to be more specific and you need to talk outcomes, not outputs.

Creating better objectives

A credible goal needs to have three components:

Change – What will you improve?
Quantifier – How much will it improve?
Deadline – When will you do it by?

A call to action

Corporate folks

If your agency walks in and says their goal is to increase your sales for next year, ask them by how much and by when.

If they say they’re going to improve your reputation online, ask them how they plan to measure that.

Let’s face it, times are tough. You need to know that you’re spending your dollars in the right areas.

Hold your agency to account.

Agency folks

Pre-empt this discussion. Walk into the room with your goals fleshed-out.

As anyone in PR knows, the end-goal effects can be hard to quantify so don’t shoot yourself in the foot and aspire to something you’ll end up not being able to prove. Use proxies.

You may not be able to directly prove sales, but you can certainly find a way to draw a line between things you can affect and the big-picture end-goal.

For example, instead of “improve your online reputation,” try something like:

Goal: Improve [brand X]‘s online reputation by:

Increasing the proportion of positive online comments about the company, compared to negative and neutral comments, by 10 per cent over the next six months;

Increasing the volume of mentions of [your brand] online by 15 per cent by March 2010;

…

Yes, external influences occur. Yes, they’re unpredictable. Just be ready to discuss those when you review your program after the deadline. Don’t let them prevent you from setting useful objectives at the outset.

What do you think?

Posted in: pr, public relations, strategy

Tags: goals, measurement, objectives, public relations, strategy

16Comments

8 Questions to Ask Your "Social Media Expert"

09.02.05

Ike Pigott wrote an excellent post today for Media Bullseye about the pack mentality emerging on Twitter. More specifically, he wrote about the glut of “whizkids” appearing out of nowhere and positioning themselves as social media consultants or experts:

“…we have a glut of people selling their expertise on how you should handle “the Twitter community” who have zero experience using the service the way most people do. They hopped on board the Consultancy Express, went straight to the head of the line, and now want to tell you how to talk to people at all of the stops they skipped.”

I wrote recently about the “expert” term and whether it was time we started to use that term. This post isn’t about that. It’s about weeding-out the pundits from the practitioners.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of seeing people sign up for Twitter, follow ten thousand people (many of whom follow back) to build a substantial following, then start spouting advice as though followers equals expertise. Some of them are experts, for sure. Others, however, seem to have little beyond a big mouth to back their words up.

Almost as annoying, but just as dangerous, are the hordes of traditional practitioners that have realized they need to include social media in their pitches nowadays, but have no experience whatsoever using those tools.

Where to start?

Dave Jones set up a wiki to track Canadian social media case studies (which I will get to soon, I promise) and Peter Kim did the same for social media marketing examples south of the border, both of which are good places to start.

Ike came up with a question to weed out the Twitter newbies from those who have some experience:

“What is your experience using the web interface on Twitter?”

Here are a couple of questions I would ask at a more general level:

1. Can you give me an example of social media work you’ve completed for a client recently?

If you hear anything other than “yes, here’s a good example” then back away slowly. Or not so slowly.

2. How do you go about pitching bloggers?

If you hear the words “blind copy,” “news release” or “email blast,” look elsewhere.

3. How do you monitor what people are saying about you?

If the answer stops with blogs, you’ve got yourself a fake.

4. Where can I find you online?

You want doers, not talkers. Choose people with a presence (although, as I said, a big mouth isn’t everything).

5. Can you (ghost) write my blog for me?

No, they can’t. They might be able to offer you some topic suggestions to get you started, but if they offer to ghost-write your blog, yell “fraud!”

6. How do you measure results?

No, “website hits” don’t count as a metric. Ever.

7. How would you define social media?

PR isn’t press releases, media lists or speeches. Social media isn’t a list of tools. Same principle. Your “expert” should start with principles. Occasionally you might hear a tool within that.

8. Can you just pretend to be me online?

No. Just no.

What question would you ask?

Posted in: social media

Tags: expert, list, questions, social media

225Comments

Blogging vs. Twitter – Commitment and Effort – Another Perspective

09.02.04

I recently received an excellent comment on my recent post Blogging vs. Twitter: A Different Kind of Commitment from Doc Kane (@dockane on Twitter), principal of Chicago-based Roscommon – a ~~marketing, communications and PR~~ professional writing services agency. Thoughtful and insightful, I thought it really drove the discussion forward.

