The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

The Measurement Standard Contents for October 2010

Here is a list of links to all the new articles and posts in The Measurement Standard for the month of October, 2010:

 Katie Paine's Education Checklist for Public Relations Measurement

 Every Day Is Statistics Day

 Online Engagement and How To Measure It, an Excerpt from “Measure What Matters,” Katie Paine's new book available in March 2011

 Jim & Lauri Grunig’s Lecture at PRSA International 10/17/10

 Can the Reputation of AT&T Be Saved?

 Bad Measurement: This Is The Kind of Chart that Really Pisses Me Off

 Five PR-Related Things We Need to Get Rid Of

 Measurement Menaces of the Month: All of Australian PR

 The Measurement Mavens of the Month: The IPR Measurement Commission

 Influencers, Social Networks and PR Measurement

 What You Measure Depends On Your Definition of “Clients”

 AVEs Are Really Dead: The IPR Says So

 Flip-Off Frequency Is Best Predictor of Tax Evasion

 Media, Social or Otherwise: It's All Yummy

 Write Faster by Organizing Your Hard Drive

 Geeks of the Week: Goodwill International’s Social Media Team

 IPR Measurement Summit 2010 Summary

 IPR Measurement Summit 2010: Day One Workshops

 

Katie Paine's Education Checklist for Public Relations Measurement

A skilled PR measurement practitioner draws on an unusual combination of talent, experience, and education. PR people are typically word people, skilled at expressing ideas and arguments in writing to fit the needs of different audiences. And they have an education to match. But to do public relations measurement requires the logic and techniques of mathematics, and measurement results are often expressed with statistics. 

It is not always easy to get an education that combines the worlds of both words and numbers. Many academic PR programs omit subject matter that measurement practitioners will find vital.

So to coach our budding measurement mavens, and perhaps to help fill in the gaps for some of you practicing professionals, here is a checklist of the training and experience that a public relations measurement professional ought to have. Or at least will find very handy. We are sure you have your own ideas as well, and we'd like to hear them.

Katie Paine's Education Checklist for Public Relations Measurement 

 Undergraduate Academic Topics:

__ Accounting

__ Business

__ Communications

__ Organizational development

__ Organizational management

__ Statistics

__ Composition

__ Social media

__ Research methods, especially survey research

Special Academic Topics:

__ SAS or SPSS

__ SQL

__ Advanced Excel, including pivot tables

__ Conflict resolution and negotiations

Postgraduate Seminars:

__ SEO

__ Social network analysis

__ Crisis management and communication

__ Relationship theory and relationship measurement

__ Excellence theory

Practical Experience (academic research, internship, or job experience)

__ PR methods and practices

__ Survey research

__ Social media methods and practices

__ Cultural history for wherever you do business

__ Office politics

__ Public speaking

Reading List:

__ Don Stacks: Primer of Public Relations Research

__ IPR: The Dictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research

__ Jim Grunig: Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management

__ Jim Grunig and David Dozier: Excellent Public Relations and Effective Organizations: A Study of Communication Management in Three Countries

__ Andrew Grove: High Output Management and Only the Paranoid Survive

__ Katie Delahaye Paine: Measuring Public Relationships

__ Don Stacks and David Michaelson: A Practitioner's Guide to Public Relations Research, Measurement and Evaluation

###

 

 

Every Day Is Statistics Day

Geeze. I am embarrassed to admit that The Measurement Standard missed observing World Statistics Day on October 20. Actually, come to think of it in a probabilistic sense, we are only one week off, out of all 52 weeks in the year. So we're pretty close. Any statistician can appreciate that level of accuracy.

Lucky for all you statistics fans, the bloggers at SAS really went a little statistics-crazy on 10/20 and cranked out a dozen posts celebrating the day and the discipline. Those guys really, really like their numbers.

Myself, I know that every day is statistics day. In fact every moment is statistics moment. Statistics is how we describe the processes that govern the physical world and our perceptions of it. The universe swirls and dances around us, and we distill order from the chaos with statistics. (Well, actually I guess that should be “with mathematics”, but we're talking statistics here.)

