Last week I chaired a low key session with the PRII on the topic of Data Driven Journalism that ended on a more positive note than I had expected.  Some very pragmatic pointers from the session and although its not quite revolution it’s a trend that is sure to continue, at an accelerated speed.

Data analysis has always been a key driver in the media but in 2009 when the Washington Post let award winning journalist Dan Froomkin go, supposedly because of low website views, I often think that the die was cast for its future central role.

Since then we have seen an incredible explosion in the amount of data being shared.  We have witnessed articles written by algorithms and algorithms that decide what news we get to see and don’t.  It was only time before these started to impact on the PR/Journalist relationship.

In one way data and data crunching is nothing new to the PR industry.  We became experts in the survey release, punchy statistics and more recently generating eye catching infographics.  Whats different is the speed, volume, scale, availability of open data and the variety of tools that are available which brings up important areas like skillsets and training for the industry.

When you gloomily look at this area logic would say we are also not far from PR pitches being potentially decided by data crunching algorithms – based on past and projected viewership, which is a scary prospect.

The three speakers on day gave a really deep dive in their allocated 10 minutes so I have tried to capture some of what they covered.  The speakers were:

Cyril Moloney, a Senior Account Director at PSG Plus specialising in online and tech PR.  

Pamela Duncan, who is one of the main contributors to the Irish Times’ data-driven journalism initiative;  

Dermot Casey, a director at Near Future and a Storyful pioneer; 

First up was Cyril Moloney who helped to put these developments into context and also some steps the industry should take.

His takeaways.

• “Don’t believe algorithms and data scientists will replace PRs/journalists, but we (PR) need to evolve (the human element/story context and the ability to tell a good story will only be enhanced by data journalism)”
• “More the change – more the same – PR and data stories (indexes, consumer surveys), but we need to evolve beyond short term use of these tactics”
• “PR measurements need to reflect digital and we as an industry need to better implement the Barcelona Principles of measurement for clients”
• “However PR needs to evolve as data journalism will change the playing field in terms of story pitching and news (in some respects, mirror a digital newsroom)”
• “Great opportunity for PR to use data journalism techniques to create better stories”
• “Agree standards and processes and share data sets with the media (to avoid the “my data scientist is better than your data scientist” scenario) – a big risk, but potentially big gain for transparency and trust (can’t be about your Google analytics alone)”
• “Great role for citizen data journalists /data scientist PRs to spot trends and issues for clients”
• “PR training will have to evolve to incorporate data collation, clean, analyse and report”
• “Transition will be a challenge (traditional PR still here/and clients may have to lead with their chin and consider digital not just print – but better data and measurement is the reward). Clients may resist this as a ‘fad’, and push back”

He was followed by Pamela Duncan from the Irish Times Data Division @irishtimesdata which launched a few weeks ago and has been producing some interesting infographics, visualisations and data driven stories.  She gave some fascinating insights into how this all works in the Irish times, the type of stories, the tools you use and some useful pointers on how the PR industry can help especially in terms of type data you look for.

The main tools used are Excel and also Datawrapper amongst a few other specialist tools but spreadsheets are the first thing she opens up every morning.

Some takeaway quotes.

• “Data journalism is worthwhile: it’s not a fad, it’s not something that is going away because more and more data is becoming available all the time and the tools to tell the story are also on the increase. “
• “We are interested in data journalism because there are some seriously good, important and worthwhile stories in the available data and it’s always been the job of journalists to dig them out”
• “I think there are benefits to both PR practitioners and journalists if they can include interesting data sets with reports/surveys etc: if I get a dataset and the data is interesting enough to warrant a graphic or interactive map then the story either gets more space in the paper or more traction online: so there’s an advantage for all sides.”
• “PR practitioners are already providing data: it’s in the body of the report or in indices in the back pages. But if I have that data in accessible format – we’re talking Excel here, nothing scary – then I can easily examine and make graphics or interactives using that data if it warrants it. If it’s in a non-readable PDF it’s much harder sell.”
• “That said I wouldn’t encourage PR people to take huge time over building graphs and maps because, chances are newsrooms are going to have to recreate them using the programmes and software that’s compatible with their systems”
• “But quality of the data is paramount: if you are going to give me a report and a data set attached to it I need to be able to rely on it. So there is, I suppose an argument for PR people to be trained in some data journalism skills – again an Excel course would probably suffice for most.”

