Online Marketing Blog

Over the weekend, Online Marketing Blog posts as well as my interactions on Twitter took on a decidedly “public relations” flavor with TopRank’s involvement at the 2008 PRSA International conference.  The event is now done and everyone should be back in the swing of things back in the office.

This year TopRank had 2 speaking slots (a workshop and a panel) plus Account Manager Mike Yanke and Media Relations Associate Nicole Leach stayed busy attending sessions, keynotes and blogging.

The theme of this year’s event was “The Point of Connection” and I think the reference served the interests of attendees well. Social technologies were top of mind for attendees, speakers and the event itself with all the blogging, Twittering and real world networking going on. PR professionals from across the globe converged on Detroit to learn, recognize their peers, conduct business and most of all to connect.

How do you measure something that seemingly cannot be measured?  For example, how much do I love this little guy here who answers to the name of Clark:

And how much does this same little guy hate, just hate I tell you, taking a bath:

In both instances, it’s as wide as my arms can go.  So how can we analyze it?

That was the question Katie Delahaye Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners, and Shonali Burke, Consultant with ABC, sought to answer in the PRSA Session “True Tales from the Social Media Measurement Trenches – Using Research to Learn & Improve Our Programs” – an excellent session bookend by a social media case study on The American Society For Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (See!  You were probably thinking I was just showing off pictures of my new puppy!)