It seems obvious to me -- as a guy who spent graduate school making math models of human short term memory -- that we move through a universe that can be elegantly described by mathematics. And -- as a guy who draws and paints, as well as writes, for a living -- I see statistics in the pattern of leaves falling in the autumn, in the distribution of the lengths of paragraphs in magazine articles (why are those New Yorker paragraphs always so long?), and in the swirl of two colors as they merge on wet watercolor paper.

Enough rhapsodizing. Statistics rules the world. No, wait, statistics describes the rules of the world. And every day is Statistics Day.

Read more about math and statistics in The Measurement Standard:

• Don Stacks and the Loneliness of the Measurement Mathematician
• Public Relations Measurement To Become Sexy

--Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.

 

Online Engagement and How To Measure It, an Excerpt from “Measure What Matters,” Katie Paine's new book available in March 2011

Measure What Matters is Katie Delahaye Paine's new book, due out in March from Wiley Press. (Read more about the book at the Measure What Matters blog.) Here is the beginning of an excerpt on how to measure engagement (click below to download the entire piece):

Like most buzzwords, “engagement” has come a long way from its original meaning of “an agreement to marry.” Essentially, it started with the notion that a website or a blog was “engaging” enough to get a reader to begin to develop a relationship with the brand. People began to speak of measuring engagement. Not just how “sticky“ the site was, but the extent to which it enhances the relationship between the user and the brand.

Communications professionals and marketers now want to measure a site’s ability to create an experience that earns a visitor’s loyalty and, with luck, its business. As a result, “engagement” now means everything from the number of times that a visitor returns to a site, to the number of comments on a corporate blog, to the number of retweets of a Twitter stream.

Engagement is critical for three reasons...

 Click here to download Online Engagement and How To Measure It.

 

Jim & Lauri Grunig’s Lecture at PRSA International 10/17/10

The Institute for Public Relations, PRSA, and the University of Maryland hosted the PRSA International Conference on 10/17/10 in Washington DC. At this conference the Third Annual Grunig Lecture was given by, yes, Drs. Jim and Lauri Grunig and entitled: “Public Relations Excellence 2010.”

As many of you know, Jim and Lauri Grunig are developers of the Excellence Study and its principles for excellent PR, which they explain and elaborate on in this lecture. They are strong proponents of relationships as the foundation of public relations, and have developed techniques to measure relationships as a way to measure the effectiveness of public relationships. (Their work forms the foundation of much of Katie Paine's book Measuring Public Relationships, and also her new book due out next spring from Wiley Press Measure What Matters.)

Click here to read an introduction to the lecture by Bob Grupp (President and CEO of the Institute for Public Relations) on the IPR website.

Click here to download a transcript of the Third Annual Grunig Lecture by Jim and Lauri Grunig.

Can the Reputation of AT&T Be Saved?

The short answer: Yes! 

The reason I don’t own an iPhone (although I lust after one every day), is because I hated Cingular and I’ve heard such terrible things about AT&T that I don’t want to go from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. (I’m a T-Mobile user.) But the savvy way AT&T just handled changes to its network makes me seriously reconsider my stance. I have yet to see or hear of any other phone company being this bold with its customers.

Here’s what happened. Last month, AT&T sent a “special message” to nearly 10 million of its customers announcing network upgrades. This message did not address some common complaints about dropped calls and coverage gaps. AT&T invited people to respond to their Facebook page. In preparation for the expected large response, they had two dozen people on hand to respond to every comment.

It wasn’t pretty. In the hours after AT&T sent their special message, Facebook posts jumped five-fold. Customers had one overriding message: Your network sucks.

 But, what didn’t suck at all was AT&T’s attitude towards the onslaught of unpleasant comments. They responded to every post rationally and kindly. You can look back and still see AT&T still responding as late 4:00 a.m. that night.

Chris Bacchus, who headed up AT&T’s response, explained to NPR’s Marketplace program why they let the ugly stuff fly: 

“People don't really expect a response when they do leave some obscene kind of comment like that. But you want to see why that person really said what they said.”

Compare that to the social media efforts of companies like BP and Disney, who remove any vulgar posts and restrict individual’s ability to post. AT&T understands the fundamental reality of social media: They are saying this stuff anyway, so why not listen, and respond rationally? And perhaps convince one or two that you are not Darth Vader. 

While many might disagree with me, (and yes, I will respond to each and every one), I think that this demonstrates that AT&T can and will survive under trying circumstances.