His view: the difference between blogging and Twitter isn’t commitment, it’s effort.

With Doc’s permission, I’m re-publishing his comment here, as a post, for your input. What do you think?

I think there are a few simple reasons why we’re seeing businesses jump into Twitter much more readily than they have blogging, and in my opinion, those reasons are mainly related to the effort required to create a blog; a lack of management’s awareness about how to create and maintain one; and the simplicity and effectiveness of Twitter as a communications tool. Unlike many other forms of new technology, one does not need to be a tech whiz to get up and running on Twitter – and this is a huge advantage over blogging.

Blogs are a lot of work. To really pull it off consistently one has to have a strategy, enough content to write consistently AND the desire to even do it. But before even starting with a blog, blogging itself needs to first be recognized as valuable by upper management (which I think is still not even close to being a reality), controllable by middle management (in terms of helping/guiding the company blogger) and executable by staff willing/able to do it. And this, I think is where everything stalls. . .before it ever even gets started. . .

In my opinion, the perceived TIME it takes to create a blog isn’t a factor…it’s the EFFORT.

A blog requires major planning and concept development on the part of the writer. So the immediate perception of blogging then, isn’t. . “Ugh, this is going to be time-consuming” (ALL work is time-consuming). . .it’s “Ugh, this is going to take a lot of EFFORT”. And effort here, is the key. This is particularly true of course, when the assignment to create a blog falls on an employee who could really care less about what they’re writing about. Trying to be passionate about a company or product that’s not your own, or that you’re not completely in love with, is not easy for any salaried writer/marketer/comms person. Where you see the difference is with blogs written by consultants and business owners. The reason is because they have a passion for, and a vested interest in, getting the word out. They have to blog even if it takes a lot of effort! The salaried writer hardly shares that same spirit or necessity.

So essentially, it becomes a big pain in the butt for everyone involved, making it easier to just shelve the idea until it becomes “necessary”. . .or something comes along that’s simpler: like Twitter.

When people ask me to explain to them what Twitter is, I tell them it’s like “public texting.” They get it right away. Okay, so now imagine you’re a manager, and you tell your colleague you want them to hang out on Twitter for a while and text people. Do you think they’ll be more open to that than all the work that comes with creating a blog post? You bet. One can sit down and rattle off Tweets to different people machine-gun style, one after another, without much thought. . .or at least until they really get strapped for characters, or are trying paste a link, etc. Not so with a blog: think, write, edit, give to boss, re-edit, post in CMS, catch typo, re-edit, etc.

Then factor in the time to train, and the software and IT costs, and you’re looking a behemoth of a project just to have an employee create what many still think is a series of ego pieces. Blogging’s early function as public diaries for quirky personalities still haunts the platform to this day. CEOs don’t dig public diaries. Especially when they’re public companies.

So, in my opinion. . .it’s the hassle-factor and a lack of knowledge, not the time-factor that keeps the blogging at bay. Video/Podcasting? Good luck. Ask someone to upload a video to any video sharing service and they’ll look at you like you’re nuts!

Isn’t that something IT does?????

Posted in: blogging, trends, Twitter

Tags: blog, commitment, effort, time, Twitter

21Comments

Rethinking Blogger Relations

09.02.03

ROI Is blogger relations worth it? Is the ROI sufficient to justify the investment?

I’ve written a few times in the past about blogger relations, from a range of angles – from the tactic in general to the practicalities of pitching bloggers to the results from a blogger’s perspective. However, I recently got to thinking about it in a different way.

I think it’s important to continually question what we’re doing – it’s the only way we’ll continue to improve over time. With that in mind, I got to thinking about whether blogger relations is really worth the investment in time and money necessary to do it well.

A little context

Here’s the issue: most people in the social media fishbowl, including me, will advocate a take-it-slow approach to engaging in social media. My preferred approach has three broad steps:

Listen
Engage
Develop

For this to work, you need to put in a substantial amount of time up-front. That time is spent monitoring what’s going on, identifying influencers, measuring and analyzing trends and getting to know peoples’ preferences.

