We love talking about Best Practices here at the Bivings Report, and today we’re offering up a very meta look at best practices in company blogs. Every business has a point of view or way of delivering their products and services – and what better way to share that with the world than on their sites? At last night’s June Social Media Club DC event, the panel discussed the strategies and challenges of their respective companies’ blogs.The speakers ranged from AARP, to Jess3 to the Nature Conservancy and their wise words (along with our perspective) could be distilled in the following list:

DO

• Leverage your company’s unique point of view to create great content. There’s a reason your company does what it does: so share it with the world
• Be Authentic. Chances are – if a reader is checking out your company’s blog – it’s because they care about your products, services, or brand. Or maybe they just think the colors are pretty. Regardless, your blog isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a way to share your organization’s perspective about relevant topics.
• Blogging takes a sustained and concerted effort. This means posting content on a regular basis, and not expecting your first 300 word post to get picked up by Mashable. Your blog WILL find its voice and niche audience,but getting there will take work and dedication.
• Great content leads to great SEO (not the other way around). Don’t spend so much time worrying about keywords, and more about what you’re actually writing. Sure, its nice when google picks up your content, but the content itself is what will drive traffic (as well as fame, fortune, and new business leads) to your site.
• Get lots of people in the mix. Allow all types of employees to have a voice. The programmers probably have good advice, as do the upper management. Involving many different authors also allows for more even workload distribution.
• Measure. Web analytics can help you see the full picture when it comes to traffic. Tracking the data over time can show valuable trends. Are old posts still getting lots of pageviews? Maybe that’s a good opportunity to revamp them.

DON’T

• Stop posting if the blog isn’t an overnight success.
• Forget to share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets.
• Aim to sound like your competitors.
• Forget to make sure any guest posts/cross-posted content is OK with your lawyers

The principles of the declaration are:

1. Goal setting and measurement are fundamental aspects of any PR programmes.
2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality – cuttings in themselves are not enough.
3. Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity.
4. Social media can and should be measured.
5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results.
6. Business results can and should be measured where possible.
7. Transparency and Replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

This is an international agreement to raise standards and to continue working towards reliable, valid and objective measurement of communications programs. Good stuff!

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The guidelines cover the impact of public relations programs on financial, reputational/brand equity, employees/internal and public policy goals.

PRSA intends to release a final set of standardized methods this fall, after compiling feedback from industry. Comments can be made via PRSA’s blog – comPRehension.

Michael G. Cherenson, PRSA’s 2009 Chair and CEO said of the effort:  “Our fundamental goal is to change how the industry talks about what public relations accomplishes. Instead of meaningless catch phrases, such as ‘create buzz,’ our recommended approach focuses on identifying meaningful expressions of business performance, suggesting more appropriate measurement metrics and recommending proven tools for demonstrating how those metrics were impacted.”

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It is part of a research project for The First European Summit on Measurement, to be held in Berlin June 10-12th, 2009. Results will be compared to a previous global study conducted 5-years ago. The results will be presented at the European Summit on Measurement and provided to all attendees.

Collaborators on the study include:

• Donald K. Wright,Ph.D. -Professor of Public Relations, Boston University, USA

• Richard Gaunt MCIPR–CEO Benchpoint Ltd, London, England

• Mike Daniels- CEO Report International and AMEC board member, London England

• Barry Leggetter – Executive director, AMEC, London, England

• Ansgar Zerfass, Dr- Professor of Communication Management, University of Leipzig, Germany

Barry Leggetter, Executive Director of AMEC, said: “During a recession the role of measurement in public relations practice has taken on a new sense of importance in order to demonstrate proof of performance. We therefore hope ICCO members will take a few minutes to complete the study.   We are working with other international trade bodies as well to give the study international scale and substance.”

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The 6-12 minute survey is available in French, German, English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Please click here to participate!

Thank you for your support!

Enter the Internet.

There’s a SaveChuck Twitter account. There are at least nine Facebook groups trying to save the show from being canceled, with the largest group boasting a membership of 18,014 currently and an online petition with 11992 signatures. Interestingly, the online campaigning is working in concert with offline campaigns as well. One effort encouraged Chuck fans to go to Subway, one of the shows biggest sponsors, and buy a footlong and put in a comment card asking for the show to be saved. Folks from TheWB.com drove around L.A. in Nerd Herd cars, if you spotted one and sent a tweet to @thewbdocom with the #savechuck and #chuck hashtags you had a chance to win prizes. The candy maker WONKA even sent Nerds candy to NBC execs as well.

Another idea that is just plain awesome was to donate to the American Heart Association in the name of Chuck Bartowski, the star character of the show, and acknowledge Ben Silverman, an NBC executive in the donation. In just three days there are almost $4,000 in donations. Have a Heart – Renew Chuck!

There seems to be a lot of momentum, show actors Zach Levi and Josh Gomez were even on CNN yesterday to talk about the shows renewal possibilities. Hopefully that momentum will carry over into increased viewership in the fall as well.

