Name: Johna Burke
Email:
Bio: I’ve been in the media monitoring and measurement business for nine years, joining BurrellesLuce in 2000. How did I get here? I was a client. I was the PR and IR director at U-Haul International for nearly 11 years. Then I chose to help make my former peers more efficient and effective. I enjoy my role as a trusted advisor and am enthused to speak about best practices in public relations. My commentaries on the subject have appeared in PR print and web outlets. Currently, I chair the Southern Region of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). So what am I passionate about, aside from measurement? My family which includes my three “boys” (Boston terriers). By the way, did I mention that I am also a master at Seinfeld trivia? Twitter: @gojohnab; LinkedIn: Johna Burke; Friendfeed: gojohnab; Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Posts by Johna Burke:
International Public Relations: Israel Mirsky, Porter Novelli, Interview With Johna Burke at the 2011 PR News Measurement Conference
April 18th, 2011Transcript -
JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and we’re here at the PR News Measurement conference. I’m joined by Israel.
Israel, will you please introduce yourself?
ISRAEL MIRSKY: Hi, I’m Israel Mirsky, I’m executive vice president for emerging media technology at Porter Novelli.
BURKE: Fantastic. Now, in your presentation earlier you talked about, you know, creating a measurement plan around international clients, and how it has to be the language first and then the medium. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach those international clients and kind of some of the groundwork that you lay in order to make sure that they’re getting good, measurable results?
MIRSKY: Well, the challenge is that as soon as we start rolling out a social media program that’s successful in English, the clients really want to extend it out to regions because that’s the way they’re organized.
Unfortunately, the Internet doesn’t have national boundaries, per se, it really has language boundaries. So people are speaking in Spanish in one country while they use different dialects, the Boolean searches, the channels and places that they talk are often similar or related. While some companies are working to build indexes that relate directly to regional, on the whole we don’t believe that regional perspectives are the most valuable way to approach international deployments in social media programs. Instead, you go from the language first. You build out your Spanish and your Portuguese, French, Russian and so on, and then you allow the channels where people want to engage from, the countries that they want to engage from, to follow from there. And it’s been a pretty successful deployment for us. We’re starting to do it on a number of clients now, and I’m very excited about it.
BURKE: Excellent. I think it’s so valuable because, you know, we start to think that it’s a global experience and, you know, everything applies everywhere. And so I loved the fact that you have that distinction in establishing your programs. Where can people connect with you online and in social media?
MIRSKY: So our website is www.porternovelli.com, and you can reach me at @israelmirsky on Twitter.
BURKE: Fantastic. Thanks so much.
MIRSKY: Thank you.
Business Objectives and the Bottom Line: Karla Wachter, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, Interview With Johna Burke at the 2011 PR News Measurement Conference
April 8th, 2011Transcript -
JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and we’re here at the PR News Measurement conference. I’m joined by Karla.
Karla, will you please introduce yourself?
KARLA WACHTER: You bet. I’m Karla Wachter, I’m the senior vice president of Insight and Analytics for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide.
BURKE: Karla, you were talking earlier about, you know, people and how they need to tie business objectives to their bottom line. And I think a lot of the viewers probably have very quantitative-based programs right now. What are some of the tips that you would offer for people that want to adopt a more qualitative approach to their measurement campaign?
WACHTER: You bet. Well, first of all, I want to point out that it should be customized based on your unique business problem and business objectives for your company. That’s the most important thing as a filter.
The second thing is taking it beyond volume into thinking about some of the standard metrics like tone, but really thinking today about engagement as well as a core qualitative measurement as well, to really be able to start linking effectively and bridging that gap between what is an output today to an outcome.
BURKE: Excellent. Karla, where can people connect with you online and in social media?
WACHTER: Yes, @karlawachter on Twitter, and waggeneredstrom.com online.
BURKE: Thank you so much, Karla.
WACHTER: Thank.
HR, Employee Retention, and Growing Your Business: Tracy Bochner, Paradigm PR, Interview With Johna Burke at the PRSA 2010 Counselors Academy
April 4th, 2011Transcript -
JOHNA BURKE: Hello, everyone. This is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m here at the PRSA Counselor’s Academy. And we’re here with Tracey.
Tracey, will you introduce yourself?
TRACEY BOCHNER: Sure. Tracey Bochner with Paradigm Public Relations in Toronto.
BURKE: Canada, yay! So, Tracey, for those people that can’t attend this session of leaders in the PR industry, what are some of the takeaways that you’d like to share with them in the sessions that you’ve learned here?
