Measurement In PR - Some Lessons Learnt From #measurePR

Few weeks back I joined a Bi-weekly chat on twitter about measuring PR (#measurePR) and I take this opportunity to thank @Shonali to introduce it to me. I’d also like to thank the few guests who I could connect with through this chat including @alanchumley, @kdpaine and @prtini who brought to the table few very interesting insights on measurement.

#measurePR helped me understand how important it is to measure your campaigns time-to-time. It also taught me the different ways to measure online/offline campaigns, the tools which can help an individual/company measure their activity in much better and quicker way.

While I understood that a sustainable practice to measure PR was the key to success, it was interesting to learn that successful measurement is about measuring the outcomes and not just the outputs. It doesn’t ends there. It is very important to analyze, implement and keep improving in order to achieve goals.

Through this chat I gathered that measurement is not just about collecting stacks of clips and showing it to the client. While the “n” number of clips might sound exciting to share with the client, but if at the end of the day, it doesn’t add value to the client’s business, it is a sheer waste. Hence, I reiterate the fact that measurement is not about stacks of clips.

Digital PR is a next step in the PR eco-system. Having said that, while the number of likes on facebook or followers on twitter is also taken as a means to measurement, at the same time it is also important to engage the target audience through such a platform to achieve better results.

These were few things I learnt through this chat and if you are reading this post, I shall see you at the next #measurePR chat on March 6^th , 2012; 10:30 PM IST!

Till then, stay tuned and share your thoughts below…

The Transformational Journey of Dell - from Hell-being to Well-being

It was back in June 2005, when Dell Inc. received some major complaints concerning its customer support services. Blogger Jeff Jarvis who coined his blog as “Dell Hell” posted a series of negative blogs about the Dell laptop he’d purchased. Within days, his post caught the attention of others who also had bad customer experience and “Dell Hell” began to catch the attention of the mainstream media. While Dell was surrounded in the negative limelight, it continued silence on the issue which resulted in Dell’s dipping sales and reputation.

Listen-engage-act is the mantra of success for companies/brands in the social media space. While Dell was late to realize the power of online communication, but today it has the most sought after social media communication strategy.

A year after the incident, Dell launched its own blog named Direct2Dell. It further expanded its blogging platform by including a blog for employees and investors. According to Dell, in 2006, at least 50% of Dell’s online conversation was negative. A year later, the negative online conversation was reduced to 23%. While Direct2Dell was one of the ways to engage customers in online conversation, Dell recently launched its own dedicated 'Social Media Listening Command Centre' in Texas head office, in order to track, monitor and respond to consumer conversation online including applications like Twitter and Facebook.

The company's command centre has multiple display screens and manned stations which track web mentions across the globe. It’s also remarkable to note that Dell launched SMAC University (Social Media and Community) to train its employees on various aspects of social media and since then it has trained 5000 staff.

Michael Dell, CEO, Dell Inc. said it right that “You want to have big ears and be tuned in to what’s going on out there in the marketplace.” It is fascinating to see that the top management in the organization is realizing the business value of social media and championing the initiative. Dell is an excellent example of how social media can be used by organizations to improve customer experience.

I believe the Social Media Listening Command Centre is an excellent way to listen, engage and act to the customers’ real time. All this totally shows that Dell has made a strong come-back in the online media and learnt from the mistake once made back in 2005! What do you think?

#SocialNetwork in the air...

Call it social media, social network or internet; this web is not just restricted to connecting people on earth but now also in the air! Meet & Seat, the new social tool is going to be introduced this year by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines - part of Air France KLM. While this tool definitely sounds interesting but personally, I’m unsure about the success of this tool due to various factors which follow below:

· Will I really bother to find an air-mate for few hours?

· Will I bother to while away time online for searching the one-an-only person who I could talk to in the aircraft?

· Will I be comfortable sharing my personal information with a stranger?

These were some basic questions that were spinning around my head when I read about this latest concept. While I may worry about the questions stated above but somewhere this tool can work wonders for people - may be you can crack a business deal sitting with a person from the same industry….or you can make a friend for lifetime!

It’s interesting to observe that the tool will work with Facebook and Linkedin, but not Twitter. I wonder why they opted out Twitter.

