Edited Headline: When Comedians Retweet

With all the good that comes from social media, sometimes you find things that are odd. Today was one of those days - a co-founder of a startup joked when he RTd something I said (note he changed the company names). Although I know of this guy's company, I had never spoken with him (or even heard of him) before.

The Tweets:

bret_clement: Talking to software company who is using @pardot today. They liked it over LoopFuse, Marketo, etc.

royrusso: RT @bret_clement Talking to software company who is using@loopfuse today. They liked it over Eloqua, Marketo, etc.

Quick Context

I work in tech PR. I started my own agency in April and have grown quickly (although I hired my first senior employee in August - I don't currently have capacity to take on any new clients).

As I work with my clients, and talk to people in the tech industry, the conversation often comes back to sales automation tools, CRM packages, etc. These tools provide so much opportunity for marketers and PR professionals who want to track their results (in terms of sales/dollars).

I am no expert in these tools. My former employer (but not me) worked with LoopFuse for awhile. After I started my own firm, I sat in on a LoopFuse demo (which was interesting and useful). Other clients use Pardot, MarketBright, Marketo and other tools and are happy with them.  I reached out to a few of these companies about potentially working with them because I was and remain so enthusiastic about what their products mean for marketing pros.

So when somebody today mentioned they had evaluated a few products and picked one I hadn't heard of,  I thought it was worth Tweeting. 

I didn't get Roy's joke at the time. To be honest, I lost my temper a bit at being misquoted like that.

But more important to me, this caused me to reflect a bit on my own use of Twitter. We all have our own reasons for using it. But I think WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) is right with its code of ethics. For corporations and startups using Twitter - transparency and honesty are important.

Agile PR: The Bearer of Reality

Earlier in my career, I worked with startups dedicated to software quality including Coverity and Agitar. These companies promoted more than their products, they promoted agile software development methodologies.

But it wasn’t until today when listening to Perficient's Kevin Sheen, Managing Director of Global Offshore Services, that I realized how it feels PR has become much more "agile". Especially as PR evolves into social media. 

For those who don’t know, agile software development is a methodology for developing software  code that involves frequent iterations, teamwork, collaboration and transparency. 

Keen said 75% of CIOs want some way to measure their software development performance, but only 33% do it. Among the reasons for not measuring performance: lack of discipline; lack of time/money and the tongue and cheek “we don’t want to be the bearer of reality.”

I suspect a similar disparity exists with PR pros. We all want to develop good metrics, but not everyone takes the time to do it or be thoughtful about what the metrics are.

But what struck me about the chat today is how recent PR launches I’ve done feel quite agile – both in their methodologies and their metrics of success.

Keen listed a few agile methodologies and metrics for success. I’ve taken his categories and added how my own experiences with recent launches apply.

Agile PR Methodologies:

• High degree of transparency – The social media elements around a launch today take a lot of time; especially if part of your goal is to monitor and engage target communities online in the places they frequent whether that be blogs, LinkedIn, Google Groups or Twitter. If you decide to outsource a lot of this monitoring/response work to an agency, it might require frequent (daily) updates with clients (unless you trust them implicitly to understand your positioning and online voice).
  
•  Iterative methodologies – Just as with agile development, the moving parts around PR launches today are much more complicated. You now have to monitor and promote your messages through various channels. Something said on Twitter can change your timeline; your targets or how you approach the launch. You have everything planned out at the beginning, but each day is filled with mini plans. Iterative plans can include specific Tweets, comments to blogs, pitches, content creation (videos, screencasts, press releases, blogs, etc) that can change on the fly.
• Tracking Changes – Keen calls his overseas project teams nightly and looks at a dashboard monitoring their process. PR doesn’t have slick tools like agile software to track their progress daily by a variety of metrics, but even if the process is manual, you need to be able roll up all the information each day into something understandable and actionable for client. For us, it was daily detailed agendas and a weekly PPT dashboard aimed to help other executives at the startup, not involved in the day to day, quickly understand the status of the launch. Anybody who has worked with me knows I hate busy work, but in this environment, clear communication about the ever changing landscape was a key value that we brought the client.

 

Agile PR Dimensions of Success:

• Quality – This is the big one and where most good PR agencies are putting a lot of time. How many visits did your launch drive to your clients web site according to Google Analytics? How many of those converted to sales? How many people watched the video? How viral was your messaging on Twitter? How many people downloaded the product?
• Predictability – In the software development world, predictability is “how close cost estimates come to actuals.” Part of me think this doesn’t apply to PR agencies who work on retainers – the amount of work involved with integrated PR/social media campaigns right now means they are probably doing a lot more work than you are paying for. The model is turned around – no matter how hard your agency works you have to have metrics to evaluate if the results are worth it in the end.

Dangers of Staff Churn

Offshore outsourcing has another similarity to PR agencies – the churn of the teams doing the work. Just as PR agencies can churn 50% of the staff over a year’s time – so do the offshore development teams. One US company got so frustrated by the churn (and the ongoing loss of familiarity to their project) that they literally asked for pictures of each member of the development team.

It's a little simplistic to drill down too far in the new parallels between PR and agile software development - but certainly the parallels exist.

 

 

 

Who is the new SlashDot: TechCrunch, Ars Technica or GigaOM?

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch wrote yesterday "Survey Says: PR People Love Our No-Embargo Policy."

I chatted with a few PR pros last night after we read Erick's post. From my informal poll, a more accurate headline might be "Survey Says: TechCrunch is the New Slashdot". The embargo policy is interesting - but we are flexible. TechCrunch can do what it wants - as long as it has the influence it has - PR folks will adjust. 

