It is essential to carry out a social media audit, be it at the start of a campaign, or for a new pitch prospect, or even a regular quarterly “MOT” of your own social media programmes. This should stand aside from the regular monthly key performance indicator (KPI) reports that campaign managers should run and it helps if someone neutral and unconnected with the programme conducts it to avoid any misrepresentation of the data and to add new ideas.

The role of social media audits is particularly relevant given that many brand presences were set up in haste to respond to client demand without clarity of an objective or proper planning. But what should a social media audit actually look like? Read more »

While many PR clients have opened up their website performance data to their agencies, many PRs still struggle to gain access to data which they overwhelmingly agree would help them create more effective campaigns.

The agency-client dynamic has always fascinated me. They always work best when the external PR agency is seen as part of the same team rather than purely an outside contractor. Trust is a key element to a healthy agency-client relationship – and that extends to sharing company data which may be perceived by some as sensitive, such as website performance data. Read more »

Women are twice as likely as men to refer to their social network contacts, especially Facebook friends, when making purchasing decisions, according to a study.  It also indicates more consumers  prefer informative content on brands’ social channels to simple offers of freebies and incentives, while  brands should tailor their online content according to age, gender and even income or education.

The study of 1,000 UK consumers using the newly-launched, self-service rapid online survey provider, Usurv*, which assessed their consumption of brands’ content online when making purchasing decisions. I’d love to learn from marketers if the below findings match up with their own experiences. Read more »

The topic of PR and SEO is one which continues to fascinate me. Why is it that so many PR agencies have been slow to exploit this field, estimated to be worth £500m per year?

For this reason I ran a rough Survey Monkey study of UK PRs during May 2012 and, although it garnered 100 entries, the responses were interesting, especially as a quarter (23 people) took the time to fill the optional comments box. Read more »

Let’s face it: most PRs probably don’t have a grasp on search engine optimisation. They might have heard of the term and may know a little bit about Google’s Keyword Tool and on-page optimisation, but how many PR firms could actually hold their hand up and say that they could offer a full SEO programme beyond just content creation?

By this I mean website re-architecture, link building, keyword position tracking and all those other things that help organisations compete effectively on search engines? Read more »

Are you a social media measurement obsessive? It’s something that’s been front of mind for me over the last couple of weeks brought on by a number of factors: Dell’s B2B Huddle with Brian Solis, which I attended; a training session I ran on social media measurement and a series of blogs ranking “influencers”, such as this one on Wallblog. Measurement sure is perplexing.

While developing an impressive Klout score appears to be increasingly essential I am still not convinced it’s a clear measure of ‘influence’. Read more »