Here are a few “spring cleaning” questions to ask yourself:

Look back at your objectives. Are you on track to meet them? If not, it’s important to figure out why.  Now is the perfect time to make a change in the campaign if necessary, while you still have time to execute and see results.

Has anything worked extremely well so far? If so, can you make it happen again? If you were able to produce great results from executing an element of your marketing plan, why not try it again?

Has something NOT worked well? Can it be changed? If not, drop it.  Thought that monthly newsletter was going to be a great idea, but turned out to be a flop? See if some elements can be changed to turn it into a success. If that’s not possible, ditch it and strategize on other ways to reach that targeted audience. The longer you let something that’s failing go, the harder it will be to pick up the pieces and start over.

Has the marketplace changed? The marketing plan you solidified at the beginning of the year may have been perfect at that time, but things change. If your strategies don’t match the current marketplace, determine what changes you can make so that you’re again on target to be successful.

Are the growth goals of the company the same? Just as markets can change quickly, so can the goals of a company. You may have developed your plan with the objective of gaining more customers, but now leadership is more interested in positioning the company to be sold. It’s important that the goals of the marketing plan are closely aligned with those of the company for it to be successful.

It’s important to think of a marketing plan as a working document, not something set in stone. Building flexibility into it will allow you to easily enhance successful elements and eliminate those that are not, which makes it much easier to meet your goals.

Don’t wait until the year starts to come to a close to look back at your marketing plan. If adjustments need to be made, it will be too late. Do it now and you’ll be happy you did.

So where do we turn to find PR news and trends? The options and outlets are endless, but here are three of my absolutely-all-time-favorites websites to keep tabs on new PR trends, tips, analytics and tools of the trade (the following all are completely free too):

         #1 – Ragan.com: PR News & Resources -  Ragan.com delivers practical advice, real-world solutions and field-tested strategies for today’s corporate communicator. This is where I can always find myself surfing five hours after I set out to fact-check something simple because the articles are strategically short, straightforward and smart. S much so that you find yourself thinking, just one more – you have been warned!

         #2 – HubSpot: Marketing Resources – This is mecca for any PR pro looking for a site to which to turn those begging beginners, aka those friends who what you to help them launch a Facebook page or explain what a blog is. They have awesome resources for advanced lessons in the dark arts of in-bound marketing, but the best base of basic webinars, guides and how-tos I have found let.

         #3 – Mashable – Follow the topics Public Relations & Social PR Guide Series – If you have never heard of Mashable, you have been living under a rock. However, to narrow down the infinite articles, follow the suggested topics to find PR content.

Don’t forget you can find updates, case studies, newsletters and whitepapers directly from Maven on www.mavenagency.com.

Advent of Social Media

The wide adoption of social media has fundamentally changed how people communicate and share information, and how brands communicate with their customers. When we started the company, Twitter was a relatively new tool that no one really knew what to do with. Most companies did not have a Facebook page yet – in fact, many people didn’t have a Facebook page yet. And LinkedIn was for recruiters.

Today it’s a given that companies and brands will have a social media presence. It’s also a given that journalists and bloggers can access company information and news easily online. It is now essential for up to the minute information to be at people’s fingertips.

It’s About the Journey, Not the Destination

Sorry to quote Aerosmith, but they have it right (in this instance at least). It used to be that a PR campaign would build and build and build until, WHAM – the big story in (insert your dream publication here). But that’s not how it works anymore. A mention on small blog X results in a Tweet by person Y, which results in a retweet by more influential person Z, which results in a guest column request by online publication A, which results in multiple “likes” on Facebook, which results in a link in blog B… which may or may not ever lead to national broadcast or big-time print. But that’s okay, because that’s probably not where you need to be. It’s nice to get your company name in an Old Guard publication, but that mostly likely won’t impact your business as much as a mention in one of the smaller, but very targeted outlets will.

Infographics

Who has time for words anymore? Based on the proliferation of infographics, not many! With the speed of content generation, it’s nearly impossible to get the attention of your target audiences. Infographics get your message across in an efficient and effective manner.

