Media Hits:

1. MarketingVOX – News Releases Not Just for Press, Serve Wide Variety of Functions
2. BizReport – How the press release can increase sales
3. MediaPost – Changing face of the press release
4. Public Relations Institute of Australia – Exploring the ROI of Online Press Releases
5. ClickZ – The SEO-Social-Media-Sales-Press-News Release
6. B2B – Direct marketers increasingly use news releases for SEO purposes
7. Mediabistro – News Releases Not Just for Press

Blogs/Podcasts:

1. Communications & Legal Studies – Research brief: Changing face of the press release
2. For Immediate Release – ROI of Online Press Releases
3. A Shel of my Former Self – ROI of Online Press Releases
4. The Buzz Bin – ROI of Online News Releases
5. B2B Marketing Blog – Online Press Releases: What’s Old is New Again
6. Arketi’s Survey City: The Changing Face of the Press Release
7. mStonerBlog – The Press Release: Not just for PR People Anymore
8. In Front Of Your Nose – PR still stuck with traditional mindset toward online news releases
9. Marketing Pilgrim – Press Releases from a Marketing Perspective
10. New Business Hunter – The Press Release as Marketing Tool

News Release Syndication:

1. International Business Times
2. PRWeb
3. eMediaWire
4. Promotion World
5. Top SEOs
6. SNCR Web site
7. New Communications Review
8. Yahoo! News

Some of the top-line findings:

• 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).
• Reaching bloggers and new media outlets has become nearly as important as reaching traditional media.
• 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.

For more information visit the press release on PRWeb.

Now that is out of the way I can get down to writing about the launch of Vocus Spring ’07.  The new release, which I’ve walked through, contains some really amazing upgrades and new features.  It is my plan to start using some of these features, particularly the analytics, to study what’s going on in the media and write about it in this Blog.  For the sake of this particular posting though, I’m going to focus on the social media offerings in Spring ’07:

1. Vocus now monitors and analyzes blogs.
2. The contact database now contains profiles on top-line bloggers.
3. Vocus is launching a user-oriented online community where Vocus customers can share best practices, network, and engage with Vocus experts on a variety of topics.

We started out by reviewing some of the social media highlights from the past month, which I’ve encapsulated in a previous blog posting.  Specifically, here are some of the key points that were made in reference to social media developments for March 2007:

Continued development in Second Life:

1. SL helps provide an enhanced ‘Web 3.0′ communications experience.
2. There are continuing technological infrastructure issues with SL: frame rendering, freezing, etc., which represent a substantial obstacle to continued diffusion of SL.
3. SL might benefit from the introduction of some form of console or controller beyond the keyboard.
4. SL’s primary benefit is community-oriented.
5. As for measurement, there is code that will track when other SL users visit your territory and interact with objects you have created.

Viacom vs. YouTube

1. As with SL, there are continued technological issues associated with the viewing experience of YouTube, most notably the low resolution of the video.
2. Copyright continues to be one of the most prominent issues facing development of YouTube and other video sharing sites.
3. Google could benefit from further outreach to the television and video content providers.
4. Viacom’s move is in large part strategic posturing in preparation for the launch of their own video sharing site.
5. YouTube could benefit from looking at a pay-per-view model.

Before we knew it, we were at the half-way point of the discussion and had not yet even gotten to the meat of the conversation: social media measurement, although we had broached the topic in reference to some of the past month’s social media highlights. 

The core of the social media measurement conversation revolved around the fundamental questions of ‘why,’ ‘what’ and ‘how.’  Here are some highlights from the conversation:

Why measure social media?

I began this part of the discussion by throwing up some stats from the 2nd European Survey of PR Professionals that assert:

1. 89% of PR professionals surveyed think that blogs and social software will be widespread and integrated into communications as websites are today.
2. 69% say they do not have the skilled personnel to handle them and 42% are unable to demonstrate the ROI of blogging.

We then began to discuss reasons why we should measure Social Media.  We came up with the following:

1. To provide accountability to the work we are doing.
2. Quantitative information brings form and meaning to abstract concepts, to those unfamiliar with the terrain.
3. To make determinations about when to and especially when not to participate in social media.
4. To improve the quality of your interactions within social media.

What to measure in social media?

The discussion of what to measure in social media encapsulated a wide range of topics, particularly on the relative value of the page view as a metric.  There seemed to be a general consensus that although the page view was declining in importance, it was still one of the key metrics in assessing social media.  In addition, many of the participants agreed that one of the key indicators in social media is the quality of relationship created through a social media interaction.

For the final section of the discussion, I threw up a quote from a paper drafted by the Independent Sector and the Urban Institute entitled “Outcome Measurement in Nonprofit Organizations (PDF).” The quotes reads: “Outcome measurement involves the identification of outcomes; development of appropriate outcome indicators and data collection procedures; data analysis to better understand organization achievements; and user-friendly, regular reporting of the findings.”

Unfortunately, we had run out of time and didn’t get a chance to delve into this part of the discussion.

Until next time…

 Other blogs about this event:

1. The Webpreneur
2. Oatmeal Stout

Apparently, the city of Boston wasn’t too thrilled with the marketing campaign.  According to a Reuters article, the marketing stunt was “Boston’s biggest security scare since the September 11, 2001, attacks — closing bridges, shutting major roads and putting hundreds of police on alert. ”

I’m not going to debate the ethics of the publicity stunt nor the reaction of the city of Boston.  What really strikes me is the tremendous impact that has resulted. 

Consider the following:

The story not only receiving traction in the social media space (it is also profiled on the front page of YouTube) but has received enormous mainstream media exposure.  According to the following graph, Aqua Teen Hunger Force had 4105 hits during the week the event hit.

The story is particularly timely given the impending advertisement-fest that is superbowl sunday.  I doubt Turner Broadcasting or the guerilla marketing firm behind the act would have ever anticipated the impact they would have – no one, for that matter, would ever have imagined that the most impactful ad during super bowl week would have had no affiliation with the Super Bowl at all!  Furthermore, consider that ABC was reported to be selling 30-second Super Bowl spots in the price range of $2.5 – $2.6 million.   Now consider that the ad equivalency for the Aqua Teen campaign is estimated at over $3 million.

Provided no one ends up in a federal prison for the stunt, I would say that the marketing department at Turner would have to be happy with their ROI on this one (even though their PR department is probably gulping down the xanax right now).  I can guarantee that millions of people who have never heard about Aqua Teen Hunger Force will pay to see the film coming out this March.  I know I will.