Gorkana Media Database now features in-depth profiles on the most influential blogs and bloggers across 17 sectors.

With an increasingly fragmented media landscape and a growing legion of social media influencers, access to accurate and in-depth information on both journalists and influential bloggers is vital. It is this information that is part of the growing armoury of essential intelligence Gorkana Group can now provide PR professionals with.

There are a number of sources of blog intelligence gathered by automated systems, but, until now, no specialist who applies a human, editorial dimension to screening, gauging relevance and giving a relative indication of popularity.

Gorkana’s blog intelligence has been shortlisted and editorially reviewed following a rigorous automated process and manual review by a specialist team of in-house researchers.

The resulting blog profiles include transparent metrics for an indication of popularity, detailed profiles of the bloggers who write for them, and in-depth information specifically geared towards PRs. This includes:

• Which subjects, themes and topics they cover and any specific areas of interest or passions
• Top tips for PRs including specific PR opportunities and how they prefer to be approached
• Key contact information, social media profiles, biographies and awards won
• How established, commercial or promotional they are
• Key metrics such as number of inbound links, average monthly updates, google search traffic and Technorati performance.

For more information:

• Email enquiries@gorkana.com
• Agency and in-house PRs: call Philip Godson on +44 (0)20 7420 6882
• Book a free demo here

This June The International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) is organising a worldwide campaign centred on its European Summit in Lisbon (June 8-10) to show how public relations measurement can result in improved brand equity, corporate reputation, employee engagement, stock price and other business objectives.

AMEC and its partner, the Institute for Public Relations (IPR), are leading the drive to embed programme research and measurement at the heart of every PR programme. As part of the summit, they will be hosting a big industry leadership debate called “Setting the Measurement Agenda”, with client, international speakers and delegates fully involved.

PR organisations throughout the world, including the US, India, Middle East, Europe and Australia are working with AMEC to ask their members to take part in a survey which will form a key part of the flagship Measurement Agenda 2020 debate at the Summit. The survey is the first step to identify the attitudes of communicators towards programme measurement, and the need to get business leaders to place more value on public relations activity. The results of the survey will be presented at the Summit.

Of the eight workshops planned Gorkana Group Managing Director Jeremy Thompson and Director, Richard Bagnall will be involved in three which include, ‘Future of the Media – Content is King’ and ‘Moving Towards a Global Standard of Social Media Measurement’. Attendees will also hear from over 40 expert international speakers from companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, FedEx, The Independent, European Newspaper Publishers Association (ENPA), Oxfam, BBVA, and the Council of Europe.

The European Summit on Measurement takes place in Lisbon (June 8 -10), the full programme and information on how to book your place can be found on their website.

The UK’s leading media intelligence and analysis services– Gorkana (www.gorkana.com), Durrants (www.durrants.co.uk) and Metrica (www.metrica.net) have launched a new corporate identity – ‘Gorkana Group’ and the first release of their ground-breaking integrated online media planning, monitoring and analysis service today.

The three businesses recently merged to form ‘Gorkana Group’ (www.gorkana.com/group), with an ambition to step-change the level and quality of media intelligence and insight available to the PR and marketing industries.

The new service features a host of benefits to help PRs plan their campaigns more accurately, keep track of their coverage and analyse the results even faster. The online portal offers seamless access to rich and accurate media and journalist intelligence and editorially reviewed print, broadcast, online and social media coverage and analysis.

Jeremy Thompson, Gorkana Group MD, said: “As former PRs, our team understands the daily needs of busy in-house and agency PR teams and have designed the service to help meet these. With the media landscape in a constant state of change, we know it will revolutionise the way they work, allowing them to be more knowledgeable about their key influencers, the media, their competitors and the effectiveness of their PR.”

Getting a clear snapshot of how PR initiatives are performing on a day to day basis is made easy through a dynamic, customisable dashboard – helping to better inform and drive PR and brand reputation strategies. “You can configure your dashboard to display whatever is most important to you – volume and favourability of key campaign coverage, spokespeople, share of voice – you can also review multiple campaigns simultaneously.” Richard Bagnall, Gorkana Group Director said.

An impressive feature of the service is ‘journalist coverage analysis’. These allow customers to understand what journalists are actually writing about through a dynamic feed of word clouds and graphs of top terms, organisations and people. PRs can build media lists based on real insight, saving them from hours of time-consuming research and helping them target their campaigns much more accurately.

Alexander Northcott, Gorkana Group Director, comments: “Our analysis on what journalists have been writing about is a great example of how Durrants has enhanced Gorkana’s journalist profiles through integration. This sort of insight is like gold dust – it’s exactly what we needed when we were PRs.”

