Friday Roundup – AMEC and the value of PR

The PR measurement and evaluation community came together in Barcelona 16th-18th June for the AMEC 2nd European Summit. AMEC is the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, and they played host to organisations such as the IPR, the PRSA, the ICCO,the CIPR and the PR Global Alliance.

I was there representing the CIPR in my capacity as chair of its measurement group.

AMEC equipped all delegates with some nifty electronic voting gadgets with which votes were cast on seven foundation principles. The headline principles were approved, and AMEC has now taken the action to tweak the detail in line with delegate feedback before publishing in full.

I won't duplicate the contents of a post on the seven principles by CIPR President Jay O'Connor, but I will convey here how delighted I am that one of the principles states simply:

Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) are not the value of PR

(Indeed, I see that Paul Holmes of the eponymous Holmes Report is delighted too, making the perspicacious observation that AVEs don't measure the value of advertising either, just its cost!)

I interviewed Barry Leggetter, AMEC Executive Director, and Katie Delahaye Paine of KD Paine & Partners, at the conclusion of the summit to get their thoughts, and you can listen to that interview on Jay's blog post too, or here:

Interview with Barry Leggetter and Katie Delahaye Paine, AMEC10

And another with Katie Delahaye Paine a few weeks before the summit:

Interview with Katie Delahaye Paine, June 2010

Public Relations professionals have more data at their fingertips than they ever dreamed, and this data is increasing by the magnitude by the year. Therein lies the opportunity for measurement and evaluation. AVEs have been a metric in the "because we can, not because we should" camp, and even if best practice doesn't turn out to be as simple or even as generic as AVE, we will at last have something of true value and practical insight to bring to the board table than a specious sum based on false assumptions using an unfounded multiplier and only addressing a fraction of the PR domain.

Onwards and upwards :-)

Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.

How to Integrate Email Marketing, SEO and Social Media

by Eric Tsai of Designdamage

Social media is changing how businesses find customers and how customers engage with brands. There are many reasons to believe that it will eventually overtake email marketing, but I’m a firm believer that it’s here to stay.  In fact, I believe email marketing combine with search (SEO) and social media will the best strategy moving forward.

However; let me get a few things straight. First, email is the original social network. Second, you need email to open social network account and get alerts. More...

What is Adding Value and How it Applies to Social Networking

by Eric Tsai of Designdamage

As a social media advocate I often discuss adding value to the conversations, to the communities or to the relationships. I guess I assumed everyone already knew what the term means and how it applies to them until I started to get questions from people.

So what exactly is adding value and how? Is it just an over-used marketing jargon? An illusion of a feel-good emotion? The more I use the term “value” the more I feel like it’s loosing its soul (I’m guilty as charged at times). More...

Engage was Written to Help You Find Answers in Social Media

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

I recently hosted a discussion on the need to reduce the weight we place on the social media case studies and “how to” posts that are now universal, as they won’t apply to the specific circumstances or context of our challenges, opportunities, and market dynamics. I believe that we should use them solely for inspiration, but not as templates for our work. The best advice that I or anyone for that matter, can offer, lies in our ability to help you define the questions you must ask and answer yourself. More...

McKinsey - social media critical issue for business leaders

by Walter Adamson of NewLeaseG2M

With the announcement of the Neilsen McKinsey Joint Venture NM Incite, the global managing director of McKinsey, Dominic Barton, said: "Social media is an increasingly critical issue for business leaders and an area of untapped opportunity for many of our clients. This joint venture will equip institutions with real-time insights to help their leaders drive better results".

I guess that statement just might be the last nail in the coffin of the "passing fad" brigade of social media for business doubters!

So where in particular does McKinsey see social media providing insights? They mention three in the press release: More...

7 Keys to Creating Social Media Strategy for Your Brand

by Eric Tsai of Designdamage

In the past few weeks I’ve experienced a decent amount of spam from social networking sites ranging from people marketing their books, selling “make money online” information, to promoting their personal brand.  It's indicative of the fact that individuals and businesses are viewing the space seriously as it takes on the mainstream spotlight.

