We live in an “e” world. Is it good or is it bad?

We have e-mails instead of mails, e-zines instead of magazines and e-newsletters instead of newsletters. The list can of course go on and on. The “e” has made our lives easier because with the “e” things are faster.


Another great thing about the “e” is that we can track it no matter where it goes in this entire Planet. We can easily find out who read our e-mail, e-zine and e-newsletter and when.

How effective is this tracking?

This online world includes of course websites and blogs. These can be easily monitored using the free tool Google Analytics. We can see how many people visited the website, where they come from, how much time they spent on our pages and so on.

These quantitative data are however not enough to provide an accurate picture of visits and visitors. Let’s take for example average time spent on website. The higher it is the better. But what if we open a page without reading anything, then go to the kitchen and eat, while at return we just close the window. The average time on the website is high but we have not read a single row. On the other hand, comments are a good way to evaluate a website. Only people interested in what has been written can leave comments. And we can tell who read what.

From a different point of view however it is a bit scary to know that every move we make online can be tracked.

So as a PR practitioner I like the fact that I can track the “e” (even with the downfalls mentioned) to improve the channels for disseminating messages. But as a person (PR pros are humans don’t get me wrong:)) I want my “e” to travel in “peace”….