One True Sentence

If you’re going to measure, you have to get real and face the music

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

Lately there has been much more of a focus on public relations measurement, which I think is a great step for the industry. My concern with suddenly embracing measurement is that it’s a bit like Othello – takes a minute to learn the basics, but a lifetime to master.

Measurement is tough, and measuring PR requires a great deal of thought. There are many, many factors to consider when deciding what metrics to use and what exactly it is that you want to measure. Sometimes when folks rush into measurement, they only focus on metrics or media sources that they think are going to yield the best results. Why? Because it’s easy to get budget for a measurement project that is going to give you a pat on the back.

Be real and honest with yourself. Do you want to measure your PR programs, campaigns and events? Or do you want to discover new data that will make you look good? They’re not always one and the same.

I will admit that I am guilty of this, too, and it can be easy to seek out measurements that show yourself or your efforts in the best light. But I urge you to understand a few things before you jump into measurement:

You are not going to like all of the results that you find.
Even if you aren’t using every media channel to reach your customers, your customers are probably using them to talk about you.
You should do a trial run first. Get an idea of how much content you will be dealing with and how long it will take you to analyze it.
Be prepared for speed bumps and learning curves. If you have never done a measurement project before, you will make mistakes.
Devote the most amount of time to analysis of data and content. While collecting the right data is important, it should take you much longer to fully understand its implications.

For those of you who have experience with measurement, what are your best tips? I’ve found the most important thing to consider when diving in is to understand that not all the results will be pretty. It’s hard to face the music sometimes, but in order to get a true and complete picture, you must be willing to accept the whole picture. You must take the bad with the good.

In the end, understanding everything will do you more good than only focusing on the praise you already receive. For those of you that have taken a dip in the measurement pool, what surprising results did you find?

Posted in Measurement, PR metrics, Social Media | Leave a comment

Metrics and Cockfosters

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

Originally posted on PRBreakfastClub.

I’ve been a bit delinquent in writing my fair share of posts recently due to my recent vacation to London. I spent one glorious week with my little sister and parents exploring one of the oldest cities in the world.

Continually struck by the historic and surreal atmosphere of the city, I often daydreamed about how different my life could be. What if my ancestors hadn’t left for the new world, would I live in London? Would I still giggle at words like Cockfosters and bangers and mash? (Hang with me for a moment, I promise this isn’t an entirely sentimental and introspective post.)

Each choice we make can have a profound effect on our lives. If I had not chosen to visit the University of North Carolina when I was a senior in high school, I would never have spent four years there. Had I not attended UNC, I likely would not have gone searching for a new major when biochemistry didn’t pan out. If I had continued to push myself to study something I wasn’t truly passionate about, I would never have signed up for the journalism class that led to where I am today.

You can never wake up one day and decide what your life will be like. You choose your path with each choice.

Similarly, you cannot wait until you have finished a campaign, look back and expect to find success. I have said this time and again, but I will keep writing about it until the entire PR industry really listens. Measurement must be planned from the very beginning.

On rare occasions, you will get lucky and be able to find some numbers retroactively. But if you want to really prove value, you have to set yourself up at the very beginning. Decide what success will look like and how you can realistically track it. Record benchmarks so you can accurately show where you were and where you are in the end.

Often I think folks assume that because there is such a wealth of data available online, there is no need to worry about measurement at first. A great deal of data is only available if you have planned to track it and have measures in place. In most instances, you cannot simply decide one day that you want data from the past three months and obtain it easily.

Planning for metrics may seem as silly to PR folks as Cockfosters seems to Americans, but we must learn to become more comfortable with measurement to accurately show our value. Plan for measurement as soon as you start planning anything at all, and you will be able to prove your worth every time.

Posted in Measurement | Leave a comment

Klout Adds Context to Automated Influence?

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

Originally posted on PRBreaktfastClub.

Klout recently announced its latest feature: +K. Similar to Google’s +1, Klout asks that you give users a +K for each topic for which they have influenced you. In theory, Klout scores will now include context and topical relevance.

For example, if you look at my profile topics, you could give me a +K if I have influenced you on social media measurement or public relations. Each user gets five +K’s each day, which means you have to be registered to give others feedback and cannot give unlimited feedback. You can also give a +K to each topic for a person once each week. So if I give you a +K for social media on Monday, then I cannot give you another +K for social media until the following Monday. And +K’s will not last forever, they have an expiration date.