Now, let’s see if those network upgrades make AT&T iPhones work in Berlin, NH!

 

Honorable Mention: The GAP 

 

I can’t resist weighing in on the GAP kerfuffle as well. Many people thought the GAP’s new logo was awful. And the fact that they immediately withdrew it was a “massive FAIL,” according to many Tweets. But I see it as another sign that corporate America is actually starting to listen to its customers and reward them for being engaged. So rather than seeing any damage, I actually think brand reputation was enhanced by the episode. (Thanks to Brand New for the illustration.)

--Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.

 

Bad Measurement: This Is The Kind of Chart that Really Pisses Me Off

Don't you just hate it when somebody crows, “Our numbers have doubled in the last four years!” but provides no comparison with any other numbers so you don't know if doubling is good or bad or whatever?

Well, feast your data-starved eyes on this beauty that arrived yesterday thanks to Silicon Ally Insider's Chart of the Day:

Yeah, so Mac's installed base has about doubled in the last four years. So what? The chart and accompanying text include no information provided about changes in the installed base of any other platforms. Or even about the population of computer users: How has the potential market increased in the last four years? Has, for instance, Apple moved strongly into any new markets during this period?

The text with the chart says:

“At today's big Apple event COO Tim Cook presented the chart below which shows the installed base of the Mac. It's just shy of 50 million right now. He added that the Mac business has been growing faster than the overall PC market for 18 quarters running.”

Which of course does not help much. We are given no idea how much faster the Mac is growing than the PC. Wouldn't have made sense to include the PC market on the chart? In fact, the absence of the PC data makes me suspicious. I’m close to assuming that the Mac grew only .05% faster than the PC, and that feeble difference is exactly why the Mac people don't want to show the numbers side by side.

And, speaking of side by side, is that quote above even comparing like measures? Is the “installed base” for the Mac a comparable measure to “the overall PC market?”

Geeze, charts like this really piss me off. Am I being too picky here?

--Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard
By the way, Bill Paarlberg has never owned any computer but a Mac. The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.

 

 

 

Five PR-Related Things We Need to Get Rid Of

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Now that the AVE is going the way of the dodo bird, what else can we put on the endangered species list? 

Here are my suggestions: 

1. Media Lists

Not that they weren’t useful back in the day when you hired someone to smile and dial and do nothing but “pitch” stories all day long. But in today’s media-rich but topically niche environment, media lists are essentially spam enablers. All you have to do is read the Bad Pitch Blog to get an idea of how damaging these lists can be to your brand. 

2. Impressions (aka opportunities to see, aka reach, aka circulation figures)

Just think about it: What really constitutes “circulation” these days and how much of it can you really count? If I pass along via email an intriguing story, no one knows whether I‘m sending it to one person or 100. If you post a link on Twitter, sure, you can track how many people had the opportunity to see it by looking at the number of followers and all of their followers, etc. But honestly, how many of your followers really respond to anything you put out there? I figure it’s only 10 or 20 out of the 330,000 people I allegedly “reach” according to most influence analyzers.

3. Direct mail

 Please take this away sooner rather than later. It kills me to see a forest of dead trees in my mail box that I just have to take to recycling every week. Above is a typical week’s haul for me and it all goes straight from the mail box to the recycling bin to the Transfer Station. Why? Has anyone noticed that the cost is going up and the effectiveness is going down? Are direct mail marketers that insulated from reality? 

4. Press releases as a tool to reach the press

Now I’m not saying that a press release isn’t a great vehicle for putting your messages and ideas and facts in one place. But it has no impact on the press. If you want to reach the media these days, you send them a link on Twitter or Facebook. And it better be to something more interesting than a press release. So let‘s drop that title all together and call it what it is: The official organizational statement which most people will ignore. 

5. Advertising inserts

In my book they are just the uglier first cousin to direct mail, but again, is anyone measuring their impact on a business? Are they really cost effective or is someone not looking at the right numbers? I love this shot of the kiosk for the local paper at the end of each day. All the ad inserts are right there at the bottom, left behind because no one wants to read them. 

Those are my top five, what are yours? --KDP

--Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.

