Posts Tagged ‘Marketing Communications’
Implementing & Measuring Public Relationships…You can do it!
As I mentioned yesterday in my dirty little secret about social media post (by the way, which was neither dirty nor a secret…just a catchy headline), I spoke to the Greater Fort Worth Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) about implementing and measuring social media.
I wanted to share my slides with everyone and hopefully share the love that social media can indeed be measured by those who so choose to do so.
Now to be perfectly clear, I am not the magician behind measuring social media. That, my friends, would be Katie Delahaye Paine. If you are in business and shooting from the hip (which your executives might not appreciate or you may be wondering how to quantify all that time on Twitter) when it comes to your social media engagement (or with your publics in general), I strongly suggest that you get Katie’s book Measuring Public Relationships because it makes the scary task rolling up your sleeves to benchmark, analyze and measure seem like an easy thing to do…and at the end of the journey, there is proof for your management team (or yourself) that you are indeed heading in the right direction and making a difference with your efforts (and perhaps either saving money or increasing sales!).
Katie’s book covers:
- An Introduction to Measurement
- Measuring Tools
- Measuring Relationships with the Media
- Measuring Relationships with Analysts & Influencers
- Comparing Media Relations to Other Marketing Disciplines
- Measuring Trust and Mistrust
- Measuring the Impact of Events and Sponsorships
- Measuring Internal Communications
- Measuring Blogs and Online Relationships
- Measuring Relationships in a Crisis
- Measuring Relationships developed through Speaking Engagements
- Measuring Relationships with Members of your Organization
- Measuring Relationships with Sales People, Channel Partners, and Franchises
- Measuring Relationships with the Investment Community
- Putting it all Together
Now, I know what you might be thinking. “I am not in PR.” Well, guess what? If you are engaged in social media, you are in PR now. As you can see from the list of chapters above, public relations aren’t just about the media…. It’s about all your publics, no matter who they are or where they may be.
In my presentation, I focused on measuring blogs, but you can use Katie’s guidance to measure all aspects of social media. [NOTE: All content used from Katie's book was done so with permission from KD Paine & Partners.]
Here are some other great books to help you get started in using social media to work with your publics:
- PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences by Deirdre Breakenridge
- Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR by Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge
I’d also suggest checking out your local PRSA chapters. The PRSA is just another great way to learn about all types of public relations.
A side note for non-profits: If you are considering engaging in social media…contact Katie Paine. She has a wonderful non-profit benchmark report & starter measurement kit available that shares important stats like: what’s “normal” in non-profit social media; what percentage positive/negative comments are standard; what people are doing on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc.; and who the influencers are in the non-profit space.
I would be interested in your feeback on my presentation…is it helpful for your social media planning and measurement?
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Communication silos don’t work
After 14 years of practicing integrated marketing communications (IMC), I never thought I’d write a post about it.
I guess there was an assumption on my part that after all these years that most marketers were already integrating their efforts…until I saw this comment on David Mullen’s blog post:
“I’ve heard many people in our industry scoff at the idea of integrated marketing communications. It was always great in theory, but hard and messy in practice.”
Scoff? Hard? Messy?
The definition of IMC on Wikipedia:
“a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.”
Sounds easy to me…
In their book “Integrated Marketing Communications: Putting it all Together and Making it Work” (1993), Don Schultz and Stanley Tannebaum state that IMC is also about “talking to people who buy or don’t buy based on what they see, hear, feel, and so on, not just about your product or service.”
What’s the problem? Why is IMC such a struggle? My first thought was to wonder how many agencies and corporations still exist with information silos. Perhaps a lot and maybe that’s the problem?
According to “Developing a Creative and Innovative Integrated Marketing Communications Plan“ by James R. Ogden, one insight might be:
“The problem with the integration of the marketing concept into today’s businesses and organizations is that many top executives learned different methods of management. The old adage ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ may be one of the stumbling blocks to the adoption of a customer orientation.”
The book then goes on to state:
“Many businesses are organized around departments, which are set up to specialize in given tasks. With this system, companies and organizations build fences around their duties. They become territorial in nature and want no part of corporate overlapping. Each territory needs to be protected by departmental managers, who may fear for their jobs. Because of these organizational structures, it has been hard to sell the marketing concept to many businesses and organizations, but without it there are decreased sales and profits.”
James Ogden wrote his book in 1998. Here is it 16 years since both books were written and it seems that businesses are still struggling with moving towards customer-oriented communications.
Back in the day, IMC referred to all the traditional marketing goodies: direct mail, PR, advertising, e-mail marketing, sales promotions, Internet marketing, etc.
But today, simply put, communication silos don’t work because marketers cannot silo how audiences & communities string together & respond to all the communications they receive. ( “Dear Customer: This message is from PR. That message is from Advertising. And the other message is from E-Marketing. Please don’t confuse the three as they serve different purposes, contain different messages and you must react to each separately so we can tell our VP of Marketing that our individual campaigns worked.”)
Like I said, I’ve been fortunate to have always been doing IMC, so I can’t comment on what the challenges are today. But I’d really like to gain some insights in to the mindset that David describes. If you are working in an agency or corporation that has not embraced IMC, would you be willing to share with us your insights, challenges and experiences?
And one final thought… what happens when we add social media to the mix? Will social media finally force companies out of their communication silos?
If you are a marketer interested in learning more about IMC, check out Amazon’s selection of books on IMC. Medill also offers the Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications.
NOTE: Integrated Marketing Communications was pioneered at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. However, other than a Digital Marketing course that covers social networking, it doesn’t appear that social media has been added to the curriculum.
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The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.theharteofmarketing.com. [If you have a question about what you can use from this blog, click on the above Creative Commons link to learn more.]
