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Lies, Damned Lies and Mis-understood Statistics

11.09.21

Earlier this week, All Facebook featured a post on a report by DDB and OpinionWay examining the reasons that Facebook users “unlike” brand pages.

The key findings, as reported by All Facebook (the report appears to have been taken down from SlideShare, so I can’t link to it):

  • The brand was no longer of interest to me (49 percent);
  • The information available was not interesting (46 percent);
  • Information was published too often (36 percent);
  • The brand published information I did not appreciate (27 percent)
  • Information was not published often enough (14 percent).

Interesting, useful data.

This follow-up chart in the post, however, is next to useless.

Why is this chart useless?

Because the sample size is too small for this kind of segmentation.

The original data is useful because the analysis is conducted at an aggregate level, over 630 respondents. At that sample size, we’re looking at a 3.9% margin of error at a 95% confidence level. That means, while there may be some variation among the top results, they’re useful at a high level.

Dig down to a country level like the chart above, though, and things start to fall apart. With a sample size of 78, given the number of Facebook users in the United States (155,746,780 according to Facebook), the margin of error for the US numbers is over 11% at that same confidence level. It’s not just the US, either – the margin of error for the France numbers is over 8.5%. Despite this, there’s no mention of these details on the post or comments; just an assumption that the numbers are correct.

This is a great example of why I think math is a critical skill for PR professionals.

PR pros need to understand the difference between valid statistics and invalid ones, so they can take advantage of useful information (like that at the top of this post) and disregard the non-useful stuff (like the regional breakdown above). What’s more, they need to know what’s news and what’s non-news too, so they can make an informed decision on what to pitch as the former and what to advise their clients to pass on promoting.

Are you comfortable reading between the lines when it comes to statistics? If not, it might be time to brush up.

Posted in: statistics

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Two Ways To Quickly Improve Your Communications Plans

11.09.19

I’ve worked in communications for a while now, and one thing I’ve noticed — consistently — is that the same two elements of communications plan get overlooked time and time again:

  • Objectives
  • Strategy

These almost always get sacrificed in favour of the bright, shiny part of the plan: tactics.

What’s more, your objectives and strategy are the most important part of the plan. They’re the part that frames the ultimate goal that you’re trying to achieve, and provides a focus for the tactics that should aim to achieve that goal.

That means that, sadly, most communications programs fail to live up to their true purpose.

I think this failure stems from two primary misunderstandings:

1. People don’t understand the difference between objectives, strategies and tactics.

Simply put, your objective should state what you’re trying to accomplish. Are you trying to sell 30,000 units of something? Increase customer loyalty? Reduce employee turnover? Remember, too, that there are business objectives and communications objectives, and the latter should flow up to the former.

Your strategy defines how you will achieve the objective you just outlined. If you’re looking to sell product, for example, one strategy might look to raise awareness of the product among a key audience. Another option might be to improve its visibility among key purchase-driven search terms.

Your tactics provide the final level of detail in your plan – the granular activities that will drive towards your strategies, and which ultimately fuel the accomplishment of your objective.

Too few people understand the difference between these three areas. If they’re on the client side, they’re the ones who, despite the great program delivered, still ask “but how many media impressions did we get” even if the business results are there for all to see. On the agency side, well, they’re the ones who risk those same clients never having the business results to ignore in the first place.

It’s CRITICAL that people get their heads around this, as these parts of your plan ensure you’re driving at the right result.

2. People focus on shiny.

Lots of people, especially in the communications industry, are highly creative and really enjoy the creative side of things. Let’s face it, brainstorms are fun. Blue sky thinking, a “there’s no such thing as a bad idea” mindset and no consideration of limitations is a nice mindset to have. Unfortunately, I’ve found that that often comes at the expense of strategy – of putting boundaries around creativity to ensure it is pointed in the right direction.

I had a great discussion with a colleague last week after a brainstorm. I commented that we had some great ideas coming out of the session, but that at that point most of them totally diverged from our strategy for the program. Her response (paraphrasing) was: “Agreed. It’s our job to take those ideas, filter them and tweak them so they fit.”

