Keeping an Eye on Google+ Commenting

Early reports are coming in on a new Google+ commenting ecosystem that “could rival Facebook.” That remains to be seen, but it’s no secret that content indexed through Google+ is poised to become increasingly powerful in driving Google search results—and in turn, comprehensive SEO strategies.

Are you or is your organization consistently posting and utilizing Google+? If so, do you approach Google+ more as a social or SEO platform in its current state?

Tracking Social Conversions

Google is rolling out a new system for tracking actual conversions on your from traffic generated by Social Media links. Techcrunch posted a great synopsis of the new Social measuring tool bundled with Google Analytics. As we see more and more people seeking to leverage Social Media for traffic, it is going to become even more important to gauge engagements and conversions. This new tool provides some assistance with being able to provide real stats on conversions from Social Media platforms.

Stay tuned for more info on this exciting new way to measure engagements.

Measuring Success

Measurement and analytics usually fall under the bailiwick of SEO and Marketing firms, but tracking and understanding numbers is equally important in PR in order to better understand how your messaging affects your target audience and how well you are engaging with that audience. Whether you are new to analytics or a seasoned pro, here are a few items to consider when analyzing traffic and how to make the most of the numbers.

Step number one: Leverage Analytics 

Neglecting to gain access to clients' analytics so that you are able to measure successes can impact your opportunity to tout progress. Sure, many factors contribute to increases in traffic but why should Marketing, SEO or WebDev get full credit for driving customers to your clients' sites? Being proactive about baselining (establishing pre-campaign stats); annotating when news coverage, social media pick-ups and events occur; and tracking up-tics in traffic are paramount to ongoing PR opportunities and further client successes. Take this one step further by creating unique URLs and landing pages for your PR endeavors to ensure that you can really target traffic and check traffic sources (social media, specific publications/blogs where articles have run, etc.) to fully capitalize on your efforts.

Step number two: Get creative about how you measure successes

Pure traffic volume is certainly the primary way to measure success in any PR campaign. If you can show increases in unique visitors, returns and overall visitor traffic to client properties, you can clearly celebrate "wins" in your favor. But there are other, less obvious ways to ring the bell when it comes to success in PR campaigns. If you can look beyond the basics, you can not only demonstrate progress but can get a fuller understanding as to how messaging resonates with your audience and at what level they engage the brand. There are many ways to get creative about measurement. Here are just a few:

• Twitter List-to-Follower Ratio: Trends indicate that Twitter users leverage lists to offset "experts" from other resources they are simply following. If you have a high list-to-follower ratio, that can indicate that the materials you are presenting are deemed more informative, interesting or valuable and that your tweets are cutting through the churn. 
• Re-Tweets, Shares and Link Click-thrus: Audience engagement can be further assessed through analysis of Re-tweet, Shares and Click-thru metrics. High figures in these key categories can indicate how well your messaging resonates with audiences and how well engaged they are with your brand. If your posts are being distributed frequently by your listeners, you can be sure that what you are saying is having an impact.
• Measure interactions: Creating a two-way dialog between your brand and your customers is paramount to tout success in the social media space. If you can create engagement (as you or your organization defines engagement internally), you can really start to crow about your effectiveness in the marketplace. High volumes of comments per blog post, Facebook post, YouTube placement or Pin demonstrate engagement and are great ways to demonstrate campaign successes. Tweet-this, shares, +1s and the like from your blog are also great ways to measure how well you are reaching an audience and how well your message is resonating. Stay creative with how you measure successes to show the full breadth of your benefit to your clients or senior management.

Step number three: Be sure you are measuring what you WANT to measure

There are some pitfalls in the numbers game to avoid, or about which to at least be aware of when setting up your campaign and analyzing information along the way. One trap comes in the form of Facebook "Likes". Often times, clients express a desire to increase their fan base and see their pure number of "Likes" as a measure of how they are engaging with an audience. Sure, this is one measure of success but are these fans engaged? If a campaign is created to generate "Likes" and that campaign relies upon users "Liking" (or "like-gating" as some call it) the brand in order to participate (for example, in a contest), you may drive pure numbers but probably aren't generating an audience that has a true affinity for the brand. Plus, this type of campaign (though seen all the time on Facebook) is actually in violation of Facebook policies. 