The Press Release Survives

Every year I read a new blog entry about the “death of the press release,” but after five years of reading the various reasons it’s no longer relevant – it’s still here. And I have to say, better than ever. Multimedia releases are more informative and useful than their cumbersome predecessors, including instant tweets, hyperlinks, embedded video, quotes, images and various ways to share information socially. Perhaps all the press release needs is a new name.

ROI is King

In the first half of 2007 the economy was still booming and companies were spending big time on marketing. In those heady days, there wasn’t a magnifying glass over marketing budgets like there is today, and much of PR was still unmeasured. Now, decision makers need to see ROI for all services and as a result the PR industry has become much more measurement-focused. Presentation of campaign results to a client must also include metrics and reports that demonstrate how the PR campaign also made the needle move. The old standard clip report no longer makes the cut (and thank goodness for that).

There are numerous other ways that the PR industry has changed over the last five years. I’d love to hear what else you think has been impactful in changing the PR landscape. And I look forward to embracing future tools that come our way in the next five years.

We have seen time and time again that people resort to social media to check out what’s going on and who else is talking about it. While it is an effective way to spread false information, it is also an extremely efficient way to get information fast. It is so fast that it is possible to see a tweet about the earthquake before you feel that same earthquake.

This was my first time experiencing a social media melt down, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. It was a little shaky at first, but then I enjoyed the ride. My phone wasn’t working initially, so I just sat back and followed the hashtag #earthquake. Twitter was chirping away during the crisis.  Just check out this awesome map that shows all the tweets from the time the quake hit through 30 seconds after.

Social media gives people the information they can’t get anywhere else, including rumors, lies, personal accounts and jokes, such as photos of quake casualties like water bottles and lawn chairs. If there were real casualties, there would not have been any humor in the situation, but since this is the East Coast, we were lucky and yes, a bit dramatic.

The entire West Coast is cracking up over East Coaster’s shaking in our shoes over a 5.8 magnitude earthquake. However, that’s why I live in Philadelphia and suffer through four seasons including the seismic snow storms and wicked hot summers; I don’t want to live in fear of earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados or wild fires.

Now excuse me, I have to go prepare for Hurricane Irene.

MediaSync: is a free online reporter resource with a database of more than 500,000 media contacts and 9 million articles and blogs. The site allows PR pros to quickly identify, connect with and track reporters, editors, analysts, bloggers and others in the media/analyst community who are assigned to a specific beat and/or write on specific topics relevant to your marketing activities. If you don’t subscribe to expensive services like Vocus or Cision, this is an alternative. However, it seems you get what you pay for when looking for media relations databases.

TweetStats: is a free application that calculates various stats of your tweets and displays the information in colorful graphs for free. This website only requires a twitter username (no password or profile required) to compute statistics, which makes it very useful when analyzing twitter activity for clients or competition.

EdCals, by CisionPoint: is a site offering free editorial/media calendars from CisionPoint’s database of nearly 500,000 editorial opportunities in North America. Yes FREE! While not the most attractive service out there – who cares? Our intern loves this program because it puts the information in an easy-to-download Excel file too.

MuckRack: Tracks the short messages on Twitter written by the journalists who do the muckraking for major media outlets. Muck Rack makes it easy to follow one line, real time reporting. A great way to skip having to make your own twitter lists.

Prezi: is the zooming presentation editor. Prezi lets you bring your ideas into one space and see how they relate, helping you and your audience connect. Zoom out to see the big picture and zoom in to see details — a bit like web-based maps that have changed how we navigate through map books. A very cool program, if you know how to use it. If not, your presentation will give people motion sickness.

SimilarSites.com or SitesLike.com: is a related content engine, displaying a list of related sites for any site that you submit. SimilarSites.com takes past user opinions into account when sorting relevant sites. Each search result has “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons, letting users help us determine a site’s relatedness. As more users search and submit feedback, the results get increasingly accurate. These programs help me widen the range of outlets when pitching… and it is kind of fun to look up the sites you prefer to visit for fun.