The perfect team combines people with creative strength alongside those with a strategic mindset, so you get the best of both worlds.

Want to improve your planning? Educate your team and your client about the difference between objectives, strategies and tactics, and make sure they’re taken into account when developing your plan.

Posted in: communications, communications planning, pr, public relations, strategy

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You Never Know

11.09.16

It’s all too easy to shoot your mouth off sometimes – to pass judgement and get a quick dose of attention and reaction from others - without thinking carefully of the consequences.

Just remember – you never know:

  • Who might be your boss one day
  • Who might interview you, or review your resume, one day
  • Who might be a colleague one day
  • Who might be a client one day
  • Who might be a key supplier one day
  • Who might be a potential recruit one day
It’s easy to pass judgement… but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Posted in: career

4Comments

Book Review: Social Marketing to the Business Customer

11.08.22

Despite all of the books out there about social media, most of them are pretty generic or focus on end-user 101s. So, when I heard about Social Marketing to the Business Customer (by Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman), I picked-up a copy straight away — because I think the marketplace is desperately in need of solid B2B books offering practical social marketing advice.

The bottom line: I’ve already recommended this book to several colleagues looking to learn more about social media from a B2B perspective. Even if you’ve worked in the social media space for a while, this book offers useful pointers and case studies that will help you to think differently about how you approach B2B social marketing.

For me, three key things stand out about this book:

1. It acknowledges that social media isn’t the second coming. While, per the title, the book is totally about social marketing, the authors frequently remind the reader that there are other promotional tactics available to business owners, and points out that social media isn’t always the best set of tools to use. A little dash of reality is essential to a book on this topic, when everyone else sometimes seem to have the blinkers on.

2. It brings new case studies to the table. We’ve all heard about the obvious case studies a hundred times. Dell, Starbucks, and so on (disclosure: Starbucks is an Edelman client). If you’ve read a social media book, you’ve heard their stories and you’ve learned all you will from them at this point. They’re in this book too, but so are organizations like InnoCentive, the Oil Spill Recovery Institute and the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts. In fact, along with the examples spread liberally throughout the book, there’s a whole chapter consisting purely of case studies of eight diverse organizations using social media in diverse ways.

Why does this matter?

Because you’re much more likely to be able to relate to one of these companies than you are to the giant first movers.

What’s more, this book doesn’t just talk inputs, it talks outcomes – it lets you know the results of those companies’ social media activities. In doing so it provides the substance that you need to take those case studies to your management to help convince them that your ideas are good ones.

3. It’s written for the average B2B marketer. You don’t need to be a social media expert; you don’t even need to be a digital marketer. You just need to have a good marketing head on your shoulders to understand and get value from this book, as it starts you at the beginning of the planning process and takes you through to tool selection and measurement. That’s why I’ve recommended it to colleagues who are looking to learn more about this topic — because it will help them go from 0 to 30 in B2B social media marketing. Our digital team can help them along the rest of the way.

Of course, there are things I would change. The chapter on ROI makes a LOT of assumptions, and I noticed more grammar errors in the book than in most others that I’ve read recently. They didn’t detract from the value in the book, though — and the fact that there IS a chapter on ROI made me happy.

Who should read this: People looking to gain a basic understanding of B2B social media. If you’re in this boat, Social Marketing to the Business Customer is a worthwhile read.

Who should avoid this: Purely B2C marketers (although you may still learn some useful pointers) and people at an advanced level of knowledge in the B2B social media space.

What you’ll learn:

  • Use cases for social media in B2B marketing
  • How other companies have successfully used social media in the B2B space
  • How you can go about planning and optimizing your own activities
  • Ways of measuring the return on your investment

Posted in: books

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Newsflash: PR is Not Easy, Cheap or Quick

11.08.16

As I continue to work towards my challenge of reading 26 books in 2011  (an aside: I’m up to 18 right now – two ahead of schedule), I recently finished reading Michael Crichton’s book State Of Fear. Within it, one section got my attention, and neatly illustrates why so many people think PR is cheap and easy.