Klout explains that influence can change over time. While there are plenty of people who are influential about SXSW in the first few months of the year, there is hardly anyone talking about it right now. So I may give you a +K for SXSW in March, but a +K for summer beers in June. Influence can be fleeting, and it can grow and shift over time, and Klout is trying to account for that.

You can also remove words and phrases from your own profile if you do not think they are fitting. I have noticed some odd words in my own profile before, so this feature may be useful for finding true contextual influencers.

While this does seem to add a layer of validation to the automated algorithm, it also brings into question the validity of the technology in the first place. Klout claims to measure your online influence. As we know, it’s not perfect, but asking for validation from peers makes me wonder about how accurate the algorithm is. Also, if I am able to remove topics I think are not relevant, doesn’t that defeat the purpose?

There have been a few who expressed fears about this becoming a popularity contest, and I have already seen some folks asking for +K’s on a certain topic for which they want to have influence. That’s not really influence. I can ask you to give me +K on New York City, for example, but if you know that I’ve never lived there or visited for an extended period of time, do you really find me influential on NYC? Probably not.

At this point you cannot search for people based on keywords or topics. The topics can only be viewed when someone visits your profile to explore your influence.

I respect what Klout is attempting to do, but they are not adding context or topical relevance to influence. They are not measuring your influence at all. They are using numerous numbers like your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, retweets and so on to determine how often folks online interact with or share your content.

Beyond the high barrier to entry for using +K, I don’t think it adds enough value to be worthwhile. I doubt many people will sign up for Klout just to give someone a small boost to their “social media” score which will only last about 48 hours anyway.

What do you think? Will you use +K?

Posted in Influence, Measurement, Social Media | Leave a comment

Taking on a new challenge!

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

As many of you already know, Friday, April 22, was a bittersweet day for me. I hopped a plane across the Atlantic to see my baby sister in London and spend a week with my family playing tourist. But it was also my last day at Edelman Digital.

After two years filled with challenges, passion and incredible colleagues, I am taking on a new role at Digitas here in Chicago.

I cannot thank everyone at Edelman Digital enough for all you have taught me and for being supportive throughout my time with you. I miss each and every one of you, and I can’t wait for our paths to cross again soon!

Posted in Digitas, Growing up | Leave a comment

Measurement is not a number, it’s context

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

Last week Ken Burbary wrote a blog post which inspired me. He talked about measuring online influence and why using a single metric or number is not the way to do it. One thing he said in particular struck a chord with me:

“While these metrics can be valuable inputs into determining whether or not someone is influential, they aren’t worth much at all without their counterpart, qualitative metrics. If influence is a coin, then the 2 sides are quantitative and qualitative.”

He’s absolutely right, and he reminded me of something even more basic about not just measuring influence, but measuring in general. Measurement is never just a number; measurement requires context.

Think about it. I tell you that my blog was given a rating of 11. What’s your first question?

Likely you want to know what the rating scale is. If it’s out of 12, that means I’m pretty awesome, right? But if the scale is out of 100, I suddenly don’t look so great. (And if I tell you the scale is 10, then you know I’m lying. This isn’t Spinal Tap.)

Let’s pretend the scale is 100. What next? Right off the bat, 11 obviously seems pretty low. But what if I tell you Mashable is rated 25 on the same scale. My score no longer seems that low. Maybe another blog focused on measurement, like Chuck Hemann’s, was given a 14. Suddenly my blog is looking pretty good by comparison.

We’re still missing something. What the heck is this scale supposed to measure in the first place?

I’ve decided my arbitrary, completely-made-up scale ranks blogs on their influence related to the NCAA tournament. Do you even still care what my score was?

My point is that one number can never tell you a story, but context can give you a sense of why that number matters. Including other metrics and qualitative analyses into your thought process will help you start to build your story.

Building Context With…

Comparisons to Competitors. One of the easiest ways to quickly put a metric into perspective is to compare your brand’s results to other companies. Look at how your nearest competitors stack up, and check out other big brands you respect. How do they compare? Try to figure out how a brand’s industry or other factors affect its results.

Comparison to Other Metrics. If you can’t easily compare your brand to other companies, try looking at other metrics. If your brand scores high with one metric, but low with another, try to figure out why. What do they metrics or scales have in common? Can you figure out what causes the change? If you have high Klout, but a low number of Twitter followers, what is it that’s driving up your score?

