Jackenhack Awards 2009:The (unofficial) video

What do you get when you cram around 170 UK tech PR people into a small bar in London, ply them with booze and offer up the prospect of some cheeky mickey taking? Answer: The Jackenhack Awards 2009 which took place last Wednesday evening at The Dust Bar in Clerkenwell Road, London.  If the PR Week Awards are “the equivalent of the film industry’s Oscars”, the Jackenhacks are the Razzies. Due to the current economic climate, there was no official video record of the evening. So I took it upon myself to create an unofficial one.

Armed with a Flip HD video camera, a copy of iMovie and a spare 30 mins for some (very) rough editing, this is what I came up with. I’m sure with more time I could have come up with a very polished video – but that would probably be “off-message” for the Jackenhacks. Suffice to say there is plenty of footage that didn’t make it into this version. If people were really that interested, I might be motivated to create an extended documentary.

Parental advisory warning: normally smooth talking PR people can be heard to be swearing in a way which makes Malcolm Tucker look like a recently ordained vicar. Those of sensitive dispositions should watch with the sound turned off.

Filed under: Technology PR, Web/Tech, digital pr, tech pr , jackenhacks

How do you distribute and monitor social media guidelines?

More and more organisations are looking to draw up social media guidelines. As I’ve previously pointed out, many larger companies have already put in place policies relating to blogging and social network participation. However, it occurred to me there is not much discussion around the subject of distributing, monitoring and enforcing social media guidelines. Having a written social media usage policy is clearly a necessary first step. But how do you make sure people have seen these guidelines? More importantly, how do you know that they have actually read and understood them? And are aware of the consequences of failing to abide by them? (Take Cisco for example: “Please be aware that violation of this policy may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination.”)

Perhaps social media might be able to learn something from the world of IT security. There are already tools that allow businesses to readily distribute and monitor IT security policy, as well as educate employees. So why not for social media guidelines?

What do people think?

Filed under: Digital marketing, IT security, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr , social media policy

Does your PR agency really understand Page Rank? A client checklist.

Talking to various people over the last weeks, it is clear that a small but growing number of PR firms are attempting to use Page Rank as a metric for measuring the value of online media coverage.  However, it seems that some either don’t really understand what Page Rank is – or are misleading clients over the real Page Rank (and value) that their coverage has delivered.

For example, I’ve been told of a few firms who if they gain a piece of client coverage on, say, Computing’s web site, will claim that the value of the coverage is Page Rank 6.  However, what they really mean is that the Computing home page has a Page Rank of 6 – the actual page where the coverage appeared will almost certainly have a Page Rank of 0. That’s a mighty big difference.

In fact, almost all press coverage (or indeed any new web page) will have a Page Rank of 0 to begin with. Any new page added to a site will first have to be indexed by Google. And it takes Google time to take account of factors that will determine what Page Rank should be assigned. It is certainly possible to get Page Rank up to 1 0r 2 relatively quickly if people begin linking to the coverage  - but unless you get some very high Page Ranked backlinks rapidly, the chances that a piece of coverage will have gained a Page Rank of 5 or higher in the space of a few days is highly unlikely.

Traditionally, gaining a piece of coverage on a major site like the BBC would be cause for celebration. And I’m not saying it shouldn’t still be. However, we need to be honest about what value that might really deliver. And why we need to be careful about using Page Rank as a PR metric.

For example, the Guardian has a massive 3.8 million unique visitors and 130 million page views per month in the UK alone. Some PR firms might be tempted to say that getting coverage on The Guardian site provides an OTS (opportunity to see) of 3.8 Million. Of course, this is not exactly the case. The Guardian has roughly 20.3 million indexed pages – not of all of these are going to be editorial pages, but most will be. Fact is, not all pages are equal. Only the publishers themselves know the real data, but I’d hazard a guess that a smaller percentage of the total number of indexed pages gain the majority of site traffic. That’s the same for any website.  The challenge with using Page Rank as a PR metric is that it is an indirect measure of traffic. If you think about it, if Google determines that a page has a higher relative importance than another then it is likely to have more traffic. In which case, try randomly sampling some pages from the BBC and other major sites and you’ll probably find that the Page Rank is o.