For context, the following excerpt reflects a discussion on the media relations surrounding a new environmental conference, four days ahead of the first day of the conference (emphasis in the excerpt is mine):

“What’s the time-line of the campaign?”

“It’s a standard starburst launch to bring public awareness to abrupt climate change [...] we have our initial press break on Sunday-morning talk shows and in the Sunday newspaper supplements. They’ll be talking about the start of the conference Wednesday and interviewing major photogenic principals [...] we’ve given enough lead time to get into all the major weekly newsbooks around the world, Time, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, Paris Match, Oggi, The Economist. All together, fifty news magazines to inform lead opinion makers. We’ve asked for cover stories, accepting banner folds with a graphic. Anything less and they didn’t get us. We expect covers on at least twenty.”

WHAT???

Yes, it’s just a novel (not a particularly good one, frankly) but things like this shape peoples’ perceptions of the PR industry, so I feel compelled to point out a few things for the record:

  1. The world’s top media won’t all cover your brand new conference. It’s a struggle to get attention from even local tier one media in many cases, when travel budgets are low and conferences are a dime a dozen. Twenty cover stories? No chance unless you’re hosting the whole world at your event. In this book, the character notes a little later that they will have 200 TV journalists alone, along with “a number of print media people to carry the word to elite opinion makers, the ones that read but do not watch TV.” Ugh.
  2. You don’t get to dictate how earned media cover you. You can do your best to influence it, but “my way or the highway” is a myth.
  3. Four days lead time is not enough. In the book, the media kit for the conference was still in development, four days ahead of the conference (which, funnily enough, puts the conversation at the same time the coverage was meant to come out… ah, plot holes…). Sorry, you’ve missed a lot of your weeklies.
No wonder clients have such overly high expectations for their PR folks. Of course clients making a 30-minute presentation at a conference will want tier-one media coverage, if their experience of PR is limited to misrepresentation like this.
Again, it’s a novel and Crichton (as far as I know) isn’t representing himself as any kind of PR expert. Still, a little more of a grounding in reality would be nice, no? Or am I just overly sensitive? Maybe I am. There’s a State Of Fear pun here somewhere…
Ok, my blood pressure is dropping again. Moving on…

Posted in: pr, public relations

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The Top Misused Words in PR

11.08.12

Ragan’s PR Daily published a post yesterday listing their top 10 words often misused in press releases.

Their list:

  • Quality
  • Unique
  • Innovation
  • Official
  • Exclusive
  • Breaking
  • Never/ever
  • Revolutionary
  • Literally
  • Social
I’d have to agree with most of those. It feels like every new product that is launched claims to be “revolutionary” or “innovative”, and “social” is without doubt one of the most abused terms right now. No, adding a “share” button to your site doesn’t make your product “social.”
Why stop at ten words, though? Here are a couple more words that PR people seem to butcher on a daily basis:
  • Leading – It feels like every company claims to be the “leading” company in its industry. Most of the time the claim just isn’t true. Other times, they define their industry so narrowly that it’s accurate while still being meaningless. Once in a blue moon it’s realistic.I’m the leading red-haired digital PR guy sitting on my side of the Edelman Toronto office. It’s true. Also, no-one cares (sob).
  • Ultimate – This one’s a personal peeve. If your new product is the ultimate product for the market,  that means you’ll never need to release a follow-up, right? Oh, wait, you will? Guess it’s not so “ultimate” then. Sheesh.
What would you add to the list?

Posted in: writing

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Thoughts on Disconnecting

11.08.10

You may have noticed that things have been quieter than usual here recently. If you didn’t know, two weeks ago I got married and as I type this, I’m sitting on a plane on the way back from two blissful weeks spent completely offline on honeymoon in Italy.

At the Colosseum in Rome

While many of our vacations focus on adventure and exploration, this time we made a conscious decision to set aside at least half of the vacation for relaxation as the last few months have been… well, manic, to say the least. So, I had plenty of time to think, and I got to thinking about the effect that being offline had on how I thought and acted while we were away.

