Analytics Is King

Just when you thought you had seen everything... Here I was, just going about my Monday...Catching up on e-mail and my Twitter stream when my good friend Heather Whaling sent me a link. Now, I think the world of Heather, and the work she does for her clients so naturally I clicked on the link. If only I could hit the rewind button and NOT click on that link. I spent the rest of my Monday trying to calm down after reading this post. What post is that you might ask? Ragan's PR Daily posted an article written by Jessica Epperly of The Wakeman Agency on measuring the value of editorial coverage. This post starts off innocently enough comparing and contrasting the role of advertising and public relations within organizations. Advertising is paid and media placements are earned...Yada yada yada... We've all heard that song and dance a million times. Where this article really comes off the tracks, at least for me, is in the discussion of how we measure success in PR and advertising. Yes, my friends, you thought right: We're back in the world of advertising value equivalencies. Ugh..and here I thought we were well on our way to moving beyond these ridiculous metrics. Perhaps we are and this is an isolated case? One can only hope, right? I don't want to go too deeply down the path to discredit advertising value equivalencies as a metric, but if you wanted to read more on the subject I'd suggest you check out the works of Don Bartholomew, Katie Paine and Sean Williams. All of them have done EXTENSIVE work to discredit the value of AVE's as a metric to evaluate success in PR. Much of their work can be found on their blogs, but I'd also encourage you to check the work from the Institute for Public Relations on this subject. It's all great, and it all, pretty much, tells the same story - advertising value equivalencies are a scourge on the PR profession. As I said, I don't want to go much down the path of discussing the science (or lack thereof) behind AVEs. However, there are a couple of things that have me very concerned after reading this article:

This is what makes measurement hard to talk about with companies - There is no doubt that Ragan.com is a reputable site. I read PR Daily myself, quite often, when it comes across in the stream. However, publishing an article like that is pretty reckless. We already know there is great misunderstanding about measurement in the marketplace, and by posting something that's so egregiously wrong you only serve to feed that beast. Similarly, there are going to be a lot of companies out there reading that article, looking for a measurement solution and using it as sort of a "bolt on." This will only lead to companies measuring the wrong thing more often than they currently do.
For the 400th time, advertising and PR DO NOT carry the same value - I'm not getting into which one of the disciplines is better than the other. I truly believe that a successful communications mix incorporates all elements of paid, earned and owned media. That being said. there hasn't been any research that I believe that would suggest advertising and PR deliver the same value to organizations. The answer, in most cases, is it depends. Some companies get more mileage out of advertising, while others get more out of PR. It depends on where you sit.
Page rank is so bogus I think I want to vomit - As if the discussion of AVEs in this article isn't enough, we go down the page rank path?! Oh, for the love of... "Whether your story appears at the beginning or the end of a magazine can impact the media value," says Epperly. Well, no shit! However, are you sitting over the shoulder of someone reading said magazine to know if they are making it to the end of the magazine? The answer is no, and the math behind trying to apply some sort of figure to those kinds of situations is less than ideal.

Listen folks, I'm all for integration. I want an integrated approach to communications and measurement. Unfortunately, blending PR and advertising by using advertising value equivalencies is a recipe for disaster. The better approach is to come up with a list of metrics that are reasonable measures of success for PR, and run with it. If some happen to be influenced by advertising, then great. Have that conversation. Until then, though, DO NOT USE AVEs. THEY ARE A SCURGE ON THE PROFESSION. CAN I GET A WITNESS?

