Web analytics, web metrics, and how to use them to track and improve conversions

So, if you don't have a story, you fake one; you don't have a war, and your government is in power, you make one, no legit story - you make one up.  I'm told that's what Edelman did when ....

"......a blog ostensibly authored by a couple traveling across America in their RV and spending nights parked in WalMart parking lots turned out to be a fake blog, the brainchild of WalMart’s PR counselors at Edelman. While fake blogs (and other fake social media) are nothing new, it’s dismaying to see it emerge from Edelman, which has some of the smarter new-media people on its staff (Phil Gomes, Michael Wiley, Steve Rubel and more), and which touts itself as the PR firm that truly gets social media. This is the third time (as Todd Defren noted in his post) that Edelman has botched the whole social media thing on WalMart’s behalf. "

Sounds like laziness to me - or maybe there are no real people who'd travel around to WalMarts and park there (who are bloggers).  Having been caught ..... it might be hard for the PR firm to talk about it - if I were working at Edelman, I would not want to talk about it either.  MediaPost has the whole story.

"Although the bloggers were acknowledged only as Jim and Laura on the "Wal-Marting Across America" site, BusinessWeek identified one as Laura St. Claire, a freelance writer. Her partner, Jim, however, declined to provide his identity, "to protect his employer," the story says.

That protection lasted about 48 hours. In less than two days, the watchdog organization Wal-Mart Watch identified him as Jim Thresher, a 25-year employee of The Washington Post and a professional photographer.

One thing holds true, if people fake something in the blogosphere - and it's found out - your credibility is hot.

"Those smart PR folks working for Edelman are among the members of the PR community who advocate participation in the conversation. Some of them have been brutal when, to their way of thinking, somebody else fails to understand what it means to be engage in the conversation. So where is Edelman in this particular conversation? Missing in action. As dismaying as this latest misstep is, it’s even more dismaying to see Edelman’s high-powered social media experts failing to walk the talk. Nothing from Richard in his vaunted 6 a.m. blog. Nothing from Steve, who blogs at the pinnacle of PR’s A-list. Nothing from anybody (based on a Technorati search and a survey of the Edelman blogs). "

If someone wants to create a viral campaign and you can find bloggers who actually agree with the story (IE: want to go and blog about WalMart....that's OK in my book).  To create a conversation and a point of view that's fictitious - that's not OK.