The ability to click through to Gorkana’s accurate journalist profiles directly from media coverage is another great time-saving feature – ensuring PRs can look up and connect with the influencers behind their coverage quickly and easily.
The service also features an online media monitoring and analysis tool ‘Metrica Radar’ – helping companies gear up to tackle the challenges of monitoring brand conversations and reputation online.

- Ends -

Notes for Editors:

About Gorkana Group:

Gorkana Group provides integrated media planning, monitoring and analysis services to the PR and marketing industries. The company is comprised of three market-leading brands – Gorkana, the UK’s most trusted media and journalist database and community network (www.gorkana.com), Durrants, a premium media monitoring service that provides fast, accurate and relevant editorially reviewed media coverage Durrants (www.durrants.co.uk) and Metrica, an award-winning global media analysis and evaluation service Metrica (www.metrica.net). Together, they serve over 4,000 organisations around the world, including 200of the FTSE 350.

The company also runs the UK’s leading journalist and PR recruitment site (www.gorkanajobs.co.uk) and provides daily industry news, features and analysis to the PR industry through its community portal (www.gorkanapr.com).

Gorkana Group is based on Old Street near the Silicon Roundabout, an area of East London where more than 100 tech and design companies have set up over the last five years. Prime Minister David Cameron recently announced that he wants to establish an East London Technology City and lure Google, Facebook and Microsoft to new offices in Olympic Park, a few tube stops from the Silicon Roundabout.

Gorkana Group was formed after Durrants acquired Metrica in October 2009 and Gorkana in April 2010.

Gorkana Group is a private company and is backed by Exponent Private Equity.

For more information and interviews please contact:

Jeremy Thompson
jeremy.thompson@gorkana.com
+44 20 7674 0356

Nilam Randall
nilam.randall@gorkana.com
+44 207 420 6848

Durrants – the UK’s leading media monitoring business, has taken a stake in Brighton-based social media monitoring company Brandwatch after being “blown away” by the company during a trial to find a social media monitoring partner.

The investment signals the company’s commitment to the social media space, an increasingly important channel for managing client and brand conversations and reputation.

Durrants, Metrica, the global media analysis and evaluation specialist and Gorkana, the UK’s most trusted media/journalist database and community network are part of Discovery Group.

This latest investment in Brandwatch supports Discovery Group’s ambition to deliver greater insight to the PR and Marketing communities. The integration of intelligence from these services will deliver unique insights to help companies plan, monitor and analyse their PR more effectively than ever before.

Durrants went to the market looking for a specialist social media monitoring company and Brandwatch came out on top following a rigorous trial period alongside several other leading international monitoring firms.

Jeremy Thompson, Durrants MD, said: “During the trial it quickly became clear that Brandwatch was head and shoulders above the competition. We were blown away by their relevant and timely coverage, strong account management and technical support, robust platform and user friendly service. It really was a case of liking the company so much we wanted to invest in it.”

“There is a baffling amount of choice for PRs when it comes to tracking brand or client conversations online and our own research tells us that most PRs find social media monitoring one of their biggest challenges.* We’re confident that Brandwatch, working alongside Metrica, will help PRs cut through the confusion and provide meaningful analytics,” Thompson said.

Brandwatch’s social media monitoring data will be used by Durrants’ sister company Metrica, the award-winning global media analysis and evaluation company, to track brands and conversations online and offer an enhanced social media service.

Giles Palmer, Brandwatch CEO, said: “When it comes to monitoring social media it is important to find a supplier and data you trust. We’ve always been confident about what we provide but this move by Durrants provides a ringing endorsement of our service.”

“We operate in a competitive space and I’m very proud that we were able to beat off stiff competition from several North American providers and managed to impress Durrants so much they wanted to invest in the company. The investment comes at an explosive time in the social media monitoring market and will help us push our product to the very top of the global pile.”

The investment in Brandwatch is the latest in a series of big deals in the social media monitoring space as companies gear up to tackle the challenges of monitoring brand conversations and reputation online. The social media marketing industry is growing by 34% a year and is expected to be worth $3.1bn a year by 2014.**

For more information about the investment or any of the services mentioned above please email us at enquiries@gorkana.com. Alternatively, please contact your dedicated account manager we will happily answer any of your questions.

*Gorkana survey of 205 Social Media Panel Event attendees, June 2010
**Forrester Research

Here at Gorkana we’ve been busy liaising with the journalists of the top 100 consumer monthly magazines and discussing the content of their up-coming Christmas pages and the PR Opportunities that will be available for you.

We’ve put together two lists filled to the brim with the Christmas food & drink and Christmas gift PR opportunities.

If you’re a client and would like to make use of these opportunities, you can find a list of them on the Gorkana Database here: lists > all lists > consumer > choose a pr opportunity > seasonal lists

And if you’re not already taking advantage of our trusted media database but would like to, or you’re just curious to know more, then please contact our sales team on +44 (0)20 7420 6882.