Social Media

AHA Blog Post ImageThere has been a great deal of discussion regarding a Pew Internet Study that says that young people are moving away from blogging and are more focused on using Facebook and Twitter.



The New York Times has an interesting piece on it as well.



We have had an interesting discussion on this study and the response it has received here in our Vancouver PR agency. While the report itself does show that young people prefer the fast, short updates provided by Facebook and Twitter – it appears to me that we are missing some context here. While Facebook and Twitter provide an opportunity for quick updates and fast outreach, often the updates link to an article, photos or a blog that goes deeper into the topic or idea.

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Communicators face a challenge when it comes to showing results. This is a long-standing challenge in PR. Many of the “standard” measurements really aren’t of value, but somehow along the way – they became what we did.

Counting clippings used to be one way of measurement. It showed how much ink, airtime or online coverage you generated. Even when you dig deeper and review key messages, placement, tone and style, images and other factors, you still aren’t getting the whole picture. What else happened that day? Were there world events that distracted people from paying attention? What context was the coverage in?

There is so much more to measuring the effectiveness of a PR initiative.

Today, we see the world differently. We talk about “influencers” and what they mean. We track how we measure influence as well as looking at the hard and fast facts of which media outlet or blogger mentioned our organization, product, service or event. There may be more depth in how we measure, but it’s important to keep it in context and to understand the bigger picture. What was the overall objective of the campaign? Where were you before you started – do you have a measurement of that? Did you want to move individuals or groups to action, to change behaviors, to inform and educate? It is more complicated than just looking at how many followers you have on Twitter or how many people visited your website.

Katie Delahaye Paine has an excellent blog post on this topic that’s worth a read.

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Years ago I was working at Maclean’s magazine and writing primarily for The People Page. The items on the page were short – about a paragraph in length and each short piece needed a strong headline.

I loved writing for The People Page. First off, it was the most-read page in the magazine and I liked the challenge of putting interesting, entertaining and informative stories into 100 words or less. And I love writing headlines. It’s not as easy as you think to be smart and witty in five words and describe the article.

Fast forward to now. Social media demands short, snappy and interesting pieces. All those late nights of struggling to turn a two-hour interview into a 100 words is paying off for our clients. I understand not only how to keep it short; I know why it’s important. As communicators, we only have seconds to capture someone’s attention and we’re competing with a lot of “stuff” for that attention. Knowing your audience is key, understanding what your objectives are is important and seeing the world in one-sentence connections is valuable.

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