Media Monitoring News this week focuses on the topic of how to handle bad publicity, including how to manage an ambush media interview. This issue also includes an amusing article on how donuts explain social media. In addition to articles on media monitoring, measurement and analysis, there are also tips for writing a great case study and for finding travel bargains in social media.

Tweets as Poll Data? Be Careful

Wall Street Journal

Tweets as Poll Data? Be Careful issues a warning on the validity of social media measurement. Focusing on the drawbacks of measuring public opinion and sentiment through social media analysis, it’s a worthwhile counterpoint to the many articles advocating quantitative measurement of Twitter and other social media. Our conclusion: monitoring social media is crucial; the value of aggregated sentiment analysis is still questionable.

How Measuring PR Helps You Triumph Over Competitors

Bulldog Reporter

Written by Kristin Jones, CEO of the media measurement service Wallop! OnDemand, How Measuring PR Helps You Triumph Over Competitors makes the case for measuring not just your own media exposure, but also that of competitors in order to better understand your PR performance and to identify weaknesses in your program compared to competitors.

7 PR Lessons Komen Didn’t Know It Was Giving You

Waxing Unlyrical

In last week’s issue of Media Monitoring News, we cited a number of articles on the Susan G. Komen Kerfuffle — thinking that would be the last of it here. But 7 PR Lessons Komen Didn’t Know It was Giving You by Shonali Burke uses the Komen incident to punctuate seven crucial points about crises management. The article also includes links to other worthwhile analyses of the Komen incident.

Managing Negative Comments in Social Media

Waxing Unlyrical

Shonali Burke offers straightforward advice for Managing Negative Comments in Social Media. Eventually, almost every organization will be “hit” in social media. Better to be prepared on response strategies and techniques — and consult this template in most any crisis. Also, take a look at the highly-personalized article on reputation management entitled How to Respond When the Internet Calls You Names which appeared on Poynter, the blog for journalists.

How to Survive an Ambush Media Interview

Mr. Media Training

Just wondering: has any corporate executive ever said to an ambush interviewer something like this with a nice friendly smile: “Look, stop acting like a jerk and start acting like a professional. Call for an appointment and I’ll be glad to talk with you.” If anyone ever did, you’ll probably never see it on TV news. How to Survive an Ambush Media Interview offers solid tips on what NOT to do (which is exactly what most every ambush-ee does) and how to gain the advantage over the ambusher. There’s also a Part II of How to Survive an Ambush Media Interview. And Mr. Media Training has an interesting case study entitled My Rape Charge Was Dropped. Now What?, on ways to reclaim your good name after wrongful publicity.

How Americans Are Spending Their Media Time…and Money

Nielsen

Americans spend more than 33 hours per week watching video across the screens, according to the latest Nielsen Cross-Platform Report. But how they’re consuming content – traditional TV and otherwise – is changing. Demonstrating that consumers are increasingly making Internet connectivity a priority, 75.3 percent pay for broadband Internet (up from 70.9% last year); 90.4 percent pay for cable, telephone company-provided TV or satellite. Homes with both paid TV and broadband increased 5.5 percent since last year. Changes are afoot, however, as consumers seek out the entertainment option that makes the most sense for them.

8 Tips for Writing a Great Case Study

Kissmetrics

If you’re in PR, you’ll almost certainly be called on the write a case study. 8 Tips for Writing a Great Case Study will help you do it well. Best tip: don’t think just “print”. Instead, create multiple versions for different types of media.

51 Ideas for Blog Posts

Business 2 Community

If you’ve ever been stumped when sitting down to write a blog post (haven’t we all?), 51 Ideas for Blog Posts can serve as an idea-generator.

How to Guarantee Your Press Releases Will Be Completely Ignored

CommPro.biz

How to Guarantee Your Press Releases Will Be Completely Ignored is a litany of all too commonplace errors in development and distribution of news releases. Ignoring the rules invites failure.

