Following the news that Durrants, Metrica and Gorkana have joined forces to provide the PR industry with a best of breed PR planning, media monitoring and PR evaluation platform Metrica is looking for an Account Director to join our succesful team. 

As an Account Director you will be working on an enviable list of global household names and taking the lead on a portfolio of clients. You will also be responsible for:

• Growing the client portfolio revenue
• Provide guidance and advice to Account Managers and your account team
• Attending and running senior management meetings and contributing appropriate strategies to achieve the desired business direction
• Provide support on process management and quality control
• Motivate and develop individuals and take an active role in the internal training and development programme
• Attend PR events for networking purposes
• Present at industry events where appropriate

Exciting times are ahead for Gorkana, Durrants and Metrica as we continue to expand our business with our passion for PR Measurement, media analysis and how it all fits into the PR planning and implementation cycle.  If you always strive for brilliance, are excited about change and want to enjoy your business career then you may be the right candidate.   

Tess Donnelly, HR Manager.

How many colleagues do you count as friends on Facebook? I’m friends with quite a few of Metrica PR Measurement staffers – at least 15 at last count, including three Directors, one Senior Account Manager and two Managers. So, should I be watching my words when I update my status or post on other walls?

There are plenty of horror stories about employees losing their jobs following “inappropriate” activity on social networking sites, such as being caught using Facebook when supposedly ill or even for calling work “boring” in a status update. A recent survey conducted by Deloitte found that 60% of business executives believe they have the right to know how their employees portray themselves and their organisations on social networking sites. Unsurprisingly, employees disagree, with more than half of workers saying their social networking pages should not be their employer’s concern.

According to the Deloitte survey, one-third of employees don’t consider what their boss or customers might think before they post material online. I myself am one of the 33%, as it never occurs to me to vet what I say before I update my status. However, I do have the benefit of 1) liking my job and therefore being unlikely to complain about it in general, not just on Facebook or Twitter and 2) reserving my status updates for important stories, such as “Ria went to the UK premiere of Star Trek last night”. Yet, if I ever did want to complain about, is it not my right to do so on my personal Facebook page, no matter who I’m friends with?

Of course, if I ever did discuss my company negatively, it’s not just employers or clients who could be affected. If third parties can see “I hate Company X” in status updates, opinions can be affected, potential new business can be compromised and/or reputations can be damaged. For PR professionals, what kind of systems are put into place – is it the remit of the PR team or the HR team to monitor what staff are saying? If, indeed, this should be monitored in the first place?

The Swedish government has recently released research that seems to show that their recent anti-piracy laws have been responsible for an incredible 33% drop in internet traffic in the country.  On the day the new laws came into effect, data traffic in and out of the country fell from an average of 120 Gbps to 80 Gbps. 

Before the media content owners start celebrating too hard however, there are of course a few caveats.  First, the research doesn't seem to be looking to see if there are any other factors that may have contributed to the drop so it may be flawed.  It's also likely that it wont be long before the file sharing community apply work arounds and the illicit traffic starts to grow again. 

The threat of criminalisation to file sharers and media content pirates in general has long been shown not to work that well. For one thing, there are too many people doing it to make the chances of being caught seem very realistic.  But it's also a problem with the stick approach rather than the carrot. Previous attempts at solving the problem have been focussed around guilt and dire warnings of the consequences of theft as demonstrated here:

The Society for New Communications has issued an executive summary of a forthcoming study, the "ROI of Press Releases."   The study results state the obvious -- the terrain and tactics of press release distribution have changed.  But some of the legacy requirements remain.

PR professionals stick with their traditional goals of announcing news and increasing thought leadership.  Marketers view SEO and reaching consumers as the most important tactics in this case.  Small business owners position online press releases as business development tools and potential profit centres. 

What struck me most about the survey results was the lack of a clear winner in criteria for measuring the success of online press releases… regardless of your profession. As seen by the clustering of the survey responses (multiple selections allowed), those who rely on PR remain unclear about the best metrics: 

• Online press release republished on websites (79.6%)
• # times online press release viewed online (76.8%)
• Articles generated from the online press release (75.4%)
• Media interview requests (74.2%)
• Traffic to organization’s website (~73%)

What do these results say to me?  First, more must be done to prove the value of an online PR function.  Second, traditional press release success criteria, such as distribution and exposure, remain the default metrics for PR success, whether online or offline.  What this study fails to engage with (and the study authors note this limitation) is that we need to move to more robust models of capturing larger indicators of success, such as product sales from online articles and related behavioural shifts that result from online and offline PR).    

Granted, it is early days in developing metrics for an emerging media relations tool.  However, PR metrics must not only measure reaching the media but reaching the public directly.  Perhaps charities, such as one mentioned in a recent Metrica blog post, hold the key to proposing commercial angle metrics structure to how best to measure the success of our evaluation criteria.