Social media is not just a tool anymore; it has become like a nerve in a human body. If it breaks down, you are so dead!

Catching ‘em young – The YouTube Mantra

4 minutes, 17 million views and more than 75,000 comments from over 130 countries! Ever wondered the power of viral trend? Indeed it’s the time and age when talent recognition is just a click away.

If you are still thinking what am I talking about - It’s the famous Kolaveri Di song by Anorudh Ravichandran who is none other than son-in-law of Latha Rajanikanth, wife of Super Star Rajanikanth. At the age of 21, he achieved the fame and the fan following which isn’t in store for anyone and everyone. It took him 30 minutes to record the absolutely amazing song and it took just a click to make him eminent! The time has gone when people used to go for auditions, stand in queues for hours and wait to get selected as a contestant in talent shows.

Interestingly enough, YouTube has been a smart one in the online media space to tap the young market and encourage them to show their talent to the world. Recently, I came to know that YouTube is giving partnerships to those who are doing excellent work online. Getting a partnership from one of the biggest video-sharing website is surely a huge recognition. Not everyone is lucky to be picked up by YouTube! You really got to show some talent to get there and woo the audience and get them to subscribe to your videos.

YouTube is selecting creative people across the globe and paying them on a per click basis. They would display adverts in the videos and more the number of hits one gets for a particular video, the more money one can fetch from YouTube reserve. This is a great example of how online media is tapping the talented pool of people from all across the world.

On one hand, YouTube is able to generate a vast amount of traffic to their site and at the same time netizens are encouraged to show their talent across the horizon. Technology is taking over our lives and for the good of course. The shift to the online planet is surely very well visible to everyone by now and people understand how important it is to be visible online and showcase the good work.

My 2c worth!

Below are some great videos by two Youngsters! Have a wonderful time watching …

• IAmNandini
• Tarun434

How Cocoberry got Social Media completely wrong

It’s remarkable to note the pace at which brands, retailers, companies are getting onto the social media bandwagon. Sites like Facebook and Twitter have become a rage for everyone, be it customer or brands.

Social Media’s popularity has grown manifold over the years and small and large size businesses are equally earmarking separate budgets to increase their presence on social communities. But how much do these businesses understand social media? Here’s one excellent example of how cocoberry - India's First Premium Frozen Yogurt Chain got social media completely wrong.

I recently stepped in to a cocoberry store and found a huge poster on the window pane. It read - Tweet and win yourself free movie tickets in a lucky draw. But guess what? Where did they want us to tweet? – On the receipt of the bill!

I froze like a frozen yogurt for a second and I thought to myself, why would I tweet on the bill? Will I write 140 characters on the bill? Will I count if I exceeded 140 characters? (LoL)

This shows the lack of knowledge these businesses have about social media. Why wouldn’t they let the customers do live tweeting? Why can’t they have lucky draws over twitter? Well these were some questions pouncing in my head while having the frozen yogurt. It’s funny to observe how poorly businesses are trying to compete with the peers, coming with some great ideas to engage their customers with the brand but all in vein as they are getting it wrong without realizing it.

It’s even more interesting to see their twitter page (@Cocoberryfroyo) where they have not taken any pain to follow their sweet customers! Knock-knock cocoberry, you got to wake up before you are kicked out of the social media planet…

The full potential of social media as a marketing platform is yet to be realised and brands and retailers need to work their way up to tap the same. Since the medium is cost-effective, marketers are arguably upbeat about its utility. The phenomenon indeed, has just begun and the best is yet to come.

What do you think? Feel free to post below with comments, suggestions, and even criticism!

Social Media Budgeting

During a recent conversation with some industry peers, it struck me that while social media excited one and all, most remained clueless when it comes to the industry’s appetite to spend and allot dedicate spend budgets for social media activities. This fact intrigued me and I set out to find the silver bullet.

So what is Social Media? For some social media means twitter, blogs etc., while for others it might mean facebook, orkut or simply an online presence. According to Sean Carton, social media is the “technologies that facilitate conversations.” The conversation begins when someone /anyone start it online and its popularity is often defined by the involvement of outside influencers. After getting a sense of what social media is in a nutshell, it is now important to understand how much budget should be allocated for the same.

