KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

One less excuse to NOT monitor social media

Thanks to my friend Ryan Anderson here's yet another free social media search tool called Social Mention.

More proof, in case we needed it that eyeball counting is still the Wrong Measure

The Twitterverse was rocked yesterday by the news from Nielsen that Twitter's retention rate was just 40% -- in other words most people try it an don't come back. But this post suggest  That Nielsen may be Wrong; because, like me, most people actually switch out of the raw Twitter feed to applications like Tweetdeck as they try to organize their Twitter followers into logical feeds.
But the biggest flaw of all is that this based on the assumption that at some point Twitter will be selling ads and therefore the number of raw eyeballs really matters. Who cares about the size of the audience when instead you can point to increased revenue, more leads, incresed engagement and impact on mission (all of which we have measured) as true measure of Twitter's efficacy.

Coolest new free measurement tool

One of the best lines at SNCR's New Comm Forum was Francois Gassieaux's statement that "I love Radian 6, but if Spy is free"  so we all dutifully went to
this site.and it turns out that while it  doesn't have all the cool bells and whistles of Radian 6, in terms of value for the dollar, this is pretty cool stuff.

An astonishing list of unmeasured success

I asked my Twitter followers for examples of good B2B uses of social media. Among the numerous resposes I got was a list to this List of Social Media Marketing Examples.compiled by Peter Kim.
What is truly astonishing about this, and I will confess that I didn't read all the case studies, but none of the dozen or so I perused had any measurement whatsoever. I assume that if people are bragging about it they think its successful but I saw neither qualitative nor quantiative metrics anywhere in the examples!

Must reading Social Media tips

Lee Odden has assembled a great compendum of Social Media Marketing Tips from Dell, Comcast, HP, Wells Fargo, Best Buy, General Mills, Ford, UPS, Home Depot, Cirque du Soleil

Must reading for anyone trying to figure out social media

Another reason why counting eyeballs no longer matters

Think of  TidyRead, a  new Firefox add-in as the computer equivalent of blinders, allowing you to focus on the content that matters and ignore the rest. You can also call it the death knell to the advertising model.

Great perspective on measuring "reputational damage"

I am quickly developing a  crush  on Clive James. He is Safire, Buckley, Buchwald and Dowd with an English accent. He is also wickedly funny, and brilliant. I love his use of the English language and his perspective on reputation .

Quantity is no substitute for quality

Since I"m getting ready to talk to PRSA's Council of Higher Ed Senior Summit on Wednesday, I was intrigued by this headline: Which top universities generate the most conversation on blogs? . Of course the data is essentially meaningless to anyone who knows anything about the education marketplace.Ultimately ranking by blog posting volume is not going to get you any more research grants, alumni donations or qualified students.What's important is not about how many times you are mentioned in social media, it's all about what people are saying about you. Are they talking about the stupid things students do? or are they talking about the ground breaking research that your faculty is doing? Is Carnegie Mellon's rank driven by one professor (Randy Pauch) or by a variety of stories that show your institutions strength in nanotechnology. Yes, rankings are important, but not this kind.

 

Finally, ad guys are entering the 21st century!

This exciting bit of news may have been overlooked by most of us, but it actually represents a huge shift in how we measure social media -- by sales not impressions. And it seems like Time Inc is weighing in as well saying that time spent has to be factored in.
I'm not suggesting that we're really any closer to a really great measurement system for social media -- especially since both of these are essentially focused on sales not reputation, and do nothing to measure the impact of word of mouth of relationships, but at least the way people are thinking about measurement is changing. Its about time

Great discussion going on about Social Media Measurement

Thoughts on Measurement » The Buzz Bin.