This ash cloud has been quite a strain, my wife and baby are still stuck in Dubai five days after they were due to fly home. The good thing is that they are staying with friends and have a great support network.

What it has shown me is how great the internet really is. Searching for information on Twitter, airline websites with the latest information (sometimes), news sites with real time video and Skype to stay in touch and more has provided real peace of mind.

Let’s talk specifically about use of social media platforms to help deal with the crisis. Twitter has become the web user’s right hand. The way the platform is set up allows a number of really useful things. You can choose to follow everything from airports to sports personalities, each wrestling with the problem of the lack of air travel in their own way. I have put together a targeted list of some of my key sources for keeping up to date. It just takes a little time to search on the site.

With a mix of journalists and news sites as well as the likes of Jake Humhprey and the Formula1 teams struggling to get home from last weekend’s race in China, there is a lot of information out there to wade through. It gives real world insight into what might work for getting the family home and is building camaraderie online.

The next key feature of Twitter is the hash tag, a really useful way to gather conversations on the same topic together. You just need to make sure that you include the right one. It is also proving a great platform for people to help each other out. The #getmehome tag has been widely used and is enabling people to share rides across Europe. I have even seen organisations and companies – one is a car share organisation called Roadshare – that are using these tags to communicate out their services to people with a specific problem; clever.

What will be interesting is to see if there is any direct increase in Twitter users as a result of this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter does see a European surge on the back of Iceland’s latest contribution to the global economy – I know, an act of God.

Yesterday, I attended a WOM UK espresso breakfast briefing with Professor of Consumer Behaviour Dr Robert East from our very own Kingston University.

Dr East and his MBA students have been researching consumer behaviour and word for mouth for 10 years.

Without serious funding they don’t have the data to prove the validity of their model conclusively, but their research indicates that the well accepted Net Promoter Score word of mouth measure for predicting growth is flawed.

NPS asks the question ‘would you recommend this brand’. Respondents are then rated 0 – 10, with 0-6 ranking as detractors, 7 and 8 passives and 9 and 10 as promoters. The NPS score is then calculated by subtracting the average of the detractors from the average of the promoters.

Dr East contends that in only measuring the volume of given word of mouth, positive versus negative without measuring received word of mouth or the impact of WOM in general, NPS misses a trick. Not to mention the fact that the people most likely to offer negative word of mouth are ex-customers who are not surveyed.

The resources of Kingston University don’t lend themselves to the level of data crunching research required to prove the validity of Dr East’s methodology. This is a shame as I think the results could be rather interesting. I’ll certainly be keeping my eyes open for a potential research partner for his department.

I’m also keen to see more thinking done around the customer experience in relation to professional services. With such a complicated purchasing relationship, can a measure as simple as NPS be effective in measuring a client/agency relationship? Can we ever hope to achieve the kind of high NPS scores enjoyed by companies such as online retailers or supermarkets that have traditionally invested heavily in how they shape their customers’ experience?

Dr East argues that there is far more positive word of mouth than negative and that negative word of mouth doesn’t necessarily have the most impact. But if I’ve taken one thing away from the talk it is that we need to be addressing past clients in addition to existing when it comes to assessing our own performance.

At the end of the day NPS may be an imperfect tool for measurement. And it may be better suited to consumer retail. But we have to start somewhere because if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Related articles

• Dr Robert East: Net Promoter Score – is there a better alternative? (slideshare.net)

On the surface, URL shortening services such as http://bit.ly are a great idea, because they can turn long, messy web addresses like this:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/support_services/article6788774.ece

Into nice tidy addresses like this:

http://bit.ly/g4ol9

This is especially useful for posting to Twitter, since it saves valuable space, but a lot of people have got into the habit of using URL shortening services all the time.

There’s an obvious problem with this from an SEO point of view. For a start, the shortened URL contains no anchor text, and secondly they do not pass on PageRank.  Since these two things are fundamental to Google’s ranking algorithm, any links to your company website that use a URL shortening service are practically worthless in terms of SEO value. They will do nothing to improve your site’s ranking for the relevant keywords.

[EDIT] As pointed out in the comments, it seems bit.ly and other URL shortening services do pass on PageRank (a few of these services do not) but the anchor text issue is still a problem, links without embedded keywords don’t provide much value.

But that’s not all. As the recent closure of http://tr.im has illustrated, sometimes URL shortening services go out of business and that means that all those millions of links on the internet which use that service will suddenly stop working.

So the long and short of it is: for online PR purposes URL shortening services are best avoided where possible, but sometimes they’re necessary, like on Twitter.

Here’s the really interesting bit

But there’s more to this story. They may have certain disadvantages and risks, but as long as Twitter is going strong, it’s fairly certain that bit.ly will be doing quite nicely too (did somebody say buyout?) and that creates an interesting situation.

Twitter is a hotbed of viral activity, with news and trends being retweeted backwards and forwards, spreading across the web faster than ever before. Given that bit.ly is rapidly becoming the de-facto URL shortening service, it is an amazing and unprecedented position in that it has access to a live, detailed view of these trends as they are developing.

Before anybody else knows what’s making an impact on the web on any given day, the people who run bit.ly will already have a clear picture of what people are looking at, what is spreading around the web, and how it’s spreading. If they’re smart, they will already be analysing that in all sorts of clever and interesting ways to figure out how they can extract value from it.