The inverse is also true. Often times, companies get concerned that the stats showing the number of pages visited on their site is deplorably low. They get focused on this particular metric and struggle to find ways to drive traffic deeper into their site (not, in and of itself, a bad tactic, incidentally) neglecting to recognize that their site is primarily a blog with the majority of the content served up on the homepage. The site structure has created the situation where people, particularly more frequent visitors, don't NEED to dive deeper into the site to access material. Better measurements for clients with sites of this type would be "amount of time spent on site" and "returning visitors". 

In short, be sure to establish campaign goals and how to best measure and report successes at the onset to be sure your campaigns are being measured thoughtfully. Keep your focus on engagements in the social space to ensure that you are developing active participants in your conversations. And don't be afraid to look creatively at numbers to measure the true success of any PR campaign. There are a lot of metrics available to measure, and ensuring that you're tracking the right numbers that will impact your overall goals is the most important first step.

Colfax Elementary yoga kids featured on KWGN’s Daybreak

On Monday four fourth graders from Denver’s Colfax Elementary School got a behind-the-scenes tour of the KWGN studios for a segment on Daybreak with Natalie Tisdale. The kids were there to demonstrate some yoga poses they’ve learned at school, so other Denver families could see just how easy it is to practice yoga.

It’s all part of an initiative driven by a nonprofit organization, The Wellness Initiative, to incorporate yoga into Colorado’s schools. The Wellness Initiative is funded in part by a grant from the Colorado Health Foundation, a GroundFloor Media client. 



Yoga instructor Allyson Levine has been teaching kids at Colfax Elementary for more than five years. At this amazing school, every student gets yoga instruction every week. Yoga in schools has many health benefits including improving physical fitness, helping maintain a healthy weight and even helping kids focus during the school day. But Allyson says the best part about teaching yoga as part of the regular PE curriculum is that students can incorporate the stress-busting benefits of yoga into their daily lives. The kids at Colfax Elementary have told us those stressors include standardized testing, bullying and even angst about their parents having to deal with the effects of the recession.

We’re thankful people like Allyson and the rest of the gang at The Wellness Initiative for not just believing in this great cause, but for dedicating themselves to helping make Colorado’s kids healthier every day.


The Colorado Health Foundation learned about Colfax Elementary's yoga through its Colorado Kaleidoscope project, a statewide storytelling campaign designed to shine a bright light on the good work of its grantee partners and the people whose lives they impact. Watch this inspiring video to learn how two Colfax Elementary School students, Zulema and Liam benefit from the yoga.


~ Claire

South by Southwest: Final Day Key Learnings

Jim’s Take:

With another SXSW interactive festival in the books, now comes the hard part: reviewing and digesting the information that came from five days and the 21 sessions I attended over that time. Without a doubt, companies are finding new and unique ways to interact with their audiences, many times in a one-on-one manner, that create a genuine connection to brands and causes. Here are my takeaways from the final day at SXSW:

• In “Gen Y&Z Expectations to Transform Customer Experience” the presenters discussed generational differences and how the youngest generation (Gen Z) has never known a world without the Internet. They are big on social causes and collecting (Pinterest was brought up more times that I could count), and have high expectations about how, when and where they should be able to connect to their social networks. Research and insights into your various audiences, and where and how they interact in the digital space is more important than ever.

• John Wuebben’s review of his book “Content is Currency: Developing Powerful Content for Web & Mobile” he outlined several items that public relations professionals have been advising their clients about for years: start with content and build from there, its about relationship building, and becoming a trusted resource to your customers.