SlideShare: is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. Upload and share on blogs, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. 50 million people use SlideShare every month for research, sharing ideas, connecting with others, and generating business leads. SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, and videos. Why didn’t I have this site in college? You can search any topic and find hundreds of presentations –genius.

NewsBasis: is an online service for media professionals and businesses. Companies, agencies, non-Profits and academic Institutions can easily and efficiently promote story ideas to the media and content publishers and respond to their specific requests. This works like HARO  and ProfNet but with in a website with a search function. While interesting to sort through, I tend to find other services are better.

Most people think that evaluation is something that happens at the completion of a campaign. In fact, evaluation should happen at different intervals throughout the year. This way you have the ability to assess the effectiveness and then adjust accordingly, creating an even stronger campaign. In addition, evaluation provides an opportunity for ongoing improvement and helps guide the campaign in a successful direction.

Think about campaign evaluation as a circular process – information is acquired, changes are made based on that information, more information is acquired, more changes are made, and so on. This is a relatively straightforward process, if you’ve built in the appropriate framework for evaluation. If you haven’t, or aren’t sure, here are a few things to consider:

Make sure your objectives are measurable. While a goal is a general outcome expected when a campaign or program is completed, an objective is very specific and based on projected and actual program outcomes. Your campaign objectives should be unambiguous and stated in a clear way that allows you to determine whether they have been met. They should be specific in terms of timeframe and outcome. For example: our objective is to increase the number of hits to our blog 20 percent by December 2011.

Know what you’re measuring and determine the right tool. Surveys can be an excellent way to measure public opinion, consumer sentiment, and awareness, but it is not a one-size-fits all measurement tool. If your objective is to increase web traffic then use a website analytics tool like Google Analytics; if you’re looking to measure awareness you can conduct an online survey; or if your objective is to ensure your key messages are conveyed in your press coverage, then a media analytics program like Vocus or Burrelles Luce may be appropriate.

Determine a benchmark. Inherently, measurement is a comparative tool. To effectively measure the relative success or failure of a campaign, you need to compare to something else. (For example, if your website gets 10,000 unique visitors/month but your biggest competitor gets 40,000, it may be time to adjust your strategy). The most effective comparisons are to the competition and peers over time, however that information isn’t always available. Another benchmark is to compare your results to past performance over a specific time period.

Once you’ve collected all of your data, draw conclusions and adjust. Ideally with each change made, the campaign gets stronger and produces better results. At the end of the day, continuous evaluation of a marketing campaign allows for those who control the marketing dollars to see the real value and return in real, hard numbers and positive results.

Facebook now consumes our personal and professional lives. Instead of hearing news through the grapevine, we read it in our newsfeed or friend’s status updates. This does not signify the loss of interpersonal relationships and communication but an evolution. The best part of evolution is studying it, learning from it and improving.They say facebook is worth upwards of $50 billion, but the tracking woven into the facebook fabric makes it priceless. We have all accessed an app and begrudgingly gave permission to access our personal information… or is that just me? That access gives people a glimpse into your city, relationship status, age, music tastes, job and more. It all depends on what the app asks permission for. Recently apps have upped the ante and I can’t help thinking ‘when you give a mouse a cookie…’ My privacy setting are as private as possible but even so I am sure my info is accessible, especially because I find myself using apps when establishing or monitoring client pages. The more pages, the more apps, the most susceptible we all are. I am fine with some of my information, as long as it does not come back to me through email spam, text messages or facebook messages.The statistics provided by facebook are invaluable to marketers. I just wish they would apply insights to personal pages so I can satisfy by ego and checkout my traffic. Well, to get a round this oversight, please visit our Maven facebook page, if you are reading this…

Some words of wisdom for those posting on personal pages or on behalf of your organization. Do yourself a favor and subscribe to Dan Zarrella’s blog and newsletter. He has great insight, easy to decipher visuals and, most importantly, he knows his stuff. Below see some useful findings from Dan. The site keeps growing adding features, function and fun. I though facebook hit the apex when they added photos but ain’t no mountain high enough and people can’t get enough of it. I could illustrate this by laying out all the most recent stats but instead just take a look below:

Now go post entry to your facebook page!

