Public relations

Perhaps more than any other field, public relations (PR) has reinvented itself though adding social media, as well as social analytics, to its traditional offerings, such as crisis management, brand awareness, brand perception and event management. But there are significant challenges for agencies practising social analytics from within the communications space, including a conflict of interest between spinning a message, and measuring it (which I have written about in my book, Social Media Analytics: Effective Tools for Building, Interpreting, and Using Metrics).²

Furthermore, the disciplines and practice of social analytics, in addition to social media creation, when practised within the marketing communication (Marcom) environment, is akin to mixing oil and water; a successful emulsion of the two approaches is difficult because there is no common lexicon. In this chapter, I will share what it takes to set up social analytics properly in organisations that focus entirely on communication, or that have significant communications departments.

Branding

The more immediate goals are fostering brand awareness, doing so by extending digital footprints of a brand online and, thereby, growing the desired audience. As stands to reason, by increasing the audience associated with any brand, this should realise higher sales and, thus, more profit. In the case of not-for-profit (NFP) entities, audience growth equates to increased support and the prospect of further donations. Also, a common goal of branding campaigns in social media is to develop empowered fans that drive demand for branded content. However, the ultimate goals of branding, as it pertains to social media, are soft in that these are often difficult to quantify. For instance, consider measures such as increased awareness, purchase consideration, brand preference and the lead closure rate.³

By heightening brand awareness, associated customers tend to become more ‘engaged with the brand’, spending more money on the brand’s products and services than would happen otherwise. Essentially, the measurement problem is determining an accurate correlation between online ‘chatter’ via social analytics platforms, such as Radian6, Alterian SM2, Brandwatch and the offline word-of-mouth (WOM) chatter that varies by industry and situation.⁴

Sales

Research conducted by Empathica, a market research company, shows brands using social media for customer outreach are more likely to succeed in getting customers to interact with them online if a business offers free coupons and assorted promotions. According to Dr Gary Edwards, the Empathica EVP of Client Services:

Consider that the recommendations from friends taking place on Facebook and Twitter are followed at least 33 per cent of the time, and it would appear that all of those recommendations can be tracked via social media analytics. Certainly, ‘likes’ and ‘votes’ are tracked by Radian6. In addition, InfiniGraph, a social intelligence platform, tracks the interaction level of branded content, trending content, affinity content and related trends, as well as influential factors.⁸

Businesses that desire to monetise social media, but are not fully prepared to track and map their social data to their sales data, all too frequently express their frustration over the lack of data that is capable of tying social media outreach and other such campaigns to measurable income. However, businesses do need to examine – perhaps using a detailed audit methodology – if they have done enough of the preparation work to enable the tracking that is necessary both on a business process level and measurement tactic level, so as to be able to follow outreach through to the cash register or (in the case of NFPs) to the collection box and related income stream. In relation to these important, if not mission-critical, issues, I developed an approach based on the concept of ‘Ultraviolet Data’ that brands can implement. But there are significant challenges for setting up complete tracking in most business environments.

The aforementioned problems, as per incomplete tracking, led me to found my new company, WebMetricsGuru Inc., in 2011. In so doing, I developed an approach for uncovering ‘Ultraviolet Data’ and enabling it, both on a social level (such as for sales) and for technological infrastructure support. This approach is now being deployed within local and international businesses in several vertical areas.⁹

Advertising

Social media data for assessing advertising effectiveness is the most accessible case for the use of social advertising, particularly with Facebook and, now, by Twitter. Facebook allows advertisers to target Facebook members (whose profile information, demographics, psychographics and behavioural data are known within Facebook) using a feature called ‘profile targeting’.¹⁰

One example of how to use the profile approach came from Dennis Yu, CEO of Blitzlocal.com, a Facebook advertising agency, in a conversation that we had in late 2010.

As a result, the people for whom a business proposal is to be presented will now be predisposed to favour your proposal based on the ad that they saw, whether that was directly or subliminally.

The public relations chasm

The practice of public relations is comprised of the effective use of spin, influencer outreach, messaging to foster free publicity, and changing public sentiment about individuals and companies. More recently, market research disciplines are included in some PR shops, with this focusing on brand sentiment, as well as brand competitors and industry-related information, with this often obtained using social media analytics tools and platforms.