My takeaway from Pamela was that interpretative content like press releases and summary reports gives useful guidance but the raw data is where she her own unique angles from.  Gone are the day of surveys of 10 people and hiding certain things in reports if the full data set is issued.

Finally Dermot Casey from Near Future gave a good overview of what is happening internationally, how data driven reporting is driving change and how data compiling was handled and evolved in Storyful.

• “Lost of investigative journalism is data journalism in slow motion.”
• “The inverted hierarchy is Compile / Clean / Context / Combine / Communicate”
• “The local is global.   The Trichet Letters from EU to Ireland was a Data Journalism story over a very small Data point.”
• “Los Vegas Sun looked at 2.9 million hospital records and found 300 preventable deaths from analysing the data. Nevada brought in six pieces of legislation on the back of it.”
• “In Storyful debunking is as important as finding information. Is it true. Is it real. Can you prove it.”
• “”We found some of the key background information by Anders Behring Breivik  the Norwegian gunman. We curated the information in real time and then dug into his background and found his manifesto. It was designed to be found but not to be too easy to find.”
• “With Syria we’re watching a war where both sides are documenting their war crimes in real time. And Storyful has worked with YouTube to preserve important video.  But sometimes videos are fake so how do you know its true. Is there really a shark on the New York Stock Exchange (but there are tweets and video). Those Tornado photos from New York, they’re 1973 not yesterday.”
• “The Google Truth project is interesting in this context as soon when you google for Measles you won’t get any information on anti-vaxxers. They’re rolling that softly through other areas, so what does that mean for journalism and for PR people and are Facebook doing something similar.  In many cases 90% of traffic to sites is coming from Facebook and from Google.”
• “Algorithms are already deciding what’s important (AP publish 3,000 stories per quarter written by Robots).”
• “Role of the tools is as an Exo-skeleton helping Journalists sift through 90% of the rubbish so they can focus on the 10% of value – Storyful has built a suite of tools to do just that.  Other people are doing it as well.”

With about 70 people in attendance the response from the floor was slightly muted.  Jacqueline Hall enquired about the state or readiness and future training requirements.  Cyril Moloney felt the industry was around a 2 on scale of 1-5 while Pamela Duncan felt that even improving basic spreadsheet skills could help a lot and Dermot Casey has some ideas about a data driven journalism course.

Sinead Whooley questioned how new all this was.   Data has always been central but agreed that the tools gave new scale and importance.  She also tackled the elephant in the room about the reluctance for open sharing of data by some PR practitioners.  This reluctance is frequently due more to massaging figures and controling the message – a topic that arises a lot in the PR/Journalist relationship.

Although there were clear opportunities highlighted during the session there was a overall sense of pessimism about the future of PR but Padraig McKeon finished on a very positive note of the industry ‘lifting up its head’ and that the real future lies with those who control information.

PR’s has an natural affinity to this role but the potential to be left behind or overtaken by others who embrace the tools and technology is, in my opinion, very real.

However my gut feel is glass half full for an industry populated with some great minds.

Keith Bohanna from Near Future live streamed much of the session using Meerkat.

 

 

 

 

One of the phrases from last nights OMiG event in Galway last night that has stuck in my mind is one by Sean Earley from New Slang 

“If its not worth spending money on, its not worth posting”

Ever since organic reach within Facebook plunged to near zero content marketeers have advocated media spend to get any sort of visibility within the platform.  However what Sean is advocating is that you need to allocate budget to pretty much all content.  It show how blurred the lines have become from the days when ‘Paid’ media were interruption promotional ads, ‘Owned” was organically rich and discoverable interesting content you seeded and ‘Earned’ was pure editorial you worked for with good content.  As interruption based marketing becomes increasingly filtered and blocked its no surprise there has been a rush to content based marketing.  Good content will always do reasonably well but needs patience and rule of thumb figures quote 5X effort per piece of content in terms of promoting it.  Sean quoted a 50% (of budget) media spend allocation for videos.  Gone are the days when creating good quality content was the hardest part – the journey is only beginning then.  This really impacts brands on these platforms rather than publishers who are treated kinder by the algorithms but its not unusual for journalists to have a modest budget to help promote stories.  Some Irish companies read these signs well in the early days such as PropelAd  who had a scientific/algorithm driven approach to selecting content that had the attributes of virality which they boosted with the Facebook ad engine.  Earned media is not immune either with services like Outbrain and Taboola further blurring the lines with their offer of ‘surfacing’ earned content on news sites.

