First Person PR

Did you miss me? Sorry for the impromptu hiatus, but a few things happened to cause the blogging break:

• I recently changed jobs, and was focused on wrapping up the old and ramping up the new gig. And of course, a fair amount of interviewing before that. My move ultimately came down to two great opportunities: another internal communications position or an exciting opportunity at a PR firm. I’ll spend more time on that subject soon, because my decision to stay corporate-side ties in nicely with the corporate vs. agency string.
• The “PR Sucks” meme made reading the blogs I love a tedious chore. No one ever said anything new, and honestly, I got fed up with all sides of the mud slinging, so I stopped reading PR blogs and checked out to gain some perspective. It was a nice break, and I’m currently in the process of trimming my reading list to include only the ones I enjoy vs. the ones I think I need to read because everyone else does.
• All the networking, researching and experimenting with social media took up so much time that I found myself leveraging those technologies less in my actual work. Apparently, there can be too much of a good thing! Again, I spent the last few months taking a break (from most, I didn’t go cold turkey or anything) and focused on actually implementing social media in my ongoing communications. So, in fact, while I was blogging much less, I was actually doing much more!

All of that is say that I’m back, and for those of you who sent emails and comments, I apologize for ignoring you. I’m in the process of easing myself back into a schedule, so you’ll be hearing from me a lot more
~Kari

With all the recession talk (it’s hard to miss it), it’s easy to fear a repeat of the Dot Com bust which resulted in a lot of downsizing in the PR world. I’ve spoken with colleagues at several PR firms in the Boston area, and it sounds like the majority of them are actually seeing more new business activity — and many can barely keep up with demand. Hopefully that trend will continue through the year.

At the same time, though, we need to face reality. Companies are definitely tightening the purse strings and reacting conservatively to the market. The PR industry needs to react, too, continually educating clients and executives about all of PR’s values. David Culver provides six great points in a Manage Smarter piece called “Recession-Proof Your Business with PR.”

David reminds us that that measuring PR is “a must during a recession.” I don’t think our industry can hear that advice enough. Ultimately, PR (along with marketing) is a line-item cost, no matter how strategically it’s approached. So if you need a reason to focus on measuring your PR program, here it is. 2008 needs to be the year of PR measurement. And I don’t mean the simplified metrics like number of articles. I mean substantive analysis that measures PR programs against business objectives. Then, perhaps, we can recession proof our industry (a bit)!

What do you think? Is the current economic uncertainty affecting how you approach PR?

Those of you practicing PR in the B2B technology space understand that how critical an analyst relations program is to the larger PR program. However, in a world of tightening budgets and limited time, we often need to focus on getting maximum impact for minimum effort. Or put another way, influencing the most influential for your company/product/service. Keep in mind, too, that often the most well known analysts aren’t necessarily the ones who are talking to your customers or target reporters.

Wondering how to identify which analysts you should focus the most efforts on? Ideally, the best path to a decision is to survey your company’s customers. Find out which analyst firms - if any - they consult before making purchasing decisions. You may be surprised by their answers.

Next, take a look at your competitors’ sites and inventory the analysts referenced. Make sure you look at any industry recognition pages, quotes spread across the website, webinars and sponsored whitepapers. And finally, take a look at the industry events and coverage you’re undoubtedly monitoring to identify which analysts are moderating sessions and frequently quoted in the media.

Unfortunately, sometimes you won’t have access to customers (or they may not exist yet). Then what do you do? Enter a great website that I’ve been using for the last few months: www.alltheanalysts.com. Think of it as a meta-search engine for all the large and small IT firms. You can search by specific analyst, firm or even topic area. I use the site to keep an eye out on competitive coverage. It also seems like an easy way to identify those smaller, niche firms that can very often prove to be the strongest evangelists.

Another perk of ATR’s site - they recently released an in-depth research paper called “Understanding the IT Analyst Landscape.” A line in the executive summary caught my attention because it echoed my opinion that end users don’t necessarily turn to the larger analyst firms when purchasing emerging technologies.

From the report’s executive summary:

“Successful implementation of analyst research requires a balanced understanding of the industry as a whole. ATA surveyed end-users of analyst research about their job function and the technology segments they specialized in to build a model of ‘mind share’ as opposed to simple revenue or market share for each topic. The findings indicate that end-users working in emerging technologies are less likely to use analyst research from larger firms. Gartner, Forrester and IDC all had below average ratios of users working in emerging trends and consumer technologies. This key data for 8 leading firms is examined in the context of current industry drivers of change.”