Here is another example. This story was one of the Most Popular on the BBC site a few days ago. However, it has a Page Rank of 0. In spite of 49 backlinks, including backlinks from pages with rankings of 7. Now the Page Rank may change over time, but again, this is unlikely unless further interest is generated via additional backlinks.

That’s not to say that over time, an article might not be able to build a higher Page Rank. But how many PR firms do you know that would recommend and implement an ongoing “merchandising” strategy to try and generate more backlinks and comments to a piece of coverage in order to improve Page Rank? Or would be able to track changes in Page Rank over time and demonstrate what factors may have caused that change in Page Rank? And have a plan for using that change in Page Rank to generate further traffic to the client’s website? (Disclosure: this is a standard approach at escherman)

The traditional PR mindset is one that says once a piece of coverage has appeared, the job is pretty much done (other than to prepare a clippings book and invoice the client). Part of the opportunity with online PR is that generating the initial coverage can in fact be the start rather than the end of the process.

So beware of PR firms touting Page Rank as a metric. Here’s a handy quick checklist of things to ask them:

1. Explain what Page Rank is and why it is important. Hint: go here to find out for yourself.

2. If a PR firm claims a high Page Rank for a piece of coverage that has appeared in the last 2 days, ask them to explain what factors have caused this to be the case.

3. Ask them if they have a plan for potentially improving the Page Rank of a piece of coverage – and how they would track that over time

Filed under: Digital marketing, Technology PR, Web/Tech, digital pr, online pr, tech pr , Page Rank

UK interest in online PR will peak in September 2009: Google

Google has just announced an update to its Insight for Search tool which now includes predictions for future search volumes.

I thought I’d give it a quick test on a few relevant terms. First up, online PR.

According to Google, search volumes for “online PR” in the UK will reach a peak in September of this year. They will tail off dramatically in October, rise again a bit in November, fall off again at Christmas – and then reach another spike in March 2010 – but not as high as Sept 2009 (interesting to note that the graph has shown a recurring pattern over the last few years – what happens in September to spike interest in online PR? AdTech?)

As noted at the Google Research blog: “Having predictable trends for a search query or for a group of queries could have interesting ramifications. One could forecast the trends into the future, and use it as a “best guess” for various business decisions such as budget planning, marketing campaigns and resource allocations.”

For example, anyone in the business of selling online PR services may want to focus their efforts on September 2009 and March 2010.

There are also ramifications for PR content development. You might plan to develop specific content for the future based around predicted keyword search volumes.

Of course, as ever, this all hinges on the accuracy of the predictions. And as Google are quick to point out, they are only extrapolating from previous data. Still, better than nothing.

Filed under: Digital marketing, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr

How to start a PR company in 2009 with Google and a credit card: version 2.0

By far and away my most popular blog post of 2008 was How To Start A PR Company with Google and a Credit Card. As of this morning, the page has had nearly 2000 views since I originally published it in March of last year.

The general principle espoused in the post remains true – but I thought I’d update a few things.

1. Do I need to own my own computer?

Last year I suggested you could get a cheap laptop for a few hundred pounds – certainly if you opt for a netbook, that is still true. However, if you want to really boil it down to operating expenses over capital investment, there are various deals where you effectively rent your laptop and internet access – say for around £22 per month.

2. Do I need my own software?

I’d add to the original list Xero, an online accounting package. Rather than spend money on Sage or similiar, you have 24/7 online access to your accounts for around £19 per month. It is a very slick service – the world’s first enjoyable to use accounting software.

3. Other additions

I’d also suggest online back up service SugarSync (10GB for a few pounds per month) and RescueTime for time managment (free, or £5 per month if you want to download stats).