Sentiment. When all you have is a number, try to look at tone in a relevant way. If you find that you have far more Facebook fans than any of your nearest competitors, check out some comments on your page. If they’re overwhelmingly negative, does it really matter how many fans you have? And conversely, if you have far fewer fans but many more positive comments or reviews, aren’t you still better off?

Conversation Details. With social media, I often find a popular question is, “But what are they saying about us?” You don’t need to be overly technical or exact here, but dive in and read! Read your Facebook comments or Twitter @replies for a couple weeks back. Do the same conversation topics pop up over and over again? I bet they do. In this case, I’d far prefer far less interaction with more meaning than thousands of @replies each day that all say the same thing. Find patterns and common complaints or questions if you can.

Changes Over Time. If all else fails, track changes over time. Did the number of new Facebook fans increase last month or decrease? Try to figure out why that change may have occurred. If you can’t add context any other way, track metrics over time and search for the reasons behind the changes. You’ll learn a great deal, I promise you that.

I’ve listed just a few of my favorite context-building measures above, but I’d really love to hear what matters to you when measuring social media or your business goals. How do you tell a story and add context?

Posted in Life as an AAE, Measurement, PR metrics, Social Media, Twitter | 3 Comments

What is it that binds us to this place as to no other?

Posted on March 5, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

I wrote this post last year on a trip back to my old stomping grounds. Today marks three years since the passing of an amazing Tar Heel and friend, and I can’t think of any better way to honor her than to shout how much I love UNC. This one is for you, Eve.

This post was written during my last trip to UNC, and I decided to publish it today in memory of Eve Marie Carson, who died two years ago today. She was probably the strongest believer in the Carolina way, and it was impossible to know her without being her friend. I will never forget Eve, forever a Tar Heel.

I will admit that I have been a huge supporter of social media and the idea that we can all join global communities regardless of our location. It can give you chills how truly connected we all are these days, and how much of an impact we can all have even if we’ve never met in person.

Despite the amazing benefits that social media can bring, I recently realized that there is quite a lot to be said for location-based communities. And I was reminded when I listened to Charles Kuralt giving a speech at the University of North Carolina’s bicentennial event.

And I found myself getting chills and tearing up at my desk on the 32^nd floor of a Chicago high-rise.

Although I could, I will not give you a long argument about why the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the absolute best school in the world and the most welcoming place on earth, but instead I want to remind you that social media should not replace all location-based community in our lives.

There is something to be said for a place connecting us. A blog or Twitter list is a great way to instantly and continuously stay connected, but when you’re in a physical place together, you’re surrounded by time and history. For hundreds of years people have been living and experiencing, and by visiting the same coffee shop or attending the same university, you become part of that history. And that bond seems to me to be stronger than reading the same blog or following the same person on Twitter.

I think that a large part of the reason that UNC students feel connection is that we all come to this place, this center of history, because we all have a passion for our own education and future. And that passion alone binds us to this place and to each other. In an online community, it’s hard to find that same amount of passion to truly create a strong bond.

True, there are some exceptions, but I think a lot of communities are convenient or helpful for us to join and participate in, but our passion doesn’t always bind us to each other. We are connected, but we’re not bound to one another in the same way. I love to show and share my passion online, but does it really bring me the strong connections I’ve found at UNC? I’m not sure about that.

Posted in Growing up, Life as an AAE | Leave a comment

Five Challenges to Social Media Measurement: Why There’s Hope Yet

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

On Sunday, Ad Age published a blog post with five reasons why digital and social media are so difficult to measure.

While I applaud the insights and validity of these points, it was a bit…depressing.

I wanted to go back through these five points and explain why there is still hope yet. Yes, this medium is difficult to measure. Yes, there are roadblocks. But there is still plenty of hope. The more we focus on the roadblocks, the slower we can progress toward that eventual goal of perfect measurability.

With that in mind, I’ve outline below why the so-called five “Sad Truths” are really just hidden (or not-so-hidden) challenges.

Five Challenges to Social Media Measurement

1. The App Ecosystem’s Poker Face. OK, so I can’t deny that total app downloads may be akin to flaunting how many Facebook fans or Twitter followers you have. You may have gotten someone to interact with your brand once, but have they been engaged since? Or did they download your app, tried it once and left it alone? Or even worse, did they download it but never even open it?

This is a challenge. A major challenge. You have access to all sorts of data about your own apps and how they are being used by your consumers, but there is little data available about your competitors. Well, directly at least. There are other ways to compare your app to their without direct access to their numbers.

