Effectively evaluating online PR and social media
Part of the debate surrounding my last post was the point that PR still needs ROI, whether it is online, social or traditional media. But considering that the old methods of evaluation need to be overhauled to incorporate new media, it seems as if it is only too easy to evaluate ineffectively.
I ended the last post with an open invite to bloggers to discuss potential FAM trips with us. Response has been fairly underwhelming, and I have a feeling among the reasons for this is that bloggers are worried they are not going to give us the ROI we are expecting. Some bloggers we have asked have been reticent to give out their web stats or subscriber figures.
However, there seem to be some other online outlets who feel the opposite – it seems quite easy at the moment to be covert or misleading about your user figures. In traditional media, ABC and NRS are there to audit circulation figures, ABC Electronic audit some of the major online outlets but the service is only really helpful for checking newspapers’ websites.
Recently we’ve been approached to assist with trips for online outlets that on the face of it, have seemed very worthy. One site in particular approached us, so we checked our media database (as we would for any media request) which told us the site received a very respectable 600,000 monthly unique users. Just to be thorough, we checked the site on Hubspot’s great website grader, which as part of it’s grading system brings back an Alexa traffic rank. This website rated considerably worse than mccluskeyinternational.co.uk, and I don’t mind admitting, we don’t receive anywhere near 600,000 monthly unique users.
So, where has this figure come from? I emailed our media database providers asking how website user figures are gathered. They quickly called me back and explained that the figures are updated constantly and always up to date. “That’s not the point”, I said, “how do you get hold of them?”
They call the publishers of the website and ask. So the publisher is taken at their word.
Which means this website has probably been misleading about their user figures. It’s not really a surprise – it’s common knowledge that plenty of print publications talk up their circulation figures, so it is not a shock to find that a similar practice exists with websites. Two things this does show though, are -
- That bloggers and web editors need to be at least vaguely honest about your user figures
- That we as PRs need to be especially vigilant about evaluation in this changing landscape
Evaluation needs to happen at the beginning of any online PR campaign, just as it would with traditional PR. Facebook pages give detailed analytics for free, and there are many ways of evaluating Twitter (actually, Hubspot’s Twitter grader is also great) and there are ways of assessing websites/blogs even if you can’t get access to audited user figures.
Part of this evaluation is research, evaluation is qualitative as well as quantative and the right outlet should hit the right market as well as the right numbers. This tweet from Kevin May (and this reply from Matt Parsons) show that this isn’t always happening. As Mark Hodson will tell you poorly researched pitches from PRs are nothing new, but I think it may be happening even more often now due to a lack of understanding of online and social media.
It’s very easy to just ‘do social media‘ but we need it to be more than a token gesture – it needs to be a well evaluated, researched, targetted campaign that gives the client an return on investment. Just like any traditional campaign.
So PRs, have you been approached by some unworthy websites talking up their figures?
Bloggers have you been hesitant in approaching PRs for assistance because you are worried they won’t see ROI?
Blogging journalists (or anyone else), do you think there’s been an upsurge in badly researched pitches? Or ‘token’ social media campaigns?
No naming and shaming here, we just want to hear if anyone has learnt anything from these experiences.
Interesting set of questions and just because I am focussing on a few points doesn’t mean that the others are not equally as important.
1) Why do you think bloggers need to approach PR’s for assistance? We tend to be writing about topics that we are experts in…. hence little assistance is required. Also we write from perspective – so even if we are wrong – it is our perspective.
2) Blog subscription figures are not the same as blog post view figures. Only a few bloggers are worth subscribing to – but many produce amazing posts once in a while (and hence get tweeted, bookmarked etc). Subscription figures for bloggers is not the end of the story.
3) Bloggers are people in the industry too. That is where we differ from journalists. With journalists they just write as their entire job. Bloggers are also running businesses within the travel industry hence you should look at them as more influential than pure journalists as they have clients as well as readers.
4) As a blogger I very rarely care about what a PR person sends me. In fact it is often a reason not to write about something. I care about trying to highlight other companies similar to me that don’t get mainstream coverage. I care about analysis over news. News is dull and can be left to journalists. Therefore I don’t care about the fact that something is launched – but why the people behind it think it is different.
Alex
Hi Alex,
A few responses from your points.
