Interview with Steve Mullen on Startup BizCast

Jiyan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:22:13 +0000

The last couple weeks I’ve moderated a couple of webinars with Steve Mullen talking about marketing and PR strategies for small businesses. Yesterday we flip-flopped places and Steve interviewed me on SEO and press releases for Startup BizCast. In the interview I discuss some of the topics I’ve blogged about recently including press releases and SEO, and our study with SNCR into the ROI of press releases.

News Distribution Analytics

Jiyan — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:53:35 +0000

This past week we (Vocus) hosted a webinar with the SNCR research team that included Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu, Jen McClure, and Shel Holtz. The event drew a pretty good audience that stayed throughout the entirety of the presentation and the audience feedback lead to a great Q&A at the end of the presentation.

For the past year or so, the SNCR research team has been digging into the ROI of online press releases and has uncovered what I believe to be industry-leading findings on how metrics are changing when it comes to press releases.

I’d like to take this opportunity to jot down some thoughts on how this impacts PRWeb and the metrics we offer.

Let’s start with one of the general conclusions from the research:

Goals are changing

The goals for online press releases have expanded beyond the traditional objectives of increasing an organization’s visibility and credibility and announcing news, to include reaching customers directly with marketing and sales messages, creating online content, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Once upon a time the goal was simply about getting stories placed in the media. Subsequently, the desired indicator took the form of media pick-ups and these could be gleaned from clipping reports. Now, as the goals expand and encompass things like direct-to-consumer communications and SEO, the metrics also need to expand. This is why we offer SEO statistics that tell customers which terms and search engines are driving traffic to their release. It’s also why instead of focusing on how many places the release was picked-up, we focus on how many people actually read the release, which actually is a good segue to the next point:

Targets are changing

Reaching consumers directly has become a top goal of people using online distribution services, which is why we place so much value in our ‘reads’ metric. Additionally, findings from the study indicate that “Reaching bloggers and new media outlets has become nearly as important as reaching traditional media.”

The issue with some of the more traditional clipping services is that while they are solid at showing mainstream media pick-up they often don’t do a good job showing the new media outlets and blogs where your news is appearing. That’s why we run a custom query in Google to help our customers get a more comprehensive picture of where their news is appearing online.

Success Indicators are Changing

According to the research, “The top four measures of success for online press releases include: 1) the number of times the release is republished on websites; 2) the number of times the release is viewed online; 3) the publication of an article based on the release; 4) media interviews resulting from the release.”

So to break this down, we offer the following methods to hit the top success indicators:

Number of times the release is republished on websites - We offer a metric called ‘impressions,’ which provides a general overview of how many places your news release appeared on Web sites, RSS feeds, and e-mails in places we can track. Granted, the trackable universe for us is but a small fraction of the larger Internet but this provides you with a baseline understanding of how much traction you got online from your news release.
Number of times the release is viewed online – This is where our ‘reads’ metric comes into play – a count of how many times someone clicked through and loaded the full version of the news release in the trackable universe.
Publication of an article based on the release – We use a custom Google query to provide users with an overview of where their article appeared online. We use Google (instead of a clipping service) because our focus goes beyond traditional media into new media outlets and blogs.
Media interviews resulting from the release – I’m afraid that’s up to you guys to track

At any rate, I don’t want to make it seem like we are completely satisfied with the tracking tools we provide. Analytics are the lifeblood of professionalism for many of our customers, especially in a down economy where they have to show accountability for what they are doing. At the end of the day, there is probably a lot more we can do to help them demonstrate this sense of accountability and believe me – we are constantly working on it.

We are always discussing ways to enhance our analytics and constantly getting new ideas from customers that all are factored into the PRWeb development mix. Hopefully, this posting will have provided you with a general sense for what we offer as well as the rationale behind it.

New Influencer » Analytics

Coverage of the SNCR Research into Online Press Releases

Interview with Steve Mullen on Startup BizCast

News Distribution Analytics