From an agency perspective, that can be a considerable investment up-front before you even begin to engage.

When you do begin to engage, blogger relations best practices (take Todd Defren’s blogger relations bookmark for example) require continued time-intensive work in both pitching and engagement.

Is that investment worth it?

Sure there are the TechCrunches, the Mashables and the ReadWriteWebs. However, most bloggers don’t have those audiences. Most bloggers don’t have a tenth or even a hundredth of that audience.

Given those low audience numbers, does the investment in time required for good blogger relations give the necessary pay-off?

A few arguments

Even setting aside the impact of corporate culture, there are a few factors to consider:

Initial time: If you add up the time you need to invest to get to know a blogger, engage with them before pitching, then tailor a pitch to that blogger, you’re probably looking at least an hour or two per blogger, if not more.
Future time: Of course, once you’ve done the groundwork, the incremental time investment will be lower for future pitches.
Relationships: Established relationships have greater value than immediate outreach – future issues management, for example.
Search engines: Online content with a positive tone can help build companies’ reputations through Google search results.
Long tail: Audience size can be much bigger than stated reader numbers – the long tail of online content can be large over time.
Research: If you offer a product or service where purchase is research-based and you’re not engaging, then people are making decisions on purchases based on everyone’s voice but your own.
More than pitching: Blogger relations encompases more than just proactive pitching – it can also include both reactive engagement with people who talk about your product, company or industry. I’ve argued before that customer service is public relations; nowhere is this more true than online.

Conclusion

My conclusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that it is worth the investment.

One thing to remember is that traditional media relations takes time, too, if done right. Researching reporters, tailoring your pitch, etc takes time while reporters for mainstream outlets are, in my experience, less likely to write about the story than relevant bloggers may be. What’s more, the long-term effects of building relationships with relevant people (both online and offline) can be substantial.

So, yes – the time investment is substantial, but so are the benefits – better relationships, more coverage, better coverage, SEO, customer service improvements and more. Still, the required investment makes measurement and analysis of results all the more important, which is why we’re putting a lot of effort into that right now.

What do you think? Is the ROI on blogger relations worth it?

Posted in: blogger relations, blogging, media relations, public relations

Tags: bloggerrelations, customerservice, ROI

19Comments

Blogging vs. Twitter: A Different Kind of Commitment

09.02.02

Talking with Michael O’Connor Clarke the other day, we both commented on a trend we’ve both observed recently:

Corporations seem to be much more willing to sign-up for Twitter than they are to set up blogs.

We’re seeing companies big and small signing up for Twitter; from Ford, General Motors, Southwest Airlines and Dell to smaller companies like Natura Mattresses and Freshbooks (check out this list of organizations on Twitter).

This isn’t always intuitive. While some companies see the inherent value and potential in communicating directly with their customers, many others are are afraid of it. It’s unpredictable, it’s often not on the topics that you want to talk about and, well, it’s something new for many organizations. So, something must be making the difference.

Of course, we have to remember that social media as a genre of tools is much more advanced, high-profile and, to an extent, accepted than it was a few years ago when blogging first broke. However, that hasn’t helped podcasting become mainstream news the way that Twitter has over the last few months.

Is something else making the difference?

Commitment

Is Twitter less of a time commitment than blogging?

As with so many things, it depends.

If you, or your organization, uses Twitter extensively, it may not be less of a time commitment than blogging. However, it certainly is a different type of commitment.

Writing a blog post takes a solid block of time – you need to set aside anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours for the process, depending on the kind of post you’re writing. Many of my posts here take upwards of 90 minutes to pull together. That can turn blogging into a big black hole for your time.

Twitter is a different kind of commitment. Each post takes just little time. That can give Twitter the appearance of requiring much less of a commitment than writing a “traditional” blog.

In reality that’s not necessarily the case. Many people post multiple times per day. What’s more, as a company representative on Twitter, you need to put a little more thought into what you write. That can make it just as time consuming over the course of a day as blogging.

Still, is the perception that Twitter takes less of a time commitment leading to companies engaging more readily through it?

What’s your take?

Posted in: blogging, trends, Twitter

Tags: blog, commitment, time, Twitter

47Comments