And why not throw in your own “on demand” car service with Streetcar?

In fact, it is perfectly conceivable to start and run a business (certainly in its early stages) purely on operating expenses of less than £100 per month and no capital expenditure (assuming you don’t need a virtual office or accounting services – even then you could probably achieve this for under £300 per month).

So in spite of the current dire climate, don’t let cost be a barrier to the entrepreneurial spirit.

Filed under: Digital marketing, Entrepreneur, General PR, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr

“Insecure, threatened, worried, exposed, skeptical, suspicious”: How PR buyers feel

David Maister’s book Managing The Professional Service Firm remains the gold standard text on the subject, some 16 years after it was first published. In fact, the book is a collection of essays and articles that he had written over previous years, stretching as far back as 1982.

The main thing that struck me about re-reading this again recently was how little things have changed in terms of the major issues still impacting professional service firms of all kinds – everyone from lawyers, accountants, consultants and, of course, PR agencies. For example, he cited systemic under delegation as a key problem back in the early 1980s – and nearly 30 years later, it continues to plague the PR business.

As Maister notes in his chapter on the Motivation Crisis: “It is not uncommon to hear comments such as ‘The practice of law [or accounting or PR consulting] is just not as fun any more. Today’s clients are demanding, cynical about the value they receive, and treat you less as a professional and more like an ordinary vendor. The pace, intensity and workload are greater than ever, and the firm atmosphere is competitive rather than supportive and certainly less collegial. With all this concern about profitability, it seems like we’re being asked to work even harder for what might turn out to be less money.”

And Maister wrote this in 1985!

There isn’t a chapter in the book that doesn’t have something of key relevance to everyone working in a PR firm today. Chapter 10 on How Client’s Choose is a good example:

“Buying professional services is rarely a comfortable experience,” says Maister. He goes on to list 10 unpleasant emotions associated with the experience (I’ve editorialised slightly from the original):

1. I’m feeling insecure, I’m not sure I know how to detect which of the agencies pitching to me is the genius and which is just good. I’ve exhausted my abilities to make a technical distinction.
   
2. I’m feeling threatened. This is my area of responsibility and even though intellectually I know I need outside expertise, emotionally it’s not comfortable to put my affairs in the hands of others
   
3. I’m taking a personal risk. By putting my affairs in the hands of others, I risk losing control
   
4. I’m impatient. I didn’t call in someone at the first sign of symptoms. I’ve been thinking about this for a while.
   
5. I’m worried. By the very fact of suggesting improvements or changes, these people are implying I haven’t been doing it right up until now. Are they on my side?
   
6. I’m exposed. Whoever I hire, I’m going to have to reveal some proprietary secrets – not all of which is flattering. I will have to undress.
   
7. I’m feeling ignorant – and I don’t like it. I don’t know if I’ve got a simple problem or a complex one – do I trust these PR folk to be honest about that?
   
8. I’m skeptical. I’ve been burned by PR agencies before. You get a lot of promises. How do I know whose promises to buy?
   
9. I’m concerned that they either won’t or can’t take the time to understand what makes my situation special. They’ll try to sell me what they’ve got rather than what I need.
   
10. I’m suspicious. Will they be those typical professionals who are hard to get hold of, who are patronizing, who leave you out of the loop, who befuddle you with jargon, who don’t explain what they are doing or why, who…., ……who? In short, will these people deal with me in the way I want to be dealt with?

If PR clients felt this way 20 years ago, think how they feel now.

Remember, it may be painful to walk in the other person’s shoes. But David Maister’s advice is as true now as it was 30 years ago: “The single most important talent in selling professional services is the ability to understand the purchasing process (not the sales process) from the client’s perspective. The better a professional can learn to think like a client, the easier it will be to do and say the correct things to get hired.”

Filed under: Books, Digital marketing, General PR, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr

Which UK search marketing agency makes £220K gross profit per employee?