• I had the pleasure of rounding out my SXSW experience by attending Anthony Bourdain’s session about his show’s use of social media. Ultimately, they utilize social platforms to provide a deeper audience experience with the show, and further humanize the show’s staff. Even with the foul-mouthed Bourdain, social media is about building relationships.

Ultimately, I came away with two overarching pieces of information that I will be continually sharing with my clients and peers:

1) As search engines and web users become savvier, marketers are less and less able to manipulate the system to get your brand in front of customers. Its about building relationships and credibility with your audiences through relevant and meaningful content. If you’re looking for a social media firm, be sure to ask them about their approach to and experience with content development. At GFM our approach has always been, and will always be - talk about your customer first and yourself second. Or “Content with Intent” as we like to call it.

2) Social media is absolutely different than mass media. In fact, social media is actually micro-media in many ways. Brands can’t continue developing limited messages for the masses. Social media allows us to build deeper relationships with our customers, customize messages and content to meet their needs, and truly make one-on-one niche, and long term connections.

Alexis’ Take:

Jim makes many great points in his summary above so I won’t repeat them. Content was definitely king at SXSWi 2012, and I can’t help but realize that there needs to be a shift, or at least a lot more attention paid to, how much time we spend planning versus actually executing when it comes to social media. Planning is critical, please don’t think I am disputing that. But it’s so easy to spend far too long in the strategy spin cycle that you leave yourself little to no time to curate really interesting content, as well as “on the fly” content to deepen relationships when your fans start to talk back to you and interacting in new ways.

• My final day started by attending a Q&A with Pinterest founder, Ben Silbermann. I was surprised by both his humility and genuine surprise regarding the mass adoption for the platform. He is certainly focused on improving the core of Pinterest before moving into a formal monetization program, but recognized the strong SEO success many e-retailers are already reporting. Expanded profiles and video pinning are just two upcoming enhancements to look for soon. I do wish however he would have spent some time talking about future metrics tools (Is something like a Facebook Insights in the works?) and more time addressing recent copyright infringement arguments. All in all though, it was neat to be just a few rows away from the golden child of SXSWi 2012.

• Next I sat in a core conversation called “How to Lead a Social Revolution and Make a Profit.” Core conversations went one of two ways at SXSWi—either no one talked and it was extremely dull or people raised exceptional points and drove the conversation to new levels. Thankfully, this session fit the latter profile. A point that resonated with me is that nonprofits too often lead with the “bad” or the “shocking” of their cause, and in turn do not make interacting or giving fun for their supporters. The session moderator urged nonprofits to lead with interactions that are more engaging or positive in order to eventually pull people into the grittier conversation. This all goes back to Jim and my comments about content—it takes much longer to brainstorm and develop these sorts of messages, but in the end they may move the needle more!

• I also rounded out SXSWi by listening to Anthony Bourdain and his cast of production characters. To say they are pushing the boundaries is an understatement, but I left thinking about how their social media savvy has opened up the show to an entirely new generation of Bourdain users/fans. I loved when he talked about how TV networks care how many people watch his show at 10 p.m. when it airs—but he doesn’t give a [insert expected Bourdain expletive]. Bourdain just wants people to watch the show, whether it be on the Travel Channel, YouTube, Hulu, etc. This reminds us all that content can no longer live in one place if you want to grow your audience. Figure out where they are and bring it to them everywhere you possible can without spreading yourself too thin that you can’t MAINTAIN this good content.

We hope you enjoyed our SXSWi 2012 Austin adventures and look forward to continuing the conversation here on the GFM blog moving forward!

~Alexis Anderson and Jim Licko

Social Media Trends in Health Care PR

I’m lucky to be at the Children’s Hospital Association’s (@hospitals4kids) annual conference in St. Louis with our client from Children’s Hospital Colorado (@ChildrensColo) meeting other health care PR and marketing professionals and hearing about trends and best practices. As usual, there’s a lot of chatter about social media and the best ways for hospitals to engage in conversations with their patients and potential patients online. Cynthia McCafferty from Fleishman-Hillard (@Fleishman) in St. Louis provided some good insight and food for thought during her session entitled “Harnessing the Social Media Wave.” I’ve highlighted some interesting social media stats and trends below…

Social Media Stats re: Health Care (don’t quote me on this; I was taking notes quickly):

· After looking up the weather, consumers most likely search for health information online.

