I've been reading "New Media, New Influencers and Implications for Public Relations" for the past few days, and it has been quite interesting. The study, conducted by he Society of New Communication Research, looked at how social media is impacting public relations and used case studies to illustrate its discoveries. Here are a few:
- 57 percent of respondents said that social media tools are becoming more valuable as consumers are relying on them more and more as communication tools.
- Blog, online videos, social networks and podcasting were the tools used most. Blog outpaced the other two.
- Blog nearly 80 percent.
- Online video over 60 percent.
- Social networks just shy of 60 percent.
- Podcasting around 50 percent.
- Respondents said online video and blogging were the top two most effective tools that achieved campaign goals.
There doesn't seem to be agreement on how to measure these tools. Many are turning to collecting data from the web, such as search engine ranking and the number of hits/unique visitors a tool attracts. But measurement is never an easy gig. While these indicators are good, they don't tell us what behaviors we are influencing, how we are influencing them and why that influence is happen. That data is more sociological and takes time to collect and analyze.
If you're a business owner and have thought about social media and its benefit to your organization, you should be thinking about conversion rates first. In other words, how much new business will my social media effort produce? It should produce more than enough to sustain its viability. Secondly, you might consider doing some long-range sociological studies of your customers too. That will give you insight into their behavior, attitudes and such. Armed with that, you can begin tailoring social media messages to be more engaging and powerful.