1) I don’t think bloggers necessarily need assistance from PRs. For the majority of the time, journalists don’t NEED assistance either. But it’s on offer, and sometimes could make a job easier. This may not be relevant to yourself, but if you were a blogger writing consumer targetted travel reviews and needed a flight and a hotel, you might not need it paid for, but if it’s offered for no more recompense than the blogging/tweeting etc you were going to do anyway why not take up the offer?
2) A very good point, and not one I had really considered. I suppose if we as the PRs think our story is so interesting, we could assume it will be picked up and Dugg/Tweeted/commented on halfway around the world, whichever blog picks it up first, but it rarely works like that in reality. It’s good to have a real idea of how much traffic that blog/website recieves in the first place, even if it’s just to know what the chances are of the story getting picked up like that.
3) Another good point. Not all bloggers are in the industry too though, there are plenty of pure bloggers (or people running websites) trying to make it their livelihood – and they’re the ones more likely to be misleading about how influential they are as they are dependent on it.
4) PR is not just about spreading news, we can be creative too. It can be about ideas, and often we really are working with media from the beginning of an idea (which is what I’m talking about when I talk about full research) rather than just sending them a release and suggesting they write about it. That way we can assist but the journalist also has a hand in the idea, meaning no one is compromising. That’s the kind of relationship we are trying to form with bloggers too…
Interesting to hear your are less likely to write about something if you receive something about it from a PR though. If you were involved in the process of something much earlier on, do you think that might make a difference?
I admit it, I was using generalisations as much as you were! We are both guilty!
On the last point, about not covering something written by a PR. Give me facts and opinions, don’t give me a finished article!
Here is an example that explains the point a bit more. The other day someone announced a redesign of their travel website. Not really interesting but something I would cover if I was given stats as to what the conversion was before – and what it was afterwards. After all the redesign was made in order to impact these numbers. I asked the company for those stats and got some back – but not sufficient to build a blog post around. Hence I didn’t cover it at all. If they had given just a few more stats it would have been bloggable as I could have done some analysis on it.
For me to write a blog post I either need interesting stats – or I need an opinion that I can address. That is why I tend to bounce many of my blog posts off what other people have written in the trade press as they are sources of opinion that I can reference. If press releases contained opinions “We think this new approach will work because of XYZ”…. then I would be very happy to receive them and would probably write it up much more.
Each time I write a blog post I am risking my credibility. i.e if I call it right – I win more credibility back. If I call it wrong, I lose that credibility. Hence it is a game of risk writing a blog. Putting opinions into a press release is a similar game of risk – you could find that everyone disagrees with the opinion…. putting your client into a tricky position. But without that risk, there are no rewards.
A more basic question even for worthy websites, is which traffic stats to trust. We have our own inhouse visitors system + a market leading web site statistics system + trend is very remotely related to what we see on Alexa or Compete + numbers don’t match upstream/downstream data that partners have reported seeing in Hitwise for us.
This is true, hard not to generalise when you’re talking about such a broad subject I guess!
That’s kind of what I mean really – those facts and opinions are the starting point for you because that’s the subject you write about. So that’s you being involved from the start, getting information which is tailored to what you write about.
And I know what you mean about credibility – it’s the same with this blog right here! We have credibility to lose/gain too. Press releases (and by the way, the term ‘press’ release is kind of redundant, if they’re not just going to press, we should really be calling them news releases) are traditionally supposed to be fairly unbiased. The idea of making them opinionated seems difficult, bloggers are supposed to have the opinions, the news is just something to have an opinion about…
Thanks Daniele, that’s almost another question all together. I’m aware we can’t wholly trust a service like Alexa, but I would say in the case I’ve stated the gap between what was shown in Alexa and what we’d been told was too great to put down to Alexa’s innaccuracy. Which I guess is why I’m suggesting the sites themselves be more open and honest.
Ian, you hit the nail on the head when you said “sites themselves have to be more open and honest”.
“Buzz” created around many elements today is just that – buzz. It has no reflection on the functionality of a site and/or social marketing campaign / traditional marketing campaign to produce results. The same can be said with utilizing social media / social networking to promote a business.
As you’ve said, it has to be strategic and focused. Following for the sake of following on services like Twitter does nothing to enhance the credibility or trust of a company. As a consumer and a marketer, I understand that there are greying lines between the online/real world. It makes me concerned when I hear about people “talking up their sites”.
For me, it’s still a grind to get acceptance.
Great post!!