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Katie Delahaye Paine on Twitter.
I have to agree with Kary Delaria and her premise that clip books must die.
In a world when all that really matters is what the customer DOES with the information you put out there, the notion of the thud factor and the stacks of clips as a measure of success certainly deserve to go the way of the mimeo machine and the rotary phone.
I have to argue one point (and would have done so on her blog, but I categorically refuse to comment on any blog that requires registration in order to comment. Pitchengine, it is clear you do NOT want to have a conversation with me, you just want my email so you can spam me) so I'll make my observations here.
Where she really gets it wrong is that you can't quantify engagement. Indeed, you can. You can use Stowe Boyd's Conversation Index to see whether people are commenting (clearly I'm NOT engaged enough in what Pitchengine has to say, since I'm not commenting there.) You can use any of Eric Peterson's engagement metrics and get a very good idea of how many people are really engaging with what you have to say. You can actually do something as radical and old fashioned as asking them how engaged they feel. Would they recommend the brand? Do they value their relationships with this brand more than others?
Engagement is highly measureable and highly quantifiable, you just have to know the right questions or metrics to look for.
In a world when all that really matters is what the customer DOES with the information you put out there, the notion of the thud factor and the stacks of clips as a measure of success certainly deserve to go the way of the mimeo machine and the rotary phone.
I have to argue one point (and would have done so on her blog, but I categorically refuse to comment on any blog that requires registration in order to comment. Pitchengine, it is clear you do NOT want to have a conversation with me, you just want my email so you can spam me) so I'll make my observations here.
Where she really gets it wrong is that you can't quantify engagement. Indeed, you can. You can use Stowe Boyd's Conversation Index to see whether people are commenting (clearly I'm NOT engaged enough in what Pitchengine has to say, since I'm not commenting there.) You can use any of Eric Peterson's engagement metrics and get a very good idea of how many people are really engaging with what you have to say. You can actually do something as radical and old fashioned as asking them how engaged they feel. Would they recommend the brand? Do they value their relationships with this brand more than others?
Engagement is highly measureable and highly quantifiable, you just have to know the right questions or metrics to look for.
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Posted by: paul smith | June 30, 2009 at 02:36 AM
Katie, if you don't mind, I thought I'd share a comment I just posted on David Mullen's blog post (to which he references you BTW) about the doom loop PR people find themselves:
David, the trap most PR people fall into is this: they’re showing the CEO clip reports while the CEO is focused on sales reports. So when sales dip, so do PR budgets. Why? Because there are no cash registers at corporate, and as the CEO sees it, PR has nothing to do with sales. (S)he sees it that way because that’s what we’re showing. In one form or another, this dynamic continues to take place in enterprises across the world. If we were doing our jobs correctly, then when times got tough, our budgets would stay the same or increase because CEOs would realize that they need us by their sides more than ever. Instead, we’re left fighting for our lives during lean times. We should be paying close attention to how we change this dynamic in the future.
Posted by: Leo Bottary | May 23, 2009 at 04:29 PM
Hi!
Great post here, I'm a big fan of your blog!
One quick request - I tried to subscribe to your rss feed in my reader, but when you click on the link from the main page it takes you to the feed for your SurvivorBlog, not your measurement blog.
Could you please fix it so we can read you in rss?
Thanks!!
Posted by: JJ | May 15, 2009 at 03:49 PM
Thank you for your comments, Katie.
You’re right – there are indexes and metrics available that quantify how many people are engaging with your brand or message (I actually hope to touch on this in a future blog post). When I talk about the qualitative, unquantifiable results, I’m referring to power of the conversations - word of mouth, viral spread – that contributes to (or, in some cases, breaks down) brand equity. While we may be able to get a good idea of how many people are engaging in these conversations, we can’t truly put a dollar value on the effect they will have, in the long run.
The larger issue is in how we report to our clients. Like you said, the thud factor should go by the wayside. I agree, we shouldn’t ignore the data that is available to us. The value of the data, is in reporting it to our clients in a meaningful way, that will contribute to the overall success of their marketing and communications strategy.
Posted by: Kary | May 15, 2009 at 10:02 AM