Measurement

We have another high/low fashion collaboration on our hands — Versace has teamed with H&M for a capsule collection that will be in stores tomorrow, which is sure to incite a fair amount of frenzy.

This one, of course, follows in a long line of collaborations, most recently the Missoni/Target collection that caused mass hysteria in person and online. Interestingly, given all the consumer interest, The New York Times says that it’s the media attention that really pays off for the retailer side of these partnerships.

Read more

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

NASDAQ OMX has acquired Glide Technologies, a British corporate communications and reputation management services company. Glide, which was founded in 2003, will be brought into the NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions fold, providing PR and IR pros with an enhanced set of services.

Glide provides media monitoring, measurement, online newsroom creation tools, and other services for campaign execution and assessment. Among its products are Glide Newsroom, Glide Manager, a PR management platform, and GlideIntelligence Social Media for sentiment analysis and monitoring.

Two PR firms have announced new service offerings for clients.

Lewis PR has added four new services, all in the social media area. “Social media for thought leadership” will help B2B marketers establish their expertise in a certain area. “Social media response” keeps an eye on and helps to manage situations that can turn negative. “Social media for events” maximizes an event’s impact with attendees. And “Social media for product marketing” motivates communities and influencers and drives awareness of a company or brand. You can learn more about all of these services here.

And Zelo Public Relations has launched the Communications Audit and Analysis Assessment, which will take a look at past PR efforts to see if the message has come through. The analysis will also compare the message to the company’s business goals. A link in the press release takes visitors to the Zelo corp comms page for more info.

News broke yesterday at TechCrunch Disrupt that Twitter Web Analytics are on the way. Currently in beta format, we have a few details about the kind of information that will be available once it goes public, including: monthly, daily, and weekly click numbers generated by tweets sent from a site’s “Tweet” button; and top links for the day, week, or month.

Measurement is a big PR focus right now, so this service couldn’t come soon enough.

Read more

News that VMS had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy came as a shock to many people. VMS was a company with a long history and this final business move seemed to come out of nowhere.

However, the media monitoring sector has been changing and shifting for years.

In today’s guest post, Sean Morgan, CEO of of Critical Media, home to real-time broadcast monitoring service Critical Mention, takes a look at the evolution of media monitoring over the past few years. As we mentioned previously, Critical Mention is offering a trial period for VMS clients in need of monitoring services.

Click through for today’s guest column.

Read more

A notice is now on the VMS homepage stating that the media monitoring and analytics company has filed for Chapter 7 liquidation today with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

“The decision has been made after exhaustively evaluating many different options and with sadness for our loyal staff and customers,” the statement reads.

All employees have been terminated, effective today. We placed a call to the company and got no answer. Cision has already put a system in place to transition VMS customers.

Read more

Among the current top priorities at the Council for Public Relations Firms (CPRF) is helping firms make a way through the world digital and social media, says Andy Polansky, president of Weber Shandwick and chairman of the organization.

Calling social media “a real growth driver for agencies,” Polansky said, “The budgets associated with public relations programs are seemingly getting larger. If you think about marketing spend from a historical perspective, there was a lot of money flowing to advertising and the various other disciplines. I think now there’s more of a jump-ball mentality; whoever brings the best ideas is going to win the day.” An October 27 event with guests Robert Gibbs, former Obama press secretary, and Mashable founder Pete Cashmore, will dig into these social media topics even further.

We had the chance to sit down with Polansky recently to discuss the industry issues that the Council is tackling, and business at his own firm. The Council’s members include more than 100 PR firms of all shapes and sizes. Talent and diversity was another important issue on CPRF list.

Read more

Lewis PR has introduced LSCORE, a measurement tool that will evaluate a campaign based on the amount of chatter, sentiment, the level of engagement, and conversion (which includes sales and other actions taken by the audience) across traditional and social media.

In its announcement, the firm notes that PR measurement has grown from “volume, tone and reach” to include engagement and, ultimately, the “business impact” of a PR effort in areas like items sold and downloads requested. The new tool also comes equipped with ways to help users map out their goals.

Cision has tossed its measurement hat into the influencer ring (?) with the launch of Cision Influence Rating, which uses more than 40 different measures — Facebook “likes,” inbound links, and voting activity, for instance — to determine who the influencers are.

Also, the company has launched the Cision Influencer Database, which includes thousands of online and traditional media muckety-mucks with details about their “social persona.” The database is free for clients through a three-month trial period.

This is becoming a very crowded space these days. Weren’t we told to resist the influence of peer pressure when we were kids?

Anyhoo, which of these influencer measurement services do you recommend? The comments section and @PRNewser is open for comment.

Gee it’s quiet. That’s because most everyone is on vacation, preparing for one, or thinking about one. But it’s not all margaritas and awkward snapshots (the voting is on BTW). The travel and hospitality industries are big business, and finding out what people are saying about their vacations on social media has become a big issue.

Our colleagues at Semantic Web take a look at the tools and insight available to travel and vacation business from companies like Lexalytics and Market Metrics, which are being used for sentiment analysis and to determine what drives people to book their vacations. Moreover, companies in the travel business are making in-house hires to manage social media activity and using the information they gather for other internal purposes.

Maybe your next vacation will benefit from all this talk happening across the Web.