 

Measurement Menaces of the Month: All of Australian PR

(...except Jim Macnamara and Rochelle Burbury)

In contrast to the IPR (who are our Measurement Mavens of the Month), it seems that the PR industry in Australia is heading in the opposite direction, essentially throwing up its hands and caving to the “I just need a number” crowd. Given that Australia has so many great educational institutions turning out more and more PR professionals every year, this is kind of scary if all of them believe that AVE is the only answer.  --KDP

--Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.  

(Eds. note: That article linked to above does say that the Public Relations Institute of Australia criticizes the use of AVEs. So maybe there are some folks down under who see the light.)

 

The Measurement Mavens of the Month: The IPR Measurement Commission

Last week the IPR Measurement Commission completed a task that many thought was impossible. As a body, they agreed to, approved, and published their final, definitive statement on the controversial subject of AVEs. The gist of it is that AVEs are bad -- very bad -- so don't use them:

The IPR Commission on Public Relations Measurement & Evaluation voted to reject the term, concept and practice of Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE)...

(Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m a founding member of this body, but that’s not to say I haven’t had my disagreements with them over the years (just read the comments).)

First of all congrats and thanks are due to Pauline Draper who chaired the Commission during this difficult time, and to Brad L. Rawlins, Chair, Department of Communications, Brigham Young University, who chaired the task force on AVEs. And to all the other members of the task force:

• Toni Griffin, Director, Public Relations, MetLife;
• Rebecca Harris, Senior Communications Manager, General Motors;
• Fraser Likely, President, Likely Communication Strategies Ltd.;
• Tim Marklein, Executive Vice President, Measurement & Strategy, Weber Shandwick; 
• Mark Weiner, CEO, North America, PRIME Research.   

When you look at the members of the task force and the commission, as well as the folks behind the Barcelona Principles, you come away with the realization that -- while not all the industry is in agreement -- certainly the best and the brightest have achieved consensus: #AVEMUSTDIE. (Thank you Shonali Burke for that wonderful hashtag!) --KDP

--Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.  

 

Influencers, Social Networks and PR Measurement

The purpose of this post is to encourage you PR measurement types to watch "How Social Networks Predict Epidemics," a talk by Nicholas Christakis. Especially if you are interested in Influencers. The following are a few of my thoughts on the connection between Influencers and social networks...

So yesterday I blogged about Robert Putnam's social capital speech (see "Flip Off Frequency Is Best Predictor of Tax Evasion"), and a friend responded by sending me this fascinating talk by Nicholas Christakis on social networks (thanks, Nathalie). Which made me recall a session on Influencers that I attended at the recent IPR Measurement Summit (see "Influence: What It Is and How to Measure It.")

So now I'm thinking about the connection between what PR people call Influencers, and what social network people call nodes of high degree. PR measurement people are interested in Influencers because they are an easily communicated-to and measured proxy for their audiences. Also for the imprimatur they add to the information they pass on (thank you David Geddes).

But social network people would probably look at Influencers for the network they represent, and the ability of that network to diffuse information. As Mr. Christakis's talk explains, by learning about people with more network connections we can anticipate the spread of epidemics of disease or the spread of ideas or behaviors.

He talks about the concept of herd immunity, in which a population can be made functionally immune to a pathogen by immunizing less than 100% of the population. Much less than 100%, as he explains, if you pick the right members. Turning that around, if you want to spread an idea or behavior, then you would maximize your ability to do so by picking the right social networks.

He goes on to share several ideas that offer tantalizing possibilities for PR measurement. Watch the video.

--Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.

What You Measure Depends On Your Definition of “Clients”

The Paine of Measurement

In response to a recent posting announcing the official IPR stance on AVEs, Mark Adams, founder of Next Fifteen, posted this comment on Facebook:

“But surely, more PR professionals in the “service” economy care about what their clients ask for? AVEs are stupid, but so are wall signs telling us how to wash our hands. The wall signs might slowly disappear. AVEs won't for many years.”

My first question, Mark, is: “Who are you defining as clients?” I realize that I live in a rarefied world. My clients are typically the smartest kids on the block, the ones that know and understand measurement and want to do it right. For the most part they know not to ask me to do AVEs. I realize that not everyone is so lucky. When PR agencies use the term “client” it can mean anything from the junior-level coordinator on the client side to the CEO.