TechCrunch is the new SlashDot (in its day, a mention on SlashDot caused the "SlashDot Effect"  - where the mentioned web site would slow down or temporarily close due to the increased traffic). The TechCrunch community is very large, active and passionate.

What is more interesting to me about this poll is who is listed after TechCrunch.

The folks in this poll named the top  tech blogs: TechCrunch, GigaOm, Engadget, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, Silicon Valley Insider, Meritalk, ReadWriteWeb, LifeHacker. The top 10 Tech Pub blogs were WSJ, New York Times, CNET, BusinessWeek, ZiffDavis, Wired, CIO, eWeek, NetworkWorld and InformationWeek.

MeriTalk and Silicon Valley Insider in the top 10? GigaOm as number 2? Ars Technica at #10?

This surprised me. So I did some quick research that I wanted to share:

• I looked at each of blogs web site traffic as reported by Compete.com
• I looked at the Google Analytics for a few recent launches 

Traffic Comparisons:

For starters, lets use Compete.com to track the number of unique visitors to these blogs in March. Compete.com is notoriously sporadic in its findings. RSS feeds push out content in a way where readers aren't counted. But even with the flaws in using Compete - I think this creates some degree of accurate comparison.

Case Studies

Since Compete.com is arguably inaccurate, let's look at the Google Analytics on 2 recent launches I've seen:

Launch 1

- An Ars Technica article delivered 6x as much traffic as a NY Times blog. 

- The NY Times Bits blog delivered 5x as much traffic as OSStatic (GigaOm) 

Launch 2:

- Ars Technica drove 7x the traffic as GigaOm.

- GigaOm drove 2x the traffic as a corporate Twitter feed.

- A corporate Twitter feed drove 8x the traffic as a TechTarget article.

Conclusion

A top 10 list is different for each announcement, for each client. So I won't do my own top 10 list. But reviewing these poll stats, I do wonder what information the PR industry uses to gauge the most influential blogs.

What are your thoughts and experiences?

Will Twitter Ever Be the Same?

This week has been fascinating as celebrities continue to bring Twitter into the mainstream. Steve Rubel, SVP/Director of Insights for Edelman Digital and an AdAge columnist summed it up briefly on his Twitter feed yesterday: "Been thinking a lot about this week's events and feel Twitter will never be the same."

Who knows how the "Oprah Effect" will impact Twitter?  CNN v Ashton? Britney Spears? 

Over the past year, I have closely observed, managed or participated in more than a dozen branded Twitter feeds. Ashton and Oprah are quickly expanding Twitter's visibility with mainstream America  - but I believe some of the key things I've learned over the past year will remain true - no matter what the impact of this week's events are:

• The importance of metrics: Metrics for evaluating conversations regarding Twitter go well beyond the number of followers. The "million follower" milestones for CNN, Ashton and Britney are interesting, but for companies looking to engage their communities online, how many people are commenting on what you say? Are you changing the tone of how people talk about your brand? How much traffic is the Twitter channel driving to your web site? Twitter isn't just about sales - but do you know if your Twitter channel is driving sales?
• The importance of transparency: Engaging people online in a public forum like Twitter isn't easy. You sometimes need to address when people are negative. It is an opportunity to listen and an opportunity to give your point of view. I think a great example of somebody taking on this challenge is Ross Turk, director of community at SourceForge.  Ross is one of the best at monitoring the conversation online and engaging people online - even if the topic is potentially negative toward Ross's employer. More often than not, a conversation that starts negative ends on a positive note after Ross jumps in.
  
• The importance of commitment:  Organizations and brands can't just outsource management of their Twitter feeds to someone and walk away. People with experience can help organizations develop good metrics, create a useful voice, and help grow a successful Twitter feed. But a Twitter feed will only be successful with significant time commitment from stakeholders within the organiation. The most successful feeds, in my experience, are the feeds that have an authentic, knowledgeable voice. 

The Palm Pre launch and the evolving realities of product reviews

In the late 1990s, I worked with a stellar team of PR people supporting HP's NetServer division. One of my tasks was to make sure that we built a plan to make HP the #1 ranked server family amongst its competitors including IBM, Compaq and Dell. From the time we started to the time we ended, HP rose from a qualitiative perspective to the best reviewed product line in the space. To discuss how we did that would be a different blog - but it involved a lot of work, relationship management with product reviewers and sometimes making difficult decisions about when NOT to be in a competitive product review.

Fast forward to today, where two of my former colleagues, Lynn Fox and Jon Zilber work at Palm. As you may have heard leading up to CES in early January, Palm needed a home run with the launch of the Pre.

They got it.

Palm's stock was up 35% on January 9 right after all of the CES buzz hit and as of this blog posting a week later has almost doubled again.

The Palm Pre got many best of show awards and an obscene amount of positive media coverage at CES that is the hallmark of Lynn and Jon's careers, but the most interesting award to me as an old product review guy was the CNET People's Voice award, decided by over 10,000 CNET readers.

Great PR people still play a vital role in product reviews and awards. But now more than ever I hear clients talk about reader choice awards/consumer opinions. Amazon.com offers aggregate consumer ratings on a wide range of products, including software. Many publications have reader's choice awards. ePinions and Yelp offer reviews for consumers, by consumers.

In this environment, among the most important people in your product reviews initiatives are not your PR team but your product development teams. Social media plays a key role in helping product designers know what consumers are talking about and what they want. Monitoring blogs, Twitter feeds and other forums can help designers understand their target user pain points. The problem is how to sift through all of this information - but there are a growing number of ways to do this.

Having an active ear to the ground doesn't replace great vision - but it sure helps.