Below are some descriptions of events run this year by the CIPR Marcomms group.
22 November 2011 – Mastering media evaluation online and offline
Social media communication channels are becoming increasingly diverse and complex. Most companies claim to have some form of monitoring in place, but few know how effective it is or whether it's even coming close to measuring the total volume of data available.
This was, and still is, a dilemma facing the communications industry at large. In response, the message delivered to a CIPR Marcomms Group seminar recently by various industry experts was simple: there is no silver-bullet; no one measurement package can do it all.
Instead, attendees were informed that as an industry we need to start ignoring vanity metrics, move away from unreliable automated tools and instead focus on building processes that align themselves to company KPIs and which are measured through an effective blend of technological and human analytics.
Tim Zecchin, Head of Client Services at Media Measurement, began the seminar by outlining five present challenges facing media measurement: measuring what matters, understanding accuracy, tracking trends, obtaining insight beyond buzz and blending disciplines.
As part of his presentation, Tim looked at automated services, describing them as 'a blunt tool' which regularly fails to take into account international, chronological and qualitative differences. In support of his argument he explained that in part, Media Measurement's regular testing accuracy of some such services "were little better than the toss of a coin" with only a 60% success rate.
To combat this he actively encouraged the employment of Technology Assisted Human Analytics as a means of enabling complex analysis of a high volume of media items in a time and cost effective manner.
In support of Tim, the next speaker, Matt McKay, Head of Communications, BioMed Central, stated
The only 100% sentiment analysis tool is you.
Examining various measurement tools, Matt explained that whilst they can be useful, it is very much context dependent. As a user you need to understand what exactly it is you want to measure and should select a tool based on this.
Importantly he explained that businesses need to start disregarding vanity metrics (number of followers, likes, tweets posted) and instead accept that measuring how you've changed peoples' opinions, driven them to complete an action and so forth are the key to measuring social media.
A tweet has no inherent value until it causes a reader to do something.
However, he did offer a cautionary tale through Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice campaign which offered a free burger for every ten friends they unfriended on Facebook. Whilst it offered clear information on how many people had acted on the campaign's call to action it was seen as rather negative and harmful to the brand.
The evening's final summary from Marcus Gault, Managing Director, Insight Division at Precise, who sponsored the event, wrapped proceedings up by outlining the shift in how media as a whole was being measured. Highlighting how, in some cases, the timeframe for report delivery had moved from a month after an article's publication to a few hours, effectively positioning research as a tool to inform activity, rather than a reflective exercise.
He also detailed how social media was now opening up new opportunities for greater insight through in-built analytical tools on websites:
In the past you would have had to have completed consumer research. Now social media offers tremendous insight into what people are saying about you.
Top five takeaways:
- understand the strengths and weaknesses of any tools used
- human analysis is essential for accurate sentiment
- vanity metrics (likes, followers, tweets) should be discarded
- metrics which demonstrate changed behaviour are paramount
- greater opportunities now exist for increased insight with greater levels and quality of data available.
20 September 2011 – Crisis Management in the Digital Age: Pitfalls and Opportunities
A new era of ultra fast social media communication has changed dramatically the challenges facing crisis managers, say leading practitioners. Yet few companies have policies in place to confront the scale or speed of the on-line assault which can ignite when crisis strikes, a CIPR Marcomms Group seminar was told.
Eurostar was an early learner of the lessons of social media onslaught in 2009, when the first signs of a different crisis landscape became apparent. When five trains ground to a halt in the Channel Tunnel shortly before Christmas, highly critical conventional media were joined by Facebook groups and bloggers for which the company was unprepared.
Effectively, Eurostar had no social media outlets beyond our marketing department website, yet the conventional media was following an hourly deluge of complaints on-line from friends and family of stranded travellers.
Eurostar has since learned and applied many lessons,
said Mary Walsh, Director of Corporate Communications,
not least how social media can be used to respond to social media crisis campaigns.
Entitled 'Crisis Management in the Digital Age – pitfalls and opportunities', the seminar focused on defining crises which burst through social media or are largely conducted on-line, how to prepare and handle them.
Speed was one of the major factors at work.
We no longer have the time to prepare which we had ten years ago. At least in 2001 you might have four or five hours in which to think. Now the crisis and the on-line comment break immediately,
said Neil Cameron, a Senior Crisis Consultant at Bell Pottinger.
Research showed that 60% of digital crises arose from community sites, You tube and blogs. Twitter accounted for nearly 20% and Facebook 15%,
he said.
Preparation was more vital than ever, said Cameron, but research showed that half of businesses did not have a media crisis plan, a quarter rarely tested it and when they did the plan was shown to be flawed.
Patrick Herridge, co-founder of Social360, a social crisis specialist, identified five main sources of digital dissent. They arose from: social media accidents – employees saying or doing something wrong; activist groups rallying their followers; consumer uprising against company; critical content from YouTube or images on-line; employee-driven crisis through revealing confidential information; amplification of an off-line crisis.
Compared with a traditional crisis, social media issues were created and conducted faster with a truly global reach. They lasted longer and often involved a much deeper level of detail arising from experts who could join the in the on-line debate. Not least, there was no meaningful legal recourse.
He urged that social media must form part of all crisis planning. It should include training for anyone using social media; employee guidelines; openness in dealing with issues; engaging formally with the protestors.
10 May 2011 – Building on the buzz: Successful social media engagement, strategy and management
Great intermediate level Socal Media seminar last night. In one of the delegates' words, Matt McKay's engaging presentation was an 'excellent distillation of Social Media strategy'. Matt's explanation of the various ways people engage with social media – becoming creators, spectators, critics, joiners and collectors – demonstrated that a social media strategy needs to take the audience into account to get a two-way conversation going.
Matt gave examples of his favourite – and free – tools to add value and assist in evaluating the impact of communication on digital platforms, including twtpoll, Mention Map, Klout Friendfeed and Technorati for blogs. He showed that, as with all communication strategies, PR practitioners should think of what they are trying to achieve before throwing themselves into the social media arena. Social media, he said, is a tool, not a separate entity to the overall comms strategy and it is important to know what is really affecting one's organisation and what professional image you wish to project before you start.
10 March 2011 – Fundamentals of Social Media
Great Socal Media seminar on 10 March. Matt McKay's practical approach concentrated on 'how to' and 'do's and dont's'. Starting with blogs, he explained that blogs are read by an incredible 346,000,000 people, helping build credibility and creating an open platform which allows readers to share information.
Going onto Facebook, the often-maligned social media site, Matt gave Barack Obama's approach to connecting up social media as a shining example of what can be done, down to regionalising message and allowing for specific targeting.
Twitter has been on everyone's lips and Matt compared it to a blog but in snapshot format. However, there is a high volume of spurious, boring information on Twitter and it is important to be able to find what you're looking for quickly and easily.
On the always tricky subject of evaluation, Matt demonstrated that there are myriad tools out there, most of them free, enabling users to conduct both qualitative and quantitative evaluation of their presence online.
