They just aren't sure why.

Todd likes to say that the best thing about social media and modern PR is that [...]]]> Throughout my career companies have asked for coverage. They know what they want to say, they know what they want to promote, they know the sales figures they want to meet. They know they need PR.

They just aren't sure why.

Todd likes to say that the best thing about social media and modern PR is that you can measure everything. Oh, and the worst thing about social media and PR is that you can measure everything.

His point is that you may not be measuring the right thing.

Many of our clients focus on a single but very important measurement: website traffic. That is, does a media hit (online or offline) result in website traffic? There are multiple ways to measure this, whether it's looking at referrals, measuring traffic from a geographic location, looking at traffic numbers from a day with coverage versus a similar time period, or including twitter traffic generated by a particular piece of coverage. It can all go into that measurement.

But not every piece of media will drive traffic. For example, we've put clients in the big city publications that used to make clients drool, only to see little or no discernible traffic spike. The reason is simple: some big publications just don't provide links. No links, no traffic. Asking people to take an action (searching on a company name or finding a website) is a barrier to results.

So the question becomes, if a piece of coverage doesn't drive traffic, is it effective?

The answer isn't so simple.

Let's take the work we did for TeraDiode, a laser manufacturer in Littleton, Mass. As part of our outreach Xconomy's Greg Huang wrote a great piece. Thanks to some great writing that piece got "slashdotted."

If you just look at the traffic numbers, SlashDot drove quite a bit of traffic, though it tended to be low quality. Most of the users bounced and few knew anything about the type of lasers TeraDiode is in the business of building.

But that SlashDot hit helped the story get picked up by a number of other publications, like PhysOrg and R&D Magazine. The traffic from those sites had low bounce rates, high pages per visit and resulted in whitepaper downloads. It also caught the eye of a reporter at Jane's Defence Weekly, a primary target. It should be noted that Jane's doesn't include links in its coverage.

So, was SlashDot worth it? Yes, if you measure its broad impact, not just its direct impact.

Of course, most media programs won't have that kind of turnaround. A mention in a broad publication like the Boston Globe or Newsweek may not result in immediate impact. But its ancillary benefits include third-party validation and helping build credibility so you can gain bigger or more relevant coverage.

To get there, you need to plan for the long-run.

So what are the takeaways here?

1. Know what you're measuring -- Yes, you can easily measure site visits, but that may not be your only goals. You may also be looking for venture funding or doing some recruiting. You may simply be looking to build awareness. Different hits have different purposes and need to be measured with a different yardstick.
2. Have realistic expectations -- A single "hit" in a widely read publication isn't going to bring you thousands of new users. You need to keep your information flowing, both through your own content and by sharing others. Your primary goal is to build an audience, not just gain a short-term bump.
3. Know where PR Fits In -- Influencer relations is a part of the traffic-driving puzzle, but if you don't have a way to capture that traffic, then it's like going fishing with a hoop instead of a net. People should come to your site and know what to do next. Don't let them bounce, keep them warm.
4. Plan for the long haul -- It's tempting to measure PR on a week-by-week basis, but a program takes time to develop. A hit today in a small online publication may be what you need to move up to the bigger, more impressive and more traffic-driving publications down the road.
5. Understand where you belong -- While the Boston Globe may not yield major results for technology companies who want site traffic, I've spoken with consumer-goods companies that say a single piece their made their year. They needed awareness that later turned into sales. It's a very different measure. Another company may find that CMSWire drives the most relevant traffic. Success depends a long list of factors.

But all those folks know their Klout score.

I don't need to rehash how Klout recently changed its algorithm and sent Twitter ablaze with vitriol. You can read a great piece on the impact and find the alternatives here. But what has always been [...]]]> Mention "Klout" in a social media conversation and you'll hear groans, frustrations and grumbling.

But all those folks know their Klout score.

I don't need to rehash how Klout recently changed its algorithm and sent Twitter ablaze with vitriol. You can read a great piece on the impact and find the alternatives here. But what has always been frustrating about Klout is how it tries to apply a number to something rather arbitrary. We've trod this ground before, but it came up again today during an online event called "Relevant Influence - Discovering and Engaging with Influencers for Effective Social Marketing" moderated by Chris Selland of Terametric. Mike Maney, who is an incredibly intelligent marketer, pointed out how he does most of his work by hand. He becomes an influencer, he learns the influencers he needs to know and just talks to them. Sure, there are tools out there to help him do that, but sometimes it comes down to something simple.

Like collecting the top influencers on a given topic at a Mexican restaurant at SXSW, pouring Margaritas and having a conversation.

