Month: May 2004

What's the most influential PR blog?

PR Blogger, Hans Kullin has done some research on which PR blogs are the most “influential” based on their Technorati references.

It seems from this research that Steve Rubel has the most influential PR blog.

In related news, Cameron Marlow’s Overstated blog has some really interesting analysis of the frequency that blogs and weblogs are covered in the print media. According to research from LexisNexis there have been 4051 articles since February 18, 1998.

Weblog citations over time

Footnote:

Thanks to Robb Hecht for the head up on Hans’ PR blog findings.

Thanks to Trevor Cook for the link to Cameron’s research.

Google is good at what it does..

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….

Is PR all about sales?

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.

The death of media relations?

Elizabeth Albrycht paints a depressing picture on the current state of media relations.

“When I do media relations, I am representing small, emerging high-tech companies. Not the IBMs of the world, who the press pretty much has to cover. When I did PR for IBM at least editors would listen to you for a minute or two. With unknown companies it is virtually impossible.”

There’s some excellent comments on the post:

Trevor Cook:  “More broadly, media relations for small clients has always been hard work and it gets harder all the time with more companies chasing the same few pages. Many end up disappointed.”

Mike Manuel: “As a result, one of the most important PR takeaways from the dot com boom fell to the wayside � creativity. I think a healthy dose of creativity has been missing the last few years and it needs to be re-infused in all media relations efforts.”

Elizabeth comes to the conclusion that she’ll increasingly be involved in the marketing communications side of the house. I think it’s a great observation.  In my view, whilst media relations will continue to play a very important role, the future success of Public Relations depends upon practitioners’ ability to take their undoubted skills in communication, strategy and implementation and apply them to a much wider range of areas.

The prime suspects right now are any area of online communications whether it be websites, newsletters, corporate blogs, search engine optimization etc. The common theme is these areas require an understanding of how to communicate be it with staff, media, analysts, customers prospects, business partners etc..

Media relations isn’t going anywhere (in fact blog relations may even bolster what we call “media” relations) but we all need to continously understand the new tools that are becoming available and how they impact our professional life.

 

Measuring Blog Relations…

Kathy E. Gill has penned an interesting research paper entitled “How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere?” (PDF). As the title suggests it looks at how we might measure the reach and influence of individual blogs.

One of the problems I have with much of the current writing on blog measurement is that it treats blogs in the same manner as the PR industry views journalism. I think that’s a little shortsighted.

While influential blogs are normally widely read, it’s not purely a question of the pure “circulation” or the volume of links. 

Not only does this approach ignore many smaller, yet possibly more effective blogs but it does nothing to help us understand the potential of using weblogs as a means of communicating with your audience(s), which can often be just as valuable.

The Internet provides us with a great opportunity to measure the performance of most marketing activities.  This measurement should be applied to blog relations.

Research the most relevant blogs – are there blogs focused on your industry? What are your customers and partners reading?

Understand the blogger’s agenda – even the most independent blogger has opinions

Respect the blogger – Bloggers don’t necessarily play by the well established PR-Media rule book.  You should be very careful before you pitch.  Understand the blogger’s agenda and modus operandi. Don’t spam them.

Measure, measure, measure – when you work with a blogger and they post a story on your firm, track the number of referrals that a post on a particular blog provides to your website.

Roll your own – would a blog be a useful communications tool for your own business? Do you have views on your industry? Can you commit the time required?

Review – once your blog relations program is underway, review it.  Find out what worked and what didn’t.. and why.

Blog relations can yield significant results. A couple of years ago we pitched four bloggers on a free utility we were providing.  We did this prior to a press release on the utility and we measured the response to the bloggers’ posts as best we could.

The result was that we got a great understanding of the respective influence of the various blogs.  We also managed to get over a million people to use the free utility.  In addition, the blog posts got the utility published in mainstream media such as the New York Times and the San Jose Mercury News as well as a large number of trade magazines.  Blog Relations can work if you take a well planned approach to target blogs that are relevant to your business. 

Footnote:

The original link to Kathy E. Gill’s research is from Steve Rubel.

Mike Manuel also has some thoughts on blog measurement.

The collision of blogging and the media (Boston Globe)

Today’s Boston Globe takes a look at the collision of blogs and the traditional media. the piece is focused on the political side of the house.

“Their (bloggers) distance from professional media, in part, is what gives blogs their identity. Bloggers’ voices are often more conversational, and profane, than newspaper or magazine fare. And while blogs have been known to amplify little-noticed news events, such as Senator Trent Lott’s 2002 praise of his colleague Strom Thurmond, blog postings don’t always hew to old-school standards of sourcing and fact-checking. There’s usually no editing at all, which many bloggers take as a point of pride.”

 

The hidden danger of blogs

There’s a very amusing article in the UK Times on the potential danger of embarrasment for babies born to parents who blog.

“So put yourself in the place of Jake, 28 days old today, whose mother, Nicola, has been keeping a diary of his birth on www.babythoughts.co.uk. Imagine a future employer or girlfriend reading the entry for Monday, April 12: ‘Ew. Jake just peed on my arm! It�s like a fountain that never ends. How can such a tiny baby have such a big bladder?’