Integrated marketing communications firms attract communications professionals along with editorial and business development candidates. But give thought to the fact that public relations professionals and social media analytics professionals are usually at cross purposes with each other.¹¹

Analysts, for example, have a religious love for the truth, and for the real story. Also, they value data integrity. In comparison, communications professionals, for the most part, focus on messaging and creative assets. The accuracy of analytics, in and of itself, depends on finding essential truths within a situation, or in a set of situations and scenarios, which requires clear thinking, focused and extended time, along with the right set of methodologies, platforms and tools in order to provide actionable insights. Associated categorisation and filtering capabilities are still emerging. Plus the work that is involved to take social listening, and to make it useful for marketing insights, is considerable, with this often not being properly planned and staffed in PR firms.

On the other hand, PR and integrated communications firms tend to be focused on a client’s reputation management, possibly with an eye to spinning the truth or, in the most positive light, putting a client’s best foot forward, especially in bad circumstances. As a result of their preoccupation with spin and influencer outreach, the PR professional’s notion of analytics is more akin to media research and campaign metrics, with the emphasis on media (clipping services, media placements, measured spots). Furthermore, note that most of the analytics platforms that exist for social media are not built for analysing media. Accordingly, analysts who find themselves in a PR firm often end up doing ‘one-off’ online media research and, usually, with not enough time or the right platforms to do it well. Social media analytics, as a research service, is a new offering in this area of investigation. But there are few ‘good use’ cases to predict how long most related tasks ought to take, which can complicate deliverables and keep analysts working overtime, typically needlessly.

Furthermore, while market research for a pitch or business opportunity is valuable, it is unclear how long it will take to produce the kind of research that will ‘wow’ a client (just as it is unclear as to what would comprise that kind of research). As a pitch has yet to produce revenue for the PR firm, the amount of time allotted for research is typically not sufficient to provide very interesting and useful results.

But the biggest problem with all of this is with varying lexicons, or ways of communicating. (For example, when a person says ‘x’, does the other person in the conversation hear ‘y’? When people communicate, they do need to agree on common meanings. Otherwise, the conversation will lead to a bad outcome. In fact, that happens quite frequently.) As might be apparent, there are differences in vocabulary between that for PR/Marcom folks, and that for analytics people, with the two being quite far apart. It requires a bit of work and knowledge to translate effectively the output analytics platforms so as to provide anything useful from a PR perspective.

Lastly, in this part of the chapter, platforms used for ‘social listening’ are still immature and are not capable of providing that much in the way of useful information without a considerable amount of effort, energy and time, which can quickly burn out anyone! I’ve also noticed that most communications deliverables don’t budget nearly enough time for setup, configuration, culling and operating in relation to gathering this conversational data, much less its delivery. Also, there is a data quality issue whereby communications professionals aren’t concerned about the quality of data as much as its marketing effectiveness, while data professionals are much more focused on what the data/conversations consist of, and how to organise them properly (which, again, takes a great deal of valuable time and effort).

For me, a legitimate question arises as to where the value in the future of PR lies – shouldn’t PR organisationally structure itself around the needs and support of the analyst (with this, I contend, due to the strong, an observed, notion that analytics, more and more, is driving the value of communications offerings) rather than the other way around? I will suggest that it all depends on who is asking the question.

The brand measurement chasm

One approach to increasing branding and brand awareness within companies lies with empowering authentic employee advocates, or as these people are more commonly called, ‘Brand Ambassadors’. Consider the contribution to industry of Steve Rubel. He is EVP of Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm. His concept of ‘Brand All Stars’ or ‘Brand Ambassadors’¹² starts with a brand’s employees spreading messaging to target audiences (this is more believable than corporate officers promoting the brand because, generally, few people trust CEOs). One way to do this is by internally recruiting employees who are already ‘stars’ within social media and, thereby, turning them into superstars, doing so by blending personal branding with corporate branding. As social media adoption becomes more widespread, what seemed like a special effort for corporate communications people a few years ago, when Steve Rubel first put forward his ideas on brand ambassadors, is much more commonplace nowadays.