This all led to some interesting discussion with Oisin Browne from the CityBin company who felt that social should remain social with great content and bought media on the platforms focused on revenue generating activities.  Expect lots of judgement calls but with the platforms calling the shots the choice might be limited.

In general this is all good news for the agencies and possibly in particular PR agencies who never really managed to get any of the media spend pie allocation.  If they can continue to be the creators of good content and clients accept the need to back it up with decent media spent it is going to be very disruptive in the PR/Advertising industry.  The ad industry will not let go easily and in fairness there is a very specialised skill set in media buying that few in PR possess.  However the ease of running ads and promoting content through these networks has become so user friendly that the barriers to entry are very low.

Sean called out Twitter cards as one particular area to watch this year and there are lots of really good deployments visible daily on Twitter.  For a nice introduction see RazorSocial’s tutorial.

Sean’s talk mainly looks at the trends for 2015 which is always a tough ask and risky.  My personal favourite was the rise of the new Bebo which is his favourite social network, so brace yourself for more platforms to get your head around and manage.  There were also some nice pointers on the need to have a good multi media mix in posts with photo updates scoring lowest on unique organic impressions.  Video scored the highest and the need for a coherent video strategy was well made.

Some of the other trends discussed are below but lots to digest.

• Continued rise of video.
• The dawn of Twitter zero.
• Hacking and experimentation with new platforms.
• Switching of of always one by brands.

 

 

 

 

I have been a bit neglectful of the blog in recent times but I promise I have been busy elsewhere online. At the end of last year year I had the pleasure of organising a social media ‘unconference’ called Congregation.ie. #cong13

It was a fascinating journey from the initial meetings with MKC Communications, who sponsored the event, through building the website, finding the experts and watching a really interesting content marketing approach unfold (including 57 posts by Irish experts).  I found the advance sharing, online socialising and the use of Audioboo by participants particularly fascinating.

The day itself tried out an experimental approach in networking and information sharing and I have compiled the insights from the experience and the 57 papers from the participants in a free eBook.

The eBook is available by clicking the image below or visiting this link.  You have a choice of formats:  a downloadable pdf or an ePub – the latter thanks to Bernie Goldbach (if you prefer to view on your mobile device).

The only ask is that if you are sharing online that you use #cong13 in any tweets or posts.

If you like what you see and are interested in #cong14 drop me a line on eoin@congregation.ie.

Eoin

At the very well run Cybercom 10th birthday bash in the Sugar Club guest speaker and internet evangalist Matt Harding spoke about his global travels and his infamous dancing videos.

After leaving his job in Australia to travel, a friend of his suggested he record a dance he used to do at peoples desk to get the to go for lunch with him.  The idea being that he dance in front of famous and not famous landmarks in different parts of the word and then merge it into one video collage with a great backing track.  His efforts caught the attention of Stride, a US chewing gum and they paid for him to do the same all over again.  Since then it has grown in popularlity (over 25 million views) and he has undertaken more commercial sponsorship (ie where he had little control over the content and left it to a large film crew – big change from hand held video recorder).  

One has to wonder how much more there is in an iniative like this but the real value lies underneat.  Social media and web platfoms offer the opportunity to have huge peaks over a short period.  Matt is now extending the dance theme with choreographed dances where he teaches different nationalities to do the traditional dance of another country – i.e. teaching the chinese to do Irish dancing.

Some interesting observations on this whole initiative where the is probably more interesting lessons and value:

• A great and simple idea (with a lot of work) can attract global attention.
• Engagement and featuring of people is key – Matt by himself because tedious after a while.
• Hands off sponsorship can benefit both sides – video product appears untarnished/uncompromised and Stride get copious mentions and kudos.
• One of the real benefits is the 10,000 email addresses and contacts that Matt now has.  The majority of these are very willing participants in future projects. 
• Ability to leverage a global audience to do something bigger and more dramatic.
• People everywhere in the world are happy to partake in online experiments (for a few seconds of fame).