Check out how often their app is mentioned online. Is yours mentioned more? Is your app more likely to be mentioned in a positive way? Check out review websites. Which app gets more reviews and which app gets more positive reviews? If you want a guess as to how much consumers actually use each app, which one has more in-depth reviews? While none of these are perfect measures, they give you a heck of a lot more information than the total number of downloads.

2. Fans and Likes: Often Meaningless. We all know by know that relying solely on your fan or follower number is just plain dumb, right? Right. Good.

Once again, I understand the point here. Gaining a ton of followers or fans all at once using some kind of incentive is not always meaningful. I agree on that point. But finding out as much as you can about these fans is anything but meaningless. And engaging with these fans can reveal some hidden value, too.

Gaining millions upon millions of followers can be exceptionally useful. It’s just another (big) challenge. Say you’re about to launch a new product, and you ask your newfound fans a question about their preferences. Even if only a small percentage of them respond, you now know far more about real consumers’ preferences toward your product than you did before. Or maybe you notice that your Facebook fans skew toward women, which you wouldn’t expect. It’s not a full picture, but it gives you a glance into your online fan base.

Remember, measurement is not the elimination but simply the reduction of uncertainty.

3. Social Love Can Often Be Weirdly Lopsided. It is strange to me sometimes to see brands that are lopsided in this way. For some reason, we all assume that a brand popular on Twitter must always be popular on Facebook and visa versa. But why?

The Ad Age piece uses Skittles as an example, and the author even concedes that Skittles is clearly putting more effort into Facebook. (More effort should lead to more fans, so is it really surprising Facebook has more of a following?) But let’s be honest. Skittles is not a brand adults are prone to like on Facebook or Twitter. The online voice is goofy. They’re targeting a younger generation, and it just so happens that this demographic is not on Twitter.

I bet if you were a brand targeting digital and marketing professionals, you would have much more success on Twitter than on Facebook. Just a guess.

While sometimes this seems inconsistent, this may just reveal that your offline fans happen to all socialize in the same places online. It’s up to you to figure out where folks are already talking about you and join in (that’s the challenge). Nothing wrong with being lopsided, in my opinion.

4. Your Brand’s Fans and Followers May Not Only Be Disengaged, They May Be Comatose. This point seems to go back to the idea that you shouldn’t rely simply on the sheer number of fans or followers. We all know that sometimes folks sign up for a website or service or app and then promptly forget about it five minutes later. We’

This is just another challenge to me. I know that not all of my followers are real, but I also know that plenty of my followers click on links in my tweets without ever saying hello. If you’re on Twitter, for example, you have to figure out what it is you want to gain from using it and go from there.

If you want to engage with your consumers and learn what their biggest pain points are with your brand, who cares if you have 500 or 5,000 followers? Sure, a bigger sample is always nice, but I’d take 500 actively engaged followers over 5,000 bots any day.

Figure out who is engaging, who is just reading and who isn’t there at all. And then just focus on the ones who matter. Forget the rest.

5. The Real-Time Social Web Speaks Its Own Erratic, Hard-to-Parse Language. This may be the biggest challenge of them all: keeping up with online language.

The way consumers talk about brands is constantly changing. Trust me, I’ve seen about 12 different spellings of one of my client’s names in the past two months. It’s hard to keep track.

But if your goal is to accurately track and monitor mentions of your brand online, then this is just another facet of your job. It can be tricky at times, but search taxonomies are meant to be living and breathing things. You don’t just set it up and hope it’s relevant in six months. I adjust at least one search string every single day because I see someone tweet something new or spell the brand name a different way.

I won’t deny that this can be awfully time consuming, but at the end of the day all it is is a challenge. It can be done. There is no tool currently available that will do it all for you, but you can do it. You’re paid to know your brand inside and out anyway, right? Just use what you know to edit and evolve how you monitor.

Posted in Life as an AAE, Marketing, Measurement, PR metrics, Social Media | 2 Comments

Building relationships with influencers is anything but lazy

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

Last week, Mark Evans wrote a blog post about influencers. He claims that they make us lazy. Not just the existence of social media influencers, but rather the use of these online influencers as third-party spokespersons for a brand or company. If you use an online influencer to support your brand or cause, you are lazy.

In some cases, I agree. In the (I hope) rarest of rare occasions I agree. If your brand is jumping online, and the only plan you have whatsoever is to get big celebrities to talk about you, then you’re lazy.