The report identifies the top technology segments by analyst firm. For example, Yankee Group’s top technology is listed as mobile and wireless while Forrester Research is associated with application development. Below is a chart mapping the Yankee Group’s strengths and weaknesses (click to enlarge).

The report also has charts for Aberdeen, AMR Research, Forrester, Gartner, IDC, Jupiter and Ovum.

I traded emails with Malcolm Ramsay about the methodology used for the report. He said:

“The charts are based on end user survey data. By analyzing end users specializations and the firms they used, we were able to compare this against the sample average to build up a picture for each firm. This was important as it shows the people that actually use the research. We then examine it within the context of the trends and themes in the industry in a more qualitative way and this is underpinned by data we have gathered from users on All-the-analysts.com as well as other available sources.”

Of note, while all-the-analysts.com is free, the report costs $595. Particularly for PR agencies that can share this information across numerous clients, I think it’s worth the cost.

I know, I know — I’ve been horrible about blogging. I’ve been going through the yearly planning, yearly wrap up and yearly over justification process. It’s been painful, educational and enlightening all at the same time, and I have several posts floating around in my head from it. But I need to gain a little perspective before ranting and raving.

In the meantime, I’ve been cleaning out my Bloglines clippings folder, and found a handful of posts worth sharing. I realize a few are several months old at this point, but I reread each one and they’re still great references and all-around-good-reads. So check them out.

• From Pandia Search Engine News: The definitive top 5 online RSS reader – a must read for those of you who aren’t using an RSS reader to stay up on news and blogs (and looking at my traffic stats, that’s a lot of you).
• From Mashable: When a Blogroll Isn’t a Blogroll — a particularly compelling idea (I think) for agency folks.
• From Liberate Media: Social Media Tools List - From Analytics to Digg — a huge resource for all your social media questions.
• From Jeremy Pepper: PR will lose Social Media to Advertising Because of Sex — great commentary on who should/will “own” social media.
• From Chip Griffin: Throwing Out the Social Media Rulebook — points out that not every “rule” in the emerging social media world should be followed, and why.
  
• From Jeremiah Owyang: List of Resources for the Analyst Industry — a list of several analyst-related social media resources.
• Also from Jeremiah Owyang: A Complete List of the Many forms of Web Marketing in 2008 — a great breakdown of the many forms of web marketing and the social media technologies related to each.
• From Now Is Gone: Finding Savvy Social Media Consultants — helpful suggestions for anyone looking to hire social media experts.
• From Brian Solis: The Definitive Guide to Social Media Releases — regardless of you think about the social media release, this post includes an interesting picture of what each press release wire offers.
• From Kathy Kerchner: Bad Press Releases Feature Boring, Ridiculous Quotes — PR folks are notorious for overwriting press releases, but this provides great examples of what a release could be.
• From Brendan Cooper: PR Friendly Index — a fabulous list of 100 PR focused blogs. Pick a new one each week to explore!

Side note — clearly, I’m catching up on my reading
BtoB Magazine has a great piece in this week’s issue, “Introducing the Next Generation of Tech Marketing,” that’s worth the read. It talks about several social media tools and technologies that you may already be familiar with, as well as a few to start playing around with: widgets (I love the Facebook app on the iPhone), social feeds, data portability, mashups and open mobile. Granted, some probably fall into the marketing camp, but they’re still worth looking at.

Also in this week’s issue is a short piece on how large companies are embracing social media, like official Facebook groups. It’s not rocket science, but they’re good snippets to have in your back pocket in case any exec says “no one’s doing this.”

We in PR talk a lot about the blurring lines between traditional and new media. We’re constantly trying to determine if we’re working with a journalist leveraging blogging for real-time reporting, a citizen journalist using blogging to act as a reporter, or a blogger acting as a journalist to drive traffic to the blog. Unfortunately, sometimes the blogger’s journalistic persona changes as often as the weather. Kara Swisher provides a great example of the difference between journalist bloggers and non-journalist bloggers.

Greg Jarboe wrote a great piece a few weeks ago on SearchEngineWatch.com called “Measuring PR in cold, hard cash.” He talked about the need to “measure public relations in both PR outputs and business outcomes.” The article resonated with me because I spent most of the last six weeks trying to do just that.I’ve been all over the web looking at case studies and searching for ways to quantify - in business terms - the results of my PR program. I actually found some great ideas and will be sharing that in a post this week. But first, I want to talk about what I didn’t do.

