The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

What You REALLY Need to Learn: KD Paine's Commencement Address to Recent Graduates in Public Relations and Social Media

The Paine of Measurement

I haven’t been asked to give a commencement speech in awhile, probably because in the last one I told graduates that, "You’re never wrong, you're just early," and,"'Tis better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”  As a result, several hundred recent graduates were launched into the business world who are probably driving their bosses crazy as we speak. 

But if I were to address recent graduates of any of the hundreds of public relations and social media programs now sending throngs of newbies into the PR world these six nuggets of wisdom are what I'd offer.

A Measurement Makeover for Brown + Dutch Public Relations

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Alyson Dutch of Brown + Dutch Public Relations

I recently had the pleasure of being part of a Bulldog Webinar entitled “The Great PR Measurement Debate: The Truth about AVE, Clip Counts and the Barcelona Principles.” The premise for the webinar was to delve into the seeming contradiction that 33% of PR people admit to using Ad Value Equivalencies (AVEs), even though the Barcelona Principles specifically state that they are not a measure of PR effectiveness. As it turned out, the title was a bit of a misnomer, because all but one of the presenters were either using or advocating for the best practices advocated in the Barcelona Principles.

Alyson Dutch, CEO of  Brown + Dutch Public Relations, was the sole holdout, and she advocated for the use of AVEs. For her bravery (albeit misguided) we thought we’d take her through a measurement makeover.

"Geography of Hate" Map of Offensive Tweets

Here's an interesting presentation of research by Dr. Monica Stephens of Humboldt State University (HSU): a interactive map identifying the geographic origins of hate Tweets. The data is based on every geocoded tweet in the U.S. from June 2012 - April 2013 containing one or more specific hate words. HSU students read all 150,000 of these tweets and classified them based on a predefined rubric. Only those tweets that were identified by human readers as negative were used in this analysis. All such tweets were aggregated to the county level and normalized by total Twitter traffic in each county. --WTP

LOVES ME SOME DATA!

You have got to watch this love letter to infographics and data visualization from PBS. (A big thanks to kingdanglerbk; I used his comment on this video as the title above.)

Video: How Roger Craig Used Statistics To Win On Jeopardy!

From the SAS Voices blog comes this video of Jeopardy! champ Roger Craig at the SAS Global Forum. He describes how he reverse-engineered the game to predict which questions would be asked and devised an optimal training strategy. Includes some interesting background on how they film the show (they tape 5 shows a day) and some good tactics should you ever appear on the show (find the Daily Doubles and bet big). --WTP

Watch live streaming video from sasglobalforum at livestream.com

Social Media Is Going More and More Mobile

Here's an eye-opening chart from Business Insider: "U.S. Share Of Time Spent On Social Media By Device." (Click on it to see it bigger.) I would have guessed, more or less, how mobile most of the social networks are. But Facebook and Pinterest, at half, are a surprise. This chart is part of a new report from BI Intelligence on the state of social media advertising. --WTP

What Your Favorite Social Network Reveals About Your Feelings Of Inferiority

Why is it that social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are so powerfully addictive? Maureen O'Connor's article in New York Magazine, "The Six Major Anxieties of Social Media," pins their popularity on our insecurities and the sites' abilities to stoke our feelings of inferiority. "Because each social media network rewards different elements of human behavior, each gives rise to a different inferiority complex. Let us explore the unique forms of oppression we willingly subject ourselves to when we join and engage... social networks."

But, hey, no worries: there are new apps that will automatically provide you with a fake social media life, much more glamorous than your real one. --WTP (thanks to FullContact for the image)

50 Top Tools for Social Media Monitoring, Analytics, and Management

Pam Dwyer on Social Media Today has listed 50 tools to "distill data in ways that are relevant to your social media marketing plan, enabling you to figure out how to succeed with your audience."

Write Better By Using Stories Wisely

Daphne Gray-Grant's Rapid Writing

Once upon a time, a man who now is a naturalist at the Grand Canyon was a nine-year-old boy. He was fascinated by bugs and rocks but not too interested in sports. His parents, however, had been schooled by his older, athletic brother and therefore insisted that the nerdy, recalcitrant boy join the local baseball team.

The boy did as he was told and immediately, the other kids stuck him in right field where, as they put it, "he couldn't do any harm." In fact, they even said to him, "don't catch the ball if it comes your way," because they didn't want him messing things up. So he sat on the grass and looked at the bugs and rocks.