Hopefully you'll permit me a quick shotout to a pretty ridiculous movie with that title...You'll understand why in a minute. Defining and measuring influence in social media is definitely the hot topic right now. Heck, Jason Falls' blog covered this topic at length last week with posts about how to improve online influence measures, revealing a new online influence tool (mPact) and then providing some background on the influencer identification tools marketplace. Radian6 also joined the party by releasing an eBook on defining and measuring online influence on Monday (co-authored by yours truly).The opinions about how to tackle this problem are varied. The varying opinions about an area this (relatively speaking) new is only leading to confusion in my estimation. People are confused about how to develop a process of identifying influencers, what tools to use, what's the appropriate amount of rigor you should apply to your analysis, is there a common set of influencers we can identify for all brands (put that one to bed right now - the answer is no). There are even those who openly are wondering if influencer analysis is even necessary. Let me be totally clear -- not only is it necessary, but it is absolutely imperative that we get the analysis (and the framework) right. And by getting it right I mean some combination of quantitative and qualitative. I'm a self-professed data geek. The more data the better (as long as there are actionable insights, of course). We need data to develop strategy and then ultimately tactics that make us look amazing to our bosses. My love affair with data doesn't mean I'm going to throw qualitative analysis out with the bath water. Quite the contrary. Influencer identification needs, and is currently crying out for skilled analysts who understand the brand(s) better than any computer possibly could. What the appropriate balance is will really be dependent on the brand or agency. My preference would be close to 50/50 (I'm not going to play Solomon here), but you have to make that call based on avalaible resources, which includes budget and people obviously. I think we can all agree that this combination of qual and quant is necessary, yes? It's interesting then to follow along with chatter (aside from the posts linked above) about how lists are developed, let alone used. I don't get an opportunity to participate in Twitter chats as much as I'd like, but one of my favorite ones is #pr20chat hosted every Tuesday night by Heather Whaling and Justin Goldsborough. During this week's chat, they asked a question (posed by yours truly) about how the participants come up with their influencer lists. Check out the conversations around the topic here if you'd like. What you'll notice is that of the 10 (I'm making that up for the sake of conversation) people who responded to the question, the majority outlined different approaches. Interesting, huh? I'll grant you that there are likely to be different ways to slay the dragon, but a majority with different methods? The number of varying methods must make a client's (or boss') head spin. I know it does mine and I live this stuff... With that as a backdrop, I thought it might be helpful if I gave you a couple of "standard" things you should use for any influencer analysis you're conducting. Yes, it is my contention that some of these more "structural" things can be implemented across brands. I'm hoping you'll drop in a comment if you disagree.

Be tool agnostic - We all know that there are a lot of tools available in this space. Jason outlined several of them in the post linked to above. Don't be hampered by one tool or algorithm (unless it is one you've developed yourself). If you want to use one of the tools that are available to measure Twitter influence or blog influence that's great. But, don't get into the habit of relying on their metrics as anything more than a gut check.
Develop your list of metrics - I mentioned above that every influencer analysis is a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Before you go digging for people to identify, make sure you spend a little time upfront identifying the types of metrics you want to use to judge people's influence.
Create a method for defining brand relevancy - This is absolutely critical, and it is something we mentioned in the white paper linked to above. Some of the world's largest blogs are great, but chances are that they've never talked about you. That isn't to say that they will never talk about you, but how much time do you want to spend on a site that doesn't seem to be talking about you or the subject matter you are most interested in? Probably not a lot (at least I hope).
Set your influencer timeframe - There are a lot of places where influencer analysis falls down, and the amount of data you gather tends to be the largest offender. Listen, there's a lot of "gut feeling" in any kind of influener analysis but please don't make the cardinal mistake of pulling in too little data. Spend the extra time to get six months worth of information instead of three. Your output will be significantly better.
Understand what your list is going to be used for - This is a pretty common misconception in the digital marketing world - everybody identified as an influencer MUST be an outreach target. *Cue ridiculous game show buzzing sound here.* That is just simply not true. If you have a list of 100 people, you might have 20 who are direct outreach targets, 20 who would only receive a press release, and 60 that are listen only. That might be an extreme example, but I think you get the gist. There are going to be folks who are influential to the online community that you may not be able to reach. That doesn't mean the intelligence they are providing you by talking online isn't valuable. Listen to those people's conversations, and don't worry if you can't engage directly with all of them.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts from me. I tend to think there is more confusion than ever around online influence. Hopefully through more educated dialog we will come to some sort of consensus. However, knowing the online space as I do I wouldn't look for that anytime soon...

AVEs are a Scourge on Public Relations. Can I Get a Witness?

Dazed and Confused: The Story of Online Influencer Identification

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