A few words come to mind:

  1. Old-school!
  2. Refreshing
  3. Disconnected

Resourcefulness

Yu know how you don’t appreciate a good thing until it’s gone? As I rapidly discovered while staying in a villa with no Internet access on the Amalfi Coast (it’s a tough life, I know), I use the Internet for a lot. A lot. No Internet meant no Google Maps; no Trip Advisor; no online bus schedule; no Google searches; nothing.

Was this tough? Absolutely not – it’s not that long since we didn’t have any of these things. However, it did make me reflect on just how much we use the Internet for nowadays. We had to search out real maps (you know, the ones “old people” use) and ask around for recommendations from local people. We had to use a phrasebook instead of Google Translate.

Again, I’m not crying “boo freakin’ hoo” here, but every time I take an offline vacation I find that the Internet had filled more and more functions for me, and I find that fascinating.

Refreshing

The view from Ravello, on the Amalfi Coast

The last six months have been, in a word, exhausting. We bought a house, renovated it, got married, and I was working long hours in the office. With everything that was going on, I found the opportunity to go completely offline reinvigorating.

Going from 300+ emails a day to none; waking up in the morning and not checking Twitter and Facebook; and not feeling like I should be Twitpic-ing photos of the sunset on the coast was completely refreshing. I highly recommend everyone unplug occasionally and just unwind.

Disconnected

Setting aside the hugely positive aspects of being offline, I did feel disconnected. I wondered what was going on with my friends. I wondered what was going on with my family. I wondered what was going on at the office. Not being able to reach out and connect with people whenever I felt like it was strange. And, yes, I did often think “I should totally post this photo” before realizing I couldn’t. It was unsettling at first, but the feeling passed.

Still, social networks are all about connecting with other people. I did miss those connections.

Looking ahead

The last two weeks were absolutely blissful and we couldn’t have had a better honeymoon. With that said, I return from it reinvigorated and re-energized, and I look forward to diving back into the things and relationships that matter to me – friends, family and colleagues – with more energy than ever before!

Posted in: miscellaneous, personal

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Eight Tips for Scaling Social Customer Support

11.07.18

David Armano noted in a recent Harvard Business Review post on social business that listening to conversations is a valuable step but only the beginning:

“The true opportunity lies in scaling and operationalizing “social”.”


Online customer support is one of the key trends confronting companies as they embrace social business and look to interact with their consumers online. The growth of social customer support is being driven by three key factors: increased uptake of social media broadly; highly visible success stories from other companies and an expectation of two-way interaction in social channels.

As social support grows in reach and popularity, companies are facing the conundrum of how to successfully scale. How do you deal with an environment where an unlimited number of people may look to you for swift, helpful service?

Here are eight pointers for scaling your customer support:

1. Shift from reactive to proactive + reactive

Listening and reacting isn’t enough. Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows that search engines are the #1 source of information about companies for informed consumers. So, win the search battle. Mine your support records for the most common support requests (through both online and traditional channels) and create searchable resources to address those queries.

These resources could be blog posts, knowledge base articles, videos, graphics, whatever (more on that later in this post) — just make sure they’re in the language of your customers, not in business jargon, and that people can link directly to them.

2. Triage

My apologies to the purists out there who think everyone should be treated equally, but if one person could cause a major issue for your company while another is lower-profile, I’m going to prioritize accordingly. Is that ideal? No. Is that completely egalitarian? No. Is it practical and realistic? You bet.

This means setting out your criteria for triage ahead of time. If you have tiered support in other channels you may already have some of this. Consider:

  • Relative influence
  • Severity of issue
  • Spread of issue
  • …etc.

