FPRA - Florida Public Relations Association Blog

Anand Pallegar from atLarge, Inc. led one of the Tuesday morning breakout sessions. Anand's session dealt with how PR and measurement is adapting to the new forms of media. The digital revolution has happened, it's not going to happen, it's not going on, it's happened.

Convergence is the name of the game today, people and firms are constantly taking on a number of tasks. Anand asks the audience who focused solely on PR and who had mixed roles. The majority of the audience worked in a mixed environment. That is part PR, part marketing and who knows what else. With this convergence, how do we know what's working and what isn't working? How can we measure results?

With the new media model there are a number new factors: citizen journalism, social media, etc. Traditional media sources like radio, outdoor and newspaper have eroding confidence levels. New forms of media are growing in confidence.

One of the new tools of the new media landscape is RSS. RSS allows for content to be delivered in a standard format. Blogs elevated RSS and this connected world. Anand talked briefly about the 1% rule. That is if you have 100 people online, 1 will create content, 10 will interact with it and the rest will read it.

Anand's rules for blogs:
- Be authentic
- Be an unmatched resource
- Maintain relevance
- Use the latest technology to measure your effectiveness
- Develop an organizational content strategy

Anand's rules for podcasts:
- Identify your target audience
- Survey other podcasts and developed a creative approach
- Get management buy-in
- Source your production and commit to a schedule
- Scripts as much as your format permits

Obviously video is huge and continues to grow. While YouTube is the major player, there are a number of other video sites out there. Make sure you factor in other sources.

Anand's rules for video:
- Keep content short
- Content is the driver
- Avoid commercial or promotional content
- Optimize your video clips
- Use a variety of people

Search engine marketing (SEM) is also a tremendous tool. While Google is the 800lb gorilla, MSN's Live search is coming on strong. With that, there is still a low cost for entry with MSN.

Anand's search tips:
- Keywords in the title tag
- Keywords in your URL structure
- Relevant anchor text
- Content frequency & uniqueness
- Links from similar trusted sites

Anand next moved on to some of the design elements used in online development. Anand's firm uses personas for the development of sites. Personas are fictitious characters to represent the different user types who will be using the site. Personas should be sharp identities and they should empathize with the target audience. However you should not have too few or too many personas.

Usability is also a major factor in web design. However, usability relates to how users interact with the sight and doesn't always focus on conversion. When you talk about conversion, you're talking about actions that users are taking. Conversions can be: Click-through, page views, time on site, repeat visits, enquiries, newsletter signups, purchases, telephone calls.

If you look at personas and conversions and then marry this with web analytics you can begin to look at the ROI of sites.

Web analytics are broken into two major categories: Logfile analysis which is server-side, while Tag based solutions are browser side. On the browser/client side Google Analytics is one of the best solutions.

How do you start to measure online?
- If you don't collect it, you can't measure it
- Use unique IDs for click-throughs of URLs
- Build a data architecture around your source IDs that is useful for measuring specific campaigns

You need to define business goals. Business goals are the foundation for all measurement and analytics. There are a number of business goals, for example:
- Increase newsletter signups
- Increase media coverage
- Increase online sales
- Increase repeat visits
- Increase brand awareness

How do you monetize business goals? You need to assign a value to each action and this is unique to each organization.

Why monetize?
- Understand overall value of the digital channel
- Where to focus research and analysis
- Prioritize potential opportunities
- Evaluate the true impact of changes

For PR practitioners one of the simplest things you can do is include links within releases and then track those inbound links.

With tracking though there are endless testing possibilities. You can change: pricing, promotional offers, headlines, copy, visual design, etc. How will changing these variables impact your conversions? You need to plan for the scenarios.

Anand's tips for getting started with conversion and metrics:
- Define Goals - what are the desirable actions?
- Analyze What and How to Measure - not an exact science
- Feasibility Analysis - will it work?
- Internal Strategy - setup your analytical task force
- Test, Test, Test! - test the measurement and reporting
- Fine Tune - use split tests, historical comparisons, optimize