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This week we’ve had the infographic trifecta: First, The Best Times to Email, then the Content Grid V2, and now some humorous flow charts thanks to Miss Cellania at mental_floss: “10 Funny and Fabulous Flowcharts.” The first of them is below. Go read the post and check out the rest. --WTP
This is Part 2 of a four-part series The Single Answer to 10,000 Measurement Questions: Measure Your Business Impact
- Part 1: Using Measurement to Link PR and Business Goals
- Part 2: Social Media
- Part 3: How to Do Measurement With Limited Resources
- Part 4: Measurement Nuts and Bolts
by Katie Delahaye Paine
People are always asking me questions about public relations measurement: “How do I do this or that or the other measurement thing?” Recently, thanks to a speaking engagement at the PR News Measurement Conference, I have come to realize that almost all of these many questions area based on a similar theme, and have a similar answer. When people ask me how to measure ROI—or how to measure on a limited budget, or how to link PR to business goals—they really are all asking different versions of the same question: “How do I measure what really matters?”
And the one answer to all these questions is: Measure the business impact of your public relations efforts. The vast majority of public relations measurement questions, problems, and difficulties can be solved with this single strategy: Measure your business impact.
Below are specific questions and answers (most of them thanks to PR News) to do with social media. For questions and answers to do with using measurement to link PR and business goals, see Part 1 of this series.
Forest-for-the-Trees Department
So I was just reading Marshall Sponder's post about distance reading, and he talks about a Stanford professor who claims that “...distance reading (searching for trends within books) may be more important, and more effective, than reading the actual books.”
The point being that you can't read all the books that are written, but you can keep up with their content by aggregating and analyzing massive amounts of data about the books. In a world with a bazillion books, perhaps what is truly interesting are the overall trends of content, rather than the content of a single book.
So I’m thinking that point applies perfectly well to public relations. Does anyone really care what one article or tweet or blog post or customer says? No. They care about what the aggregate says. (Actually, PR measurement types care more about the outcomes than the outputs, but that’s a different post.) (And, O.K., front page of the Times or the WSJ? Yeah, they care.)
And now that I've thought this far, it's a no-brainer. Of course measurement is more important than individual outputs. Seeing the forest for the trees and all that.
So why don't more people spend more money on measurement? --WTP
--Bill Paarlberg is editor of The Measurement Standard blog and newsletter, and of Katie Paine's new book Measure What Matters. The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.
A great post from the ever-thoughtful Avinash Kaushik: “Your Web Metrics: Super Lame or Super Awesome?” Makes the point that what we think of as our usual metrics only “measure tactical top of the funnel activity requiring too much inference and cause us to simply chase one night stands.” Better to look at metrics that may be harder to come by, but that actually mean something, business-wise. Take a look at the chart here, a then go read the whole post.
For more in this general direction, see Katie Paine’s article The Single Answer to 10,000 Measurement Questions: Measure Your Business Impact.”). --WTP
This infographic from Eloqua is such an elegant way to present a lot of information at once. It succinctly organizes and displays the process by which “Publishing valuable content – whether blog articles, infographics, white papers, or videos – can turn prospects into customers.” That last quote is a definition of content marketing from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue blog. --WTP
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Here’s great infographic from KISSmetrics that summarizes recent research on the best times of the day to send emails. Remember to verify with tests on your own list. --WTP
5 measurement books you could, sure, take to the beach.
O.K., we don't really expect you to take these measurement books along next time you head to the beach. But just think how smart and dedicated you would look leaving the office with your towel, umbrella, and one of these books on social media measurement under your arm. Don't forget the sunscreen.
1. A great place to start your social media strategy is Stephen D. Rappaport’s, Listen First!: Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage. It’s a detailed workbook of how to begin listening to your customers, how to manage a social media listening program, and how to use the research correctly. Read a review by Neil Glassman here.
2. Your next step up the measurement ladder is Katie Delahaye Paine’s Measure What Matters: Online Tools For Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships. (Yes, Katie Paine is the publisher of this newsletter.) It takes you from first steps all the way through how-to-measure procedures for each of your audiences and projects. If you’re a seasoned pro, it’s your all-purpose reference: As Lee Odden says, “This is a measurement bible for the social media and public relations savvy professionals of the world.”