According to the latest NMA UK Search Marketing League Table, Net Planet Media achieved income (or gross profit) of £5.2m last year. Based on a head count of 24, that works out at just under £220K gross profit per employee. Pretty impressive by anyone’s standards.
Bigmouthmedia topped the table with a total income of 13.4m – and an equally impressive 209K gross profit per employee.

This is the first time that NMA have used income rather than turnover as the measure for ranking – interestingly, a number of the higher placed firms from last year (based on turnover) were “unable” to supply figures this year – notably The Search Works and iCrossing.

As guide editor Nic Howell explains: “This year we’ve made an important change by basing some of the financial rankings on the income, or gross profit, that companies earn from their given specialism. This brings the Marketing Services Guide into line with its sister publication, theTop 100 Interactive Agencies guide, as well as other tables published by Centaur and other publishing groups. But we also believe that, as the industry matures, for certain sectors turnover is becoming a less useful measure of what a company earns for its expertise. In search, for example, with Google having withdrawn agency remuneration, there’s less incentive for agencies to buy paid search on behalf of their clients. We expect to see agencies earn money from consultancy fees rather than commission and kickbacks.”

However, given that Google’s Best Practice Funding really only ended in February of this year, we will have to wait until next year’s table in order to truly see the impact this will have on search marketing agencies profitability. For example, Netmediaplanet derives 100pc of its revenue from paid search – I have no idea whether or not they benefitted from Google’s BPF, but will be interesting to see if they can maintain or improve on last year’s impressive financial performance.

Here’s my quick analysis of the overall table:

Average gross profit per employee for the top 30 UK search marketing firms is around £70K. Having said that, there is a very wide range – all points between £220K and £10K.

In 2007, the top 30 agencies employed 1258 people – last year, this figure had dropped to 1154. I appreciate that we aren’t really comparing like with like given the new criteria being used by NMA.  However, even though some agencies have clearly  increased staffing levels eg Bigmouthmedia, some have obviously dropped eg Latitude, down to 98 from 120.

Another interesting trend was the number of search marketing firms who are creating or expanding their own online PR teams. According to Jack Hubbard of 14th ranked Propellernet in a recent interview: “The growth in demand for and subsequent expansion of our online PR team is taking the industry by storm. Bringing together creative PR’s and analytical search experts is generating some great new thinking, and pushing new frontiers for our clients. I’ve never been so excited to be in this space.”

Given Volvo’s recent well documented decision and Ruder Finn’s just published research that shows a great degree of “irritation” by clients with PR firms when pricing online PR proposals, the current robust financial figures for search firms – combined with their obvious expansion plans into the realm of PR – shows that the PR industry needs to continue to work hard to justify its place at the client table.

Filed under: Digital marketing, General PR, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr

“You can’t predict the return on investment you don’t make” David Griner

Fear and Loathing in Social Media

Excellent presentation from David Griner of TheSocialPath.com.

View more Microsoft Word documents from David Griner.

Filed under: Digital marketing, General PR, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr

Guardiantech: 564,698 Twitter followers: 0.4pc (or less) click through rate on links

The Guardian Technology Twitter account has 564,698 followers (as of lunch time today). Helpfully, they use bitly as their URL shorterner of choice for distributing links for Guardian news stories and blog posts. Which means anyone can see the click through rates for any given link. Looking at the last week or so, the highest I’ve found so far is around 2.300 for this story.  Generally, the click through rates are around the 1,500 mark.

So – even with a huge bunch of followers, the click through rates for links put out by Guardiantech on Twitter are around 0.4pc or less.  (Now and again, a link of mine might generate 150 – 200 click throughs – so as a percentage of my Twitter followers (606) that’s not too bad).

Of course, you could use Backtweet to determine where else the links end up – but even here the numbers aren’t huge.