Top 100 Influencers in Social Media

Social Technology Review

Yet another selection of Top 100 Influencers in Social Media, this one with “The White House” at #100. In reviewing the list, you’ll be struck by how few mainstream journalists and business leaders make the list, comprised mostly of individuals who made their reputation largely through opinionated blogging.

5 Essential Spreadsheets for Social Media Analytics

Mashable

If you’re in search of free, time-efficient methods for measuring social media, 5 Essential Spreadsheets for Social Media Analytics points you to ready-made analysis tools to measure Twitter and Facebook. Yes, they’re free and they’re helpful, but they’re not integrated and the metrics are limited. They are certainly better than no media measurement at all, but far less valuable than most any subscription social media analysis service.

What Others Like (and Dislike) about Your Tweets

Marketing Profs

Based on an extensive survey by Carnegie Mellon University, What Others Like (and Dislike) About Your Tweets includes concrete guidance on preferred types of Tweets. What’s disliked: Tweets that were part of someone else’s conversation, or updates around a current mood or activity. What’s liked: Tweets that included questions to followers, information sharing, and self-promotion (such as links to content the writer had created). Repeat: No one gives a tweet what you’re eating…or feeling.

The State of Social Media Marketing

Awareness Networks

It’s a white paper and it’s free, but you have to register to get a copy of The State of Social Media Marketing, based on interviews of 320 marketers from multiple industries with varying levels of social media experience. Some key points:

• Executives and senior managers expect traction in three key areas — ROI, integration of social with lead generation and sales, and expansion of social presence and reach.
• Though social marketers do not have the necessary resources to execute initiatives successfully, they must meet expectations of senior management who demand tangible business value.
• Companies experienced in social marketing are moving beyond growing social presence and reach. Their focus is shifting to active social media management for increased lead generation and sales.
• Less-experienced marketers follow visionary peers, adopting established practices as they move along the maturity continuum.

Social Media Explained Through Donuts

Todd M. Post

Social Media Explained Through Donuts is amusing — and startling accurate in characterizing the positioning of each of the social media networks through short posts about donuts.

10 Immutable Laws of SEO

Evergreen Search

Anyone responsible for a Web site should be competent in search engine optimization to generate traffic. If you understand and apply the 10 Immutable Laws of SEO, you won’t need an overpriced SEO consulting service and your ranking in the search engines will almost certainly rise.

Fixing the Reputations of Reputation Managers

Business Week

Before hiring a reputation management service to fix your organization’s online reputation, check out the online reputation of the reputation manager advises Fixing the Reputations of Reputation Managers. Tha’s sound advice for whenever you do any hiring of employees, consultants, or business services.

5 Ways to Find the Best Travel Deals Using Social Media

Mashable

In our effort to expand our newsletter content to self-help articles for PR and marketing professionals, we offer 5 Ways to Find the Best Travel Deals Using Social Media. Even the most seasoned business travelers are likely to find some helpful tips to save bucks.

The topics for this issue of Media Monitoring News cover a wide range of issues and functions in PR and marketing: media monitoring, reputation management, media pitching, digital marketing in social media, media measurement, and more.

A Glimpse of Murdock Unbound

New York Times

Written by the seasoned business columnist David Carr, A Glimpse of Murdock Unbound is remarkable on a number of levels. In the introduction to the main part of the story, Carr bluntly derides the efforts of corporate “communications operatives”. Then, the columnist for the liberal Times praises how the ultra-conservative Rupert Murdock, CEO of NewsCorp, utilizes Twitter to broadcast his opinions. And, finally, Carr portrays Twitter as a valuable, untapped resource for CEO communications that cuts through the clutter of corporate spokespersons. An absolute must-read by everyone employed in corporate communications.

