Today’s marks the end of our second annual Digital Week at Burson-Marsteller. It sounds odd to talk about Digital Week when we live in a digital world but I think it is important to stop frequently and think about the implications of digital media on communications in general and our work as communications counselors.

It is not news that digital has changed the way consumers access and absorb information. What continues to evolve however is the way that companies adopt to the changing preferences of their stakeholder groups. I am proud to work for an organization that celebrates these changes and puts resources against creating dialogue with employees, developing training opportunities, and for adapting to our clients’ needs. Despite our great team and passion for digital, things are fluid and it can be tough to stay ahead of the trends. Thus, Digital Week provides an opportunity to get everyone speaking the same language in addition to celebrating great work from our colleagues around the world.

We’ve had a big week. We launched a self-guided training program, unveiled the next iteration of our intranet, hosted special events for employees, launched a mobile marketing program, created a collaborative internal thought leadership environment, and released the next phase of digital content on our corporate website. More importantly than all that though is the fact that we have demonstrated as a company the reality that digital media presents a personal opportunity for all of us to grow our knowledge and value by participating and a professional responsibility to be current on digital trends and strategies for our clients.

I want to send a special shout-out to the digital team that managed all of the content and logistics for this week. Our global digital coordinator David Ambrose has done a wonderful job overseeing this event with a fantastic team including Ashley Finch, Stephanie Bonnet, Desiree Collier, Felix Leander, Charles Pownall, and Tery Spataro - thank you all. Of course there are dozens of other folks who contributed as well, ranging from IT to design and everything in between, and we appreciate your support too. Thank you.

While it may be true that every day is Digital Day in a Digital World, I still think it is smart to take time to step back, consider what is important, and allocate resources against moving forward. For our employees, i hope you enjoyed this week and found it to be a valuable learning experience. And for our clients, I’d ask you to take a moment and reflect on how you are leveraging digital media within your organization and think about ways to be better, faster, and bigger. It will make a difference.

According to a new Online Measurement and Strategy Report, “companies are typically failing to adopt a coherent strategy that ties in web analytics data with business objectives - just 18% of surveyed firms do so.” Apparently, organizations are “under-investing in internal analytics staff and failing to implement a coherent measurement strategy which can help them turn their data into something of real value to their business.”

Approximately 700 companies took part in the survey, including 434 client-side companies and 229 supplier-side respondents (constituting agencies, consultancies and analytics vendors).

Although 88% of companies polled said that web analytics are important for measuring traffic to websites, cost and resources were seen as the greatest hindrance to effective data analysis. 48% of organizations do not have any dedicated web analysts.

For anyone who participates online, whether via blogs, social networks and even instant messenger, having some form of a history log is helpful to gain a better understanding of past trends and possibly predict the future. Sure, there are some frustrations with current web analytics offerings, but as we continue to live in an increasing hyper-digital world, effective measurement and targeting will become a necessity.

For more information about Burson-Marsteller’s evidence-based approach and strategic analysis offerings, see our Strategic Development section on www.bm.com.

I continue to be amazed by stories of employees of large companies trying to conceal their identity to influence issues via social media. Burger King is the latest to be in the news on this topic, although from what I’ve read (and admittedly I know very little about this particular case) it seems as though the company handled the situation well and was transparent in how they disclosed it.

I spoke with a reporter from the Miami Herald last week (the story is available online) and she asked some great questions around how companies should figure out when to participate, and when they decide to do so, how they should go about doing it. The initial answer is easy - if you participate you need to say who you are and be transparent about stating your reason for participating. Transparency is often used to indicate you have to disclose everything. That isn’t the case, and is usually too much information. You do need to be transparent about the topic you are discussing, and need to be unassailable in your truthfulness. People who try to participate under fake names need to just stop it. Go away! You will be caught, but more importantly, you are ruining it for others who are doing the right thing.

It is a hard enough decision to figure out how to participate. Note use of “how to participate” and not “whether or not to participate.” Companies who want any chance to influence their reputation and brand online have no choice but to be involved in online conversations. If you aren’t part of the conversation then your point of view is not represented. But when companies see others on the front pages and online news sites for improper behavior it elevates the overall feeling of confusion and concern about being involved online. It makes the blogosphere seem dark and scary (insert Halloween music here) and minimizes the true opportunity for companies to engage with their stakeholders.

I am not suggesting that companies need to respond to every every story, topic, and blog post. I am recommending that companies:

• Put social media guidelines in place so that employees and partners know what is allowed, and the implications for violating behavior (I wrote some about this in February.) The Word of Mouth Marketing Association is a good place to start for guidance.
• Monitor online conversations to understand what is being said. This is a great opportunity to get real-time feedback, almost a focus group of thousands. It will also give you a way to understand the topics that may be relevant for you to participate in, both proactively to contribute to a story, but reactively to correct misinformation.
• Determine how you will decide which posts to respond to. There will be some blogs that you want to avoid for whatever reason - the blogger is not open to differing points of view, the community has a set opinion and will use your participation to flame an issue, or the blog has a significant amount of offensive material that you don’t want to be exposed to. These are a few ideas, but think it through because there are others.
• Contribute to the community. Organizations that find a way to contribute to the conversation as opposed to only participating from a selfish perspective have a great opportunity to build relationships. H&R Block did this with tax tips, Southwest does it with open conversation and an integrated social media approach, and selfishly, our founding chairman Harold Burson occasionally does it by sharing his wisdom and insight.
• Think broadly. This isn’t only about blogs. It is about social media, twitter, discussion forums, and more.
• Participate. Monitor. And stick with it. It won’t always be easy, and the results won’t come quickly, but if you truly want to influence your brand position then you need to have a voice. And that voice needs to live online and off.

Today Burson-Marsteller launched its Digital Perspective Newsletter and we are all pretty excited about it. First of all: thank you to everyone that was involved in making this happen. The Digital Perspective newsletter will highlight some of our digital initiatives, point of views, trends, and news - it will be sent out on a monthly basis.

Signing-up is easy - just look to the right of this post where it says “Subscribe to Newsletter” (If this post is not current anymore, scroll to the top of the homepage of the Digital Perspective Blog). We would be more than happy to hear from you: suggestions, ideas, comments - please write to us at b-mdigital@digital.bm.com or simply respond to this post.