But if you're looking at a number like a Klout score you need to ask yourself "what are you truly measuring?" Even accepted measurements have flaws. For evidence of that look no further than a great Freakonomics video on Football stats. They point out how seemingly simple metrics like a QB's passing yards never tell the whole story. The video points out that last season, quarterbacks who threw for 300 or more yards a game went 47-49. When you look at those QBs with 400+ passing games, that record drops to 3-11. (I'd like to note here that Joe Namath was the MVP of Superbowl III without throwing a single touchdown pass. He didn't throw any passes in the 4th quarter. Yet the Jets still won.)

I like what Klout is attempting to do: trying to provide everyone with a simple way to measure influence. The problem is, it means different things to different people and has a dozen different contexts.

In other words, "influence" isn't so simple to measure.

The event was an excellent overview of how far we've come. According to Jeremiah Owyang, the opening speaker, 71% of businesses have had some form of social media program in place for more than a year [...]]]> I very much enjoyed today's "Awareness Exploring Social Media Business Summit," but not for the reasons I thought I would.

The event was an excellent overview of how far we've come. According to Jeremiah Owyang, the opening speaker, 71% of businesses have had some form of social media program in place for more than a year (his slide deck from the program is below).

The event was also an excellent illustration of how far we have yet to go. When I saw the phrase "Social Media Business" I thought there would be more exploration of how social is moving beyond the marketing department. The Altimeter Group itself shared some interesting survey results on social's expansion into other departments back in June (see below), but the focus of today's program stayed very much in the marketing department.

That's definitely not a bad thing -- there is plenty of work left to do when it comes to realizing the full potential of social media marketing. And as a PR guy, I should be happy about where we are. But so much of my success as a PR pro is dependent on the quality and reputation of the company or product I'm promoting -- and that can only be helped by involving more than just the marketing department.

Those of you interested in continuing the conversation outside the marketing department should tune in to Tuesday's Social Product Innovation Summit and SPIKE Awards event, being sponsored by the Social Media Club and Fresh Ground client Kalypso, among others. The free virtual program starts at 11am and runs through 3pm -- sign up at http://www.spikesummit.com/, even if you can only make part of the program!

Five years ago, much of what we think of today as social media was either in its early days or still stuck on a whiteboard somewhere.

Five years ago, [...]]]> What did we do before Facebook? Before Twitter? Before most of what we think of as social media and smart phones and all of today's connected technologies existed?

Five years ago, much of what we think of today as social media was either in its early days or still stuck on a whiteboard somewhere.

Five years ago, we felt the same pain that we do today. We felt overwhelmed by new media (there were millions of blogs in 2006). Our filters sucked only slightly more than they do today.

Five years ago, I had the honor of being there, at least in a virtual sense, for the first meeting of the Social Media Club, or at least the meeting that started it all. Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells sat down with Todd Defren, Brian Solis, Sally Falkow, Tom Abate, Seth Mazow, Tom Foremski, Mark Nowlan, Jen McClure, Pat Meier-Johnson, Russell Johnson, Shannon Clark, Lisa Chung, myself and (also virtually) Jason Baptiste to talk about the changes that social media was bringing.

In November of that same year, a group of about 100 of us teamed up with the Society for New Communications Research and hosted our first Boston meeting of the club. Jen was there, as well as Chris Heuer, and we were joined by a great group of Boston folks, including the following folks who really helped get the word out and share their thoughts: Adam Weiss, Adam Zand, Alison Raymond, Amanda Watlington, Barbara Rudolph, Brian Cavoli, Bryan Person, Chuck Hester, David Meerman Scott, Doug Haslam, Geoff Livingston, Mike Spataro, Paula Slotkin, Scott Monty, Susan Koutalakis, Tom Francoeur, Tony Sapienza and many others who you'll recognize in the photos below.

In the five years that have transpired since then, so much has happened. There's a great blog post on some of the milestones, and this great infographic from JESS3:

Here are some thoughts from Social Media Club Founder Chris Heuer on our 5th anniversary:

I'll share my own thoughts on our 5th anniversary at our November 8th "Evolution of Social Business" event at IBM. I hope you'll join me for that!

I started my journalism career in radio, so I have a bit of a bias toward sound.  Nothing, not TV, not print, not Twitter, not Facebook, can convey as much information, texture and beauty as the human voice.

For this reason, radio tends to be a relatively tight medium with short [...]]]>

Image via spDuchamp on Flickr

I started my journalism career in radio, so I have a bit of a bias toward sound.  Nothing, not TV, not print, not Twitter, not Facebook, can convey as much information, texture and beauty as the human voice.