In case you have been living under a rock:

Google Alerts: Email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Facebook: A social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them.

Twitter: A real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.

HARO: A social media service that brings reporters and bloggers, news sources and small businesses together to tell their stories, promote their brands and sell their products and services.

Others I like (in alphabetical order because I can’t pick favorites):

Addict-o-matic: A search tool that uncovers the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images.

Alexa: A Toolbar and web site provides information about websites including Top Sites, Internet Traffic Stats and Metrics, Related Links, Online Reviews Contact Information and more.

AllTop: A search tool that collects all the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic and groups these collections — “aggregations” — into individual web pages. It is a good place to start a research project.

BackTweets: A simple tool that shows your tweets linking back, shortened too, to a particular URL.

Bit.ly – A URL cruncher with metrics enabling measurement of number of clicks, countries clicked from, conversations around URL, etc.

BlogPulse: An automated trend discovery system for blogs. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs.

BoardTracker: An innovative forum search engine, message tracking and instant alerts system designed to provide relevant information quickly and efficiently while ensuring you never miss an important forum thread no matter where or when posted.

Compete – Compares and reports competitor site traffic but estimates only of monthly visitor data. Best used on large high-traffic web sites but produces nice looking graphs.

Social Mention: A social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information. You can set up alerts too.

Wordle: is a ‘toy’ for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. Plus, word clouds are pretty as you can see for yourself with the cloud of this post.

There are plenty more like Delicious, Pitch Rate, HowSociable?, TweetDeck, etc. These are just a few of my go-to free tools but they might not be the sharpest in the shed, so please comment with your favorites and why!

While I believe they are a bit basic, they have started a much needed conversation on the topic. The principles, seven in total, are listed below. While it’s nice to have these seven principles to refer to, what I feel is most important, is that measurement is considered when a PR campaign is created – not when it’s over. The folks at Maven are sick of hearing me say it, but objectives need to be specific (I mean really specific) and they need to be agreed upon with the client beforehand. If the definition of “success” is never established ahead of time, then how will you (as the agency) determine whether it’s been a successful campaign? The answer is you can’t.

I’ve said it before in previous blog posts, PR evaluation provides an opportunity for ongoing improvement and helps guide future campaigns in a successful direction, but more importantly, evaluation and measurement builds trust between client and agency and demonstrates the value agencies provide. Evaluation is what will keep public relations firms relevant in a world where blogging, tweeting and do-it-yourself reporting are the norm.

As presented by the AMEC and Institute for Public Relations, here are The Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles:

1. The Importance of Goal Setting and Measurement
Fundamentally important, goals should be as quantitative as possible and address who, what, when and how much impact is expected from a public relations campaign. Traditional and social media should be measured as well as changes in stakeholder awareness, comprehension, attitude and behavior. Paul Holmes was present and rightfully took exception with the measurement term “target audiences.” Instead, we need to think in terms of communities of “stakeholders” as the power of communications shifts from companies and institutions to communities of individuals.

2. Media Measurement Requires Quantity and Quality
This principle acknowledges that overall clip counts and impressions are usually meaningless. Instead media measurement should account for impressions among stakeholder audiences and quality (eg. tone, credibility of the source and media outlet), message delivery, inclusion of 3rd party spokespersons, prominence and visual dimension. Importantly, this principle also suggests that quality can be defined as negative, positive or neutral.

3. AVEs are not the Value of Public Relations
There was near-total agreement on this principle in Barcelona (92%) but the group was split on what other validated metrics to use in place of AVEs. (Weighted Media Cost was one suggestion.). The legitimate intent here is not to debate the validity of AVEs (which simply measure the cost of media space) but to move beyond this measure once and for all. Also, this principle acknowledges that multipliers are “silly” and should never be applied unless proven to exist in a specific case.