For most web users, bit.ly is just a handy way to make unwieldy URLs a bit more manageable, but for businesses it’s a goldmine of up to the minute data on consumer trends and behaviour, on an amazing scale. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see bit.ly selling customised dashboards to provide businesses with snapshots of that data in the future.

Twitter’s business model may still be a bit hazy, but it’s certainly created fertile ground for bit.ly to develop into what could be one of the most powerful and valuable business tools on the web.

[UPDATE] It seems tr.im has decided to stick around after all – although the service’s owners have a few things to say about the relationship between Twitter and bit.ly

Just gave this presentation at the Online Marketing Show. Not sure it makes a lot of sense without the banter over the top, but I thought I would share.

The slides really fall into four categories:

1. How brands are performing in social media
2. The changing landscape online
3. How you can trigger conversations by tapping into passions and interests and creating social currency
4. How Sony BRAVIA used this model to inspire postive discussion, raise search engine visibility and drive website visits

We are launching research exclusively at the Online Marketing show this week. The study looks at the Interbrand top 100 global brands, to reveal which brands have the largest share of voice and the most positive conversations.

The report measures brand mentions across blogs, social networks, video and photo sharing sites, social bookmarking and news sites, to provide a snapshot of brand share of voice. It also details sentiment (positive and negative conversation) in social network groups. A section of social media that is increasingly being adopted by consumers in order to discuss brands.

Come and visit us on stand V6 at the business design centre (26^th and 27^th June) and you can get your free report, along with a whole range of guides and tips (a social media toolbox).

I am speaking at the workshop too, at 1pm on the 27^th – worth a visit if you prefer an explanation along with case studies on how to engage with social media.

Drop me an email if you want to meet up during the show.

Now off to frantically look for a four-gang adapter so I can power up my laptop at the show.

We’re exhibiting at the Online Marketing Show this week.

The event will be good. We went last year and found ourselves constantly in the throng of online marketers – discussing Online PR till we were hoarse. Last year, visitors wanted to know what online PR was and how it integrated with online marketing and traditional PR activity.

This year, it is already clear that they want to know how they can get involved with social media. I am quite ebullient at the prospect of talking to companies that are ready to take the plunge into the online conversation

We are managing the press office for the show, and also have our own stand (V6). We will be running an online PR clinic for anyone with social media questions they need answering so do come and say hello.

We are giving away a social media toolbox full of case studies, tips and our social media research (launching at the event). Do visit and pick up one up.

Technorati Tags: Online Marketing Show, social media, online PR

 I am speaking this week at the IAB’s seminar, demystifying online PR. It is interesting that in their blurb on the seminar they say…

Demystifying Online PR - Online PR has changed the roles of creative and PR agencies in a client’s communication strategies. This seminar is aimed at both – showing how you can combine an understanding of online as a powerful marketing channel as well as an appreciation of traditional public relations best practice.  With experts from the industry this event will provide a thorough introduction to the subject, share key case studies and illustrate how you can use online communities to spread your marketing message, monitor online commentary on a brand and distribute press materials online for the best results. 

The idea that online PR is another marketing channel is a common mistake. And completely forgivable. We all want to fit online PR in a box: to understand how it integrates with our other marketing and PR efforts. So it is easy to see why it has been billed this way.

But online PR and social media relations is unique. Why? Because it is the only medium in which your brand can be ‘marketed’ without you!

OK, maybe not marketed. But it is the only space where your advocates will shout and your detractors will shout louder! To approach the discipline with the intention of spreading a marketing message is to misunderstand the huge shift in brand ownership online.

It requires marketers to change their mindset completely. I often get asked to justify budgets against recognised online marketing ROI. Online agencies and brands want to push all online activity together and create metrics that work across the board. They want to compare online PR campaigns with ad campaigns, affiliate marketing, SEM.

But it doesn’t work that way. There are no comparisons for reputation in the blogosphere. No way to benchmark the feedback and loyalty you engender by being active in communities.  

Yes, online PR will drive traffic to your site, it will increase your visibility, done right it can also generate advocacy and positive sentiment. But it is a much more complex discourse. It requires greater integration with a company’s ethos, transparency, adaptability, and basically a change in marketing mindset, from pushing messages to starting dialogue.  

Technorati Tags: Online PR, social media, online marketing, blogosphere

Digital marketing agencies are increasingly looking to tap into the conversation on social media. Those that have expanded beyond the marketing push are reaping the rewards and finding that buzz around online campaigns can dramatically shift perceptions, drive visitors and enhance objectives.

I am on a panel at the next BIMA Dialogue on the 24th May. Matt Morison of RMM chairs the panel discussion called, ‘Igniting buzz with social media relations and online PR’. I shall be sat alongside Mark Rogers at Market Sentinel and Dan Light at Picture Production Company.

They both have some amazing case studies to example. Mark’s are Avis and Intuit and Dan will show he engaged with bloggers for the Warner Bros release, 300. I am intrigued to see how he organised an advance preview screening of the movie for an audience of UK bloggers using PPC’s island on Second Life.

Me, well I shall be outlining the success of the Sony BRAVIA ‘Paint’ campaign that we managed last year. Already pretty full, I understand there are a few places left. So feel free to book a place on the BIMA website.

Technorati Tags: Digital marketing, social media, buzz, Market Sentinel, Second Life, Sony BRAVIA