Day: May 14, 2004

Google’s rise is well documented and the secret of their success isn’t really a secret.  It’s simple: They are good at what they do and they keep trying to make it better.

Google shouldn’t actually exist.  According to the experts the search engine market was saturated with Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves and then Google appeared and suddenly there was a new kid on the block and that kid was easier, faster and more productive.

As you’re probably aware they’ve launched their new Google blog to coincide with the re-design of blogger.

Now once you’ve built the profile Google has, you must tread very carefully because everyone is watching.  When you go public it gets even harder.

As you probably know, blogs can provide a human face to your organization and Google once again is doing a fine job.

It turns out that one of the early posts to the blog was (shock and horror) edited. Of course, given it is Google’s blog, this editing was quickly noted by the Internet mind police and outrage followed in predictable fashion.

So Google posted a mea culpa on the blog which I think deals with the “issue” nicely. It’s also a nice illustration of building an honest conversation.

“Blogs are living things. Ours was just born and is still adjusting to the loud noises and the bright lights. It’s gonna be awhile before we get our driver’s license, so you decide if you want to sit in the passenger seat while we figure out which one’s the gear shift and which is the turn signal. One way or another, it should be an interesting ride.”

Thank god no one reads this blog, because I edit my posts all the time. I edit the typos (yes I know I don’t get them all), I sometimes change my opinions and I’ve even been known to change a post just because I can. So there.

Footnote:

I’ve edited this post a couple of times already….

The Inquirer has an story on reviewing hardware and the contribution of PR.

“Whilst some company PR reps are equally happy to have bad editorial (so long as it is constructive) there are others that will tend to get a little stressed – after all, PR reps consider it their job to get good reviews of a product, a job made much harder if the product they’re given by their company is rubbish.”

I enjoy the RLM PR newsletter every month, there’s a whole mixed bag of content and they are an opionated bunch at RLM…. which is a good thing!

In this month’s newsletter, Erin Mitchell has a soapbox piece looking at the ROI from PR.

The article argues for a more common sense approach to measuring PR.  This is somthing I agree with, we need to tie PR back to a company’s business objectives and look at how well PR contributes to those objectives.  Of course that opens the debate on how we measure how PR is contributing.  Erin writes:

“To me, measuring ROI of PR programs has always been really simple: The purpose of a well-executed PR program (with few exceptions) is to drive sales. �Sales,� in this context, comes in different forms�prescriptions written, product purchased by consumers, legislation passed�you get the idea: it is supposed to contribute to the company�s tangible bottom line.”

Now there’s a lot of merit to that idea, but I’m not sure it’s always as easy as that.  If the company is selling directly from the web, then analysis of sales patterns to coverage might indicate performance, but where companies are selling through a direct sales force or indirectly through channel partners it becomes a more complex equation.  And there are other factors that might impact that analysis.  For example what if the company in question is weak at converting sales or has poor channel management.  How do we compensate for those factors?  If there’s loads of well qualified leads but no sales, has PR (and marketing) failed? Probably not. Surely what we have to do is look at what point PR hands over the opportunity to a different department, because it is hard to be measured on something that you have no control on.

One other area of discussion is Erin’s comment that “Some of us folks who toil in PR have forgotten the core purpose of what we do: deliver complete stories to the right media.”

Of course PR extends far beyond media relations. Some practitioners never talk to the media, they’re focused on internal communications, community relations, analyst relations etc. PR’s diversity is what makes it great, it’s also what makes it hard.