Response to Comments regarding “Would YOU Trust a PR Firm without a Social Media Presence with Your Social Media Programs”

There has been quite a bit of discussion from the original post and on a post by Jeremiah Owyang titled “Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess,”. I honestly didn’t think that my initial effort would generate such discussion, which I think provides a lot of fodder for thought.

 

I do want to provide my perspective on one aspect of Jennifer Leggio’s comment:

Client service comes first, always. Yes agencies should strive to have a presence of their own but not having a presence on Twitter or LinkedIn for their corporation is not a good measurement — at all.

When reviewing Jennifer Leggio’s post “Is ‘social PR’ for real?”, this paragraph resonated with me:

 

Agencies need to work hard to ease their clients’ or potential clients’ minds by showing hard metrics of how social programs have worked for other clients. There is also more justifiable pressure on marketers as a whole to demonstrate ROI from social media programs. Clients should start requiring these types of ROI metrics or case studies and not take “this is a new practice” as a valid excuse for the agencies not having proof points. The agency at the very least should be able to show how it’s built its own brand / the brand of its people through social media.

 

I do agree with the position that a PR agency having a social media presence is not necessarily a barometer of how that agency can deliver results for clients using social media. However, I will argue that an agency’s ability to use these tactics/strategies to build awareness and industry expertise demonstrates understanding of the pressures that clients face and their objectives. This includes increasing incoming sales leads, communicating with key customers, building thought leadership, reaching key audiences, etc.

 

 

Besides this particular point, I want to add the following:

• I recognize that individual contributors are just as important as corporate brands. I will still assert that corporate brands will be just as important for establishing brand awareness and thought leadership

• With that said, how one participates in social media can be dictated based on one’s audience and goals. I strongly believe that having a presence in the right avenues helps to drive an agency’s lead generation efforts

• Since I was laid off, I decided to do this research out of curiousity. I knew it would take time and spent a several hours over a two week period to “research” the original list. As I was doing this myself, I acknowledge that I may have missing or incorrect information. As such, I appreciate those who have provided updates in comments or emails to me. I have updated the table accordingly.

   

And finally, as this endeavor is much bigger than I originally anticipated, I have set up a public wiki for agencies and the community to make updates directly.

 

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Would YOU Trust a PR Agency Not Involved in Social Media with YOUR Social Media Programs?

A lot of PR firms are stating that they have social media capabilities and can help develop your strategy in this arena. So I thought, how many are actually practicing what they’re preaching?

 

I decided to see which PR firms were actively participating in social media. [update 2/20/09] I initially evaluated PR firms listed on O’Dwyer’s list of top 100 independent PR firms. This list was based on worldwide fees for firms with major US operations. As such, some prominent firms, such as Ogilvy & Mather, Ketchum PR and others. Since this post was published, the list has been exanded to include firms that have proactively included information in the comments or email. It is now sorted alphabetically and includes different types of firms, such as IR, healthcare and technology.

 

Some points to keep in mind:

• I looked at if the agency had a blog, Twitter profile, Facebook page (both group and/or fan), LinkedIn Group

• While there are individuals within each agency who have great online presences, I was seeking corporate presence. So some fields may be marked as “none” as a result

• And since I did this myself, I was trying to maximize my time:

  • I didn’t categorize the type of PR each firm did – I took the list at its word

  • If the blog wasn’t listed on the home page or easily found via a sitemap, I assumed there was none or you don’t really want me to find your blog

  • I searched on the agency’s name or common abbreviation as presented on their website. Anything more exotic or too cute, would not have been found

  • For Twitter, I used Twitter search or tried to manually type in what seemed like an appropriate Twitter handle

  • I used the group search functions found on Facebook and LinkedIn respectively

  • I decided not to look at other sites like delicious, slideshare.net, flickr, etc., frankly, because I was doing this myself =); however, I did include it if the agency made it easy to find

     

Interesting Findings:

• Almost all of the agencies did NOT link to their profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. from their website. I would’ve expected this on their Contact Us page or linked from the Blog but this was very rare.

• While those who had blogs did a good job of putting the blog link front and center on the home page, some were too cute and hid the link under a different section of the website. If you’re one of these agencies and I found your blog regardless, it’s because it was listed on your site map.

• 39 agencies had blogs; 28 had Twitter profiles with one having a hashtag but no Twitter profile; 35 agencies had Facebook Group pages with two establishing fan pages; and 25 had LinkedIn Group pages while two created company pages

 

So let’s see how this little experiment works. If you’re a PR agency and I have incorrect information, please provide the corrections below or write a post that links back. I will then update the listing as quickly as I can. And if you have accounts with Flickr, YouTube and Slideshare.net, let me know.

 

But If you don’t have a social media presence, tell me why. I want to give folks the benefit of doubt. I was able to format the list into a table below captured the list in a jpg (couldn’t get it to format correctly, sorry!) or you can download a pdf version of this list. visit the public wiki and make changes to the table.

 

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Table of PR Firms and Social Media Presence

Update: 2/19/09 – This table was updated to be in alphabetical order, includes additional PR firms not on the original list, and eliminates “none” from the table. You can also visit the PR Firms Social Media Public Wiki to make changes.

 

PR Agency	Corporate Blog	Corporate Twitter	Individual Twitter	Facebook Page	LinkedIn Group	Additional
5W Public Relations, New	CEO Blog			Ronn Torossian’s Group (469 members), 5WPR Group (5 members)		YouTube Page
Access Comms., San Francisco	The Access Point and PR Measurist	@AccessPR: 14 followers		Corporate group page	Current and former employees
Airfoil PR, Inc., Detroit	Airfoil Public Relations	@AirfoilPR – 15 followers
Allison & Partners, San Francisco	updated 3/10/09	@AllisonPR	30+ indiviual feeds	Corporate Group Page		YouTube Page
APCO Worldwide, Wash., DC	Unable to find blog	@APCOJobs – 2 followers (protected account)		A few groups for summer interns but no corporate page	APCO Alumni
Atomic PR, San Francisco	Particles
Bader Rutter, Brookfield, WI				Former employees page
Bender/Helper Impact, Los Angeles				BHI Alumni Society
Bite Communications, San Francisco	bitemark	@BitePR: 340 followers; @bitesweden		Bite Communications US – HR, Bite Communications UK – HR, Bite Communications is HIRING!, Bite Sweden, Bite Alumni	Company LinkedIn page	YouTube Channel; Flickr
Bliss PR (formerly Bliss Gouverneur & Assocs.), New York		@BlissPR – 0 followers
Burson-Marsteller	The Burson-Marsteller Blog	@bmdigital and @bmglobalnews		B-M on Facebook	LinkedIn Group	Social media spaces on the Digital Perspective Blog
Capstrat, Raleigh, NC	Filed Notes	#Capstrat	update 5/10/2009 @rharris, and others: @kalbritton @cord @stevenkeith @tarheelevan @oombrella		Capstrat Friends
Cerrell Assocs., Los Angeles
Comms. Strategies, Madison, NJ
Consensus Planning Group, Los Angeles	The Front Porch – hyperlink wasn’t working
Cooney/Waters Group, New York
CooperKatz & Co., New York	What’s New
Coyne PR, Parsippany, NJ	CoyneExchange	@CoynePR – 106 followers		Corporate group page	Company Page	YouTube Channel, Flickr Channel
Upated: 2/22/09 Crenshaw Communications, New York (Formerly Stanton Crenshaw Comms. – On Feb 9, 2009, became Crenshaw Communications. I have focused only on this brand for the search.)	imPRessions	@CrenshawComm – 1 3 followers		Corporate group page	Company Page
CRT/tanaka, Richmond, VA	What we are thinking about	@CRTTanaka – 25 followers		Corporate group page	Friends of CRT/Tanaka and CRT/Tanaka Public Relations and Marketing
Cubitt Jacobs & Prosek, Stratford, CT	Clever Witty Quick			Corporate group page	CJP Client, Employee and Alumni Group
Cushman/Amberg Comms., Chicago				Corporate group page	Cushmaniacs
Dan Klores Comms., New York
Davies Murphy Group, Burlington, MA
Davies, Santa Barbara, CA				Corporate group page	Employees and Clients Group
Development Counsellors Int’l., New York	DCI Dialogue				Development Counsellors International Group Page
Dye, Van Mol & Lawrence, Nashville, TN
Edelman, New York	Speak Up, Pioneer Thinking	Multiple: @EdelmanDigital, @EngageinHealth, @EdelmaninMIA, @EdelmanDE, @EdelmanSweden	@steverubel, @philgomes, @rickmurray, @marshallmanson, @luebue	Edelman Groups for China, Edelman Change and Employee Engagement, Edelman Poland, and Edelman Australia Alumni	Past & Present Edelman Employees
Edward Howard & Co., Cleveland		@EdwardHoward – not sure if this is for the agency. 0 followers		Corporate group page
Formula PR, San Diego					Formula PR Group
French|West|Vaughan, Raleigh, NC					French/West/Vaughan Alumni	Has a Second Life office
Gibbs & Soell, New York
Gregory FCA Comms., Ardmore, PA
GYMR, Wash., DC				Alumni Page
Hager Sharp, Inc., Wash., DC
Healthstar, New York – could not get to the website
Hill & Knowlton	Collective Conversation Blogs
Hunter PR, New York
ICR (formerly Integrated Corp. Rels.), Westport, CT	ICR Blogs – seems to be several topics under one URL	@ICR – no followers
Imre Comms., Towson, MD
Intermarket, NY
Jackson Spalding, Atlanta
Jasculca/Terman & Assocs., Chicago
Kaplow Comms., New York				Kaplow Global
KCSA Strategic Comms., New York				KCSA Worldwide Interns
KGBTexas Public Relations / Advertising , San Antonio Texas		@Kgbtexas:238 followers
Kwittken & Co., New York
LaunchSquad, San Francisco, CA	(updated 2/22/09) What’s New, Exclamation Blog, Green Amy, Searching for Savvy	@launchsquad – 215 followers	@jmandell @throck @brettweiner @sistaklein	Corporate Group Page	Company Page	YouTube Page
L.C. Williams & Assocs., Chicago
Levick Strategic Coms., Wash., D.C.	Bullet Proof		update 5/10/09 @richardlevick @dallaslawrence @crisisguru		LinkedIn Page	YouTube
Lewis Public Relations, San Francisco	Lewis 360	@Lewispr – 50 followers		Corporate group page	Lewis Global Public Relations Group
Linden Alschuler & Kaplan, New York
Lippert/Heilshorn Assocs, New York
Lois Paul & Partners	Beyond the Hype		@Tweismann: 217 followers	Corporate group page		Flickr
Lou Hammond & Assocs., New York
M Booth & Assocs., New York	FWD Thinking		@mrinklin			Flickr
M. Silver Assocs., New York	M. Silver Associates Blog
Makovsky & Co., New York				Mckovsky + Company Alumni Associaton Group	Mckovsky + Company Alumni Association
Maloney & Fox, New York
Marx Layne & Co., Farmington Hills, MI	Responsive, Individualized Results	@Marxlayne – 16 followers		Corporate group page	Marx Layne & Co Small Business Development Forum
Matter Communications, Boston
McNeelly Pigott & Fox, Nashville, TN				Corporate group page	MP&F Group page
MCS, Bedminster, N.J.
Merritt Group, Reston, VA	Merritt Blog	@MerrittGroup – 65 followers
Morgan & Myers, Jefferson, WI
New Media Strategies	NMS Blog	(update 2/22/09) @NMSosphere	NMS has several employees who participate in social media.	NMS Fan Page	NMS Group Page on LinkedIn	Delicious, Flickr, YouTube, FriendFeed
New West, Louisville, KY	new.west blog
Padilla Speer Beardsley, Minneapolis	The Lead				Current and former employees
Page One PR, Palo Alto, CA	The Page Wonders	@Pageonepr – 109 followers		Corporate group page	Company LinkedIn page	YouTube channel
PAN Communications, Andover, MA		@PANcomm – 74 followers
Peppercom, New York	Reason Enough
Pierpont Comms., Houston	Pierpontifications	@PierpontCom – 98 followers
Porter Novelli	Multiple blogs	@porternovelli, @pndigital, @pn_atx, @marjinalpn, @pn_chile, @pn_uk		Corporate group page	LinkedIn Alumni Group, and group for our London office	Flickr, Delicious
Public Communications, Chicago		@PCI – 0 followers
Qorvis Comms., Wash., DC	The Q	@Qorvis: no followers		Corporate group page
Quinn & Co., New York		@Quinnandco – 225 followers
Rasky Baerlein, Boston		update: 5/10/09 @betsykelly @laurenChisolm @bethbres13	Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications
rbb Public Relations, Miami				Careers Page
Regan Comms., Boston
RF | Binder Partners, New York					RF/Binder Partners
Rogers Group, Los Angeles					The Rogers Group Employees, Past and Present
Ron Sachs Comms., Tallahassee, FL	Several blogs – Ron, Michelle, Ryan, Alia and Sachs
Ruder Finn Group, New York	Ethics Blog, (Updated 2/22/09) Left Brain, Right Brain, RF Voices, Communicating Promise (Middle East), Dot Org (UK), Dot Comms (UK)	@RuderFinn – 2 followers, @RuderFinnUK – 207 followers		Four group pages for China, Healthcare Group, Israel and corporate
S&S Public Relations, Glenview, IL	public relations evolved	@SSPR – 40 followers
Schneider Assocs., Boston				Internship Page and Intern Group
Schwartz Comms., Waltham, MA	Schwartz Blog	@Schwartz – 0 followers (protected account)		Corporate group page
Shelton Group, Dallas -
Shift Communications, Brighton, MA	PR-Squared, slice snackable PR				Group Page
Spark PR, San Francisco	sparkpr blog		updated 3/12/09 @ paulasantos @ donnasokolsky @americanadian @syreetam @timrturpin @rbremer @clarissaspark @jacqattack @jamiewalker19 @ilikegranola @koodot0  @otnerak @sparkpr_katie @chansamerica  @mattmarquess	Corporate group page	Sparkpr Company Profile
Spectrum Science Comms., Wash., DC	The Spectrum Blog	@SpectrumScience – 48 followers		Groups for the company, Summer 2008 and Staff	Spectrum Science Communications Group
Spring O’Brien & Co., New York
Sterling Communications, Los Gatos, CA	Gearheads	@SterlingPR – 108 followers		Corporate group page	Company Page	Upate (2/22/09) Delicious, Flickr, FriendFeed, YouTube,
Taylor, New York /
Text 100 Int’l., San Francisco	HYPERText, London, Sydney, Malaysia	@Text100: Over 600 followers		Hong Kong, London, Madrid 1, Madrid2, Bangalore	Text 100 Alumni	Second Life
The Edison Group, Atlanta				Corporate group page	Company Page
The Hoffman Agency, San Jose, CA	Ismael’s Corner
The Horn Group, San Francisco	Brass Tacks	HornGroup – 3 followers		Several groups for PR	Horn Group Alumni
The Jeffrey Group, Miami
The Standing Partnership, St. Louis, MO	Where do you stand?		@Susanisk: 668 followers	Corporate group page	Standing Partnership Group Page
Vollmer, Houston
Waggener Edstrom, Bellevue, WA	Multiple blogs written by several individuals	@WaggenerEdstrom – 513 followers		Fan page, Careers With Waggener Edstrom	Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
WeissComm Partners, San Francisco
Widmeyer Comms., Wash., DC				Corporate group page
William Mills Agency, Atlanta	Financial Industry Marketing Blog	@Wmagency – 34 2 followers (updated 2/22/09)	Multiple…Pres	Scott Mills’, Network Facebook Group	Corporate Group Page
Winning Strategies PR, Newark
Wragg & Casas PR, Miami
Zeno Group	Zeno | acropolis			Corporate group page

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Using Social Media: Part 6 – Measurement

Copyright 2007 by noblelgnoble

 

This is the sixth post in a 6 part series on how I using social media. In this sixth installment, I discuss measurement.

 

 

Measure What Counts

There has been discussion about how to measure social media and can it truly impact your bottom line. The same could be said of public relations. In the end, it’s measuring what counts for your business.

 

Personally, I think it’s important to determine your baseline measurements to gauge the effectiveness of your strategies over time. Consider keeping it simple, selecting 3-4 points to track. As you gather more information, you can better refine and expand your measurement criteria. Here are some basic points to measure:

 

Tweetburner

• Subscribers, Followers, Fans: One way to track the success of your programs is by the steady growth of subscribers to your blog, followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook. Feedburner is a nice way to track subscribers to your blog or any RSS feed that you create for corporate updates, such as press releases, newsletters, etc.

• Audience Reach: The key aspect of social media is tracking “word of mouth” or the reach of your content to your key audiences.

  • Twitter – Tweetburner allows you to create a short URL for Twitter and then tracks who has retweeted the link or clicked on it. You can keep your stats private or public. While this is a great tool, I’ve found that people will create their own short URLs for the content, so you may want to actively search on your Twitter ID for possible retweet. I then add up the number of subscribers for these individuals to get a “number” regarding reach.

  • Online Reputation: Another way to determine reach is to track who is talking about you online. I wrote a bit about this in my second post – Using Social Media: Part 2 – Search Feeds. The added component is determining the reach of these online outlets. While ad equivalence can be used too, I’m not a fan of this method as I point out in my next bullet point.

• Incoming Leads, Inquiries: There are a couple of free tools such as Quantcast and Google Analytics that provide good detail about your incoming traffic. The key is to closely track the referring sources for the incoming leads and the conversion rates. For example, Twitter is quickly becoming a driver of traffic to my blog or answering a question on LinkedIn can lead to an inquiry about your services.

• Increased Links: Before you start your programs, take a quick snapshot of sites that link to your website. While a basic stat, this can have huge SEO implications for your site, which in turn, increases your visibility on search engines. Check to see if your efforts increase this basic stat.

• Conversation Index: Steve Boyd discusses the Conversation Index as a way to determine which blogs are successful. Basically, successful blogs are those have a more comments than posts. I would think that the same value can be applied to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. The more that people interact with your company and messages, one can assume the more engaged they are with you.

 

Conclusion

No matter what you do, measurement has to be an integral part of your program. Identifying the key data points relevant to your business, you can better justify these programs to your executive management. And who can argue with a program that has a low cost per lead and high conversion rate for sales?

 

Other posts in the series:

Using Social Media: Part 1 – Microblogging

Using Social Media: Part 2 – Search Feeds

Using Social Media: Part 3 – Social Networking Sites (updated link)

Using Social Media: Part 4 – Linking Strategies

Using Social Media: Part 5 – Blogger Relations

 

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Using Social Media: Part 1 – Microblogging

Update: I’ve edited this post to provide a more objective view of social media and how it can be applied.  

There has been a lot written about how to use social media and what the ROI is from using the various tool. Instead of trying to reach all audiences, I view social media as another communications avenue to expand the reach of your company’s specific audiences and customers. 

 

If I was in an agency, I would list my key objectives and list the tools that would help accomplish these objectives. Since I’m not, I did what was easiest – listing the different tools I use and bullet pointing how each helps me. See how lazy I got going in-house…=)

 

I originally was going to have one post but I realized this would be too long. As such, I will have a multi-part series focusing on one segment of separate tools. In this first installment, a look at microblogging.

 

Twittering a Twhirl

I use Twitter as my main microblogging platform, with Twhirl to manage personal and corporate accounts. Check out my previous post on Twhirl for more information. 

 

• Brand awareness: Twitter is gaining traction as viable avenue for brand awareness. I anticipate seeing more company brands using Twitter as a viable communications vehicle. Similar to a website, they will need to have a Twitter handle; otherwise, we’ll start seeing “Twittersquatting” happening.
• Customer Engagement: Twitter is another way for your company to connect and engage with customers by following the customer’s brand, a specific department or individual for updates. This is especially true if your customers tend to be early adopters of technology. I recommend responding to appropriate tweets, especially when your company is mentioned or if people are discussing a related topic.
• Industry Conversations: I recommend following key individuals, such as reporters, analysts and industry luminaries, who are relevant to your company. In this way, you can keep a pulse of topics important to them and provide insight from your company’s perspective.
• Competitive Intelligence: Consider following individuals from competitive companies. This is one way for monitoring what competitors are doing and who they may be speaking with.
• Corporate Marketing: And I purposely put this last. The first tendency is to only tweet updates about what your company is doing – new webinars, white papers, etc. While this is important, you need to balance this with tweets about industry topics that would be of interest to your followers or links to interesting articles. Remember, participate in conversations. It’s not a one-way marketing channel.  

Conclusion

While microblogging is still “new” to many marketers and public relationships professionals, it is quickly becoming a de facto need like a website. Since microblogs are bite-sized updates, a more intimate environment is created between the Twitterer and her followers.

 

A company that engages its audiences with microblogging can further increase its brand awareness, while creating a stronger community.

 

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Additional Twitter Tricks – Twhirl

Since I first started tweeting on Twitter (thanks Jeremiah!), I have learned some additional tricks for maximizing my time and presence on Twitter. My main difficulty was how to manage more than one account for person and work related tweets. That is until I found out about Twhirl.

What a time saver!

I had tried using my instant messaging tool as a way to receive and send out tweets but that wasn’t as elegant as Twhirl is. With Twhirl, I no longer have to constantly refresh my browser for updated tweets. Here are some of my favorite features (updated image 11/20/08):

Starred items are unread tweets. I can either click on tweets to indicate read or mark all tweets as read.

 

Mouse over someone and be able to send a message, direct message, mark a tweet as a favorite, or retweet something with just a click of the mouse.

 

Shorten URLs automatically. While Twitter does this too, if you go over your character limit, you can’t shorten it. With Twhirl, I have three different options to shorten a URL before inserting into a tweet

 

Twitpic – I haven’t tried this but can see this as a valuable way to share images.

 

Search is actually integrated with the solution versus having to go to a different page to find people. And while Twitter has disable people search recently, Twhirl has not.

 

If there are specific tweets I want to favorite, I can do this. Especially useful for saving links people have tweeted about.

Give Twhirl a Whirl

Overall, I am loving Twhirl as a way to manage multiple twitter accounts for personal and business purposes. One thing to keep in mind is tracking the clicks of the links posted on Twitter. Mack Collier just wrote about Tweetburner and Ellie of HubSpot commented on other ways to track the links in the comments. I would also check out Dave Fleet’s article on tips for new twitter users.

My previous posts about Twitter:

Brave New World of Media Pitching: Twitter

Twitter Experiment: Why Follow?

 

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