Tools to Monitor Online Reputation Across Different Languages

Search Engine Watch

With so much information freely available, it’s never been harder to monitor exactly who is saying what about your business. It can only take one negative article or blog post to seriously undermine customers’ trust. Tools to Monitor Online Reputation Across Different Languages suggests using Google Alerts and other search engines to monitor corporate reputation in different languages. This often requires the time-consuming process of entering different query terms for each language — and then saving the results. Sponsor plug: Utilizing a worldwide monitoring service such as CyberAlert 5.0 News Monitoring is almost always a more comprehensive, time-efficient and cost-effective media monitoring solution than doing it yourself if you count the cost of staff time.

Stop Avoiding Video for PR Purposes

CommPro.Biz

NYU’s Don Bates makes a strong case for utilizing online video as a PR tool in Stop Avoiding Video for PR Purposes. “Video should be top-of-mind when you plan client programs, prepare business proposals, and devise strategies and tactics for reaching target audiences,” he says. Agreed. “The biggest reason, he says, “is we all like it. If we have a choice between video and text when we visit websites, we will look at the video first and the text second (if at all).” With that, we disagree. And, as a former producer of videos for medical education, we’ll share our pet peeve about online videos: in far too many online videos, the visuals add little or nothing to the story. Watching a video that is simply a “talking head” takes far longer than reading text, is more difficult to understand (especially for individuals who learn best through their eyes and not their ears — which is most of us), and is impossible to scan. Text, then, is the preferred format if the visuals are not integral to telling the story. For more on use of online videos in marketing and PR, take a look at Creating Compelling Video Content on the Bulletproof Blog from Levick Strategic Communications. Bottom line: If you’re going to use video, make certain you have interesting visuals to carry the story. If not, stick with powerful words in text.

The 11 Things that Journalists Consider Newsworthy

Mr. Media Training

Pitching for a placement? There’s often a big difference between what your company (or client) may consider important and what a journalist considers newsworthy. The 11 Things that Journalists Consider Newsworthy provides a framework of newsworthiness with which to pitch stories. Hint: to increase pitching success, try to use at least one of the 11 things in your pitches.

26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Posts

Social Media Examiner

The A to Z 26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Posts offers superb guidance on how to create a successful blog — from selecting a platform, to developing a content strategy, to writing headlines and formatting content, to blog promotion, and even measuring results. It’s quite a thorough look at what it takes to create and maintain a successful blog — either personal or corporate.

13 Social Platforms Your Small Business Should Consider Using

Business 2 Community

As if you didn’t have enough to do in maintaining your Twitter and Facebook accounts, 13 Social Platforms Your Small Business Should Consider Using examines other social media services that can be used to deliver customers and sales. When your time is the gating factor (as it often is), it’s best to concentrate on the “big boys”.

Who Are the Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers?

Forbes

Using a semi-scientific metric, Haydn Shaughnessy identifies Who Are the Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers. Media Monitoring News has cited most of them over the past year and includes the crème de la crème in the CyberAlert Blog List — thereby validating the selections, if not the methodology.

Automated vs. Human Analysis

The Social Analyst

The battle rages in media analysis circles. Which is better: automated or human analysis? Often, an individual’s opinion depends on which side of the fence he or she works. Human analysts opine for, well, human analysis. Executives of text analytics software push their solutions. Automated vs. Human Analysis sometimes confuses “monitoring” (the gathering of content) with “measurement” and “analysis”, the evaluation of the gathered content. The author of this article opts for human analysis. (Guess what type of company he works for!) “There are aspects of monitoring where machines cannot completely replace the quality of a smart, well trained, and careful human analyst, and those aspects also happen to be the most important,” he contends. Automated sentiment, he say, is less accurate than flipping a coin — a harsh assessment that text analysis companies would heartily dispute.

