"Companies need it. Without it they can't innovate, build consensus, or go to market. Markets need it. Without it they don't know what works and what doesn't; don't know why
they should give a damn. Cultures need it. Without play and knowledge in equal measure, they begin to die..."
The language is certainly a bit nihilistic, but it made its point: These words kick-started the 2000 bestseller "The Cluetrain Manifesto" - the quasi-Marxian diatribe of the
business and PR universes - and got communications professionals everywhere to stand up and salute the power of the "it" - the Internet, that is. Published at the height of the
dot-com bubble's ascension, author Christopher Locke foresaw the end of "business as usual" and pushed the PR profession to embrace cyberspace - or die.
Since the book's release into the marketplace, the dot-com industry has seen its near-demise and subsequent rebound, and corporations are, for the most part, finally jumping on
the bandwidth bandwagon and using technology to their advantage. But in an age of proving ROI to the corporate powers that be, PR executives are still grappling with measuring
online communications efforts, be they blogs, intranets or Web pages. While reconciling the mammoth power of the billions of sites and their citizen-journalist keepers is
overwhelming, there must be ways to alleviate some of the pressure. But what?
According to Locke, the answer is easy - if you have camouflage gear and military training: "Burn down business-as-usual. Bulldoze it. Cordon off the area. Set up barricades.
Cripple the tanks. Topple the statues of heroes too long dead into the street."
But according to PR executives in the know, compiling a digital toolbox need not be so combative.
"Tools are getting easier and easier for PR professionals to keep track of," says Peter Granat, senior vice president, marketing and client development of Bacon's
Information, Inc. "Afterall, tactics and tools are the foundation of the PR profession." According to Granat, tools include everything from e-mail - which must be executed
effectively on every level, from the subject line to the body - to media monitoring services. The latter, he says, is an effective part of any communications arsenal, especially
when it comes to measuring and maximizing initiatives in the blogosphere.
Moreover, it's the first line of defense Katie Paine, president of KDPaine & Partners, cites in her research paper "Measures of Success in Cyberspace." There she
identifies half a dozen tools that measure various aspects of online communications and, in turn, make them stronger:
- Media monitoring services to supervise what the media are saying. This can include any online "clipping service" that searches for a mention of a company in a
universe of news sources and then aggregates the results in one neat package. Though not comprehensive, the list of providers includes BurrellesLuce, Vocus, Bacon's
and CyberAlert.
- A tool that measures audience reach, a la Nielsen ratings. Let's face the facts: It's very archaic to solely measure hits. Angela Sinickas, president of Sinickas
Communications, advises PR practitioners to "look at specific page views" because "if there is something you want people to see, you have to look at what page will put them on
the road to finding it."
- A tool that measures what the company's constituencies are saying. In this arena, Paine says, "The problem we face is too much data rather than too little." One can
collect data, once again, from any number of providers; the important step is to analyze comments for tone, positioning and message once they have been measured.
- A tool that measures constituency opinion of the company. This is most effectively measured through any number of surveying techniques that gather data from visitors
(via a Web page) or elicit it via an e-mail distributed questionnaire. Paine cites David Solomon's 2001 article "Conducting Web-Based Surveys: Practical Assessment Research and
Evaluation" as a good source to check before getting started.
- A tool to determine what action said company's constituencies are taking. "Behavioral change is both the loftiest goal and the hardest to measure," Paine writes.
Loyalty - and what it drives consumers to do - is an integral part of business, especially for corporations like FedEx that sell reputation instead of a tangible product.
Consumer relationship management (CRM) providers like Loyalty Builders map consumer transaction data over time to show what impacts loyalty.
- And, most importantly, a tool to decide "whether it's all worth it," so to speak. This step is the hardest to quantify, so the "tool" here would be ingenuity itself.
In other words, come up with a measurement method that most directly applies to the goal at hand.
For example, to measure the effectiveness of a company's Web site, Sinickas offers a solution: Direct people to a site via print marketing or public service announcements. In
the days following the promotion, note any increase in Web traffic or, for the most accurate measurement, market the Web site as a slightly different URL than the one that would
be found through an online search. This will offer a quantitative measure of how many visitors came thanks to specific PR initiatives.
Thus, PR practitioners have a handful of tool options to arm themselves for an array of online initiatives, be they measuring ROI on Web traffic or monitoring blog mentions
based on tone and messaging. Either way, as "The Cluetrain Manifesto" says:
"The Internet is inherently seditious. It undermines unthinking respect for centralized authority, whether that "authority" is the neatly homogenized voice of broadcast
advertising or the smarmy rhetoric of the corporate annual report. And Internet technology has also threaded its way deep into the heart of Corporate Empire, where once upon a
time, lockstep loyalty to the chairman's latest attempt at insight was no further away than the mimeograph machine...No more."
Contacts: Peter Granat, 312-986-2717; Katie Paine, 603.868.1550, [email protected]; Angela Sinickas, 714.241.8665, [email protected]