There are many ways to utilize social media to boost your brand.  The key is to have a strategy around building your social proof. More...

Neuromarketing, Imprinting & David Hasselhoff on Your Mind

by Marc Narine of 3Brain Marketing

The foods you prefer, the music you like or whether you think David Hasselhoff is a really good singer or an insane reality tv judge who makes awesome youtube vides, are likely influenced by ‘imprints‘ embedded in your unconscious mind. ‘Imprints‘ can be defined as the subconscious rules that guides each of us depending on the culture in which we are raised. The combination of the experience and the accompanying emotion creates the imprint. The stronger the emotion, the deeper the imprint. More...

Top 5 Mobile Smartphone Apps in the U.S. Market

by David H Deans of Digital Lifescapes

U.S. mobile phone service subscribers are finally becoming more sophisticated, like their counterparts in other more advanced mobile markets, using their smartphone applications (apps) at a higher rate.

eMarketer reports that according to the latest comScore study, the total number of mobile app users in the U.S. increased by 28 percent from April 2009 to April 2010.

Several app categories saw usage grow much faster. Social networking apps grew their user base by 240 percent during the period, to more than 14.5 million mobile users. More...

Social media at Deloitte Australia

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

How does a large professional services firm communicate using the tools of social media? For an answer, take a look at this excellent report Social Media at Deloitte. (Consider sending it to your boss.)

Deloitte Australia has 12 offices and over 4,500 people and provides audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory services to public and private clients across Australia.

Deloitte Australia defaulted to one of its seven key values and went with 'empower and trust'.

From the report: More...

7 Steps to Creating and Cultivating a Brand in Social Media

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

In business, we learn through everything we do and it influences all that we try and repeat. When something new comes along, we tend to view it with either enthusiasm or skepticism, or in some cases a bit of both. Such is true with the advent of Social Media.

As business, marketing and service leaders, we face new challenges. We’re not quite sure how or why to implement the lessons and promises of social media into what we’re already doing. Nor do we understand how to experiment with it in ways that are safe and useful. More...

Shortest marketing conference ever

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

On July 6 at 6:00 pm eastern, 60 thinkers speak for 60 seconds each about how to increase your digital influence.

The Influencer Project

I’ll be one of the presenters. It is a stellar lineup.

It’s kind of liberating to only have 60 seconds to speak. I boiled down a typical one-hour keynote into one minute. And 59 others did the same.

Cool.

The organizers setup for our short talks was: We want to empower as many people as possible to make a big impact in the world—ideally while pursuing their deepest passions. More...

There are no blog how-tos for the hard stuff

by Andrew Swenson of wordpost

You won’t find the secret to business success online. So stop looking.

Because everyone is scrambling to produce better content more often, there’s great incentive (eyeballs and wallets) to create new and better guides for business.

I mean, Brian Solis told us how to create and cultivate a brand in social media in just seven steps.

Chris Brogan just shared a simple formula for blogging success that got him 50,000 subscribers.

Forbes thought it prudent to create a slideshow entitled “In Pictures: More...

ABC data shows continued growth in online news

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

Another month and another set of results from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) that show a seemingly insatiable appetite for online news in the UK. The ABC Multi-Platform Report for May 2010 has MailOnline leading the pack with the largest online audience of 2.39 million. I’ve written before about the MailOnline’s pursuit of a Google-baiting-celeb agenda.

The Sun and The Times dropped out of the audit in May as News International readies itself to move to paid for access. Likewise FT.com isn’t included. More...

E-Commerce Report: Facebook and Twitter Users Make It Rain

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

If you want to get a glimpse of the economic future, focus on the emerging trends driven by those defining the evolution of the social Web. Social media is not only democratizing influence and upsetting the traditional media ecosystem, it is now an indicator for a potential economic resurgence.

Leading metrics firm, comScore, released its Q1 U.S E-Commerce Spending Report recently, finding that online retail spending approached $34 billion in Q1 2010, which represents a 10 percent boost compared to last year. More...