Matts experience, although probably one in a million, does show that you can make a livilihood out of social media but that route will probably only become clear after you do something special rather than a planned programmes.  Lots of interesting crossovers with the Chris Anderson book Free – the content is free but some brand pay for its development.

I will be interested to see how the next set of videos go and if the more professional edge lessens or increases it popularity.

I was part of a panel at the last Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Masterclass moderated by Darragh Doyle and had the pleasure of listening to Roger Galligan from Cognotent (also Irish blogs and Irishpressreleases.ie).   In his presentation he discussed how the traditional media was one of the key drivers of new media tools and platforms.  No real surprise here but he had some great examples including a large jump in Irish Twitter joiners when George Hook of the Right Hook Show joined and discussed twitter on the show.  The shows twitter feeds are now follwed by over 3,855 people.

I have heard estimates of current Irish Twitter users ranging from 8,000 to 20,000 but certainly it has experienced unquestionable growth.  This scarey growth path is tempered slightly by the Nielsen survey which maintains there is a 40% retention rate with 60% of US users failing to return a month after signing up.

The Right Hook is not the only media outlet to have a Twitter feed.  The Irish Times use it mainly as a distribution medium for breaking news but I believe Twitter is an ideal medium for radio and especially live shows, both as an update mechanism and also engaging people and offering an opportunity to repond/discuss as the show is in progress.  This could have a pretty big impact on their SMS text ins especially if they are using premium text in numbers.

Roger also discussed the good and the bad of Twitter espcially on the Swine Fever outbreak, similar to Karlin Lillington Irish Times article but I think this cartoon that he showed capture it very nicely.

The IIA Social Media Working Group (disclosure – I am a member of this group) produced a white paper on blogging and launched it at a well attended breakfast last week.   Brendan Hughes, eCommerce manager with FBD, Michelle Daly, Paddy Power Trader and Aedan Ryan, Director of Puddleducks.ie all gave some practical insights into running a blog, what they experienced in terms of feedback/community and increased findability.  Aedans personal findings reflected the findings of the white paper from why blog, to the benefits of it while Michelle presented a more complex arrangement of running multiple blogs.  Both integrated their blogs with other online properties from Twitter to Facebook.  All three companies have well presented blogs and take it seriously.

Emmet Ryan of Villa81 gives a snap short of the launch in a short video of the launch.

So the big question – how much time and resource does it take.  Aedan, who would be reflective of many Irish SMEs, spends 4-6 hours a week on his blog.  Michelle was a bit more coy in terms of actual resources invested but did discuss the outsource model that they utilise.  At the Blogger Collision course many people reported spending up to 3-4 hours per post, with some posting every day.  Assuming that the blog is unlikely to stand by itelf then you also needs to factor the other social media into the mix:

• Twitter (30 min to 1 hr a day if not posting regularly and mainly monitoring),
• Facebook (10-30 mins a day checking, 1-2 hr for multiple updates),
• Bebo (similar to Facebook),
• Flickr 30 mins per photo upload session (captioning etc),
• Pix.ie 30 mins per photo upload,
• YouTube (30 mins upload but 4 hr editing, 1-2 hrs of production is simple),
• Podcasting (20 min upload, 1-2 hr of editing if short, 1-2 hr of production and planning)
• Monitoring (30 mins per day).

This is all very much on the back of an envelope (and does not take account of the creation time) but it can grow into double digits per week very fast and I would imagine that digital is taking a disproportionate amount of the percentage time that people have to spend on marketing – especially at this early stage.  There is no doubt that Social Media engagement does deliver but has great capacity to soak up every hour in the day.  My experience has been that without some structures you can get extremely distracted and follow ‘interesting’ trails that lead to other ‘interesting trails’.  As new tools, blogs and interesting pointers from twitter emerge being disciplined is now even more important.

So if you are looking to invest in social media here are some pointer on managing the time element a bit better.

• Use outlook or some online calendar to dedicate time in the day when you catch upon socia media rather than when you feel lilke it.
• Decide in advance how much time you are going to dedicate to it.
• Be methodical in the list of social media you run through to ensure you dont forget some.
• Allocate time to research and monitoring.
• Use RSS feed to keep up to date on blogs you follow rather than random surfing.
• Use tools such as Tweetdeck to Monitter to help give a snap shot of activity.
• Build an editorial calendar and stick to the frequency that suits your business.