In the midst of my digging for ideas to map PR results to business outcomes, I received a direct mail piece from a NY-based PR firm claiming last year they “achieved an average ROI of 500% on behalf of its clients.” It’s quite a claim and it definitely caught my attention. But then the letter went on to claim that “for every dollar [X PR company's clients] paid for public relations, they would have had to have spent at least five times that much to achieve similar results with advertising.”

(sigh)

Okay folks, I know a lot of PR people fall back on the advertising value equivalent as a measure of success. As an industry, we struggle to attach dollar figures to our results - something that the c-suite wants. So I can understand the appeal of this comparison. But it is flawed on so many levels.

First, let’s accept that a comparison chart is not proof of ROI. ROI, as you know, means return on investment. Specifically, it’s defined as: the ratio of money gained or lost on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. The key words in that sentence are money gained. NOT money saved. NOT money that could have been spent elsewhere. Simply, money gained. To show true ROI on a PR program, you’ll need to attribute sales to that program. When the amount of sales exceeds the entire cost of the program, you’ve got positive ROI. Of course, this is difficult to track specifically to PR, so the PR person who can demonstrate ROI is few and far between.

Assuming you accept all of the last paragraph, I’ll admit I can still see the why folks try to show that PR is more cost efficient than advertising - because many times we must compete for the same finite budget. That’s where the practice of calculating advertising value equivalents comes into play. This is the practice of measuring the relative size of an article, mapping that to the cost of a similarly sized ad in the same publication, and then claiming that the article was worth the same amount of the cost of an ad.

Even if you’re trying to show why budget should be allocated to PR over advertising, it’s still a very flawed practice for oh-so-many reasons. First and foremost, ads are created by the company. That means they’re on message, positive in nature, typically have a call to action and the company in the headline, and don’t mention the competition, except to bash them. How much of your editorial coverage fits that exact description? Exactly, so you can see how quickly the comparison falls apart. Also consider how much an ad on the front cover of BusinessWeek would cost, since it’s impossible to get. Or the value of PR results in the form of analyst endorsements, industry awards, speaking opportunities, and even a presence in the blogosphere. How much would advertising there cost? You get my point. (For a great list on why this method is incredibly flawed, check out this post.)

I still agree with Jarboe that we must start mapping PR outputs to business outcomes, but we can’t take the easy look-at-how-great-these-numbers-are way. We also can’t simply push coverage numbers and call it a day. I think the right answer is a hybrid of good ol’ fashioned PR results, such as coverage and industry accolades, measured against business outcomes, like increased traffic or leads, with a quality overlay to account for improved perception. I’ve been experimenting with several ways to do that (with zero budget), and will present those in my next post for your feedback. I don’t claim to have the answers, but I’m hoping as an industry we can figure it out (and soon).

Today’s news that Marketwire has revolutionized the social media release caught my eye. In case you haven’t seen it, Marketwire is integrating social media components into their newswire.

However, I don’t think this “Social Media 2.0″ is going to be the press release’s salvation, because it’s still plagued by bad, buzzword-laden writing. For example, take the second sentence of the release, where I think Marketwire is trying to say something about distribution:

Social Media 2.0 advances today’s press release format, offers public relations professionals a multitude of content options, and distributes news in a variety of mediums to distribution channels beyond traditional media distribution networks.

I also think there’s some subtle irony to a social media release — designed to reach online users who frequently embed links in their text and know to click on a hyperlink — using the phrase “click here” so many times (Perhaps last night’s Patriots loss has me a little extra snarky).
If you can get beyond the actual release, I do think this is good news for the PR world (assuming they aren’t charging an arm and a leg for it). I’m particularly interested in the assortment of tagging and tracking capabilities. But, as a profession, we still need to work on the quality of our release writing. Otherwise, we’re just putting lipstick — and new distribution — on a very ugly pig.

Everyone’s talking about last night’s 60 Minutes interview with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. I watched it and came away thinking “what a wasted, multi-million dollar PR opportunity.”

The piece started out sounding like an early Valentine for Zuckerberg, but then it turned into an uncomfortable — and sometimes painful — interview. I won’t spend much time on his actual performance — it’s safe to say that he’s in desperate need of some media training. Even Lesley Stahl interjected at one point that Zuckerberg has been described as being awkward.

