|
|
| Recent
Articles |
Put Shopping Search Strategies In Your Basket
If your site isn't listed in the various shopping search engines online, it may
be time to give them some extra consideration for your search strategy. Our publisher,
Rich Ord, delivered his notes on an afternoon...
Basics
Of Link Building
Quality, not quantity, should be the focus of building links, as presenters at
a session on the topic at SES Chicago discussed one of the fundamentals to improving
awareness and ranking of a site.
Press Releases The New Hotness For 2006
Search engine optimization for press releases could give marketers an avenue into
the various news search sites online. Yesterday, our Jason Lee Miller reported
from SES Chicago that getting on page one of the search rankings, especially Google's,
makes an enormous...
PageRank Panhandlers Beg Links on Street Corners - Get a Job!
I get a steady stream of link requests for three of my own sites and a half dozen
others that I manage for clients. For about the last year, I've had a standard
template reply that I send to all link panhandlers...
Blogs
Can Help eBay Affiliates
A lot of people write blogs and place affiliate links on their sites, and we have
a few suggestions to help make them work better. It's easy enough to create a
blog and...
|
|
|
|
12.27.05
PR
Measurement And Math-Challenged Communicators
 By
Shel Holtz
It's an amusing sight, a group of PR practitioners at dinner trying to figure
out the check and the tip. Most communicators don't do math.
It's a right-brain left-brain thing. Lack of math skills led most of us to writing
as an avocation to begin with. I'm always glad when Angela
Sinickas is at dinner with us. She's a math whiz. But you'd expect her to
be, since communication measurement is her area of expertise.
Angela's not alone. Tudor and Ryan Williams
also specialize in measuring the effectiveness of communication efforts. Both
Angela and the Williams boys are excellent at what they do. I've often lamented
that their businesses have not grown to the point where they need offices in multiple
cities, but I haven't been surprised. Measurement just isn't important to most
math-challenged communicators or budget-conscious companies. Communicators would
rather churn out cool-looking and brilliantly written collateral while companies
see measurement as an effort by consultants and agencies to squeeze a few extra
dollars out of the project.
I'm equally unsrurprised by the lack of attention given to Andy Lark's December
18 post about the reults of a Holmes Report "survey of more than 100 PR Agency
principles-the results of which point to some of the problems that continue to
make research and evaluation a major issue for the industry." Measurement...math...yawn…
Only three comments were submitted to the post-one by Auburn academic Robert
French. You expect the professors to have a better grasp of math than practitioners.
But the simple fact is that PR efforts will never gain the kind of respect we
crave until we can quantify the results in terms that resonate with the people
who hire us. Lark quotes from the survey:
"In general, their responses
suggested that an failure of commitment- rather than the absence of necessary
tools and techniques-is behind the industry's poor performance."
Lark's conclusion mirrors precisely my own beliefs about measurement:
I just don't understand how any PR department or practitioner can operate without
a measurement program in place. Measurement isn't monitoring. Monitoring isn't
measurement. What I am talking about here is a deep understanding of how communications
impacts business outcomes. An understanding based on research not just of what
occurred in the media, but also in the minds of your customers. Without that you
shouldn't expect resources, budget, even a job.
Still, there's only one PR measurement blog that I'm aware of-the one from Katie
Paine-and it isn't updated nearly enough. What will it take to make measurement
an integral part of any communicator's planning process? I admire the hell out
of Steve
Rubel's effort to get agency honchos talking about practical implementation
of new media in their efforts. But maybe they need to worry about the fundamentals
before they scurry on to the Next Big Thing. Whether it's a traditional media
campaign or a blog/wiki combo, it's not complete without the measurement component.
About the Author:
Shel
Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication
+ Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication
capabilities to their strategic organizational communications. |
