KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

In case you were wondering what all that Twittering was about..

I seem to be talking more and more about Twitter, to which most people's response is: Is that a nervous condition? This  Newbie's guide to Twitter
explains all. Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang for the link.

YAY -- another measurement blog is born!

The smart folks at Metrica have launched  Measurement Matters - The media evaluation and PR analysis blog
and its well worth reading. Lots of jolly good insight from the British perspective.

UNC teaches measurement right

I recently spoke at UNC's  School of Journalism and Mass Communication and was blown away by their use of technology. About 2/3rds of the way thru my talk, the professor, Craig Carroll, asked the class a question and got instant response. Talk about how to learn about surveys! Between their hands on use of our dashboard and the hands-one practical approach to research, these are the students I want to hire in the future.  University of New Hampshire are you listening?

More interesting perspectives on Social Media Metrics

Link: Social Media Metrics - ClickZ.

Yet another black box

I always get excited about new engagement metrics, but Microsoft's new Engagement Mapping actually sets the industry back. Scott Karp elogquently explains why in: What's Inside Microsoft's Engagement Mapping 'Black Box'? - Seeking Alpha.

One more sign that its about relationships not eyeballs

I got a peek yesterday at yet another piece of the CGM puzzle that Paul Gillin would call "disruptive technology." Its called VendorRate and it allows B2B customers to anonymously rate vendors.
Think BizRate on steroids for the B to B marketplace. Most companies have policies about talking about vendors, but the completely anonymous environment changes that dynamic. You have to register and qualify to rate, so the system prohibits vendors from rating themselves.
Why should PR people care? and what does this have to do with measurement? you ask.
In the old days, it used to be that PR people "Launched" a product by talking to key journalists, issuing a press release and maybe having a launch tour or party. With luck, the right media would write about it, and with luck the right people would be influenced by those reviews and maybe buy the produce.
VendorRate takes that journalist/reviewer/analyst entirely out of the picture, and substitutes a reviewer that is much more likely to be trusted, according to most research. People are much more likely to trust people like themselves. So a trusted rating system by B2B reviewers is going to have much more credibility than the reviewers at TechCrunch, Engadget etc. In fact, in KDPaine & Partners own research we've found evidence that customer-generated reviews are more influential in the sales cycle than professional reviews.
So increasingly the onus is placed on the organization to have a good relationship with its customers, do the right thing, make good products, not just have the best "launch" or the best spin.
Where does that leave PR? Right where it should be. Working on improving the organizations trust and credibility (and, we hope, measuring it.) and improving relationships and communications between customers and employees.  That is, unless they abdicate that to marketing.

More on measuring engagement

Four Different Ways Of Looking At Engagement.

Business Week adopts the conversation index

Business Week has decided to use the conversation index (ratio between postings and comments) as an Engagement Metrics  for their advertisers. Once again, you're never wrong, you're just early. I've been advocating usage of the conversation index since January of 2006. Nice to know someone's listening.

Perhaps the most useful post of the year so far

This is a great list of mostly free social media tools list - from analytics to Digg.

A great discussion about social media measurement coming up

The Bulldog Audio Conference on Wednesday should be interesting if you want to know how to Monitor and Measure Reputation, Relationships and ROI Using Web 2.0 Tools.