It is generally held that people need to hear or see a message three to seven times before it is absorbed or believed, just as it is that 40 per cent of brand messaging gets through by means of employees promoting the brand to stakeholders, and via social media. As a result of social media outreach, there is often heightened visibility and higher rankings within search engines due to increased social content creation (by the brand ambassadors and influencers). In order to use brand ambassadors effectively, social listening has evolved to help find, select and target audiences in terms of locations, interests and activities. But creating effective messaging is not the same thing as measuring it, or fully understanding the impact of online conversations.

According to Gary Angel, CTO of Semphonic, which is a large independent analytics consultancy based in the Bay Area around San Francisco,¹³ there is a real problem in using online listening tools to measure the effect of brand advocacy or to measure brand sentiment:

The data quality issue might make social media analytics a non-starter, especially if organisations do really care about the quality of the data and its accuracy (with this being the ‘substance versus hype’ argument), as neither can be guaranteed in the social space, as it can be for other types of data, such as web and search analytics. On the other hand, if reaching customers and fostering conversations is the main business goal, perhaps the quality of the data in social media is not so much of an issue (but that’s debatable).

Social media analytics can be used to find your audience online through platforms, like Rapleaf, that determine which social networks are prominent for target audiences. Then, a brand can dispatch empowered employees to reach out to customers in those social networks.

Rapleaf uses this data to create anonymous audience segments, such as ‘Female’ and ‘Age 24–34’, for online ad placements, then creates segments based on specific demographics requirements, as defined by clients. The Rapleaf platform places a cookie on your computer via your web browser. The Rapleaf cookie tells ad serving networks what ads will most likely be of interest to you, with this helping you to see more relevant content and helping companies to advertise their products more efficiently. Given that our segments are based on general profile data, Rapleaf cookies enhance your user experience without identifying you personally.¹⁴

While technology can personalise content by helping brands become more relevant, it’s not able to replace primary research, such as the Edelman Trust Monitor.¹⁵ This is due to the extent of the primary research undertaken, for instance, where Edelman’s research consists of conducting several thousand 25-minute telephone interviews with people meeting certain criteria, and where respondents are chosen from a panel and statistically scored.¹⁶ Going beyond who the survey takers are, the Edelman Trust Monitor attempts to find out ‘brand health’, as well as how it is perceived and trusted.

There have been attempts to create something equivalent to Edelman’s Trust Monitor by using social media listening (thereby avoiding direct contact with customers) and the closest-known attempt about which I am aware is the PoliPulse project.¹⁷ The brains behind PoliPulse are a team at Powell Tate, a leading DC-based public affairs and communications agency that is in partnership with Crimson Hexagon, which provides social media monitoring and analysis using machine learning algorithms.¹⁸

On the surface, it would appear that Crimson Hexagon provides a solution for many of the questions that Edelman Trust Monitor asks. Yet the level of reliability goes down due to limitations of ascertaining online identities and understanding to what extent viewpoints culled with machine learning neurolinguistic algorithms are often not proven to be representative of the way that people really think and feel.

Citing the issues from work by Wharton University in showing that there is little correlation been online and offline buzz, Gary Angel (mentioned earlier) suggests the data collected by social media listening isn’t good enough to base good research on.

So, in reality, using social analytics to track brands has significant challenges; this suggests very strongly that much work needs to be done to shore up the integrity of reporting and analysis around brands in the online space.

The sales analytics chasm

One of the more interesting developments over the last three years is a rise in use of Quick Response (QR) codes that can be scanned with mobile devices, such as smartphones, that can also be used to track sales.²⁰ With the automatic generation of QR codes by many URL shorteners, such as bitly and Goo.gl, it is possible to track instances when customers interact with a bottle of wine, or a menu item at a restaurant, doing so in ways that were not possible to do before now. The problem is that QR codes are not yet widely adopted and, even when they are, these do interfere with a user’s experience of brand messaging (for instance, acting on QR codes involves using a mobile device in a specified, frequently awkward, way). For an example of a QR code, see Figure 11.1.

Greg Dowling, VP of Analytics for Semphonic.com, is a specialist in the area of mobile technology and he has valuable insights for how QR codes should be used for sales, marketing and advertising,²¹ along with six of the most popular types of QR codes being used in marketing today.

Unfortunately, at this time, detailed geo-location information is usually not collected while using QR codes, though it is possible to foresee a day in the near future when all mobile devices are collecting geo-location and passing on of that information to analytics. Nevertheless, it is likely that analytics will improve for QR code data collection, especially when these codes are used more pervasively.

