KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

Tim Dyson has a great new metric

Thanks to Brendon Hodgson for pointing out this blog from Tim Dyson has been looking at the ratio of news stories to blog postings and coming up with some interesting conclusions. We're thinking there's probably an industry benchmark out there for different types of industries and different types of crises. Anyone got any theories?

What is new media?

A client recently asked me to for my take on “new Media” how I would define it, what it meant, and how could she measure it? My immediate flip response was: its everything that old media isn’t. But then I started thinking. It’s not like “old media” or MSM. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Sunday talk shows still wield a lot of clout. Its just that now, everyone else has a little bit of clout too. 

New media is citizens covering the war in Lebanon via cell phone and YouTube.

It’s activists changing the face of politics by motivating the grass roots and defeat the favorite by 20 percentage points even though you’re outspent 10 to 1.

It’s Edelman being hired to blog for Walmart, and then being outed for producing a fake blog (“flog” which of course leads to a whole new meaning to “flogging” a product) and having its reputation destroyed in the process.

 It’s the flavor of the week, the brouhaha of the week, the crise du jour moving effortlessly between MSM and the blogosphere.

It’s me being able to influence opinion about PR measurement thru my blog, while I’m in

Wichita,  Dallas, LA, Warsaw, Dubai, Doha, Islamabad, Singapore or Columbia.

It’s being recorded giving a speech inWichita, and knowing that the pod cast will be available before you board your flight home.

 Its bilingual, multi cultural and truly global. Its having fans of measurement in 
Singapore follow your blog and invite you to speak.

It's the power of cell phones and text messaging.I

t’s the notion that you can shut down the student riots in downtown  Durham, NH by shutting down the cell phone system because text messaging via cell phone was how the word was getting out.

 It’s being able to create the definition of PR Measurement on Wikipedia, and then watching it evolve as more and more experts chime in

 It’s you, me and every other citizen journalist sharing your experiences – pretty and ugly – on You Tube, Shutterfly and Flikr.

 It’s consumer to consumer marketing with no middle men, no spin meisters, no corporate speak in between.

Its product placement in everything from main stream movies, to You Tube, to blogs. It’s Loco sports, sending their amazing running shoes to an A-list blogger, not just because they want him/her to write about them, but because the care passionately about their product and want to share it with the world.

Ultimately, its being who you are and seeing who is pleased, rather than seeking approval for every word you try to publish. 

And, in the end, that’s what differentiates new media from old. In the bad old days, we wrote and published what was approved, condoned, signed off by 40 people, white washed and spun. In the new media world, we follow our passions. If I’m passionate about running or biking or kayaking, I Google the topic, and find other people who share my passion. I start conversations with them.

 I happen to be passionate about PR and Marketing Measurement, and I happen to be a breast cancer survivor. So I write about what I believe and other people pick up on that and join in the conversation, and I have conversations with amazing people that I would never meet if it weren’t for this “new media”

 It’s reality TV come to every aspect of communications. Its real people, doing real stuff, using real language to talk about it, and being heard by the real live people that care about what your saying.  It’s the death of scream marketing and the start of a whole lot of conversations.

Is it good for business? you bet your bippy it is.  Can I measure all of it?  – not yet. But I do know that business is up over 50% since I started blogging.  Correlation or coincidence? You be the judge.

And you say, it's so scary, you're so vulnerable in this new world. I say yes, but we were always vulnerable and life is always scary (just try hearing the words “you’ve got cancer” and see how you feel) and what you realize is, it’s all relative. On a scale of one to ten, “you’ve got cancer” is about a 9 – just shy of and closely related to “you’re going to die.” And when you’ve heard those words, someone saying “your product sucks” is about a 4.

 

You become what you measure

Don Bartholemew has a great post on a corrollary to my oft-repeated phrase.  If all you measure is media relations (primarily clip tonnage), that is how the PR profession will be valued. Read his whole post here.

