How do I measure this stuff anyway?

After taking an entire semester to study the use of social media for Public Relations, I know a few trillion reasons why and how social media can be useful.

Image Credit: "February 15, 2011" By Beto Ruiz Alonso

One of the most interesting things to learn has been how you can measure the success of social media campaigns. Measurement is obviously important if you want to be paid because companies want to know the bottom line before they spend money.

Social Media Examiner offers some great tips on how to create a strategy to measure social media. Remember that analytics mean nothing if you’re not measuring the right thing.

Here’s a breakdown of some useful, free ways to measure your reach through websites, Facebook, and twitter.

Google Analytics – Arik Hanson wrote a great post on his blog to explain 5 uses to measure blog activity

Facebook Insights – tool on Facebook that provides great statistics for pages

Klout – measures individual twitter accounts

What are some other great tools that PR agents can use free?

 

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This post was sparked by an article on PR Daily.

Guest Blogger: Whitney Gonzalez “Twitterville Review”

The following post was written by guest blogger Whitney Gonzalez. You can view the original post on her blog. I choose to share this blog with you in light of the recent changes Twitter has undergone.

Twitterville Review

What could be better than a book all about Twitter? I picked up Shel Israel’sTwitterville as part of a social media book assignment and enjoyed reading it. I learned a lot about Twitter’s beginnings and the different ways in which it was adopted.Twitter can be more of a listening tool than people think. One can Twitter search their name or company’s name and obtain accurate results of what’s being said out there about them or their company. It can be just about as accurate asGoogle Alerts.

Although it may seem like you are tweeting to the entire twitterverse, by using @replies and DMs (direct messages) one can make Twitter as intimate as a telephone conversation.

One thing that stood out from Twitterville was the Google “sucks” test. If you type your name or company’s name in Google and type “sucks” after it and a lot of results return, you just may “suck.”

Overall, Twitterville was a great book and anyone that has an interest in social media can benefit from reading this book. By learning about Twitter from a slightly different angle, students can benefit upon searching for a career in social media because they will be familiar with everything Twitter.

StumbleUpon Cures Boredom

StumbleUpon (the cool discovery and recommendation site I browse when I’m bored) reached 1 billion stumbles per month in April 2011. I was really excited to see that so many people find the site as useful as I do.

I’ve written about StumbeUpon before. You can add the StumbleUpon toolbar to any browser to make stumbling easy too.

Here are a few things I stumbled upon this week.

1. Silk – a site that lets you drag your mouse to create interactive artwork

 

Image Credit: "Silk Screenshot" by Megan Getter

 

2. Quotations of Dr. Seuss – my favorite of those listed: “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

 

Image Credit: "Dr. Seuss Quotations Screenshot" By Megan Getter

 

 

3. S’mores Bars – I haven’t had a chance to try the recipe, but I want to soon.

 

Image Credit: "S'mores Bar Screenshot" By Megan Getter

 

 

Your Time To Speak

Image Credit: "master chief sings" by Ayton

PR OpenMic is a website that connects PR students, professors, and professionals. The site has a number of features that can give voice to and connect the users. The areas I liked most are explained below.

Videos

PR OpenMic has a great section on videos. One of my favorites illustrates Obama’s proposed budget cuts in pennies. This video makes Obama’s budget cuts seem insignificant in light of the overall budget. I especially enjoyed the side commentary that made the video really captivating.

I also found a video by Kent State that spoke to professors about PR vs. Marketing. I thought the video was informative and explained both sides well. My favorite part was defining PR and marking in under 10 words.

PR Web in Plain English was another video I found on the site. I’ve found that Plain English does an excellent job of simplifying complicated issues. This video explains how using the service PR Web can increase the exposure a single new release receives.

Blogs

PR OpenMic devotes a lot of content space to blogs. After accessing the home page, you can click on the blog link to blog posts by users. One of the down sides is that PR OpenMic seems to limit the number of words each blog can be. I was unsatisfied with the short posts. I did find that some users linked back to another blog site where a longer blog appeared.

One blog that I particularly enjoyed was Platform Magazine. I posted a comment on “Sarcasm So Works Best” by Katherine Baker. The blog talks about the recent success of Jennifer Aniston and her viral video for Smart Water. Read the blog and watch the video = time well spent!