More likely, as I covered in my Rainbow Analytics paper²² with Compete.com, there is a great deal of data that is ‘ultraviolet’ that, if made trackable, could translate directly into sales numbers, as had occurred with one of my former clients, the Havana Central Restaurant chain in New York City, where the direct measurement of social media efforts translated into sales numbers. However, the problem continues to be that social media actions are often not able to be tracked back to the cash register or the bottom line, even this correlation is expected to be in place. In that regard, consider the information contained in Figure 11.2.

Rarely is social media a direct sales channel, according to Amber Naslund, a former community manager at Radian6:²³

The problem is that many businesses expected social media to lead to measureable sales when, in fact, they usually haven’t. No doubt, in time, we’ll close the loop on sales and measuring the effectiveness of social media. But meanwhile, managing stakeholder expectations seems to be the order of the day.

The social advertising chasm

Perhaps the one area where the accuracy of online measurement is not as much of a problem is with the practice of social advertising²⁴ where, usually, sophisticated tracking is available, especially on Facebook. Increasingly, this is also true of other applications, such as Twitter and Linkedln. However, the issue of privacy has come up as platforms such as Facebook collect a fantastic treasure trove of user data. Understandably, the user data provides better targeting, but the effect can often feel like a 1984 scenario.

So, collecting too much social data, which conflicts with what people still believe to be their rights to privacy, might be where the chasm arises between data collectors and users. However, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has standard best practices for social advertising, although these are largely missing for the other practices examined in this chapter.²⁵

What works for branding?

Brands are focusing on communicating directly with existing, and prospective, consumers with content placed in social media sites (such as Blendtec). Brands are abandoning other media platforms in favour of creating their own branded original content in social media channels.

My findings suggest that brands should concentrate on the quality of their product or service first, and let the messages spread organically. In fact, personal relationships with brands are entirely optional (and may not be what you want to promote, after all).

What works for advertising in social media?

Focusing on smaller niche communities and supporting services is where advertising should be concentrated. This is certainly the case in business-to-business (B2B) as getting people to share information in a ‘safe’ environment is most important.

What works for sales and social media?

The global recessions are helping to drive social media campaigns – but at this time, what is generally understood as ROI will probably come from traditional marketing channels instead of social media. In time, what we call social media today, will itself be rolled up into a traditional marketing channel, and be tracked along with the rest of the channels – but I’d give that three to five years to mature fully.

What works for marketing and social media?

Good marketers tend to be good storytellers. Social media for marketers is primarily a communications tool that sits across multiple channels to speak with customers (and listen to them) and where ROI comes from precise targeting of the right customers.

What works for retail social media?

Using customer support for retail products is the best place to find ROI in social media, and this is repeatedly shown to be the case. Having said that, using platforms such as Sprinklr, Shoutlet, Awareness Networks, Radian6 Engagement Console, Synthesio Unity and so on (being platforms that are built for engaging with customers) will be the best play here. This will amplify marketing and support efforts, along with increasing customer lifetime value.

What works for customer service and social media?

Putting a dollar value on customer service transactions is premature until we reach a consensus on the value of social media and how to measure it. Therefore, it is best to reach a consensus first. Any company or organisation can come up with an index value for a lead or customer transaction that is based on their own record keeping – and apply that to the customer service channel.

What works for customer resource management and social media?

Current customer resource management (CRM) solutions are uneven in their effectiveness, by type and segment, in reaching and recording vital transactions with the best bets being selling and ordering with customer insight that turned out to be interesting, but too hard to implement.

What works for community management and social media?

Reverse engineer whom you need to reach via community management software, such as Sprinklr, or use InfiniGraph to find the most active influencers behind the most active content being shared and acted upon.

Keep in mind that it is no longer enough to show growth of Twitter followers or Facebook fans, because social media ROI and clients are asking for qualification of how those increases translate into actual value. In fact, clients are often put off by ‘fuzzy ROI’ metrics, even though social media is still fuzzy in and of itself. ROI should be evaluated against certain objectives your organisation is trying to achieve and not in absolutes.

What works for business-to-business and social media?