Great read from Jeremy Pepper

Jeremy Pepper has a very good rant here from the Blog Business Summit on how everyone is talking about "community" and "conversatin" but is still applying old media techniques and thinking to new media.

Measure this!

This great article just came out about our Breast Friends Calendar that is being published and we've already gotten half a dozen new orders -- proof that PR works! If you're wondering, I'm Miss June. 

Talk to the dead or approve of congress?

My favorite statistic of the week is that, according to Salon, more Americans now believe it's possible to talk with the dead than approve of the way Republicans are running the legislative branch.

I was thinking of that as I competed in yesterday's Run, Pedal Paddle in Newcastle, NH. It's a great triathlon -- you run a 10K Through Newcastle, then bike 20 miles thru the beautiful back roads of Rye, NH. and then kayak around Newcastle Island. I did the run and the bike part and then bailed on the kayak since it was blowing 40 and there were white caps on the salt marshes! But since one of my New Year's Resolutions was to do the bike piece, I'm just happy I made it -- particularly since it was only my second time on a road bike ever!

So I was thinking of that quote, because I'm definitely not one of those that approve of congress, but I do think that the dead do speak o you. And, just as my energy started to flag yesterday, I got some very clear messages from some very dear friends who have passed on. I was doing the race in honor of my nephew Dauphinot Piper and my friend Crescentia True both of whom died earlier this year.

Just as I was struggling up a hill during the run, my friend Cormac's song "A little something" came on my mp3 player and gave me the boost to make it to the top, and I just know that it was sent to me by Crescentia. The next song was off a CD that my nephew had made for me and my feet started flying.  Then, just as I was starting to really suffer during the bike race, I found myself cruising by a cemetery in Rye where some dear friends are buried, and once again, I felt my feet pedal just a little faster.  Call me crazy, but at least I don' t approve of congress.

If you're thinking about brand measurement

If you're thinking about brand measurement, this report from Forester is a must read. I tend to agree with their assessment, surprise, surprise. What's more interesting is that there are a lot of companies out there doing this that aren't even on Forrester's radar.

This is what it looks like out there..

Thanks to Carolyn Russell for these great shots of the Wichita event
Here's Carolyn and me in the gorgeous Wichita Art Museum:

What a place to give a lecture!

Measuring failure with Edelman and Walmart

If there is one good piece of news to come out of the disgusting Edelman/Walmart affair it is this: With any luck, someone out there is measuring Walmart's reputation and realizing that fake blogs and trickery are not effective PR tactics.  I know we are measuring Edelman's reputation and it's not being helped by any of this.  Ultimately both organizations will only learn from their failures if they actually lose business from all of this. Sadly the  chances of Walmart suffering lost sales from a kerfuffle in the blogosphere are slim to none. Nonetheless, I maintain that the what this whole affair points out is that there is a culture in certain PR agencies that anything goes as long as it gets the client "good press."  That culture starts at the top, and whatever mid-level PR flack takes the blame for all this, somehow got the notion that violating WOMMA guidelines would be okay with his/her boss.
The bigger issue here, is that you become what you measure, as we always say. And if you measure success based on clip books --  or whatever the blog equivalent is -- full of happy news stories -- you will do anything to generate such stories.  The more column inches the better, right? Look where it got them!
Instead of looking at clip books, they should be looking at relationship measures like trust, integrity, honesty etc. Both Edelman and Walmart might learn something by doing some real research on what a lack of transparency and blatant media manipulation does to ones trust index.  But that takes too much time effort and energy, apparently.

Need good t-shirt ideas

I'm thinking that us  data-driven,  accountable communictors and Measurement Mavens of the world really need a good t-shirt --
we were brainstorming a bit the other night (yes, there was alcohol involved) but we came up with the following, and I was hoping for more suggestions.
1.    Unlike the President, I'm accountable
2.    When we say "Mission Accomplished" we can actually prove it
3.    Outputs, outtakes, outcomes --who gives a s__t as long as we get the credit
4. I have a ruler and I know how to use it
5. Measure this!