In Paterno Death Apology, a Lesson for CEOs

MSNBC

A kid who edits a student-run website at Penn State University showed exactly how you’re supposed to apologize for a terrible mistake. The site reported the death of Joe Paterno before his actual death. The story was picked up by CBS sports and spread nationally. The editor wrote an apology that is close to ideal: straightforward, sincere, heartfelt, humble, taking responsibility, asking for forgiveness and taking action. In Paterno Death Apology, a Lesson for CEOs includes the entire word-for-word apology. Every PR pro needs to read it, learn from it and maybe even save it for reference when that terrible PR day comes.

8 Things You Should Think About When Dealing with Several Crises at Once

Johnston Wells

The sinking of the Costa Concordia embodies the epitome of crises management. After detailing the multiple crises embedded in the single incident, Gwin Johnston delineates 8 Things You Should Think About When Dealing with Several Crises at Once.

How Chasing Your Metrics Has You Chasing Your Tail

Destination CRM

Measuring marketing or PR performance can put you into a maze of charts and graphs. Most marketing and PR professionals are creative types, not bean counters. So the data can be alien…and confusing. How Chasing Your Metrics Has You Chasing Your Tail explains what to do with all those metrics generated by marketing, CRM, and other programs. Just focus on the data that connect to your specific business goals.

Qualitative Web Analytics: Heuristic Evaluations Rock

Occam’s Razor

Avinash Kaushik publishes some of the most cutting edge (pun intended) ideas on the subject of media monitoring and measurement. Qualitative Web Anaytics: Heurestic Evaluations Rock provides in-depth analysis of hueristic analysis or applying rules of thumb to Web analytics. Heuristics are fast and cheap — and often yield actionable information. Find out here how to apply heuristics to identify flaws in and amplify results from your Web site.

Marketer’s Guide to Engaging the Tablet User

iMedia Connection

Every new generation of communications technology requires new approaches to communications. Owners of hand-held tablet computers use them for longer each day than they do their desktops or laptops. If they are on their tablets, that’s where marketer’s need to be too. Marketer’s Guide to Engaging the Table User analyses how people use their tablets, what they expect of their tablets, and what types of programs marketers and PR staff can develop that appeal to users of tablets and other mobile devices.

11 Deadly Social Media Sins

ClickZ

Most companies and brands are trying to engage customers on social media. 11 Deadly Social Media Sins delineates key things not to do in social media. The recommendations may seem obvious, but major brands falter most every day.

What Not to Post on Facebook

Huffington Post

What Not to Post on Facebook mostly applies to personal, not corporate, accounts. Here’s a few: your birthday, your mother’s maiden name, your home address, your phone number, your trips away from home, your inappropriate photos, or confessions. There’s more and they all have to with protecting your safety, privacy and reputation.

This issue of Media Monitoring News looks at PRSA’s own rationale for developing a new definition of public relations and includes a number of worthwhile “how to” articles including “How to Create an Infographic”, how an agency or freelancer can create a Knock-Out Pitch for new business, and how to get started in creating an interactive game for corporate public relations or marketing. There’s also a compendium of articles on social media monitoring and measurement. Good reading!

The New Definition of PR

PRSA

For whatever reason, the Public Relations Society of America decided it needed to re-define the public relations profession. Voila! Here are the Candidates for a Modern Definition of Public Relations. Justice Potter Stewart had the right idea. You don’t have to define it to know it when you see it.

4 Reasons Why the PR Team Should Be in Charge of Social Media

Footprints: The Walker Sands Blog

Who should be in charge of running the corporate social media program? 4 Reasons Why the PR Team Should Be in Charge of Social Media makes the case for PR, but ignores the value of a collaborative, team effort that includes marketing and customer service among others.

Why Brevity in PR Will Get You Noticed

PR Breakfast Club

People prefer brevity is Why Brevity in PR Will Get You Noticed. Enough said.

How to Create an Infographic

Business 2 Community

Infographics are the communications technique du jour. How to Create an Infographic utilizes an infographic — what else? — to describe the process of creating an infographic. Take down: It most certainly does require talent and it’s important to have a creative individual who thinks visually and communicates succinctly.

