The year social media came on the map

A new report by AMEC member Metrica will be of interest to all communications professionals as it clearly shows that for the UK at least, 2008 was the year that the media needle moved for social media as a major PR channel.

 

Metrica Numbers is an annual report which consolidates media analysis meta-data from more than three million press articles over the last decade to enable industry trends to be identified. As well as top line findings, it looks at key breakdowns by media type, sector and specific media titles. Key findings are:

·                Online coverage more than doubled in 2008 from 11% in 2007 to 25%.

·                Broadcast coverage has been declining over the last two years.

·                Business press has shown consistent and strong growth over 10 years.

·                Regional coverage continues the downward trend in evidence now for over ten years, down another 23% from last year, but remains the most important media type for PR professionals, accounting for 37% of coverage in 2008 (46% in 2007)

·                Regional press continues to perform well for PRs in terms of favourability (93% of regional coverage is favorable)

·                In terms of message delivery, regional press is more likely to convey a key message than the national press (55% against 33%).

 

One of the great beliefs with many clients and PR consultancies is that social media cannot be measured. We will aim to kill this myth once and for all at the 1st European Summit on Measurementin Berlin. Nevertheless, this lack of confidence in ability to measure is considered by Metrica to be a major factor behind the low proportion of social media within online as a media type. The Report comments:  “The issues and debate regarding monitoring social media….is in turn inhibiting the inclusion of social media in media evaluation and PR measurement programmes. “

 

Metrica Matters also makes the point that the growth in online coverage over the last 12 months has been largely driven by publications either moving their print publication online only, or producing a smaller hard copy so that more editorial is appearing solely in the online version, as well as the emergence of new online titles.

To obtain a copy of Metrica Matters go to http://www.metrica.net/contact/content4c.aspx

 

Comments

[Mark Westaby]

Great report! One of the major issues we've identified at Spectrum is that many organisations still don't have a social media budget. Sounds incredible, but I'm afraid it's true.

In our experience companies are increasingly taking on specialists to manage social media but without a budget to support them they have to do the job with one hand tied behind their back. This also raises a further problem in that many 'traditional' PR departments seem to see social media as a threat, both to their expertise and to their budgets.

Spectrum's view is that social media provide new opportunities for existing PR departments, which they should embrace willingly. Given the rapidly growing influence of social media this is something they're going to have to do, so the sooner they take it on board the better.