Video: A Few Measurement Tips From Katie Paine

Here's a video from IABC Calgary, in which Katie Paine provides some measurement tips. (It takes a minute to get to Ms. Paine's advice, and, yes, that background music is a bit much.) --WTP

Social Media Apps To Airbrush Away Your Useless Boring Existence

On social media, nobody knows your whole life is a dog. That's becoming more true every day, with new apps to not just super-model your appearance, but airbrush the rest of your boring life as well. This article in Marketing explains how companies like Instasham and CouchCachet provide you with the life your feeble self can only dream of. From CouchCachet’s mission statement: "Start living the life you have always wanted without ever leaving the house." 

This brings a whole new twist to social media measurement. If I've tweaked Twitter to tell the world I'm drinking Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA, but my real beer of choice is Bud Lite, then isn't that going to skew the research on beer consumption? (Actually, I'm a big fan of Torpedo, which brings on the massive hops but leaves me some change for Beer Nuts. Also, most any of the gruits from Earth Eagle Brewings.) --WTP (thanks to ThoughtPick for the image)

SEO Best Practices For PR

Go read this nice little post by Carrie Morgan at Ragan's PR Daily: "3 Best Practices Of SEO For PR." If you are in PR, then you know you are in the business of getting things noticed online. These tips will help with some good basic advice. --WTP (thanks to Atwoodz for the image)

Best and Worst Times To Post To Social Networks

Here's a very informative infographic from Business Insider to help you plan your social media posting times. Click on it to see it HUGE. --WTP

Gini Dietrich on How to Measure PR

Go read this great article by Gini Dietrich at Spin Sucks: "How to Measure PR: Use These Tools." It includes an inspirational little case study of a content marketing program with the goal of getting people to a free trial. The nice point she makes is that once you settle on what to measure:

"...we know exactly how many people we need to get to the free trial landing page – through content – in order to get them to take it and then what kinds of content – through email – we need to send them so they’ll convert to a customer. It becomes science and math, combined with art, and it works really, really well."

Go read read it right now.

Life After Death By PowerPoint 2010

Expanded version of Don McMillan's 2008 YouTube hit "Life After Death by PowerPoint":

Your Resume and Interview Don't Count: New Data On How To Predict A Good Employee

Yesterday, I posted about how being well connected leads to more and better employment. Today, here's a very different side of the job hunt story.

You think that good employees are a product of a good school, good grades, and months of training? Think again, says this article in Business Insider. New ways of gathering data and assessing employees has lead to new knowledge about what makes a good employee. Old school job-search staples like resumes and interviews are being replaced by online data, analytics, and the Moneyball approach to hiring.

The most valuable innate quality in an employee? "Over and over again, the people who perform best are the ones who don't need to be told what to do, the ones that love challenges, seek information on their own, and quickly adapt." --Bill Paarlberg, editor (Thanks to Innovation Box for the image.)

Social Media Effectiveness and Black Unemployment

We like to think of social media as a tool to "bring people together" to accomplish mutually beneficial goals. But it's also clear that social media is a tool with which we gain advantage over other people. This can be especially valuable when finding a job.

More social media connections means more favoritism in determining who gets a job and who doesn't.

3 Types of Rarely Retweeted Tweets

From ragan.com comes this post on what to avoid if you want to have your tweets retweeted. Tactics that will improve your retweet exposure include avoiding truncated Facebook tweets, too many hashtags, and poor grammar and spelling.

Personally, I am so glad to hear that some people are turned off by poor English usage. Of course, I am an editor, so there you go.  (Thanks to MIT Technology Review for the image.) -- WTP

Tools to Track Success on Instagram

Four tools to track Instagram success are briefly mentioned in this post from PRDaily. It's intriguing that one of them, SimplyMeasured, provides "free" analytics, but you must share a tweet to promote the company. What an interesting way to get payment for a service. (The post and the image originally appeared on WaxingUnlyrical.com) -- WTP

The Measurement Geeks of the Month: PR News' 2013 Measurement Hall of Fame Inductees

On May 15th, PR News will induct six longtime public relations measurement heavy hitters into its Measurement Hall of Fame at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Congrats!

• James Fetig, recently retired chief, external relations, for the Corporation for National and Community Service
• Diane Lennox, PR services manager for SAS
• David Michaelson, managing director for Teneo Strategy
• Katie Paine, chief marketing officer, News Group, and chairman & founder, Salience/KDPaine & Partners
• Mark Weiner, CEO of PRIME Research
• Donald K. Wright, Harold Burson Professor and Chair in Public Relations, Boston University’s College of Communication.

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