Social Media Measurement and Analytics

SemAngel

Gary Angel of Semphonic analyzes the uses of social media and the corresponding metrics for each use. It’s a wider and more, well analytic, vision of Social Media Measurement and Analytics with some substantive insights.

CES 2012: Measuring Social Conversations Among the Noise

Intel

Intel employed The Consumer Electronics Show as the venue to launch and demonstrate its “Social Cockpit”, a social media measurement system for Measuring Social Conversations Among the Noise. According to Intel in its hype-filled news release, the social media monitoring and measurement system measures “the pulse and meaningful movements of the social Web, something akin to how the Bloomberg Terminal gives minute-by-minute information about stock markets and financial news.” The “cockpit”, Intel says, serves as a constantly updating dashboard that fills several large monitors so the teams can track in real time who is getting share of voice, and generally, what people are saying and about what products and what companies.

State of the Media Report

Vocus

In its sneak peek at some highlights from the upcoming 2012 State of the Media Report, Vocus reports that 152 newspapers folded in 2011, but no major dailies. Layoffs of news staff and paywalls abounded, and newspapers faced the hyperlocal digital news services such as Patch. There were 195 magazine launches and most magazines implemented new formatting for the iPad and other tablets. In broadcast, the number of TV shows streaming to computers continued to increase and radio continued to survive with some growth in listenership.

5 Ways to Get Started with Gamification [Slide Show]

CMO.com

Games engendering engagement can be useful communications tools for public relations or marketing. 5 Ways to Get Started with Gamification suggests ways companies and other organizations can employ interactive games to deliver corporate and brand messages — and develop relationships with consumers. Side issue: What’s with this new trend of displaying articles in slides with irrelevant graphics that add little or nothing to the central concepts — make it more time-consuming to read and make it impossible to scan the article? It’s just an awful idea. Present it as the text article that it is!

10 Measurement Predictions for 2012

K.D. Paine

With her vast experience and insight, Katie Paine offers 10 Measurement Predictions for 2012. Two of them are: measuring mobile will be mandatory; the election and Olympics will steal all media oxygen. In other words, media coverage of corporate news will plummet.

7 Top Online Marketing Trends for 2012

ClickZ

Keeping with the predictions theme, 7 Top Online Marketing Trends for 2012 offers a data intensive analysis of the major digital marketing trends going into 2012. Key trends: mobile, social media, content marketing, real time, actionable metrics, and a few more.

7 Social Media & SEO Tactics Businesses Will Adopt in 2012

Search Engine Land

Are any of the 7 Social Media & SEO Tactics Businesses Will Adopt in 2012 in your PR or marketing plan for the coming year? They include: social media listening (a.k.a. social media monitoring) for market intelligence; community building; SoLoMo, meaning social, local and mobile; and social media drives SEO.

5 New Rules for a Knock-Out Pitch

iMedia Connection

Targeted at agency personnel pitching new business (not journalists), 5 New Rules for a Knock-Out Pitch is an irreverent analysis of the reality of new business pitches to disinterested corporate committees that probably already decided the outcome in advance. First rule: Don’t rely on PowerPoint! Really! Remember: A pitch is not a meeting; it’s performance art. It’s a worthwhile read for anyone making new business or new project pitches.

Social Media Compendium

Various Sources

The past week saw a plethora of articles on the “hot topic” of the New Year — social media. Here’s a selection. 101 Examples of Social Media Business ROI lists a cross-section of social media initiatives with a return on investment. The Three Worst Social Media Metrics (And What You Should Measure Instead) suggests ditching counts of Twitter followers, Facebook fans and Klout Net Promoter Score. On a more positive note, Rune Haugestad presents a thoughtful list of quantitative and qualitative Social Media ROI Metrics to Consider. How Safe Is Your Business from a Social Media Shakedown examines how some consumers complain about products or services in social media just to get rewards from the company. Yes, it is a shake-down at least sometimes and companies do need to devise defenses.