For this reason, radio tends to be a relatively tight medium with short stories, quick soundbites and audio cues that give you a lot of information fast. A radio journalism professor of mine once commented that you can tell the history of the world in 3 minutes.

She's close. It may take 5.

Some people talk better than they write (though, admittedly, some write better than they talk) because for many of us it's a much more natural way of communicating. Even as babies it was our primary way of taking in information and our second way of conveying information (gesturing came first). Writing comes long after.

So I'm always surprised when I hear that journalists don't want to answer phones. I understand that they are often overwhelmed with calls or, as Robin Wauters points out, that phone calls aren't searchable. It's a fair issue. Though, recording and transcribing technologies can fix some of that. (Paul Carr's "I'm quitting breathing" reaction is killer, by the way.)

I still find phone to be an extrodinarily useful tool, both inbound and outbound. Quite often I'll email a reporter, maybe IM them, then wait for a response. Sometimes, if the story is right, I'll follow up by phone. Nearly all of the time the reporter will say one of two things:

• Oh, I saw that email but didn't have a chance to respond, what was that again? or
• Can you email me? You did? Let me find it... hold on.... [searching inbox]... oh, yeah, that does sound interesting...

The reason is simple: a phone call lets them get more information in less time. Instead of being stuck with just the information I sent, they can interrupt me, ask questions and get more data. They can also tell me why they're not interested, giving me more information to help improve the story.

Anyone who has ever tried to make a joke via email can tell you that writing has its limits. Sarcasm certainly doesn't translate well and jokes often fall flat. So if you're a journalist doing an interview, don't you want to hear a pregnant pause? Doesn't a tone tell you a bit more information than the basic facts?

If you need a current example of this just listen to the amazing piece on This American Life called When Patents Attack! Simple questions trip up key subjects just by being asked out loud. Via email those questions would have been fretted over and answered carefully. They would have conveyed some information, but not all of it.

Also, if, as a journalist, you carefully screen everyone who gets through to you, aren't you simply limiting your sources of information? This has some advantages, but as a journalist doesn't this keep you from gaining new sources and good stories?

So I'm curious from journalists and non-journalists: if you could eliminate phone from your life, would you? Have you already done that through tools like Google Voice? Are their other inbound channels that you'd eliminate if you could?

Today he offers up [...]]]> I love working with Wade Roush. Not only is he a great guy, he's a smart, serious and intelligent reporter. The only catch is that he is about 3 feet taller than I am, so I strain my neck looking up while talking to him. I may start bringing a step stool.

Today he offers up some great advice about how pitch him. Other reporters have done this in the past, but Wade's post is among the best I read and actually speaks to issues that are much broader than just him. He echoes much of what we hear from reporters all the time. I recently had conversations with several reporters from all different types of publications who may love the story we're pitching, but simply don't have time to do it. These range from those focusing in regional tech to national consumer. Fewer reporters are churning out more material with fewer resources. This leads to them find ways to limit where to focus.

Wade lays out some of his key questions. Below are his questions with my take right after. Over on his blog you can see his own explanations.

Has this company won the backing of reputable investors? This is really about third-party validation. If you're just someone with an idea that hasn't yet gone through some kind of business gauntlet, then it's hard for a journalist to take you seriously yet.

How truly differentiated is this company’s technology? For entrepreneurs this is often the most difficult to answer. From inside your technology looks different than anything else out there, but when you bring something to a reporter who gets pitched by 20 companies that look and sound just like yours, you need to have messaging in place that answers this question very well. You will stumble with this at first, but be willing to look deep and think about it.

Is this company offering a product or service that our audience would care about? I think this is more about the strategy behind your media and influencer relations program. Are you picking the right media audience? Did you create the right "pitch" for that audience? Are the readers of that publication people you truly need to reach?

Does this company have a team of articulate, charismatic founders or executives? One phrase: media training. Get it. Feel you need it? Contact us.

Does this company have a convincing business model? Oh the business model discussion. I cannot tell you how often I go to a pitch event, listen to the entrepreneur go through the whole pitch only to have the first question be: how are you going to make money? It's become so obvious that people actually laugh when it comes up. It's easier just to acknowledge and answer it up front. Though, as Wade points out: "I’m increasingly irritated by what I call the Twitter Answer: 'We’re focused for now on building a service that 200 million people will use, and later we’ll figure out some way to monetize it.'"

Is this company built to flip? Or simply to get the founders “acqhired” at Google, Facebook, or Twitter? Here in Boston I've seen frothy coverage of companies that I just don't fully understand. I look at their business and their technology and think "that's a not a company, that's an application." I'm not the only one, others seem to have the same opinion. But it's a good thing to think about as an entrepreneur in general. Are we really creating something that can stand alone? One of my favorite examples on the positive side of this question is Runkeeper, which started as an application and has evolved into a platform. Jason Jacobs isn't about creating a company that is born to flip, he created a company that has much more potential than that.

If I were to sum up the whole discussion in a phrase it would come [...]]]> InkHouse PR hosted a fascinating online discussion on Wednesday about the fate of the embargo. Hosted by Beth Monaghan, it included insights from Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick, Xconomy's Wade Roush, the Boston Globe's Scott Kirsner and USA Today's Jon Swartz.

If I were to sum up the whole discussion in a phrase it would come down to this: size matters. I'll get back to that.

The most interesting tidbit, however, was throw-away line from all four reporters that they don't bother with the press release wires. One reporter said he hadn't looked at BusinessWire or PR Newswire in about seven years. Wade noted that he sometimes uses it for archive purposes.

Even Beth seemed surprised at that answer. Of course, this is a long way from saying that the press release is dead. Kirsner, for example, still runs them on his "Read Scott's Email" page (though, obviously just a selection of those he receives) and reporters routinely ask me for them.

In fact, all four reporters noted that Twitter has become their news feed. Something reinforced just a short time later when Shaq announced his retirement on Twitter (with an associated video). Sorry ESPN, Shaq doesn't need your audience.

Twitter being a primary news feed for reporters is, on some level, a "no duh" moment. It is, in fact, pretty awesome and shows the power of Twitter both as a medium unto itself as well as its influence over "mainstream media." While Twitter is certainly not nearly as popular as Facebook, it is certainly influential. But that also leads to a number of concerns:

1. Twitter has a high signal-to-noise ratio -- Filtering Twitter to find the good stuff is a major hassle. Personally, I use Twitter lists (both public and private) to select information I want to find. I know that popular stuff rises to the top, but quite often I'll look at an individual's feed and find that I missed something interesting that happened weeks ago. How do reporters filter? What does this mean for their reporting?
2. Reporters can easily insulate themselves from information -- They can limit themselves to the people they follow as well as a few search terms. That's not everyone. Also, as mentioned above, Twitter is just a subset of a much larger population. Is it truly representative? In the tech world, maybe, but the broader world?
3. Twitter has a "blink and you missed it" issue -- information on Twitter rots very fast. My main feed scrolls by so fast to render it useless.

Still, it's the reality. A while back Bianca Bosker, tech editor at the Huffington Post, told me that she has two monitors on her desk: one is email, web browser and everything she needs for her job; the other runs Tweetdeck all day. Do the math, the power of being in her news feed and therefore winding up in one of her posts will pay off huge dividends in traffic.

As a related note, Kirkpatrick noted that the best way to get on his radar is to send him your RSS feed so he can follow it. He follows a massive number of blogs, but if being in front of the top editor at a top publication is important, then you need to keep your feed filled with information as to show up on his radar.

But what about the embargo? Well, Kirkpatrick loves them noting that it helps level the playing field so he has time to do his own reporting. As a smaller organization this is important to him, allowing him to compete with much larger and more well-funded organizations, like TechCrunch. The other reporters tended to take a much dimmer view of embargoes, Roush won't bother with them at all and Swartz prefers not to deal with them either, but Kirsner admitted that he'd take them if the news was big enough.

Frankly, that came up a few times. If the news is big enough, or the company issuing it is big enough, the "no embargo" policy flies out the window. It was mentioned that even TechCrunch would take an embargo from those companies and simply break it 15 minutes early, just because they can.

So, in this sense, size matters. When the PR team has the power they'll use it (and get their way), when the journalist has the power they'll use it to avoid taking the embargo. The topic of offering exclusives came up as an alternative, but all the reporters were uncomfortable with that, saying it makes them feel as if they're being controlled by the PR machine.

My take on all this remains the same. Most of my clients are smaller and tend to be more concerned about getting coverage than about timing it. So while we would bring news out to reporters and prebrief them, I'd rarely put them under embargo. Of course, sometimes the client wants the assurance, so you do it. But I believe the news must be big enough to warrant it, and that's a judgement call.

So what does this all mean? Well, a few things:

1. A news release isn't enough -- You need a content plan to make things work. Yes, a news release can help (and still does drive SEO as well as some coverage from vertical publications) but if your goal is bigger coverage you need more.
2. Build relationships -- This goes for all influencers, online and off. Reporters are part of the influence chain.
3. Integrate content -- Your blog is your friend. Your Twitter feed is your friend. Use them, build them.
4. Finally: if you have real news by all means put it out. Reporters are smart, they know when it's something real and when it isn't.... mostly.

With apologies to Tom Foremski.