The evolution of evaluation by Professor Tom Watson

This summer, at the annual International History of Public Relations Conference at Bournemouth University, UK, Professor Tom Watson delivered an interesting presentation on the evolution of evaluaiton in PR- Public Relations eratic path to the measurement of effectiveness. As an expert on the history of PR himself, with over 20 years of experience in the field, Professor Watson outlined the role of evaluation and measurement in pr and how it has evolved in the past 200 years.

Some points that are raised in the presentation include the evolution of PR measurement and evaluation as an eradic progress. Development evaluation as a surrogate history of PR. He looks at it in the form of a timeline narrative, starting in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and ending with todays current PR practices.

Have a look at the speech below:

The people formerly known as the audience

A very interesting article in the Economist about the changing landscape of news in light of recent developments with Newscorp.

It provides a thorough outline of how journalism has evolved with a focus on the influence of social media, and specific examples of how social media has impacted the news since it’s inception in the late 90′s. From the “Rathergate” scandal in 2004 which provoked the resignation of renowned television anchor Dan Rather to the rise of hybrid news sources such as the Huffington post and the viral news of the revolutions in the middle East, this article provides insight into the increasingly important role that social media has in our lives.

Rather than thinking of themselves as setting the agenda and managing the conversation, news organisations need to recognise that journalism is now just part of a conversation that is going on anyway, argues Jeff Jarvis, a media guru at the City University of New York. The role of journalists in this new world is to add value to the conversation by providing reporting, context, analysis, verification and debunking, and by making available tools and platforms that allow people to participate. All this requires journalists to admit that they do not have a monopoly on wisdom. 

Full article>>

3rd annual AMEC Summit feedback

At the 3rd annual AMEC Summit in Lisbon some interesting thoughts were shared about measurement and evaluation in PR, particularly linked to social media. From establishing definitions for concepts such as engagement and influence to discussions about AVE’s the conference provided a wide spectrum of input from professionals in PR and beyond. A good summary has been provided by Professor Tom Watson of Bournmouth University. He also presented an interesting workshop on the fundamentals of measurement and evaluation. Read more on his Dummyspit blog in the post on social media metrics.

Another good summary can be found on the PR Media blog.

The presentations can be viewed here.

Foursquare social media strategies

Increasingly, companies are using Foursquare to reach their audiences. Numerous promotions have been successful in attracting new customers and converting existing ones to new ambassadors for your brand, which is the basis of social media. It is increasingly important to interact with the customer and their audience. They are no longer passive bystanders as we know, both for communication and marketing. Today, almost everyone has some sort of smartphone, hence the rise of applications such as Foursquare, which allow you to check in anywhere, find points of interest around your checkin as well as current and potential or future contacts. This provides an excellent opportunity for people to become familiar with a product or to create resonance around it and attract attention, which is usually the objective on an advertising campaign.

The most common approach is to provide a discount to users who check in at one of the store’s branches. Many companies including Gap and Starbucks are renowned for this approach. Jimmy Choo, however, took it a step further by organising a type of treasure hunt in the city of London. Through their Twitter account @Catchachoo they posted specific locations around the city and the first person to check in at one of those locations via Foursquare would receive a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes of their choice for free.

McDonalds is another example of an original campaign. The aim was to increase foot traffic to their stores by 33% in one day by using Foursquare. 100 randomly awarded $5 and $10 giftcards were used as checkin bait to attract potential customers. The bait also worked to attract attention from the media and resulted in more than 50 articles talking about their so called Foursquare special. The problem with this campaign was the measurement. The blog thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com provides an excellent summary of this.

 

 

 

 

Social media policy

Following my last post, an additional element to consider is the social media policy. A recent post from the Greenbuzz agency makes a valid point about the idea that a social media strategy should include a coherent policy to help employees understand how they fit into the strategy. “Companies can build the most carefully-planned social media strategy, but if employees don’t have specific ‘how to’ guidelines, confusion erupts and hands are slapped in the process.”

Ready to tackle social media policy development? Consider these questions:

1.    Will employees be allowed to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. during business hours?

2.    How much time, or which specific time periods, will be allowed on these sites? Only during the lunch hour and breaks?

3.    Who is the designated spokesperson/people representing your company’s ‘voice’? Don’t designate “anyone” — choose wisely.

4.    What style will be used when posting? Conversational and friendly? Business casual? Professional and formal? Make sure the style accurately represents your company’s culture.