The really interesting data from a PR standpoint would be how many views a story  or post gets in total from all sources – and only the site owners have that data. Getting access to that would help PRs to better understand the value/influence of the coverage they generate.

Also – adding followers doesn’t necessarily translate into increased link click throughs.

Filed under: Digital marketing, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr

PR: the parallels between Page Rank and Public Relations

In SEO circles, the term PR is more likely to refer to Page Rank than Public Relations.  However, in the world of online PR, both have a role to play. In fact, the parallels between Page Rank and Public Relations are closer than you might expect.

But what is Page Rank? Phil Craven’s explanation is the best I’ve seen:

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page’s importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page’s PageRank is calculated.  PageRank is Google’s way of deciding a page’s importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

Phil also highlights some other key factors about Page Rank that are not immediately obvious:

The values shown in the Google toolbar are not the actual PageRank figures. According to the equation, and to the creators of Google, the billions of pages on the web average out to a PageRank of 1.0 per page. So the total PageRank on the web is equal to the number of pages on the web * 1, which equals a lot of PageRank spread around the web. (Google passed the trillion mark for indexed pages last year and says it is adding billions daily). The Google toolbar range is from 1 to 10. (They sometimes show 0, but that figure isn’t believed to be a PageRank calculation result). What Google does is divide the full range of actual PageRanks on the web into 10 parts – each part is represented by a value as shown in the toolbar. So the toolbar values only show what part of the overall range a page’s PageRank is in, and not the actual PageRank itself. The numbers in the toolbar are just labels. The toolbar value is a good indicator of a page’s PageRank but it only indicates that a page is in a certain range of the overall scale. One PR5 page could be just above the PR5 division and another PR5 page could be just below the PR6 division – almost a whole division (toolbar point) between them.

A page “votes” an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.

From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.

If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2,…..PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar. If so, it means that it takes a lot more additional PageRank for a page to move up to the next PageRank level that it did to move up from the previous PageRank level. The result is that it reverses the previous conclusion, so that a link from a PR8 page that has lots of outbound links is worth more than a link from a PR4 page that has only a few outbound links.

Outbound links are a drain on a site’s total PageRank. They leak PageRank. To counter the drain, try to ensure that the links are reciprocated. Because of the PageRank of the pages at each end of an external link, and the number of links out from those pages, reciprocal links can gain or lose PageRank. You need to take care when choosing where to exchange links.

So what has this got to do with public relations? Think of it this way. You could consider PR as the attempt to gain positive “votes” from a target audience. And the votes from some places are going to be more important than others. In a media relations context, you can either try to get lots of small circulation coverage (Page Rank 0 links) or a small number of more influential titles (ie a link from a Page Rank  8 page – in media terms the home page of national newspaper. The analogy holds up because not all pages on a site have equal page rank). The further up the influence scale you go, the effort required increases logarithmically. And it’s better to be the only brand mentioned rather than one among many – because the “voting power” of the linking page is spread equally amongst it’s links. However, this only applies if you are comparing titles with similiar influence. Getting talked about in the FT with other companies is better than being the only one being referred to in a less influential title.

Take the example of PR as a keyword term – see full analysis here. The Wikipedia page ranks number one – even though it appears to have comparatively fewer backlinks than other pages on the results page. However, when you examine the Page Rank of those linking pages, you can see that they are from higher ranked pages. Quality trumps quantity.

Also, you need reciprocity. As shown above, to increase your authority, you can’t just make the communication one way – you need “votes” to come back your way.  But they have to be the right kind of links – and how you ask for them will have an impact on whether or not you will get a return link (in public relations terms, this is equivalent to ringing up a journalist and asking him to write about your client with no attempt at relevance and personalisation. Or actually taking the time to research a properly targetted pitch).

I realise – like all analogies – this one breaks down. But in the world of online PR, public relations and Page Rank are not as different as you think.

Filed under: Digital marketing, General PR, Technology PR, digital pr, online pr, tech pr