· The top social mediums used by hospitals include: 1) Facebook, 2) Foursquare and 3) Twitter.

· Hospital rankings are not widely considered in consumer searches; only 15% of Internet users have consulted online rankings.

· When searching for information online, the general population doesn’t tend to differentiate between paid and organic search results.

Trends (Cynthia’s list with commentary from me):

· Influencers as experts/spokespeople: Like it or not, consumers are increasingly relying on influencers to make health care decisions. If you don’t have relationships with the mom bloggers in your community – forge them now.

· Location-based services: While you’re not going to offer a free appendectomy to the 50th patient through the door of the hospital, you can provide useful information when patients check into FourSquare. Consider providing a link to an app with maps of the campus/hospital, information about visiting hours, food services, etc.

· Proliferation of smartphones: With increased usage of smart phones comes increased adoption of apps and QR codes. Use them to your advantage to provide information to your patients.

· Convergence of online and offline: We’ve all heard about “live tweeting” of surgical procedures, but the opportunities for the convergence of online and offline events don’t stop there. Consider things like Facebook events, House Parties for fundraising or Tweet Ups for key influencers.

· Brand = media company: Social media empowers organizations to create their own brands and publish content promoting that brand on a variety of channels. If you’re reading this, I’m preaching to the choir, so enough said.

Health care professionals, like everybody else, continue to seek the most effective ways to engage on social media, and there is a lot of opportunity to do so. It’s important to stay on top of the latest trends, be creative yet authentic and determine how to measure your efforts.

And on a side note, in seeking out a place to write this blog post and grab a yummy bite to eat, I discovered a great restaurant with delicious butternut squash soup and an interesting (in a good way) take on hummus -- Mosaic (@EnjoyMosiac). I hope you can check it out when you’re in St. Louis!

~Ramonna

Favorites From the Fifth Day in Austin (Monday)

Easily our favorite day of SXSW so far, Monday took us from great sessions to amazing food to crazy brand activations to Alexis making a local news appearance to a Jay-Z concert. We had a lot to choose from for our favorites from Monday…here is the list:

Nom nom: Frank is going to get two mentions in in our favorites today, because it’s just that good. As the “Purveyors of Artesian Sausage,” Alexis had the Veggie Jackalope dog (huckleberry compote, sriracha aioli, cheddar) while I had the Texalina (pork and beef sausage, grilled coleslaw, Carolina mustard BBQ sauce, white cheddar), and we both had a corn cup as our side (Grilled corn served off the cob with chili mayonesa, lime juice, cilantro and cotija cheese). We can’t talk enough about how good Frank is.

Libations: As if the dogs weren’t delicious enough, Frank also has an killer drink list including the Plantation (Hendrick’s Gin, fresh basil, fresh-squeezed lime, grapefruit juice) and the Kentucky Peach (Maker's Mark, fresh basil and peach, house-made lemonade) – both pictured below.

Celebrity-ish Sighting: Walking down 6^th Street, post-concert, we ran into actor Matthew Lillard of Scream, Hackers, Scooby Doo, She’s All That and most recently, The Descendants.

Through the lens: Film director Robert Rodriguez discussing his latest projects in the Samsung Blogger Lounge.

Grab Bag: Walking back to the car before the concert, Alexis and I were stopped by a reporter from the local Fox affiliate to comment on the use of homeless people in Austin to promote free wi-fi hotspots. Alexis made the nightly news in Austin…at this point nothing will surprise us.

Free Stuff Rules: You can’t really top being 15 rows deep on the floor of the ACL Live Moody Theater for a free Jay-Z concert. It was fantastic.