Music

On their main home page along the right hand side, there’s a small section entitled “Music”. In this space you can find PR related podcasts. When I last accessed the site (March 10, 2011), there was a number of podcasts from “Inside PR.”

I also found a podcast by NPR on Social Media in the military. The podcast from Talk of the Nation interviewed Price Floyd from the Pentagon. He talked about the social media policies that the military adheres to.

What do you think?

Jump On Board with Social Media

In the podcast “Speakers & Speeches: Social Media, Friend or Foe?” a panel at a Ragan Communication conference mock pitches social media to a CEO. The panel discusses a wide range of topics including blogs, facebook, and management of social media within a company.

Image Credit: "Working Together Teamwork Puzzle Concept" by lumaxart

I learned about company intranets, which I found useful. I’m currently a student, and have little interaction with intranets. Florida Southern College uses the “portal” to communicate with students, but the site has limited functionality. I think it would be helpful if the site had more functions that instructors knew how to utilize. The idea of a college-based intranet was the foundation for Facebook after all.  Where do you see the future of social media and education headed?

 

The panel also discussed splitting the work load of a blog among the company’s employees. I know that many blogs I read feature several different contributors. Disney actually uses this model on their company blog. I think the model works effectively for them. Do you know of any other company blogs that clearly identify multiple writers and use the model effectively?

Best Buy‘s employee social networking site was a highlighted case study in the podcast. Best Buy created Blue Shirt Nation as an internal social networking community for their employees. The site link is currently down. I went out and tried to find another example of an internal community. I was unable to locate one. Send me another one if you find one. I’d be interested in seeing what one looks like.

Lastly, I heard the idea of a “cloud” come up several times. My understanding of the term is that it’s a place where digital information is stored and can be accessed. I googled “digital cloud,” and it seems that the term refers to any information on the web. Do you think the world wide web is a cloud or a storm of information?

Tweet Your Speech

Image Credit: "the 44th President of the United States...Barack Obama" By jmtimages

When President Obama gave his 2011 State of the Union address, I was at home watching and tweeting.

I could comment and like some quotes. I also replied to comments friends made. Some comments were witty and others were not.

Regardless, this marks the first time that I sat through an entire state of the union address. How did I manage that? I think the comments on twitter and Facebook made the engagement… fun.

From a PR perspective, Obama’s simultaneous tweets during the speech was amazing. Congress.org wrote an article that highlighted that most of his quote were 140 characters or less. Almost as though the speech was written for tweeter.

The article asks whether twitter has become the new sound bite. I think the answer can be seen when you look at the number of media outlets that use screenshots of tweets.

Do you think his speech was written for twitter? If so, is Obama doing for social media what JFK did for television?

Is Anybody Listening?

Image Credit: "Twitter Follower Mosaic" By joelaz

So does anyone care what you think? If so, does your influence really matter?

When it comes to social media the answer is an overwhelming YES! The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about social media influencers. These are the people that have the most influence over others on the web. They get all kinds of cool prizes and freebies from companies that want them to say good things about their brands.

I was wondering though… does social media influence equal influence in the real world? Do these people have the same influence on Twitter as they do on Capitol Hill, Wall Street, and Hollywood?

I think the answer is again yes. People like Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Lady Gaga make powerful statements that ripple through their spheres of influence. For Barack Obama, I would argue that his immense social media influence was a primary factor in how he got elected.

I was being conceited and looked up my own score. @Megangetter has a score of 10 on Klout. Not so impressive. I was disappointed it wasn’t higher, but then realized that I don’t use twitter very often. Maybe one day it will be in the sixties. For now, 10 is fine with me.

 

Update: My Klout Score on March 29, 2011 was 29.  53 Reach | 14 amplification | 37 network

Classification – Dabbler

Chitchat with the Groundswell in Social Media

Forrester Research’s Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff wrote a fascinating novel that examines social media. “Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies” looks at how companies can harness the power of the groundswell.

The groundswell is “a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.”