So yes, Mark, you are right, there are “clients” out there that are trying to justify their existence. But they inevitably report to either the CMO, CFO, or CEO. And if that junior level PR person doesn’t care about the bottom line, the C-suite does. Those folks in the C-suite want valid business results, not BS and fake numbers. Which is why so many in PR are behind the Barcelona Principles, the statement put out recently by the IPR, and PRSA’s Business Case for PR: AVEs are not valid measures for PR.

The industry has finally woken up and realized that the time has come to ignore those “clients” that don’t really care about valid metrics. The ones that want an easy fix, a simple number that they can waive in front of their boss or their client in hopes of receiving a gold star.

Why now? In essence, social media is forcing businesses to rethink their marketing communication programs. And, when companies like Dell, Southwest, Sodexo, The Humane Society, and GM can point to real revenue generation, it makes traditional PR metrics look dumber than ever.

So Mark, next time a client asks for AVEs, instead of just acquiescing to their demand, how about we push back a bit? Point out the industry opposition, point out the flaws, and, if all else fails, just say “No.” Whenever I provide clients with better alternatives, they are happy to make the switch.

--Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.  

 

AVEs Are Really Dead: The IPR Says So

Here at The Measurement Standard we have long argued against the use of AVEs, as has our publisher Katie Delahaye Paine. See these articles about AVEs (Advertising Value Equivalency) if you'd like to review the controversy. (Especially "AVEs Are Porn for PR.")

Now, after a year of deliberation, a task force of the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) has released a report denouncing the use of AVEs: "The IPR Commission on Public Relations Measurement & Evaluation voted to reject the term, concept and practice of Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE)..." 

You can read the entire AVE report over on Katie Paine's blog. And also read what she thinks about it.

I say it's great progress. But AVEs -- fast, cheap, and flashy as they are -- are still going to be sold and used by people who don't know any better. Only when fast and easy alternatives are available will AVEs cease to be a temptation. And for more on that see this summary of a session on AVE alternatives at the recent IPR Measurement Summit.

--Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. 

Flip-Off Frequency Is Best Predictor of Tax Evasion

Here are some amazing tidbits from "Social Capital: Measurement and Consequences," a speech given by Robert Putnam, see source and link below. (Social capital is the notion that networks of connectedness between people--clubs, for instance--have value to individuals and society):

-- Tax Evasion and The Finger:
"...among the thousands of variables in this dataset, by far the best predictor of tax evasion is the number of times in the course of the last year that you gave the ‘finger’ to another driver." (p. 7)

-- Lawyers Per Capita:
"...historically there were about 40 lawyers, plus or minus one, for every 10,000 employees in America. This number was rock-steady over the first seventy years of this [20th] century. And then this number started to increase, just as trust and social capital started to decline, so that by now lawyers' share in the workforce has more than doubled." (p. 8)

-- Where is Social Capital in the US?:
"...the best single predictor of the level of social capital in American states is distance to the Canadian border. Being closer to the Canadian border means more social capital." (p. 10)

-- Social Capital and Immigration:
"...if you rank Americans today by their level of social capital or social trust or social connectedness, and you rank the countries from which their ancestors come, even as long ago as two or three generations, those two rankings are perfectly correlated, even though the connection between those two streams is on average two or three generations old." (p. 11)

-- Social Capital and the Murder Rate:
"...the strongest predictor of the murder rate is a low level of social capital." (p. 12)

-- Your Chance of Dying and Your Social Capital:
"Controlling for [all] risk factors, your chances of dying over the course of the next year are cut in half by joining one [social] group, and cut to a quarter by joining two groups... It is not that people who are healthy become joiners, it is clear from the studies that the arrow runs in the other direction, from joining to health. (p. 12)

 

And by now you have got to be interested enough to want to read the whole speech, so here it is:

Download the 32-page "Social Capital: Measurement and Consequences" by Robert Putnam now from OECD.org. 

(Thanks to Katie Paine for sending this to me: Putnam, R. (2001), Social Capital: Measurement and Consequences, in The Contribution of Human and Social Capital to Sustained Economic Growth and Well-Being, International Symposium Report edited by the OECD and HRDC.)

--Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. 

Media, Social or Otherwise: It's All Yummy

 
The Paine of Measurement

Boundaries between media are only getting blurrier, so don't wait around for that annual employee attitude survey.