Number of steps taken: 15,124

Hours of sleep: Jim: 6. Alexis: 7.

Caffeinated beverages consumed: Jim: 3. Alexis: 1.

Number of connections made: 66 people and counting.

~Jim Licko and Alexis Anderson

South by Southwest: Day Four Key Learnings

Alexis’ Take, Day 4…

Mad Men (via AMC) and Old Spice. I am a fan of both, obviously for different reasons (i.e. I watch Mad Men religiously and the Old Spice character isn’t bad to look at). I bring both up because they seem to be the case study darlings of SXSWi, or at least of all the sessions I attended today. Mad Men has jumped out of the TV screen and into so many of our worlds, from the @BettyDraper Twitter personality to Banana Republic clothing lines. Old Spice went a step beyond its ads and started answering fans’ tweets via video, even fulfilling a marriage proposal request.

Think big or go home—being on Facebook and Twitter may no longer enough if you subscribe to emerging transmedia theories, and if you do not have the bandwidth to do more, you better make sure you are doing both extremely well and pushing the creative limits along the way.

Other points that stuck…

• Branded content isn’t new, but some brands just continue to evolve and push the category to new limits. In a digital storytelling session we were shown a parkour video shot and produced by Red Bull. Aside from subtle branding, the user experience is all about an incredible athlete and beautiful backdrop.

• Pinterest was the focus of a panel about how to harness consumer intent and while the ideas of how consumer – especially e-commerce – brands can and should leverage consumer intent on Pinterest into lead/sale conversions, the woman sitting next to me mumbled under her breath, “yeah, but how is this scalable?” Unless you have a social media team of 20 it is impossible to chase down every pin and repin on the platform. Instead, take a page from brands like ModCloth and work to curate a useful experience that does not just jam your company down their throat.

• In the same consumer intent panel, panelist Farrah Bostic, founder of The Difference Engine, was a wealth of understandable and compelling sound bites about what inherently limits and destroys the social media hopes of many brands. My two favorites: "Desire for perfection is social media's greatest enemy” and “Far worse for a brand to be irrelevant (in SM) than to piss someone off." Both were in reference to how you are in a no win situation if you are running a social media program that takes longer than a few minutes to approve a tweet.

Jim’s Take, Day 4…

It may have been the near fatal amounts of caffeine running through my body, or maybe it was the speakers themselves, but my notes from today consisted of many short, quick, one-liners. Strangely, they all made perfect sense to me as I re-read them and I feel they should be shared, nearly verbatim. Here are some of the great thoughts I overheard on Monday at SXSW:

• “Make something people want to share.” Without context, this is true across the board when it comes to social media and digital marketing. Before you hit “comment” or “post,” think to yourself: would anyone want to share this?

• “It’s not about you, it’s about your audience.” Yes, this is the fourth out of four days I’ve posted this type of comment. I hope you don’t get tired of it, because you’ll probably hear me say it in person, via email, on Twitter and otherwise…

• “Help customers out and provide them with valuable content and solutions. They’ll come back to you the next time they want information on that topic.” This came from an employee at Eventbrite – the event RSVP site. This is thought leadership at its best. Think about the content you’re putting out there, and how you can build on what your customers want. (see the previous bullet)
• “Reach out to your customers where they already live (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, etc.). Don’t expect them to interact with you in an area they aren’t used to.” In other words – research is key. Find out where your customers are talking, what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. That is what GFM’s Digital Snapshot™ process is all about.

• “Don’t be gross. There are a lot of things that digital marketers can do that are disingenuous. Don’t do them.” I wanted to hug the panelist after she said this.

• “I don’t work extra hours in the week because I want to make more money, I do it because I care about analog photography.” This came from Alexandra Klasinski of one of my favorites, Lomography, and I think this is true of any employer that creates an honest and healthy culture – including GFM.

~ Alexis Anderson and Jim Licko