Measuring Blogs…
One of the most frequently asked of me at conferences and the like is “how do you measure the effectiveness of blogs. Charlene Li at Forrester weighs in on a methodology to quantify the return on investment in blogging starting with:
- return on impressions
- return on media impact
- return on target influence
- return on earned media.
This is an interesting view in that it looks at the ROI element of the equation. Some of the other areas we also see benefits in are:
- Reduced cost of customer acquisition: customers are looking at the blog for education and insight reducing the requirement for hard materials and ongoing dialogue with sales engineers. In short, blogs reduce the sales cycle. We can measure this in hours of people time taken back.
- Reduced SEO costs: By participating in other blogs (especially those of pundits and analysts) we see more inbound traffic against key topic areas reducing our dependency on paid search to drive traffic. We’ve seen this go as high as 25%.
- Participation reduces research costs: Closed blog communities are a great source of insight for polling and thought taking. They reduce the cost of insight.
Charlene points over to Fraser Likel’s paper “Perspectives on the ROI of Media Relations Publicity Efforts” which also has some good thinking in this area.
I suggest to companies that they start by aligning the blog goals with business goals and let the metrics flow from there.
Engagement Level – A New Metric of Success for Online Advertising
Worth a read. Measuring engagement should be a priority for communicators as well. And I would extend the mandate to include all marketing.
Measurement Moves
Measurement leader Cymfony today launched its Influence 2.0 initiative with a new set of analytics – Market Influence Analytics:
Messages in the Influence 2.0 world must run the gauntlet of traditional and social media sources on the way to reach their intended target. Along the way they are amended, appended, extended and up-ended. Understanding the paths of influence and how this affects the audience’s reception of the message requires a different kind of service than PR measurement or CGM monitoring.
Taking a quick look at what they are up to, Cymfony is making some strong moves toward understanding the power of recommendation (their measurement engine has a unique advantage here) that should make them attractive to any F1000 looking to track influence vs. opportunities to see. Here is what they have to say on the initiative:
Cymfony’s goal is to kick off an industry-wide effort to fully understand the changes underway, and educate companies, brands, marketers, PR professionals and others who aren’t as deeply immersed in these changes as we are.
This is a great initiative and I like what they are up to here. Igniting a dialog is as important as launching the ideas and solutions. Understanding recommendation and its relationship to OTS should be something that every communicator is looking at. Moreover, it extends the communications measurement mandate into the heart of product, brand and marketing management.
You can read more in the first chapter of their eBook and are encouraging you to contribute to the conversation via their wiki. And they’ve updated their site along with new blog.
Deb Eastman of Biz360 has also launched a blog.
Media Rating Points…
I’ve been meaning to write on the recently proposed Media Rating Points system. If you are a small business that can’t afford to pay for a media measurement solution, or an agency that needs a means of communicating results, then this could work well. I don’t like the idea of rating coverage… this introduces a layer of opinion and complexity not needed. Focus on opportunities to see and frequency of messages.
The MRP™ system includes templates and reach data. The templates can be downloaded free of charge by clicking here.
Don Bartholomew has a summary of the evaluation/measurement findings from the latest GAP IV study from the Strategic Public Relations Center at USC Annenberg.
Key findings include that respondents spent only 4% of their budgets on evaluation. In terms of measuring PR performance (articles generated etc.) this could be right but if this number includes measuring impact (did we change minds, move markets, influence decisions?) then it is way low. That number should be closer to 15-20%.
Read Don’s post for a thorough analysis and the differing metrics used by PR departments that report to the C-suite and those that report to Marketing. Having run both functions in a number of companies I was always impressed how the brand teams started with deep research into the customer. The PR teams generally started with a brainstorm. I’ll say no more.
Katie has more on this…
Edelman Gobbles Up A&R Partners
A&R are one of the most highly regarded independent PR agencies in the Valley. At least one part of that statement stands, but not the independent bit. Edelman is the new owner, completing a much needed strengthening their tech capabilities that makes them a real force now in the Nth American tech market. Bizarrely the story is running on PRWeek and on Steve’s blog, nothing on Edelman or A&R.
Edelman’s tech footprint also includes Zeno with long-term clients like Oracle. So it’s now Next Fifteen with brands like Bite, Outcast and Text 100 pitted against Edelman with Zeno and A&R. Are we looking at the two break-away holding company brands in tech worldwide?
While Edelman will have to deal with the inevitable integration issues that come with any merger(retaining clients and staff, and dealing with conflicts – the big three), what it looks like they are going to do is similar to Next Fifteen – that is, keep the brands independent and fuel their growth. Merging Edelman’s tech group into A&R solves another issue – the conflict with Microsoft.
More than anything though, this looks to be about fueling growth through talent acquisition. I meet with plenty of agency heads and they are all saying the same thing. Can’t find great talent, can barely find good talent. This is a talent starved market.
Good move by Edelman.