Save Chuck campaigns on CNN

• Amazon.com delisted thousands of books from general search results, including many gay and lesbian themed books, prompting accusations of sudden policy change against such topics.
• Employees of Domino’s Pizza posted a video on YouTube of them defiling food while making it.
• Time Warner Cable revealed the details of its metered internet usage plans being tested in four major cities.
• Ashton Kutcher and CNN were involved in a challenge to be the first to reach 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Only it turns out CNN didn’t even operate the CNNBrk Twitter account that was in the race.

All of these events created a massive amount of social media buzz, and the companies involved varied in their responses.

Amazon apologized and basically said the problem was “a glitch” but since then seems to be hoping that the buzz will go away leaving all of those who were outraged without much satisfaction.

Domino’s created a YouTube video response and set up a Twitter account of their own to answer any questions people might have showing that while they might not have been ready for something like this, they can certainly roll with the punches and respond appropriately.

Time Warner Cable backed off and has delayed plans to implement metered billing, presumably to polish up their PR and marketing machine before giving it another go. We’ll have to wait and see what the final outcome is.

CNN embraced the idea of the race to 1,000,000 followers while behind the scenes they hired James Cox, the owner of the CNNBrk account, as a consultant to run it for them. This well-played maneuver was a great way to make the best of the situation and let the hype about the race overshadow the possible branding nightmare.

The speed at which these story lines unfolded illustrates just how important it is to be monitoring your brand. But that’s only going to give you a fighting chance. The way you address the concerns of your consumers is going to mean the success or demise of your reputation in the long run.

• 63% are satisfied that agency communications are “informative and timely”.
• 60% are satisfied with the quality of coverage achieved by their agency.
• Only 38% feel that pitch promises made are being kept (33% were neutral and 29% unsatisfied).
• Respondents are evenly split over whether they have had an overall positive experience with their agency.

The biggest complaint of PR clients (51% unsatisfied) is with agencies’ failure to tie PR initiatives to general business objectives, focusing instead on simply producing coverage. Jennifer points out that part of the issue may be the involvement of junior account managers who lack an understanding of basic business. A bigger issue may be the ease with which traditional media coverage can be measured and thus used to prove ROI. We’ll come back to this in a minute.

Let’s look at the social media responses:

• 79% (!!!) say it is “extremely” important for an agency to understand social media strategy.
• 70% say they themselves have an adequate grasp of how social media relates to business.
• 84% would attend a social media workshop offered by their agency – but over half wouldn’t pay for it.
• Only 22% say their agency has recommended a social media program beyond specific tools (twitter, linkedin).

The survey comments also suggest that agencies might be more successful rolling social media elements into current offerings, instead of adding a social media add-on or upgrade package.

What struck me about these survey results is that clients want two things 1) a comprehensive program that goes beyond traditional PR targets and 2) a clear accounting of the success achieved by their agency.

Understandable. The complication is that often, the more successful you are at 1, the more difficult 2 becomes. Social media initiatives are a perfect example of this.

Many companies are anxious to get involved in social media, both to build a presence and to engage their customers. They want to see how their PR campaigns are translating into social media buzz, respond to customer concerns from a corporate twitter account and figure out how many sales leads resulted from a blog post. But how do you measure message penetration on Facebook? How do you track lead generation from a blog? How do you calculate the value of a retweet?*

Expanding PR programs (out of coverage-chasing and into social media) requires a new level of engagement for PR firms. To avoid the type of dissatisfaction expressed in the survey results, agencies must:

1. Be the expert. Only 37% of clients said they fully understand social media for business.
2. Be the guide. Work with clients to develop a strategic plan – who and why? Not just how.
3. Be the evaluator. What metrics will you use to measure success?

See the full survey results.

*The answer is: one client at a time.

Analytics aside, it boils down to a matter of tipping points. Most organizations spend countless resources building their brands, and the reality is that these intellectual positions can fall at a moment’s notice. Trying to calculate ROI, tracing overall trends, semantic analysis — all of these take a back burner to public relations emergencies within the realm of new media.

Being aware of attacks on your image, misrepresentations of fact, and negative opinion from top influencers is simply necessary when positioning your brand.

The graph below illustrates what I’m talking about:

 Even from this raw graph of daily average favorability, the difference is quite noticeable. When I visualize by month to show overall trends, things get interesting:

These trend lines highlight the discrepancy between the two topics. While the Olympic Games’ average favorability has had its ups and downs, its average favorability has both remained positive and increased in positivity from May to August.

China has not fared as well in its coverage; while enjoying two relatively neutral months (May and June), its favorability rating began to falter in July (-.13) and August (-.29). Quite the opposite of the Games’ coverage, China’s trend line indicates both a negative rating and an increase in negativity from May to August.

As the Games’ opening ceremony nears, a new chapter in our ImpactWatch demo begins. With Beijing as a stage, the world — and our demo — is all eyes…anything could happen.

1. Get involved sooner rather than later
2. Implement a platform that will track online media for you
3. Categorize online activities of target markets/information seekers–blogging, message board posting, etc.
4. Make a list of the top sites to monitor per public/target audience
5. Track site statistics (eg, how often the site is visited)
6. Track bias of various sites with regard to your product
7. Decide how you will respond to the circulation of negative information about your product

You can read the article in its entirety here.