5.    Can employees access sites via company mobile devices? Will this pose a security risk?

6.    Who ‘owns’ contacts made for business purposes? This is an especially important question for companies with sales forces.

You can read more by taking ideas from what others have done in this list of 160 social media policies.

A structured communication plan is the foundation of a sustainable social media strategy

Recently I received several calls from organisations seeking advice about how to establish a presence on Facebook and other social media platforms. Most importantly they wanted to hear about the advantages of social media adoption. My first question to them is always: what is your communication objective? This is usually followed by a moment of silence. In fact, most of them do not have a communications strategy.  Yet jumping into social media without a proper communications strategy seems like building a house without a proper foundation.

Social media may produce immediate results but it also presents an opportunity for a long term communication management. You build relationships, gain knowledge, and participate in and shape conversations. But how do you combine the immediacy of posts, status updates, rss, etc. with longterm objectives and goals linked to a communications strategy? To answer that we should review the elements of a communications strategy. These include a proper stakeholder analyses, goals, objectives, and a proper method for evaluating results.

A stakeholder analysis is essential for any organisation. There are numerous methods that can be used which focus on the identification of stakeholders. The challenge is to decide which stakeholders should receive specific attention. One excellent model that can be used was developed by Brad L. Rawlins which prioritizes stakeholders through a four-step process: 1. Identifying all potential stakeholders according to their relationship to the organization; 2. Prioritizing stakeholders by attributes; 3. Prioritizing stakeholders by relationship to the situation; 4. Prioritizing the publics according to the communication strategy. This model helps an organisation decide how much attention each stakeholder group deserves or requires. If you know your publics you can select which platforms are most suited for your specific objectives more effectively. You might set shorter communications initiatives with some stakeholders while others would require a longterm investment. Social media could be used for both.

In communication we distinguish between goals and objectives, in that a goal is a statement rooted in the organization’s mission or vision and an objective is a statement emerging from the organization’s goals. For example, if your goal is to raise awareness about a certain issue or product, your objective might indicate how much awareness and it would specify a time frame. Once an organisation has set specific objectives and decided on which stakeholders to target, specific channels can be identified. These channels may include a more traditional approach such as print journalism or advertising or they may include social media. One advantage social media offers is that you are able to listen to your stakeholders. Effective communicators implement a two-way approach which requires longterm investment. Just posting a message blindly to reach a maximum number of people will not be effective in the long run.

The final step is then to decide on how to measure your results. Here again the most effective approach is a combined measurement, both on and offline. Some interesting references for measurement are Intelligent Measurement and the Metricsman. They talk extensively about the importance of evaluation and measurement but also about the combined approach implementing both online and offline techniques.

One reference which I think describes this point is from the film Field of Dreams, where Kevin Costner’s character hears a voice which tells him to build a baseball stadium. He hears repeatedly “if you build it, they will come” referring to the spectators. And at the end of the film you see thousands of cars approaching the farmland on which he had built the field. But was he ready for all those people? We don’t know because the film ends. In social media it is comparable, you can build your profiles, start posting, commenting, linking and you might generate a great deal of traffic very quickly. But if you do not feed that traffic with quality material they will disappear and it will be counter productive in the long run. Therefore, think and plan ahead. Establish a proper communications strategy before building.

Communication, Chaos, and Control

From the New Yorker, I came across this interesting interview with Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and the author of “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires,” about how forms o

The Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles

After a brief break to collect my thoughts, I am back with a focus on evaluation and measurement. At a conference on measurement held in Barcelona in June, an important development was recorded: the creation of the ‘Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles’. The Summit was organized by the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) and the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) and over 200 delegates from around 33 countries voted on what is to be considered new standards in communication measurement. Participants at the conference included important PR and measurement organizations such as AMEC, IPR, The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), The International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO), and The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (GA).

The finalized version of these principles has now been published. The seven Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles are:

1. Importance of Goal Setting and Measurement
2. Measuring the Effect on Outcomes is Preferred to Measuring Output
3. The Effect on Business Results Can and Should Be Measured Where Possible
4. Media Measurement Requires Quantity and Quality
5. AVEs are not the Value of Public Relations
6. Social Media Can and Should be Measured
7. Transparency and Replicability are Paramount to Sound Measurement

The full description (pdf) of each of these principles and the thought process behind them can be seen on the  AMEC website.

NYT article: The Data-Driven Life

A very interesting article in The New York Times today about ubiqutous self-tracking. The article, titled The Data-Driven Life, is written by Gary Wolf who usually writes about science and social issues for Wired.