More than his uncomfortable performance, I was really surprised that Facebook/Zuckerberg squandered such a huge opportunity. I flinched each time he was thrown an excellent transition question and he missed it. For example, here are a few key topics that he didn’t insert into the interview:

1. For all it’s hype, Facebook is still the #2 social network behind MySpace. Why would I join Facebook over MySpace? I’ll admit I was waiting (and hoping) for a slam about MySpace’s multiple cameos on Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator” … but they never came. I was expecting to hear Facebook’s value vis-a-vis MySpace, though.
2. No really, why do I want to join Facebook? Early on, Lesley got excited when a former colleague reconnected with her after setting up her profile — which gave him a perfect segue to throw out a dozen other examples of people reconnecting, business people networking, or even someone finding their college sweetheart. Anything beyond Scrabble? Given the demographics of 60 Minutes’ viewers, I was particularly expecting to hear a few reasons why the Gen X and Boomer generations should join. Instead, he talked about Scrabble. Now, I love the Scrabble app just as much as Zuckerberg apparently does. Unfortunately that’s about the only use I’ve found for Facebook so far, and I was waiting for him change that.
3. Can a 23 year old really run a $15 billion company (setting aside that it’s not actually worth that, for a moment)? Lesley brought this up a few times, and Zuckerberg’s three word answers didn’t cut it. Why not point to how quickly the company is growing? Why not talk about him solidifying funding and Microsoft’s investment? Surely there could have been a FEW examples to address this. Why not point to what he’s already accomplished as CEO?
4. Is Zuckerberg really a visionary? This one came up a few times, most notably when he was compared to the Google Gazillionaires. What a great opportunity to talk about where he sees Facebook going, how innovative the company is vs. other hot startups, etc. Yet, we got nothing.
5. Was all the bad publicity wrong about Beacon and Facebook’s ads? With this one, Zuckerberg gave a little answer, but I don’t think “Facebook needs to pay its employees” was the right answer. I’ll grant him that it’s a legitimate reason to start monetizing Facebook’s audience, but he should have given several other, much more compelling, reasons. And then immediately followed those with an explanation about how/why the privacy concerns of Facebook users have been addressed.
6. Why should Facebook employees feel proud about working for him? At any point, Zuckerberg could have talked about how revolutionary/innovative/etc. the company was, but he didn’t. I don’t even remember him smiling when he spoke about the team working for him.
7. What’s next? I wasn’t expecting to hear any product news, but Zuckerberg could have thrown in a few teaser comments to keep me interested in Facebook in the coming months.

As I write this, I wonder how involved Facebook’s PR team was with this opportunity. From my vantage point, either Facebook doesn’t view PR as a strategic component to the company’s success, or Zuckerberg is a classic example of a CEO who thinks he knows PR and won’t take guidance. Or, he needs a new PR team. Regardless, I think the entire Facebook team botched a huge opportunity last night that might not come his way again.

What did you think of the interview?

Today, I was struck by a major difference between working for a PR agency and doing PR inhouse — perspective.

I’ve talked about how great the camaraderie is at an agency, and it’s still something I miss. But I realized today that in-house PR folks are exposed to so many more perspectives about a company than an outsourced agency could ever be.For example, I sit next to a team of people focused on client retention. I hear their calls all day to existing customers, and get to hear some interesting conversations. Internal planning meetings typically include an interesting sampling of people across job functions who all represent different stakeholders (our customers, our technology, our investors). It’s fascinating to hear how everything affects everyone else.

At the same time, people with such varied backgrounds bring entirely new perspectives to any conversation. The questions are different, the thought processes are different, the examples of what has worked are different. I find that it brings a new level of understanding and access to the PR program that I don’t believe you can get over the phone.

I will say that I think agency PR people benefit from a different type of perspective. I loved working with multiple VPs because I found they all approached problems from a different perspective. And while the fundamental programs were relatively similar, each one offered a unique view. Mix in the ability to work on multiple clients across industries (something I craved — having completely different clients kept things interesting), and you’re presented with yet another perspective. Often, I’d brainstorm ideas and challenges with multiple people just to see their different approaches. Ultimately, looking at a problem five different ways becomes a great asset.

I’m still not ready to say one is better than the other, but more I do the more I realize just how different they are.