Thursday, August 31, 2006
Flaks get hooked on stats.
Today was the official launch of Browzar, a free web browser which lets you search and surf the web without leaving any visible trace on the computer you are using.
It's not often in PR that you have the opportunity to get real time, independent feedback on exactly what the work you are doing is achieving for you client but working this week on the Browzar launch our team got to see exactly how coverage was driving downloads through the site statistics from www.browzar.com, and boy it is addictive!
The the stats are updated every five minutes giving us enough resolution to literally see particular bits of coverage hit. Grabbing the latest set immediately after Ajaz's interview on Channel 4 news showed a large jump in downloads. A ripple of Scandinavian downloads spread from Sweden, where IDG covered the story, to Norway and Denmark. Slashdot picked up the story before the USA woke up and became the top referring site. We were then able to see the USA and Brazil light up in red as downloads climbed and coloured the map from the East coast across the continent as people woke up to the news.
Not only is it a real motivator to see such tangible and immediate results, but the data we were getting showed up a few good opportunities for follow up calls and angles we could amplify.
The feel good factor target for downloads was passed round lunch time, doubled by 3pm and was still climbing tonight.
Google hits for the word Browzar went from 36 on Tuesday (35 misspellings of Browser and one
for the www.browzar.com site) to 159,000 as I write this.
Book marks for www.browzar.com on del.icio.us rose from my first lone entry less than 24 hours ago, to 251 today.
Who says you can't measure the effectiveness of PR?
Well a lot of people and they have a point, finding a single, meaningful, direct measure for the effectiveness of a campaign is rare but it is great when you have one.
UPDATE
Browzar is now the LifeHacker Download of the day. Good job S. !
It's not often in PR that you have the opportunity to get real time, independent feedback on exactly what the work you are doing is achieving for you client but working this week on the Browzar launch our team got to see exactly how coverage was driving downloads through the site statistics from www.browzar.com, and boy it is addictive!
The the stats are updated every five minutes giving us enough resolution to literally see particular bits of coverage hit. Grabbing the latest set immediately after Ajaz's interview on Channel 4 news showed a large jump in downloads. A ripple of Scandinavian downloads spread from Sweden, where IDG covered the story, to Norway and Denmark. Slashdot picked up the story before the USA woke up and became the top referring site. We were then able to see the USA and Brazil light up in red as downloads climbed and coloured the map from the East coast across the continent as people woke up to the news.
Not only is it a real motivator to see such tangible and immediate results, but the data we were getting showed up a few good opportunities for follow up calls and angles we could amplify.
The feel good factor target for downloads was passed round lunch time, doubled by 3pm and was still climbing tonight.
Google hits for the word Browzar went from 36 on Tuesday (35 misspellings of Browser and one
for the www.browzar.com site) to 159,000 as I write this. Who says you can't measure the effectiveness of PR?
Well a lot of people and they have a point, finding a single, meaningful, direct measure for the effectiveness of a campaign is rare but it is great when you have one.
UPDATE
Browzar is now the LifeHacker Download of the day. Good job S. !