All this before you even start to think about what you want to say.  The good news is that once you get into a rhythm you get much faster and efficient

Social Media engagement seemed to be the big winner at Search Marketing World this year.  The beauty and horror of these events is that you get to pick and choose the sections you can attend but invariably the ones you want to see clash.  The three that I was particularly struck with were the Brand and Reputation Management, Social Media -Redefining the customer and The Ad Industry and Online Marketing.  Too many learnings for this post so here I will deal with the Online Reputation Management one only.

Web Brand & Reputation Management

Brian Marin from Marin Software (not related believe it or not) began this session with an overview of the drop in levels of public trust from the Edelman Trust Barometer, where 83% of Irish people reported that they trusted brands less, before giving some examples of companies who have experienced bad karma online.  The are some really strong examples of where the negative online activity can really impact on brands.  Some of the ones he touched are worth reading and included:

TicketMaster is Evil and Must Die

Walmart Watch, which is a nationwide campaign to reval harmeful impact of Walmart

United Airline and customer compliants

Concast Sucks

Ryanair Sucks

Moben Kitchens – Destroys Your Health

Boycott De Beers

Alitalia Sucks

Countrywide Home Loans Sucks

Kentucky Fried Cruelty

I Hate Starbucks

Some of these are fully set up sites dedicated sites that have a damaging effect on the search engine traffic but the examples shown went beyond this to include facebook profiles that also mirrored above including

Acer Sucks

Comcast Sucks

Starbucks Sucks (interestingly there are a number in this category)

The main point coming from this was that a lot of negative commentary is taking place and that most companies are blissfully unaware of it.  Stage one being the obvious to establish resonable methodologies and automate the process of monitoring.  Some good aids here are Brandwatch, BrandsEye and Yasni (for people searching).  These can tell you a lot about trends but as Brian Marin pointed out you also need to watch downstream traffic using tools such as hitwise.  He pointed to an example where HSBC were seeing lots of traffic to their site from Facebook (positive you would think)  but when they tracked it back, it led to complaints by students about the bank.

All of this caught everyone interest but the pencils really started to scribble down notes when he covered actions you could take – some very ill advised –  some reasonable.  Most of the other sessions contained some element about the perils of trying to be more clever than the search engines so best to stick within the rules.

So what can you do if you are the recipient of negative online coverage especially when this pops up in search engine rankings before or after you company listing.

• Google Tattling.  Basically looking for link buying by the site and telling Google in the hope they will take action against the site.
• Google Bowling.  Not recommended but spamming the site with lots of links in the hope Google will act against them.
• Denial of Service.  Again not recomended but overunning the site with so many requests that it become unaccessable.
• Creating land pages or microsites.  Good in principle but the time and effort it takes to drive these up the search engine rankings (and out rank the negative commentary) makes it questionable about how useful they are.
• Insulation.  Get some credited third party endorsement or positive coverage of your company or the story.   Basically floating the good stories to the top.

All of these are fairly dramatic efforts but the real ways to protect your brand comes back to a lot of the basics in PR including:

• Participate in the discussion.
• Communicate positively – early ideally and point to actions taken to address the problem.
• Engage with the community.  You will get a fairer hearing if you are part of the community.
• Treat the cause.  Get to the fundamental root of the problem.  Sounds obvious but many people still prefer to try cover up.

• Build trust and attract advocates.  Nothing more powerful that other people coming to your rescue or balancing a debate rather than you defending the brand along.  General Motors got a reasonable amount of flack in social media (as you would expect with some many cars and owners) but decided to let the debate continue.  They were pleasantly suprised to see that members of the community came to their rescue with postive experiences.

These strategies are very positive news for the PR industry as the core skill set of communication is engrained in everything we do.  Again the Edelman Barometer but a 91% figure was reported in response to being asked how important “communicates frequently and honestly on the state of its business” was to the overall reputation of a company.

Brians summary was also useful but in brief:

• Insulate search results
• Monitor your brand online
• Act fast and dont hide
• Communicate frequently and honestly
• Build trust and adovates
• And finally dont over do it.  Make sure its natural.

Rob Shine from Cybercom had some additional gems to share.