4. Social Media Can and Should be Measured
• Organizations need clearly defined goals and outcomes for social media
• Evaluating quality and quantity is critical just as with traditional media
• Media content analysis should be supplemented by web and search analytics, sales and CRM data, survey data and other methods.
• Given the scale and volume of social media, technology-assisted analysis may be necessary.
• Measurement must focus on conversations and communities, not “coverage”
• Understanding reach and influence is important, but existing sources are not acceptable, transparent or consistent enough to be reliable. Experimentation and testing are key to success.

5. Measuring Outcomes is Preferred to Measuring Media Results • This principle suggests that: Outcomes include shifts in awareness, comprehension, attitude and behavior related to purchase, donations, brand equity, corporate reputation, employee engagement, public policy investment decisions and other shifts in audiences regarding a company, NGO, government or entity as well as the audience’s own beliefs and behaviors.
• The proposal that “benchmark and tracking survey research are the preferred practices for quantitative measurement” almost certainly will be expanded to include and acknowledge the value of qualitative research methodology. (Some researchers suggest that in addition to being descriptive, PR research is dominated by a short-term quantitative tradition. Some contend “that no everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted, counts.”)
• Standard best practices in survey research — including sample design, question wording and order and statistical analysis – should be applied in total transparency.

6. Business (read: Organizational) Results Can and should be Measured Where Possible • Models that determine the effects of the quantity and quality of PR outputs on sales or other business metrics, while accounting for other variables that drive sales, are a preferred choice for measuring consumer or brand marketing. Related points are:
• Clients are creating demand for market mix models to evaluate the impact of consumer marketing
• The PR industry needs to understand the value and implications of market mix models for accurate evaluation of consumer marketing PR in contrast to other measurement approaches
• The PR industry needs to develop measures that can provide reliable input into market mix models
• Survey research can also be used to isolate the change in purchasing preference or attitude shift resulting from exposure to PR initiatives.

7. Transparency and Replicability are Paramount to Sound Measurement
• PR measurement should be done in a manner that is transparent and replicable.

With the advent of social media, public relations agencies now have competition from places where there was never competition before, such as interactive agencies and engaged individuals. With predictions that social media will replace television and the main news sources altogether, where do public relations firms fit into that equation? In his recent article on AdWeek.com, Joseph Jaffe asked “how ‘relations’ between corporations and journalists equate with real people hanging out with other real people.” In other words, if corporations and journalists are now speaking directly to each other, how is there still a need for public relations?

While I disagree with Jaffe and believe that the public relations industry is not going to vanish, public relations practitioners will need to adapt to survive, and those who don’t will not be in existence for much longer. In a world where journalists are speaking directly with corporations, public relations practitioners now more than ever need to show their value. Part of that value is measuring relationships. Public relations measurement is a way for practitioners to put hard numbers and solid data in front of C-suite decision makers. The value that measurement provides clients is invaluable for public relations firms’ survival.

The authors of the USC Annenberg Gap IV study found that the public relations profession is not doing enough to demonstrate its value relative to other disciplines such as advertising and marketing. It is imperative for public relations practitioners to demonstrate quantitative means that go beyond simple numerical counts of media clips before even considering getting a larger share of the total communications expenditure.

In order to make this happen, public relations practitioners first need to get educated about measurement. In their analysis of the increasing impacts of social and other new media on public relations practice, Wright and Hinson found that while more than 90% of the study’s respondents encourage the use of research to measure various aspects of how blogs and social media are influencing their organization, only about one-third say their companies are conducting this measurement. The same study found that more than 90% of respondents very strongly agree that measurement and evaluation about blogs and social media should focus not only on outputs but also on content analysis and outcomes; however, in reality, most measurement is directed only at outputs. What’s interesting about the results of this study is that while public relations practitioners are aware that measurement is important, very few are actually conducting meaningful measurement, and are still just counting outputs.

Public relations practitioners need to think beyond outputs as evaluation and realize that for public relations to remain an item on the marketing budget there needs to be a direct link between programs and achieving the objectives of the corporation. Building measurement into proposals for services should be the norm and building evaluation into budgets should be essential.

This is a change that those in the public relations industry should embrace. Social media are actually putting the “public” back into public relations, and who better to measure relationships with the public than the practitioners who have been influencing them for years?

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