SHOUTING

So everyone knows that companies are willing to shell out millions of dollars to run an ad on tv. Super Bowl Sunday is a prime example of this theory. But what do ads really accomplish? What if you could talk to your customers…

How do you talk to the groundswell?

1.       Post a viral video.

George Wright and Blendtec put together the viral video “Will It Blend?” These videos advertise the product and reach a mass audience the even the Super Bowl can’t compare with. The company even has a “Will It Blog?” area to their website that allows customers to weigh in.

2.       Engage in social networks.

Ernst & Young Careers page on Facebook allows college students to asks questions and get real answers and advice. The company takes time to respond to each comment posted on their wall. Students are exposed to traditional media, but they talk!

3.       Join the blogosphere.

GM’s blog has loads of information on a variety of topics.  Blogging can offer lots of different opportunities, so businesses have to decide their purpose for the blog. You can’t start a blog just to save costs and be successful. Most importantly, you need to use your blog to start and engage in conversation with your audience.

4.       Create a community.

Companies that create and maintain a community can tap into the groundswell with incredible. First make sure your audience will join the community (see Social Techographics Profile). Proctor & Gamble targeted tween girls for feminine care products with the creation of beinggirl.com. Being Girl gave girls the chance to ask questions and get answers on questions they were too embarrassed to ask anyone else.

If you’re company is looking at social media and aiming to become part of the conservation, then simply start by talking to the groundswell!

The Great Paradox of Social Media

Image Credit: "Social Media Monopoly" By clasesdeperiodismo

An interesting paradox exists between people and their privacy when it comes to social media. The very idea of social media as Mark Zuckeberg has pointed out time and time again is the ability to connect and share with people. We share all kinds of things from what we’re doing to everything we like (and everything we don’t!). We aim to connect with as many people as we can, but in the same breathe try to protect our privacy from intrusion.

Companies that have an interest in scooping up all that data we post on every.com site imaginable turn to social media monitoring services. Social Media Monitoring enables companies to easily see everything we put on social media sites from Facebook to Flickr, Twitter to LinkedIn. These monitoring companies offer a variety services including mining the data and formulating useful graphs and charts on our habits.

The Debate

In light of both our fight for privacy and our need to share, critics debate the ethics of social media monitoring. In “Debating the Ethics of Social Media Research” Jeffrey  Henning outlined the debate.

1.      Cite/obscure identities of commenters: Do you give credit to the source or do you obscure the identity of individuals when using the data?

2.       Seek/don’t seek permission: Do you get consent to use the data or accept that consent is not always possible to obtain?

3.      Engage/don’t engage with commenters: Do you respond to commentators and possibly influence them or sit passively respecting that individual may say things online that are not always true?

4.      Respect/ignore perceptions of privacy: Do you allow the users to think their privacy is being respected or accept that everything on the internet is public?

Weighing In

Image Credit: "3D Character and Question Mark" By 姒儿喵喵

I think that standard PR ethics codes (i.e. PRSA) can adequately address the problems associated with social media monitoring. I think knowing and understanding the target audience is also a big part of the process. Forrester’s Social Technographic Consumer Profiles can illuminate how your target uses social media.

Passion precedes prosperity for PR professionals

Brona Cosgrave wrote on his blog about the “PR Client’s Bill of Rights,” and added two more additional points to the list of eight:

Image Credit: "88 Prosperity_7850" By Daniel Cheah

1.You have the right to measurable results or at least deliverables that can be met.

2. You have the right to be represented professionally.

3. You have the right to be represented by someone that actually knows your food, your book, your product.

4.You have the right to expect your PR professional to understand social media.

5. You have the right to expect your PR person to tailor their communications to the audience.

6. You have the right to a PR person that will not inconvenience the people with whom you are trying to build good
relationships.

7. You have the right to a PR professional who will be smart about working for you.

8. You have the right to a PR professional that accurately and completely represents what s/he claims to represent.

9. You have the right to be represented by someone who shares your passion and enthusiasm.

10. You have the right to work with a PR team that is fun!

Cosgrave suggests that the PR professional should have passion for their clients.

I think that any job should include 50% work and 60% passion to equal 110% quality work. If you love your job and your clients, prosperity will come your way!

Related Articles

• Got Passion? (livingstonbuzz.com)