Measurement Tip of the Week: Crowdsourcing

How crowdsourcing solved two of my tricky measurement problems.

Twice in the last week, I’ve been faced with difficult measurement procedural problems, and I turned to the cloud for answers. In the past, I might have emailed my colleagues on the IPR’s Measurement Commission. But in this case I was looking for a broader perspective so I asked the folks on Shonali Burke’s #MeasurePR Facebook group as well as my 10,000+ followers on Twitter.

And it worked: I got some useful answers, made decisions, and moved on. Here are the questions (and please chime in with your own suggestions):

Question 1: 
If a media outlet runs the same story twice, for whatever reason, do you count it as two mentions or one?

Answers: Lots of varied opinions came in. Not surprisingly, PR people generally said twice. Media types said once. In general the consensus was that the situation arose because of bad editing and created an inflated impression count. So I‘ve decided, effective 1/1/11, to only count them once.

Question 2: 
When bots automatically grab press releases and put them on a site, should it count towards PR success?

 Answers: Again, the variety of opinions and thoughts was refreshing. In the end, the decision of the crowd was that the bots should not count. Which was my leaning from the start, so I felt good about the corroboration.

Now, I realize this isn’t real research. You probably should contact the Institute for Public Relations if you have similar thorny issues. For me it was great to have such a stimulating virtual debate with so many different people and walks of life. And have my thorny problems solved. —KDP

Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements.

 

Comments

[Shonali Burke]

I love that the #measurePR Facebook group was able to add value like this, Katie. For me, it's wonderful that trailblazers like you are part of it and do so much to continue to move the measurement conversation forward. Thank you!