I’m not really fond of artificial boundaries. So the notion that, in today’s media environment, you can have “traditional media” and “social media” managed by two different teams of people (frequently housed in different buildings, aided by two different agencies, and measured by two different systems) makes little sense. It's like me trying to explain to my two kittens why they shouldn’t eat my breakfast as well as theirs. They just don’t care whose is whose; it’s all yummy to them.

Similarly, your customers and stakeholders are consuming media. They get information from blogs, cable TV, online news sources, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and wherever. And at the end of the day, do they remember which piece of information came from where? Of course not.

So, for most of our clients here at KDPaine & Partners, we have eliminated the term “traditional media” altogether. Instead, we organize by which audience the media is being targeted to – general interest, business, women, trade, etc. Then, if a client wants a bit more detail, we break it out by channel: broadcast, video sharing site, social network, microblog, blog, online news source and, yes, even print.

Recently I’ve noticed an even further blurring of the traditional boundaries between internal and external communications. In our work for Ikea, our client correctly postulated that examining what employees were saying to their friends online might provide more insight into company morale than would the annual employee attitude survey. So we looked at what employees were saying about the company in external sources such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

Other clients are now talking to us about analyzing employee conversations—on blogs, bulletin boards, and Facebook pages—to determine how on or off message they are. (This could become a very valuable tool to measure employee attitudes—without the difficulties of surveys.)

The point here is that employees don't confine their comments to just one medium, so we shouldn't be listening to just one medium. Just as they consume a variety of media, they also express themselves in a variety of media. 

--Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.

 

Write Faster by Organizing Your Hard Drive

Rapid Writing

by Daphne Gray-Grant

I fret about many aspects of my own writing. I worry about being dull. I fear my metaphors lack pizzazz. I constantly have to stop myself from editing while I write. But one thing never vexes me – my own sense of organization.

Years ago, I learned I could double or triple my writing output by setting up my hard drive to increase my efficiency. Anal retentive? Probably. Effective? You bet!

Here are the principles I follow:

Define main "project" folders.
I have a folder called "Current Active" and it contains a long list of sub-folders -- one for every client I have. This is an excellent system if you're a consultant because it makes filing a breeze. If the file belongs to Widget Incorporated it goes in the Widgets Incorporated folder. If it belongs to the Hummingbird Rescue Society, it goes into that folder. No thinking required. If you work for just one company, however, you'll need to spend a bit more thought on setting up the folders. My advice -- try to follow a project-based approach as much as possible.

Set up many sub-folders within each main folder.
Whenever I create a folder for a new client, I also immediately create a sub-folder for each project or publication. At the same time, I also create an "archives" folder so that when the job is signed off I have a place to keep everything without cluttering up the main folder. Within the archives I name the folders beginning with the year and month, to keep them in chronological order. For example: 07-09 ABC company newsletter #03.

Keep all drafts as well as all research and interview notes.
Hard drives are big these days, so take advantage. My archives folder not only holds the finished publication or product for each client (usually in PDF form) it also contains all my drafts and research. And everything is clearly labelled:

• Widget_story_draft_01
• Widget_research
• Widget_interview_Bob_Smith_07-08-24

As a bonus, at the top of each set of interview notes, I put the name of the person interviewed and his/her phone number. I have recovered valuable contact info in this way more times than I care to recount.

Use numbers and words to name your folders and files.
Numbers are great for keeping your folders or files in order when you look at them in a directory. (Just remember to write numbers less than 10 with a zero in front -- for example, 01, 02 etc. Otherwise, if you have more than 10 files, "1" will end up appearing after "10"!) When I want a file that I use frequently to appear at the top of the directory, I name it beginning with 00 for example: 00_story_list. But I never use just numbers in a name, because it's not memorable enough. The best tactic is to combine numbers and names.

Have multiple "ideas" files.
We all have great ideas every day. And we all lose them unless we write them down. I keep a variety of different ideas folders -- for example, I have a folder of ideas for this newsletter. But here's the real trick: Each individual idea gets its own document so that I can "name" it. That way I don't have to open the document to remember my ideas -- I can simply cast my eye down the directory list.