The advent of Universal Search where other third party content is pulled high in search engine rankings, such as YouTube videos, is something people have seen but have not really thought about the implications.  The Taco Bell video of rats running through the restaurant at night was followed by a huge online and traditional media coverage including footage of the reaturant opening up the next day.   The Ryanair snoozing air hostess BBC coverage on YouTube also ranked high in Google.  Interestingly enough the anti blogger stance by Ryanair, which for most would have been a near disaster, actually resulted in higher bookings to the site (higher visits to the site was expected).  This sparked a debate about no PR being bad PR.

On the defenive tactic side Pay per Click advertising supported by good content can help to push down negative mentions or at least point to your side of the debate.  One of the earlier presentations by Anthony Quigley pointed out that although many people ignore the ads on the side the paid for sponsored ads at the top of organic searches are frequently percieved as organic listings.  This involves buying the negative keywords that people are using to find the story and then using google adwords to link to some positive aspect such as a balancing statement on the story.

Influecing the blogging community was another tactic mentioned but can take a long time and is uncontrollable.

Two other tactics were also covered including

1. Push down the critical site by having more positive pages rank above it.  This covers optimised YouTube videos, optimised press releases, blog posts, social profiles etc and is well within the remit of PR companies.

2. De-legitimise the link in the eyes of the search engine.

You can always complain to Google through the editors of its Open Directory DMOZ.  To be effective the critical site needs to be out of compliance with the DMOZ rules and can theorically decrease the importance of the site.  However any action, if any, can be many months in actually taking place.

Rob finished up by highlighting the importance of establishing positive online PR as part of the marketing mix rather than waiting for negative commentary.  He pointed to their work with blogger Guy Kawasaki who they brought over to the store house to show him how to pour the perfect pint.  His subsequent blog posts on it resulted in 100,000 additional readers and an approximate 5% lift in visitors to the Guinness Store House site.  He also spoke about an joint initiative with Irish photo sharing site Pix.ie.  They realised the potential of tapping into the power of the thousands of amateur photos that are taken at the store everyday by creating a photo gallery on the site.  In promoting this they did some blogger outreach where they targeted a group of influential photo bloggers and after a tour of the facility got 70 blog posts that helped generate an additional 400,000 extra readers of the site.  Some of the photos that he showed were of an extremely high calibre and would have been difficult to achieve with a professionally contracted photo session.

Some of his summary tips were useful including:

• Importance of establishling a framework to identify issues and influencers
• Establishing proactive and reactive social media engagement teams
• Monitoring and moderation of key review and comparison sites over a period of time is critical to getting an initial feel of how the brand is percieved over time – rather than one post or thread.

The final speaker was Krishna De.

She open up with some more online reputation horror stories such as Motrin negative experience with a minor revolt in the blogosphere and social media sites over an ad they ran.  Some users found the language and tone offensive (that interestingly was launched over a weekend) and resulted in a back peddling by the company.

She also pointed to an issue that blogger Emily Tully had with a mobile provider where the debate raged on IGO People.  Interestingly the competing providers had a presence on the site and gained judos by interacting on the issue.  It also made its way into main stream papers.

Krishna heavily endorsed using communications specialist to help decide the tone and nature of engagement when dealing with online reputation issues.  One of the really obviously things that is overlooked by companies mentioned was the – Online Reputation Management Plan.  We prepare these plans for clients for events in the real world but they are still very new for dealing with crisis and reputation issues in the online world especially with social media.

Krishna also pointed out the obvious step of making sure you own the url for high profile CEOs or management.   She pointed to an example with Fast Company whose the CEO Shel Israel was parodied on a website in his own name following a volley of criticism over a inteview he did.  This tactic also covers buying the domainname’sucks’.com address as this is a popular one for people who have an axe to grind with a company.

Another good practical measure, especially as brands are on the fence in relation to engaging with social media, was to at least claim ownership of the name.  While not exactly cybersquatting there are many examples of multiple unofficial versions of sites/profile/brands on Facebook and Twitter.  Apparently an Exxon Mobil Twitter account that was being lauded for being proactive was not officially part of the company.

In terms of engagement she also recommended getting in early rather than late and not necessarily staying until the bitter end.

Once again listening to the online conversation, understanding the medium and building relationship are key and should be done before a disaster strikes.

Overall some great learning and some new tricks.  If PR people ever needed a reason to get to grips with adwords then this is a really strong one.