3. Philip Sheldrake’s The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age is definitely not for the newcomer to social media. It does start with a great overview of where we are, but then quickly gets into the nitty-gritty of defining and mapping the influencers that are important to your strategy. Says Katie Delahaye Paine: “The Business of Influence should be found, dog-eared and jam-packed with marks in the margins, on every successful CMO's desk.”
4. If you’re in the b2b space, Social Marketing to the Business Customer: Listen to Your B2B Market, Generate Major Account Leads, and Build Client Relationships by Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman is an great read. It removes the “This doesn’t apply to me” excuse beautifully. Chris Brogan says,“Finally, the book I was too lazy to write. Gillin and Schwartzman have broken open the code to how to approach B2B marketing with social media.”
5. Finally, for anyone in marketing or media, or if you’re teaching it, you must read Timothy Wu’s The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Every new communications medium or technology begins with an idea, an entrepreneur, and an explosion of free exchange of this technology. But, sooner or later, it is taken over and monopolized by a single person or company—too frequently with the collusion of the US government. See our review here.
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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.
For Immediate Release: The Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) Promotion Council has announced that recent coverage of its Advertising Value Equivalency public relations measurement technique amounts to over $10 billion in media value. This figure takes into account recent voluminous condemnatory coverage in conferences, social media, and mainstream media.
The $10 billion figure was determined by adding up what it would cost to sponsor major denunciation at both the 2010 Barcelona and 2011 Lisbon Summits on Measurement, to buy several hundred inches of castigation in blog posts by prominent public relations experts, and to purchase 15 1/2" of advertising space adjacent to Carl Bialik’s Wall Street Journal column “Publicists Pump Up Value of Buzz; Don't Believe the Hype.”
This sum was then multiplied by 7.4, a generally accepted advertising-to-PR conversion factor. Based on this total, the Promotional Council calculates a 54,321% ROI on its recent program costs.
For more information on AVEs, contact any of the major measurement firms now offering them to their clients, including Kantar, Ketchum, Hill & Knowlton, MediaMonitors, VMS, BurrellesLuce, and Cision. --WTP
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--Bill Paarlberg is editor of The Measurement Standard blog and newsletter, and of Katie Paine's new book Measure What Matters. The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.
Plus: What to do if your client has bad taste(!)
Rapid Writing
by Daphne Gray-Grant
Do you have a supermodel you can consult with? Headline notwithstanding, I don’t mean Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, or even that inimitable diva, Tyra Banks. (I call this column the Tyra Banks approach because I’m Canadian and irony is in my nature.)
What I’m talking about here is having a writing model -- that is, a clear example of the kind of text you want to emulate.
Continue reading "The Tyra Banks Approach to Writing: 3 Reasons to Work from Models" »
Brian Chappell at Social Media Blog has some keen and practical insights into choosing a social media monitoring tool (“The Problem with Social Media Monitoring Tools”). He includes practical tips (“Look for a tool that facilitates easy reading, browsing and collaboration...”) and a wishlist of improvements (“...more effort behind fighting spam, being more open about what their products can actually do and being more transparent about how their technology works.”)
His discussion of automated sentiment analysis echos some of what Katie Paine said here a month or so ago, the gist of which is that computers just aren’t that smart. (See “Should You Analyze Sentiment? With Computers or Humans?: 7 questions to help you decide.”)
Don't miss the extensive comments on the post; some good advice and recommendations there. He also includes a link to Seth Grimes’ detailed discussion of desirable social media monitoring tool attributes in Information Week (“What I Look for in a Social Analysis Tool”). --WTP
Please pardon a brief rant: As we have said several times before, Return on Investment (ROI) does not mean “Whatever kind of results you want to measure.” ROI means percent return on a financial investment.
Legions of social media measurement wannabes talk about “ROI this” and “ROI that.” But borrowing the lingo of accountants does not make you a measurement guru. Quite the opposite.
Continue reading "Tim Marklein on the AMEC Summit: Rethinking ROI for Public Relations" »
If you work for non-profits, keep an eye on Beth Kanter’s Beth’s Blog, How Networked Nonprofits Are Using Social Media to Power Change. A recent post entitled “How to Make Measurement Fun!” addresses the problem that “Most people view measurement as punishment, not something fun or valued.” She recommends “...ways to make measurement sexy include focusing on the results by celebrating them. Also, the reporting by using visual humor.”