Have templates for stuff you do regularly.
I have tables set up (in MS Word - nothing fancy) for all the publications I produce, listing the number of stories and photographs required and a timeline showing how long the entire writing/production process will take. I also have templates for letters engaging photographers and graphic artists and for getting "approvals" from clients on various jobs. If I do anything more than twice I turn it into a template and store it on my hard drive.

Will all of these specific tips work for you? Maybe, maybe not. But invest an hour or two in getting your hard drive better organized and I guarantee you'll see your productivity soar. 

A former daily newspaper editor, Daphne Gray-Grant is a writing and editing coach and the author of 8 1⁄2 Steps to Writing Faster, Better. She offers a weekly newsletter on her website Publication Coach. It's brief. It's smart. And it's free.

Geeks of the Week: Goodwill International’s Social Media Team

A year ago, my company (KDPaine & Partners) and I were called in to conduct a measurement program for Goodwill International’s social media efforts. Their notion of measurement at the time was pretty much confined to monitoring what was being said about them. So we benchmarked them against other non-profits as well as consumer companies. We also gave them suggestions and directions as to how to improve their presence in social media.

A few weeks ago, I met with Goodwill International’s social media team again, but now it had grown to eight — including Director of Online Media Arlene McCrehan, a content analysis specialist, a web metrics dude, and a bunch of other sharp people who totally “get” measurement. And they really use the numbers.

My, what a difference a year makes: This is a group who went back to school and redefined measurement entirely. They’ve assembled a team that loves numbers and metrics and actually uses them to make decisions.

We constantly tell people: “It’s not enough to look at the big picture, you need to have enough granularity to your program to be able to make decisions on how to launch the next initiative, or make that next announcement.” And that’s exactly what Goodwill is doing.

They’re tracking success on an individual program basis, and they’re not just looking at “hits” but rather at click-throughs, traffic, and, ultimately, store traffic and donations. While their measurement program continues to evolve, it’s enormously gratifying to see just how much progress an organization can make so quickly.

--Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.

IPR Measurement Summit 2010 Summary

Once again the IPR Measurement Summit was held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and as always it was three days of the heaviest of measurement heavy hitters mingling to share theory and practice. Many great opportunities to learn and network. In the photo above, Bob Grupp, IPR President & CEO, addresses the lunch crowd before the announcement of the Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award.

The IPR has a new blog called IPR Measurement Social Hub that includes comprehensive summaries of all the sessions. Kudos to whoever wrote them (Margot, is that you?): they really are top-notch, play-by-play reports right from the conference sessions, and well worth browsing. Links to great photos, too.

--Bill Paarlberg Editor, The Measurement Standard
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. 

IPR Measurement Summit 2010: Day One Workshops

The IPR Measurement Summit always starts off with a day of Introduction to Measurement Workshops (see the 2010 Summit schedule here). This year for the workshops, Don Stacks, Katie Paine, David Geddes, Brad Rawlins, Don Wright, Michelle Hinson, and David Dozier were featured speakers. Also, Jim and Lauri Grunig gave an ask-us-anything-you-want seminar that touched on education, social media, models of communication and crisis measurement. In the evening, a group of speakers and attendees braved the blustery weather to visit the Dolphin Striker pub. Photos below...

"Without a benchmark, forget it!" 
Dr. Don W. Stacks, Associate Dean for Research & Professor of Public Relations, School of Communication, University of Miami

 

"Social media is not about getting your feet wet, it's about solving problems... You want to be able to capture these amorphic things in clear charts and graphs, so that people will stop doing stupid things."
Katharine D. Paine, President & CEO, KDPaine & Partners

 

 "What people thank and say about you: That's always been my definition of reputation."
"The Disclosure Principle has a long history of value to relationships: If you can't disclose what you are doing to your spouse, then you shouldn't be doing it."
Dr. James E. Grunig, Professor Emeritus of Communication, University of Maryland, and Dr. Larissa A. Grunig, Professor Emeriti of Communication, University of Maryland 

 

At the Dolphin Striker, including Don Stacks, Frazer Likely, David Geddes, Don Wright, Shannon Bowen, Carolos Diaz, Christina Darnowski, Antonio Ortolani, Alex Sevigny, Diane Lennox, Phillipe Sadron and Andrew Laing.

--Bill Paarlberg Editor, The Measurement Standard
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.