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Evaluating the media: July 2006

PR geekiness - the tools & techniques to gain insights from PR exposure

Friday, July 28, 2006

Heated-up over Diploma

It has become somewhat conspicuous the absence of recent entries on this blog - for which I apologise.

Of course, there are reasons for everything, and mine involves being tied-up with the project element of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Diploma. ‘Tied-up’ is quite a good way of describing it, or to be more appropriate ‘being strangled by’. Indeed, it is only 6000 words and when I chose my area of study it looked restricted enough not to get too complicated.

But then I stumbled across Jim Macnamara's and Kimberley Neuendorf‘s research on media content analysis and my innocence was lost! The thing is looking to be about half written with the next step to send out a questionnaire, which will form my primary research. When information becomes available I will update this blog with relevant findings.

Monday, July 10, 2006

'EAV a heart

Paul Miller’s passionate argument about the eradication of EAV’s featured in PR Business (6th July 2006) offered a valuable insight into the dangers of adopting this measure. In so much of what he said I found myself in unstinting agreement with and in an ideal world we would have closed the book and moved on a decade ago.

But that is not the case and public relations sits alongside advertising within marketing departments. In the same way that people are said not to be able to resist chewing a Fruit Pastel (never my favourite), so I believe many in public relations will not be able to resist the temptation of dipping into that extensive range of frequently updated advertising value data to justify themselves.

I don’t necessarily support their use, but I am not in denial about their application. In a single measure, EAV’s can factor in the number of times something has been featured, the space on page it accounts for and an audited value for the media outlet. In the years I have been involved in this industry I have not found a methodology so universally encompassing. In many ways it is a shame they are so poorly applied and misinterpreted. Rather than fight their use, maybe we should be thinking about promoting a universal methodology and dataset, supported by defendable research?

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Identifying the influencers

It is great to see so much attention being paid to measurement of the Internet. In many respects life was much easier before multiple niche news sites, blogs and the rest blurred the channels of communication to the point where the most accurate form of internet measurement is referred to as ‘buzz’.

This barometer of Internet activity seeks (in a semi-scientific way) to isolate and highlight the key influencers, motive and message relevant to an industry sector, organisation or brand.

Take a step back… before the Internet finding out who the key influencers were in the media was relatively simple. This is changing and with more people aged under 25 sourcing their news online, as opposed to from the traditional press (source: Carnegie Foundation, 2005) this trend will continue to the point where we could start to regard the newspapers as a non-core source of coverage.