But I’d like to believe that more often than not, companies and brands understand that there’s much more to the online world than that. Including influencers in your social media strategy is not lazy. (It’s just plain smart.) Using influencers or celebrities as your only strategy. Lazy.

OK, I’ll stop beating you over the head now.

In the end, I think Mark and I would eventually agree on the above point anyhow. What really drove me to blog in response, though, was his implied definition of influencers:

“It may have to do with the fact many companies are battling for the affections of influencers. It may also have to do with the reality that maybe influencers aren’t as influential as we want to believe…Influencers come and go; they fall out of favor as quickly as they become flavor of the day.”

Stop me if you disagree, but from this I infer that his definition of an influencer is someone who is exceedingly popular or influential during their 15 minutes of fame. A pop culture star like Antoine Dodson or that guy you see in the commercials all the time for about three months, to name a few.

While these folks are popular and make hold some sway for the moment, these are not who I consider social media influencers. An influencer is someone I trust. An influencer is someone whose advice or counsel I seek out on numerous occasions. An influencer is someone I have learned to trust through time.

More importantly for brands and companies seeking out partners online, an influencer is someone who speaks to the same audience or gives a voice to the same cause.

Partnering with social media influencers can be extremely beneficial (even if the results are not immediately seen or felt) for these same reasons. This person is someone trusted by their audience to give sound advice and support only the most relevant and reliable brands.

Choosing to team up with a flavor-of-the-day YouTube celebrity would be lazy. And likely irrelevant.

Finding the right influencers, the true influencers of your customers? That’s what drives chatter and builds your own online influence. That’s exactly what it’s all about.

Posted in Marketing, public relations, Social Media | 3 Comments

We get it. Search is king. So how do we measure it?

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

With the release of the 11^th annual Edelman Trust Barometer, it has never been more clear to me that search is no longer the future. Search is already king. We probably should have seen this coming when “to Google” officially became a verb (and maybe you did).

When asked where they go for news and information, online search engines topped the list for first sources and came in third as a second source behind only online and print news. While the margin over other sources was not terribly high, this is the first the Trust Barometer showed this kind of dominance for search. This is the first time search ranked so high as a first or second source of news and information.

OK, so search is in. It should matter to you what comes up when you Google your name or your employer’s name or your client’s name. I think we all get it.

The next logical step (for data and measurement nerds like me) is to figure how the heck we can measure search. I know, I know. There is such a thing as page rankings and what not, but how do we effectively measure search and tie it to real business goals?

Trust me, that’s not a rhetorical question. I’d love to hear your personal tips and tricks because I know very little about how to measure search.

Do you care more if you show up on the first page of results? Would you rather show up for many generic searches or a few specific ones? How do you logistically track how search drives, changes or effects your business?

From my basic knowledge of search and how it’s measured, I’ve drafted a preliminary wishlist for search measurement. These are the things I would have in an ideal world to be able to tie a random Google search to a business outcome (like a sale):

Unique source in Web analytics dashboard for first page of results
Ability to track time spent on search results vs. time spent on website
Data aggregation for multiple searches or string of searches which led to website
Ability to identify the folks who use search to find everything, even sites they visit on a daily basis

What’s on your wishlist? How do you currently measure search (if at all)?

Posted in Measurement, Search | Leave a comment

I think I work to live

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Rebecca Denison

The more I think about what my goals are for the next year, five years and beyond, the more I’ve discovered that I think I may be a “work to live” person.

If we’ve met in real life, if you work with me, or if you have ever had to deal with me being late to…well…anything because I was working, you’re probably rolling your eyes at me right now. Hear me out.

Lately I’ve been doing some thinking about my goals in life. A few questions popped up that got me to thinking about my goals before I’m 25 and 30. And you know what? My first answers were personal goals.

Not to say I don’t want to continue to grow and thrive in my career, but much more important to me is my personal life and relationships. I want to get a dog. I want to start saving for my (distant) future kid’s college education. I want to start saving to take my folks of a vacation.

I can’t help but wonder if this means I’m a “work to live” person. Am I really the kind of person who works just so that I can enjoy my life outside the office? I’m starting to think maybe I am. But at the same time, my job is so challenging and fulfilling. Maybe I’m already so happy with my life inside the office that I can focus on the rest of my life.

I’m almost not sure which one is better or correct. But I also don’t think it matters. I’m happy and I’m ambitious, isn’t that all that counts?

What about you? Do you live to work or work to live?