This article explores both the benefits and drawbacks of new technology which allows us to compensate for “human error” such as e blind spots in our field of vision and gaps in our stream of attention.

Sometimes we can’t even answer the simplest questions. Where was I last week at this time? How long have I had this pain in my knee? How much money do I typically spend in a day? These weaknesses put us at a disadvantage. We make decisions with partial information. We are forced to steer by guesswork. We go with our gut.

Apparently, machines can compensate for these lacunas. Examples depicted cover a range of tracking devices from the simplest used for sports (runners) to sophisticated systems applied to track bipolar disorders, addiction, and even ranges in mental function. Perhaps the most frightening of those mentioned is a digital device that tucks into specially designed toddlers’ clothing and can be used to predict language development through tracking the number of conversational exchanges a child has with adults.

“The more they want to share, the more they want to have something to share.” Personal data are ideally suited to a social life of sharing. You might not always have something to say, but you always have a number to report.

Our search history, friend networks and status updates allow us to be analyzed by machines in ways we can’t always anticipate or control. It’s natural that we would want to reclaim some of this power: to look outward to the cloud, as well as inward toward the psyche, in our quest to figure ourselves out.

Watch out for those machines, though. Humans know a special trick of self-observation: when to avert our gaze. Machines don’t understand the value of forgiving a lapse, or of treating an unpleasant detail with tactful silence. A graph or a spreadsheet talks only in numbers, but there is a policeman inside all of our heads who is well equipped with punishing words. “Each day my self-worth was tied to the data”.

Electronic trackers have no feelings. They are emotionally neutral, but this very fact makes them powerful mirrors of our own values and judgments. The objectivity of a machine can seem generous or merciless, tolerant or cruel. Designers of tracking systems are trying to finesse this ambivalence.

Often, pioneering trackers struggle with feelings of being both aided and tormented by the very systems they have built. The article mentions a woman, Alexandra Carmichael, one of the founders of the self-tracking site CureTogether, who recently had to stop.  “One pound heavier this morning? You’re fat. Skipped a day of running? You’re lazy. It felt like being back in school. Less than 100 percent on an exam? You’re dumb.” Carmichael had been tracking 40 different things about herself. The data she was seeing every day didn’t respect her wishes or her self-esteem. It was awful, and she had to stop.

What motivates Trackers? Those focused on their health want to ensure that their medical practitioners don’t miss the particulars of their condition; those who record their mental states are often trying to find their own way to personal fulfillment amid the seductions of marketing and the errors of common opinion; fitness trackers are trying to tune their training regimes to their own body types and competitive goals, but they are also looking to understand their strengths and weaknesses, to uncover potential they didn’t know they had.

All this to satisfy our struggle for self-actualization and perfection? Is that the future? We will all walk around with contraptions attached to our bodies, or inserted under our skin, which will track our every move. the information will be sent to a computer which will then alert us to inconsistencies and provide suggestions about how to get back on the “right track” to perfection? And what happens to all this information if it falls into the wrong hands? Something to ponder on over the week-end.

The article also includes a number of very interesting comments worth reading.

Socialnomics

Reading a very interesting book about Social Media titled: Socialnomics: How Social Media Transofrms the Way We Live and Do Business, by Erik Qualman.

It summarizes in a very clear manner the basics of social media and their impact on our society. It provides visions into the future, how social networks will evolve and how business can benefit by adapting their strategies. Of course, it also restates many points that we, as early adapters, have already mentioned. Ideas such as the importance of two way conversations with your publics or target audience and the necessity to adjust your strategy according to their feedback. In this book, the author focuses more on the marketing/advertising perspective than PR. In other words how customers have taken ownership of the brands and how organisations can learn from their customers to improve their products and services. That is not to say that the days of traditional marketing and advertising have disappeared completely, they have merely evolved into something more interactive.

There are a number of good case studies in the book such as the Obama campaign, the Budweiser Wassup campaign, the Jetblue crisis response, Starbucks and many other great examples of how organisations and individuals are using social media successfully.

One nice example of proliferation through social media is for a product invented by two young entrepreneurs from Seattle. The product is Bacon Salt. Two friends started talking about how great it would be to have a powder that made “everything taste like bacon. One of them started a MySpace profile dedicated to Bacon Salt. The used the data available on MySpace to look for other people who had mentioned bacon in their profiles and found 35 000 of them. They began reaching out to them to establish their interest in Bacon Salt. They found wide interest and started receiving orders even before having a product. Word of Mouth took over and they sold 600 000 bottles in 18 months.