BOCHNER: I’ve been to some really interesting sessions, particularly on HR, on retaining employees, on growing your business. Some of the biggest takeaways I think for us from the session have been around how to structure bonuses, because that’s something we’ve been looking at very closely, and how to grow your agency. We’re an agency of 14 people and we’re only two and a half years old, so we’re busy on this growth path, and there’s been a lot of–what the most interesting pieces for us have been about growing your agencies to be not big, but the best. That was Elise Mitchell’s session yesterday, which was fantastic.
And out of some of the roundtable sessions this morning, tips and advice on how to structure bonuses for best motivating employees, how to look at retention strategies that, again, motivate employees. Even the softer things like beer on Fridays, what are some of those tactics that have worked really well for other agencies? And that has been very interesting for us.
BURKE: Great feedback. And where can people find you on the web?
BOCHNER: We’re at paradigmpr.ca.
BURKE: Great. Thank you so much.
BOCHNER: Thank you.
Improving Your Media Relations Measurement Program. Ed Davis, United Way Houston, Interview with Johna Burke, at the 2011 PR News Measurement Conference
April 1st, 2011Transcript –
JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and we’re here at the PR News Measurement conference. We’re joined by Ed.
Ed, will you please introduce yourself?
ED DAVIS: Sure. My name is Ed Davis. I am the director of media relations for the United Way of greater Houston. And we are a nonprofit, one of the largest United Ways in the United States, located in Houston, Texas.
BURKE: Great. Now, Ed, you talked about the changes that you’ve made to your measurement program. And I know so many times people want to get started and they want to make improvements and changes. Can you talk a little bit about some of those incremental changes that would help people get started in improving and overhauling their own–their current system?
DAVIS: Absolutely. Some of the incremental changes that we implemented on our way to a better process from a communications–both from a communications perspective and a measurement perspective is, number one, getting everybody on board with what it is that we were trying to do and helping everybody understand why we should do this. The second thing was proving the usefulness of this information to our senior leadership. Whether it’s your board, whether it’s your manager, whether it’s your CEO, it doesn’t matter. They need to understand at a very basic level why this is important to them and why it makes your business better. And so those are a couple things that we looked at.
BURKE: Great. And I think, you know, anytime somebody’s evaluating a peer measurement program, it’s always good to be able to get that peer advice of how can they get started. Ed, where can people connect with you online and in social media?
DAVIS: Sure. So online we are at unitedwayhouston.org, and you can always find my cell phone number and my e-mail address on there. And then on Twitter it’s H-A–H-O-U-unitedway, so H-O-U-U-N-I-T-E-D-W-A-Y. And then we don’t really use Facebook for that type of thing, so Twitter would be the best way.
BURKE: Great. Thank you so much.
DAVIS: Yes, ma’am.
The Evolution of Media Measurement: Dr. Jim Grunig, University of Maryland, Interview with Johna Burke at the 2011 PR News Measurement Conference
March 30th, 2011Transcript –
JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and we’re here at the PR News Measurement conference. I’m joined by Dr. Grunig.
Dr. Grunig, will you please introduce yourself?
Dr. JIM GRUNIG: My name is Jim Grunig, or James Grunig. I’m a professor emeritus of public relations from the Department of Communication at University of Maryland.
BURKE: Also, very humbly, one of the new inductees into the PR News Hall of Fame, rightfully so. You know, part of your career has, I’m sure, seen the evolution of measurement. What are some of the biggest changes that you’ve seen in the growth in the industry over the last few years?
Dr. GRUNIG: Actually, the questions that are asked seem to be about the same as they were in the 1970s when I first started working on research and measurement and evaluation as a consultant at AT&T. People still want to show that they have some sort of measurable effects. I think there is an interest, I hope, in moving beyond just program evaluation, which there’s still a great deal of interest in–that is, how do we measure the effects of media relations or employee relations or marketing communications consultant–to get into the longer-term kind of value of the communication function to an organization.
And I think that’s best done through measuring relationships, and this is something that I’ve probably several articles on that’re published on the website of the Institute for Public Relations. And I think the emphasis on reputation is something that has occurred probably mostly in the last 10 years, and I think reputation can largely be explained by the quality of relationships that an organization has with its publics. And in turn, that can be explained by how the organization behaves. So our greatest value, I think, is in changing the behavior of the organization as much as changing the behavior of publics.
BURKE: Great. Thank you so much for your time. And I think that after that it’s no surprise why you are a highly revered person in the measurement community, and we’re so grateful to have the time with you today. Where can people connect with you online or in social media?
Dr. GRUNIG: Well, you can reach me by e-mail at jgrunig@umd.edu. I’m also on both Facebook and LinkedIn if you would like to contact me there.
BURKE: Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. GRUNIG: Thank.