3. Respond publicly when possible

The natural inclination for many companies is to take negative chatter offline ASAP. There are a couple of pitfalls to this approach:

  1. The Internet doesn’t forget — others will be able to see the complaint, but no resolution
  2. Other people with the same problem won’t benefit from the solution

There are many cases where you will have to take a conversation offline due to privacy needs around personal information, or due to legal regulations. Where those things aren’t the case, though, responding to concerns publicly accomplishes two things:

  1. Allows anyone watching to see your company being responsive to an issue (improves your reputation)
  2. The one:many nature of the Internet means that other people with that same issue can see the solution (scales your response)

4. Help customers to help customers

Companies like AT&T (rated highly for social support by Forrester) and BlackBerry (disclosure: client) have been successful at developing highly active support forums where customers interact with and help each other. While the company can step in and address unanswered questions, this solution means that many queries are addressed without any involvement from the company.

5. Build an army of advocates

Your social media activities will naturally let you identify your most active users and your biggest fans. Don’t ignore this potential; create programs to cultivate and build relationships with these people, empower them to become your ambassadors and reward them for doing so.

6. Know your customer

Different people have different preferences for how to receive service; this leads both to tailored interactions with people and to the development of different support mechanisms to suit their needs. People who are pressed for time and just want to get the answer with no frills may prefer quick step-by-step how-tos, for example, while others look for more social interaction and conversation. If you can, take the time (and/or money) to do the research to identify those needs.

Social CRM is a buzz term right now, but even if you’re not ready to go to that extent, there are plenty of tools that let you view your past interactions with people online and begin to move in that direction.

7. Structure for scale

While you may have a core group of support agents conducting support online, look to train and prepare a broader group of employees to step in during critical situations. Few companies are going to be able to take the Zappos approach to empowering employees, but by training outside your team you can be prepared for spikes in activity.

8. Plan strategically

Businesses don’t usually experience flat demand throughout the year. You’ll have seasonality; you’ll have spikes driven by announcements and launches; you’ll have marketing promotions. By knowing when those are, you can plan your resources accordingly – both in terms of staffing and in terms of proactive asset creation (see #1  above).

Scaling support remains a pressing problem for organizations. These approaches can help you to help more people, and in doing so raise satisfaction rates, reduce customer churn and improve your organization’s  reputation.

What tips would you add to the list?

Posted in: customer service, social media

Tags: ,

10Comments

11 Things I Wish More People Knew About Me

11.07.08

If you didn’t already know, I’m a huge Amber Naslund fan. Her latest post, over at the Brass Tack Thinking blog, focuses on the things she wishes more people knew about her, and it got me thinking.

As Amber notes, and as I’ve found, social media enables immensely valuable connections and relationships, but it’s all too easy to mistake loose, weak connections for strong ones when you really don’t know the person that well. A few posts don’t make a close friend; they make a passing acquaintance. Those acquaintances can and do grow into real relationships and real friendships over time, but in many cases they remain loose connections.

I loved Amber’s post, and it made me think about the things I wish more people knew about me. So, here goes – here are 11 things you may not know about me.

I’m an extrovert… but only just. Our team recently did a Myers Briggs workshop, and I’m an ESTJ. However, while the last three aspects of the assessment are strong, I scored just “one” on the extrovert scale.

In real life, I’m comfortable in and enjoy meeting new people and interacting with others, which is the side of me that people generally see. However, when the day is done I’m very protective of my “Dave time” – I’ll often turn down social engagements to get time alone with my thoughts, play a video game or just to switch off and enjoy the opportunity to relax alone.

I give 110%, or nothing. I’m an all or nothing guy. I’ve burned out on all sorts of sports and hobbies because I throw everything at them, then get tired of them. I’m the same at work — I throw everything into it, and adopt it into my own sense of who I am.

Measurement turns my crank. I have a business degree, but I was very, very close to doing math at university. Numbers have always come easily to me; I took my GCSE in math a  year early, and got an A* grade (above an A). I took A-levels in Math and Further Math. Measurement and analytics let me return to my comfort zone.

Moving to Canada was like a rebirth for me. Moving to Canada let me completely redefine who I was. When you grow up in a small town with the same bunch of kids following each other all of the way through the education system, you can find yourself boxed-in in terms of peoples’ expectations. By the time I was done with university, I was tired of being what people wanted me to be.