It’s a myth that social media is free. There is no fixed percentage which is allocated for social media budget but it largely depends on the following factors which helps in deciding how much budget an organization allocate for social media.

First and foremost, it is important to know the awareness and maturity of the marketing head in an organization. Social media budget is part of the marketing budget and unless the marketing head is not mature enough to understand the importance of social media in today’s world then it is difficult to allocate a budget for the same.

On similar lines the awareness and maturity of agency has a major role to play in deciding the budget. Not all agencies are open to change. With the way communication is evolving, the agencies need to change the way they communicate their message to the audience. There are a lot of agencies which still believes in traditional methods of communicating. Although this way of communicating won’t die but a more effective way of sending across the message to millions of people would be a social media platform and agencies need to realize this before it’s too late.

So what happens if the agency is open to change and the marketing head is mature enough to understand social media but there is no awareness and maturity in organizations? Thus, unless the organizations are not open to new tools of communicating, the agencies can’t do much. Hence, a big factor of whether one needs a budget for social media depends on the need/want of the organization to use effective means of communicating.

Last but not the least every industry is unique. There are two types of industries – B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to consumer). It will be interesting to explain this concept with the help of an example.

Example: While Dominos will apply pull strategy and would need social media to reach out to the masses in a more efficacious way, the person providing wheat and flour to Dominos, would not find any worth spending money on the same. So why would he need to allocate budget for social media?

But if Dominos apply push strategy and introduces social media platform for the supplier community, then eventually all businesses will have to move to social media platforms to communicate their message to the masses.

In today’s world where technology is changing every second and competition is trying to outdo you at every step, you want to be ahead of the rat race. Come to think of it, if Dominos is using social media then its competition would also use such platforms to stay ahead of the race.

Thus social media has already changed the way we communicate to each other and the organizations need to realize the importance of the same. Once the basics are understood then only one can think of allocating budgets for such platforms. What do you think?

My 2c Worth!

Richard Branson and his magical wand

Experts believe an innovator is someone who pushes the boundaries of comfort and does things differently. Succinctly put, it’s that someone who has a dream and the passion to translate ideas to execution.

An iconic example of this someone described above is Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, popularly known as Richard Branson. Best known for his company, Virgin Group, this British industrialist launched his first venture at the age of 16 when he published a magazine in the name of Student. It’s interesting to note the reason how the business was started – Branson found the school rules and regulations too demanding and wanted to capitalize on the energy of student activism. While the idea itself was not revolutionary, Branson and his friends decided to give it an edge by tying up with lots of schools and selling advertising space to corporate.

This was just the beginning of a chain of businesses that were to follow – an audio record mail-order business in 1970 and then a chain of record stores (1972) in the name of Virgin Records that later were rebranded to Virgin Megastores. As many believe, Branson hit to fame in the 1980s when he was ramping up the Virgin brand and set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label.

What stands out most about Richard Branson is his acumen to capitalize opportunities and achieve despite all odds – he’s known to suffer with dyslexia and had a poor academic performance as a student. Branson is also known to do things differently and a classic example of this how he operates Virgin Airlines – not taking the typical low-cost route, the group has acted innovate by selling value-added services onboard.

Many other reasons can be attributed to the mighty success achieved by Richard Branson. While he’s famous for his unusual corporate ways and adding ‘personal touch’ to all of the company’s employees, there are multiple instances that validate Branson’s tireless efforts to empower people and their ideas and steer them towards success. He truly works on the fundamental of empowering his employees to ultimately empower the Virgin brand.

To quantify his success, it’s apt to quote here the fact that Branson was adjudged as the 212th richest person in the world according to Forbes' 2009 (Updated 03.10.10) list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of approximately £2.97 billion (US$4.0billion).

With multiple honours and accolades under his belt, Richard Branson is acclaimed for his relentless passion and laser-sharp focus on business and has often stated his dream to make things happen as the real driver of his success. In his own words:

"Sometimes I do wake up in the mornings and feel like I've just had the most incredible dream. I've just dreamt my life."

- Richard Branson