Business-to-business (B2B) customers want to adopt social media. But C-level executives are still waiting to see hard proof from other B2B campaigns that worked before they get their feet wet. Using free gifts in email links sent to clients seems to work well by combining email and common social networks.

Also, B2B conversations need a safe place to happen. Often, a custom community portal is the best place to engage customers in this case.

What works for business-to-consumer in social media?

Again, customer support of a brand is the best place to see ROI in social media and looking at it as a marketing channel will be frustrating. It’s also tempting to use listening systems to monitor customers. However, the related platforms are too immature for determining social media ROI.

What works for generating awareness using social media?

Start by creating content and sharing it via aptly named sharing tools (such as Share This); the more sharing of social media content that takes place, the more awareness will be generated – but make sure that you are generating awareness in the right circles by using an appropriate platform, such as InfiniGraph, that measures the interactions of followers of specific brands on Facebook and Twitter.

What works in moving customers from awareness to consideration?

Opinion sharing and word-of-mouth are the best ways to move potential customers from awareness to consideration in social media.

What works in moving customers from consideration to trying a product or service?

To move people to try a product or service, there should be several positive reviews that are easy to find/read/share and, in particular, it helps if their friends like the product/service.

What works in moving customers from trying a product to recommending it to friends?

Customer support from a brand may be the main motivating factor in getting customers to refer to a friend a product or service that they have tried.

What works in creating engagement using social media?

Get back to good marketing – have a compelling story with crisp messaging and artwork that appeals to smaller and well-targeted niche communities. That helps. Having complementary services that lend weight to each other can help to increase the number of engaged followers.

What works best for email marketing and social media?

Using free gifts in email links that are connected to social networks seems to work well by combining email and common social networks. Also, using personal targeting is helpful when combining social media and email.

What works best in using Facebook?

Return on Engagement (ROE) is a more reasonable measure of success than ROI – driving thousands of eyeballs to pictures/videos depicting your brand when utilising social networking services, like Twitter or Facebook, is more likely to be seen as a metric that you can put to good use without too much difficulty.

What works best in using mobile social media?

According to a Forrester research study, 75 per cent of online retailers are developing a mobile marketing strategy, and there is an increasing appetite for mobile applications in driving online retailers to speed up their mobile marketing initiatives. Product and price information, store information and coupons are among the most popular features that retailers are offering consumers. In order to realise increased ROI from mobile marketing, retailers are investing in features that support the cross-channel experience.

In addition, note that Forrester expects the worldwide online video marketing spend to explode from $1 billion in 2008 to $7 billion this year. Add to this the fact that viral commercials, movie and game trailers and social media are major online trends across the globe.

What works best for geo-location services like Foursquare and Facebook Places?

Looking at Foursquare for ROI was premature until late in 2011, where about 25 per cent of the online population was using geo-location, which was up significantly from 6 per cent only two years earlier. It is possible now, with applications such as Valuevine.com, to measure geo-location fairly well, and this level of marketing measurement should be encouraged.

Historically, businesses have used geo-location for retail locations, in relation to rewards, prizes and giveaways. But there are still too few brands and businesses using geo-location intelligently to build best practices.

What works best for blogs and blogging?

Blogging should be the hub of your social media efforts. Content creation is the best thing that one can do to create ROI. Blogging helps drive search traffic, which can be a driver of ROI and social media ROI. Usually, blogs are where opinions on products and services are posted, and these can be effective in moving people from awareness to consideration and then on to purchasing. Be a good storyteller when blogging. Note that personal blogs are ego-driven and they are either personal opinion platforms for the author, or the content is almost solely what the author chooses to write about.

What works best for content creation in social media?

Generally speaking, the more content a brand has that is search- and social media-accessible, the more likely it is to be searched for and found. But web analytics provide misleading results for social media ROI. For example, using page views fails to differentiate between segment traffic, and a loyal visitor is more valuable to a content site than someone who visited the site for the first time and will likely never come back. It’s also true that page views alone fail to report the level of engagement on the pages visited.

What works best for search marketing and social media?

When people buy, they generally first do Internet research via search, then ask the related opinions of their friends.

What works best for establishing and measuring social media ROI?

Typically, results are measured in soft metrics, such as friends, followers, likes, bookmarks, retweets, reach and link tracking via Google/bitly. In addition, it is helpful to distinguish between the five types of social media ROI: