While we are busy racking up followers, friends or connections, getting a re-tweet or comment here or there, how much do we analyse the effectiveness of our social media output?

Probably for many it is based on just that: amassing a large number of followers, with some nods towards interaction.  How else can you do it?

One free tool available on the Internet is Klout.

Simple and easy to sign-up with and use, it assesses the power of an individuals or company’s social media through algorithms that give feedback on three key elements:

How many people you influence (True Reach)

How much you influence them (Amplification)

How influential they are (Network Score)

If we take Twitter (there are other social media that can be analysed such as LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook) I have a Klout score of 37.88 out of a possible 100, up from 34.65 a few days ago.

My true reach is 286 (rather than the nearly 800 followers I have) although I am not sure if the lists I am noted on are included, there are about 50 and range from one follower to several hundred.  It is an important point as I have more followers on lists than the almost 800 cited.

Network influence is 41 and and amplification stands at 14.

I am also influential about “lawyers, journalism and Manchester.”

I thought I saw “Alan Carr” the other day in that list, but  it must have been my imagination.

It is quite fluid system, scores can go up and down.  When I looked at “I Love Manchester’s” scores, as a test, it went up straight after the riots when many wanted to show support for the city – so first test passed.

With a claim of over 85 million Twitter accounts assessed, you are free to compare scores, quite impressive as the majority of accounts are not signed-up to Klout.

I will mention two more features.

The first is a grid, reminiscent of a marketing or business matrix.  This is an account’s “Klout style,” mine is between “casual and listening” and “focused and consistent.”  As with the other indicators comparisons with friends or rivals accounts can be made.

It adds: “You actively engage in the social web, constantly trying out new ways to interact and network. You’re exploring the ecosystem and making it work for you. Your level of activity and engagement shows that you “get it,” we predict you’ll be moving up.”

I am getting falshbacks to school reports.

The other is “Klout perks.”  If you are an influential social media operative you can try or be given gifts,  with the aim of promoting the brand – being influential on journalists and lawyers might not be helpful in this regard, but Manchester might be.

So for any PR that has to justify social media or simply for interested parties who want the gratification that their hours of tweeting are changing the world, it is a fun, easy and perhaps a useful tool.

PR agencies sometimes don’t deliver – that is not big news, is it?

There are professionals and organisations that do not measure up in all sectors, perhaps over-selling to ensure the contract is theirs and then disappointing then when tested.

There are real issues concerning the reputation of PR agencies and when I saw this thread on LinkedIn I felt I had to answer.

Here are three comments I think show real misunderstanding – such views need to be challenged.

“The average agency client relationship lasts just 18 months because 99% of agency pitches are dishonest….sounds like PR firms need a lesson in PR!”

Kathy Towner, owner Win Communications

Well if I am honest that means statistically every other PR agency in Manchester and the North West is not – that doesn’t seem quite right.

But let me argue the real point and not the vitriolic bit, which might come from a bad experience and requires a venting of anger.

“Client relationships last 18 months.”

I am not sure where this is sourced and whether it is correct but let’s say it is.

Client relationships can end because a client suffers from a critical cash flow because of tax issues, loss of one of their key clients or the economic conditions.

Client relationships can also end because of the following reasons (I have listed 10 possibles):

• New marketing director wants his or her own agency brought in.
• The client feels a new agency will be extra keen, this is a perception that does not always ring true.
• The PR resource is brought in-house.
• Some clients only want a project with specified aims and time period.
• Sometimes after a couple of years the original aims of the client have been achieved or the account has been exhausted; some clients have a restricted range of subjects and news.
• The client is very busy and feels they do not need a PR agency anymore.
• The client has become very busy and does not have the time to devote to handling the agency and so has decided to put things on hold
• The client has grown or has changed and believes a new agency with specific experience or skills is needed.
• The client has unrealistic expectations and are disappointed when they are not filled.
• The agency has had enough of the lack of co-operation of the client; sometimes clients might not pay on time or at all.  (I worked for an agency where the client refused to pay and said the work was all done for free to curry favour despite contracts and e-mail clearly stating the work had been commissioned.  Apparently they had done this to a number of suppliers).

I have one client that I have worked with for two years and they put things on hold  in April for reasons that were no-one’s fault.  I met them today and they want me to take up the communication reigns again; I am starting work with them tomorrow.

“I’ve always found retainers to be self defeating in that they repeatedly prompt the same question: “what am I getting for this?” My response always has been to offer retainer, hourly rate and “per project” arrangements and let clients decide which they prefer.”

Bill Brody Professor Emeritus at the University of Memphis

Retainers make sense for an agency and client:

• Retainers allow an agency to invest time in researching opportunities.  It allows an agency to act on an opportunity; if you had to wait for an affirmative every time something came up it would be an impractical relationship.
• Retainers enable agencies to plan financially – retainers enable clients to plan financially.
• Retainers give agencies a robust model to work around.
• Retainers show the agency that the clients are committed to the relationship – this is reciprocated by any agency worth hiring.

If you want to offer a range of arrangements then do so.  But if you try and bend to all demands and requirements it is going to be more complicated than it need to be.

“We had two disappointing experiences with PR firms. How can you justify the expense of hours worked if at the end of it you can’t correlate any tangible improvement in business, customers, profits, image, or anything?”

Todd Lempicke

OptimalResume.com

It is not always easy to measure PR.  I tell that to all prospects.  I try to give a realistic opinion about possible results and let clients make a call based on sensible estimations.

• Clients – Let me say that some clients do not ask where new business has come from, so how can you measure it?  What if a client’s website loses a prospect or the way they are handled on the phone? mmmmmmm
• Profits – Doesn’t this mainly depend on variables that aren’t anything to do with PR such as costs of suppliers, wages, the economy, competition etc?
• Image – not easy to measure.
• Anything – PR works on many levels and it has a positive affect on many elements of a company.  If you agency does not deliver at all, either you have a really awful agency and you really need to be more careful in your hiring process or perhaps handle your agency better.

I was speaking to a client I worked for for over two years and whose contract finished in the summer.  He told me last Friday that his agency had got many inquiries, as much as a quarter, from a source he wasn’t sure of.  He supposed, as all his inquiries came from referrals, that this must be PR.  As his agency was small then, he told me PR was an important ingredient in its growth.  But there was no system in place to measure the effect.

I don’t mean this to be a them against us piece: it is not.  All I am saying is that it can be more complicated that is stated by the above statements.

When PR agencies peform and work well with clients the results can make companies.

On Saturday I secured an in-depth interview for Jane Pye from headhunting and executive recruitment practice Ashley Hoyle.

But the perennial PR question that comes up is: “What is the value of such coverage?”

The Guardian boasts:

• A circulation of near 350,000
• A readership of 1.2m
• A very high percentage of ABC1s – not sure what I come under, if indeed I do register as an ABC.  I could be a “q” or “r” if such demarcations exist.

Advertising rates hover around the £50 per square cm, but can go as high as £90.

I would assume that to advertise on a full page is about £20,000 – £25,000, perhaps.

Then as a PR I could argue that editorial is much more valuable than advertising, so times by….

But then again what really counts is how it raises and improves the profile of Ashley Hoyle – very hard to determine.

And then there is the bottom line question: “Did the client get any inquiries or did it make there job easier when approaching a candidate?”

Then, I pitch, show my work and get asked, after a “very impressive” response:  “What was the benefit to the client?”

Thanks to Leo Benedictus for a great article though – intelligent and witty.

The Ross / Brand incident had a definite upside for Georgina Baillie, the burlesque dancer and focus of the “prank” phone calls – it gathered £2.4 million of equivalent advertising space according to reputation monitoring firm Ebiquity Newslive.

I must get them to leave obscene messages on my answer phone.  As long as the BBC handles the situation slowly and half-hearted way I will be up there with Clifford and Freud.

Tom Cheesewright of The Lever expresses an outraged stance on a recent talk given by a non-marketer on how easy it is to do.  Why use those useless “marketers” when it is such as doddle?

The originator of such a view is a finance professional.

I know that marketers and finance people are often of different temperaments, but
surely saying another discipline is easy has its risks.

I could do my own accounts, contact finance companies about pensions myself, investigate shares.  But I would rather have a good professional to help me.

It is not that someone cannot have success doing PR or marketing, but hopefully the professional will be better versed, more efficient and effective over the medium and long term, even if a stater has an initial PR coup.

If they are not, change your supplier.

I have been given the opportunity to talk about PR on Salford City Radio 94.4 FM today at 2-3pm. Most of the hour is a selection of my tunes based on my superlative taste – no irony intended.

But what are the benefits and how do you measure them?

Well there is RAJAR, which stands for Radio Joint Audience Research Limited. This produces research that shows reach, share of possible reach, average listening time etc.

But being surveyed is not cheap, it can run into the thousands. So many local stations will be a mystery concerning their success.

I was told that previous guests had gained new business as a result of their appearance, including a toast master that secured two new bookings. Perhaps the best measure.

Anyway whatever the result, it is worth going through the process to see what clients go through as I dismissively tell them not to be nervous.

Thanks to Jon Monks of Chapel Street Business Group for settling my nerves and setting up the opportunity.

Today’s Manchester Evening News is dominated by Reuben Singh – at one time the world’s youngest millionaire and a fraud.

Reuben had no business acumen and by all accounts he was a con man. His Miss Attitude chain was sold for £5.

One way he did this was to use the media to add weight to the illusion of being a business hero. Photo opportunities with Tony Blair and countless interviews.

He even used the mass of positive coverage in the press to convince the Royal Bank of Scotland to give him a rather substantial loan in the region of a million pounds.

One thing Reuben has learnt is that the media can be like fire: a fantastic range of benefits if you use it well, but cross them and you get burnt. In the Manchester Evening News there are nearly 3 pages devoted to unraveling Reuben’s business history.

PR is constantly having to justify itself and consequently is under pressure to deliver or rather prove a return. That is how it should be, to some extent, but it can be a difficult ask and the pressure is there to keep clients and to keep marketing money in the PR pot.

I came across one ridiculous claim by an associate of a PR agency that because a client was mentioned in a national that the entire page counted or that is how it seemingly worked. The estimate was the value of the page was over £150,000. However, the venue, which paid the PR money, was only to my perception mentioned in a line; the rest were images but nothing that gave the location away, being too close up. The celebrities used got £150,000 worth of value, if anyone. Did the client buy the PR patter?

Rick from Brazen PR estimates the value of editorial at 3:1 (for newspapers) or 4:1 (for magazines) if I remember rightly. This seems more reasonable.

Of course there is no definitive answer. However, I have been thinking that the value is what the client sees and what advertising value he would swap the PR for could be an accurate measure (although not without flaws).

Let me explain. I achieve coverage worth £10,000 (in a national) if paid for from an advertising budget. The editorial value is calculated at say £50,000.

Would the client accept £50,000 worth of advertising instead of my editorial achieved, after all editorial is more valuable?

How about £40,000 of advertising? Less? £25,000? Yes.

Then, surely the editorial in reality is worth that much as that is how much the client would pay for or swap it for.

Of course this is not perfect, but inflation of perceived value is not either.