Moving to Canada nearly 10 years ago let me hit the reset button. No-one knew me; no-one knew what I was “meant” to be and that meant I could really be who I wanted to be. I found that incredibly liberating, and it let me become the person I wanted to be.

Running is my therapy. Because I throw >110% into my work, and because I need my personal space, running is very therapeutic — I retreat into my own world, where I can think the day’s events through and clear my head by the end of it. I haven’t found the time to run for the last few years; getting back into it remains a huge priority for me moving forward.

It’s easy to mistake satisfaction for ego. On a daily basis, I marvel that anyone cares what I think, or wants to read what I write. To this day, I find that astonishing and exciting.

Some people mistake that astonishment for bragging; it’s not — I’m genuinely excited when people care what I think as, at my core, I have a lot of insecurity around my abilities.

I adore dogs. Not those annoying drop-kick dogs; I’m talking about big dogs — golden retrievers, german shepherds and the like. For years, my parent’s dog (Guinness) was like a close friend to me. I’ve been pining for a dog ever since I moved to Canada, and I long for the day that my lifestyle will allow it. Right now, though, that all-or-nothing approach to work and life means it’s just not feasible.

Laughter and music are my drugs. I prefer comedies to other movies; I love going to stand-up comedy nights, and unfortunately for my colleagues I exercise my own sense of humour (I’m fluent in sarcasm, have a bit of a potty mouth and continuously self-censor — or try to (sorry, gang)) constantly.

I come from a musical family (my mum is a piano teacher); I played the violin and piano, and sang, as a kid. Nowadays I just listen to a lot of (rock) music. I go to a bunch of shows, and I get cranky if I haven’t managed to zone out and listen to music for a while.

I love the outdoors. I’m pining now because it hasn’t happened yet, but normally we try to go camping half a dozen times or more each summer. I love the outdoors; I love the peace that being out of the city provides and I love unplugging and just relaxing. Oh, and I love monstrous breakfast fry-ups cooked over a fire.

I’m a small-town guy at heart and will eventually become one again. I spent my first 18 years in a village with 30 or so houses and zero shops in Cornwall, England. I spent the next four in a small city (Bath). My last 9 have been in a big city, but I don’t expect that that will be the case for the next 30. I need my space  too badly to be able to stay in the city scene for good.

I’m a big mushball. My sense of humour sometimes makes it seem like I have a hard edge, but when I come home after even the longest days in the office, there’s nothing I want to do more than just cuddle up with Caralin and spend time with her. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that in just over two weeks she will become my wife makes me the luckiest guy in the world.

What about you?

Posted in: personal

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27Comments

Criticism is Good

11.06.28

Yesterday I published a post (ok, fine, a rant) about people who sling unconstructive criticism at others and the effect it has.

Several people seemed to take that to mean that I think all criticism is bad, or that we should avoid commenting on other posts. That’s my fault – I buried this line way within the post (as, per the previous paragraph, I was ranting):

“As I’ve said before, criticism can be good. For that to be the case, it needs to be informed and it needs to be constructive.”

My concern is that there’s a big difference between these two statements:

“‘Company X’ did this. I don’t think that was the best move – I might have considered [change A], [change B] or [change C] to make [aspects D, E and F] better.”

“‘Company X’ did this. What a dumb move – who in their right minds would do that? Fail.”

One is constructive; one is unhelpful. One offers useful suggestions; the other tears the organization down. One builds; the other tears down. One makes you look smart and helpful; the other does the opposite.

Happily, the people who read my post and took that meaning from it (again, my bad) chose to do so in a constructive way and made some constructive points in return. For that, I thank you.

Criticism is good. Most people don’t receive enough feedback — the kind that builds and helps them to be better, that is, not the kind that makes an example of them. I know I always strive to receive more, as I know there’s a lot to improve. We just need to get better at both providing and receiving it. The aim of the last post was to let those who aim to knock others down rather than build them up know that that’s not part of the equation.

Make sense?

#thatisall

Posted in: blogging, miscellaneous

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