How to measure PR on the Internet – panel discussion

- Samih Toukan ( CEO, Maktoomb), Rob Jones – Editorial director, AME Info, Katie Paine



Samih - Largest online community – 10 million unique visitors in Middle East. We are an audited company. We hope that others in the community will move to auditing as well. We served 2 billion pages on the Internet, double of Al Jazeera company. We are also into e-comm. One of the largest sports, travel network.

Arab internet network is re-shaping the region in many ways. It is becoming an interesting thing in the region and is growing at 25 %. All youngsters want to be on the Internet. The next five years we will see a big boom. There are 150 million pages, most of the content is user-generated. Net has pushed democratization process in the region. And we see a crack-down in the region by the government.

We are in the midst of a media revolution, and we are changing the rules of PR. And a clear shift of usage towards online media. A shift of Ad dollars from traditional media to online. UK = 12 % of the ad spends are on the internet. In the USA, circulation figures are going down. 40% of the revenues are from classifieds. Bill gates said that in five years TV will be very different than what it is today.

PR professionals need a good understanding of Web sphere.

Case study : Aramex, one of the customers attacked it. People started commenting about it. Suddenly, there was a response on that blog which said. Aramex reacted proactively and the CEO had posted on the blog. CEO invited the customer to share the frustration about the service. This led to a meeting and also positive reviews on the blog.

PR is no longer about relationship with media. Today PR allows us to a direct relationship with the public. We must learn to use the existing tools which allow us to do that.

Tracking and monitoring messages is easier today. Why not have PRLs’ customized for the internet ( with links, downloads etc..). Build online communities – upload videos etc..



Rob Jones – AME Info

Headlines in PRLs’ need to be self-explanatory. A lot of people come to us through Google and go away too…the headlines are the ones which really matter.

Katie : In the US, there is a concern that are we editing through Google ? ( depending on the release)

Samih : You have to be available to people where they are looking for you. Have your PRL’s which are search engine friendly….have a content strategy…and give good content to users searching for it.


Rob : I would love to have PRLs’ which have links or videos ( corporate videos etc..). Don’t hide the fact that it is a PRL. We need to work closely with PR professionals.

How does one customize a press release ?? for the internet

Rob : Where we are today, we post 150 PRLs’ a day. We would not be able to customize. For us, the relevance of the PRL is important. I know that during the peak time, we know the data about our users.



How do you measure repeat customers ?? Versus someone who has come accidentally ??

Samih : How do you come up in top ten of a search engine ? We use SEO etc.. also, he/she should be able to get relevant information easily. PR agencies must go ahead and learn. We do Ad recall studies and similar things can be done for PR. We have Maktoob Research unit.

Online research is also growing in a big way. We are launching Trend tracker 2007. We help track brand reputation online. This monitors trends in blogs, releases and other . forums.

Event blogs etc… are a good idea too….