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hyku | blog - by Josh Hallett

Commentary by Josh Hallett on the utilization of weblogs (blogs) for public relations & marketing and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.

Page Views are Dead, Long Live Page ViewsToday

Have you heard the page view is dead? In some circles people have moved on and it's very fashionable to make claims as such, but sadly much of the corporate world still sees it as an important number. Why? Benchmarking, specifically against other business units and various web properties within brands.

Don't get me wrong, we work with our clients to educate them that stats such as time on site, # of comments, # of inbound links, external media coverage are all major things to look at. But guess what, many times the sites they are benchmarked against internally don't have some of those metrics, that's where the page view becomes the lowest common denominator.

As measurement continues to evolve, specifically related to social media projects we focus on things like RSS subscribers, % of pass along and engagement to name a few. Another new focus is velocity. That is, how quickly is the information we're discussing being spread. Is it taking minutes, hours or days?

Then of course there are sales. What direct revenue is being generated from the site/blog? For some of our clients that's a key measure and we have to track that.

In the car world it's kind of like horsepower. How much you got? Yeah horsepower is nice, but then you start to think about torque, curb weight and other things that all contribute to the 0-60 time.

But it's always nice to throw ou

More Luggage LustToday

Back in 2007 I posted about some luggage lust. Specifically the Tumi Ducati carry-on bag I wanted to get (and ended up getting). In my 120,000 Delta miles of travel last year the Ducati has served me very well.

This year is shaping up to be another busy travel year, and I'm carrying more suit coats so a carry-on garment bag may be in order. Looking at the Tumi site the Townhouse collection really caught my eye, nice clean, classic lines and since it's Tumi it can handle the miles.

I was sold, until I visited the store and saw it in person. What's not really evident at first on the web site pictures is the 'bling' on the wheels. I've highlighted it in the photo below, but when you see the bag in person it's so gaudy. Why ruin a nice bag with some cheap chrome?

Engagement Isn't Always EasyJanuary 6

Building on the topic I started yesterday about social media monitoring and engagement, let's dig a bit deeper into engagement and response.

Heading into Mplanet 2009, the four major topics are: Brand Building in a digital world, Connecting with empowered consumers, Marketing mix in a fragmented world & Global marketing on a borderless planet.

Engagement at the organizational level bridges two of those topics....let's call it 'Connecting in a Fragmented World.' However, the fragmentation is internal.

It's always fun when a blogger says a company just doesn't get it because they won't respond to an issue or complaint. If they only knew what was going on internally.

Responding online gets really tricky when you deal with large organizations with a number of different business units. I know that customers don't care about internal organization charts, but they're still a reality in corporations.

From yesterday's post, it doesn't matter if there is a Centralized of De-Centralized approach to social media monitoring. An issue is flagged and somebody else has to respond, somebody in another business unit.

First off, there might not be open lines of communication between the units. If there are, it's often at a high level. I can just see one SVP askin

Mplanet 2009 is Coming Up SoonJanuary 6

The American Marketing Association's Mplanet conference is coming up at the end of this month, January 26-28th, in my backyard (Orlando). I attended the first version in 2006, yes that's right three years ago.

It's actually an interesting concept, the three year gap ensures that the content is fresh and not simply a rehash of last year....after all much can happen in three years :-)

I'm honored once again to be one of the invited bloggers to help cover the event along with Toby Bloomberg and Peter Kim. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting a bit more about some of the trends/issues related to the event here, and on the Mplanet blog.

Will you be attending Mplanet?

If You are Speaking About Social Media at a Conference....January 6

And I'm in the audience, expect the first two questions to be:

1. Do you have any recent examples of how you've executed a program for a client?

2. How are you measuring the output/outcomes of this program?

If you don't have valid answers to those questions, then why are we even listening to you?