She lists 7 tips on how to make measurement fun. I like “#1. Celebrate Small Successes,” and “#4. Report the Impact.” Read the whole post here. --WTP
--Bill Paarlberg is editor of The Measurement Standard blog and newsletter, and of Katie Paine's new book Measure What Matters. The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.
Jorge Portugal
Advisor on Technology to the Republic of Portugal
Jorge Portugal’s official title is “Advisor on Technology to the Republic of Portugal reporting to the president of the Portuguese Republic in innovation and knowledge society.” He was one of the presenters at AMEC’s 3rd Annual European Summit on Measurement, speaking on the use of social media in political campaigns. (Download his presentation “Presidential election 2011: The Economics of Attention of the first full-scale digital campaign in Portuguese electoral history” here.)
The best way to describe him is the Portuguese equivalent of a cross between
Eli Pariser (“The Filter Bubble”) and David Plouffe. He orchestrated the digital media strategy for the reelection campaign of Portuguese President Aníbal Cavaco Silva. Cavaco Silva won by a landslide winning all 18 districts.
The best part of his Summit presentation was how he continuously improved the campaign by measuring—and then really using—the data from social media. As you know, anyone who not only measures, but uses the measurement data to make better decisions is always a Measurement Maven in our book. Congrats to Jorge Portugal, Measurement Maven of the Month. —KDP
(In the photo are Fatima Rubelo, Katie Paine and Jorge Portugal at the Summit. Thanks for the photo to David Clifford.)
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.
I just read Carl Bialik's The Numbers Guy column “Seeking Standards in Tourism Measurement.” The pissing match between Orlando and NYC over the title of U.S.’s Most-Visited City demonstrates why social media measurement needs standards.
Get this: In January, NYC says it’s Number One with 48.7 million visits last year, just above Orlando’s 48.6 million. Oooh, but then Orlando strikes back with recently revised figures of 51.5 million visits. Orlando's on top!
The ridiculous thing is that both cities measure visitors differently, and neither is required to disclose its methodology.
And here we thought public relations measurement and social media measurement were having problems getting standards together.
(Carl Bialik writes for The Wall Street Journal, and his “The Numbers Guy” blog has great stuff on measurement. Check it out.) --WTP
--Bill Paarlberg is editor of The Measurement Standard blog and newsletter, and of Katie Paine's new book Measure What Matters. The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.
News You Thought Wasn’t New...
This just in from the News Bureau of the University of Missouri: “Angry Online Commenters Can Cause Negative Perceptions of Corporations, MU Researchers Find.” Says Bo Kyung Kim, a doctoral student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, “We found that negative messages created by victims significantly increased the negative reputation of an organization...” -- WTP
Recent Updates: Measurement heavy hitter Angela Jeffrey has written a summary of several conference sessions for PRNews. You can download all the speaker presentations at the AMEC site here. Tim Marklein has a summary of new thinking about ROI from the Summit. Ben Smith has a nice summary with some cool word clouds, too.
Our Ms. Paine was a presenter at the Lisbon AMEC European Summit on PR Measurement last week, and we will post a roundup of the whole conference from her soon. In the meantime, here are some early summaries and notes.
Lisbon Summit Summary—The Short Answer:
The big deal at the Lisbon Summit was to set priorities for future action. The top four, as voted on by delegates, were:
The Long Answer:
-- Here is AMEC's Summit summary email newsletter .
-- Here's the gist of the Summit summary press release from AMEC:
This year’s AMEC conference produced solid outcomes in the form of Valid Metrics for PR Measurement, a one-approach fits-all methodology.
Continue reading "2011 Lisbon Conference Early Returns: Slides, Summaries, and Voting Results " »
Yes, folks, there are times when you should not measure your public relations. Read Sean Williams at ragan.com: “3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Measure PR.” Including:
“Forget measurement when:
1. You cannot make a difference...
2. You’re unwilling to do what it takes to make things better...
3. It’s more expensive to measure than the program you're measuring...”
Click here to read the whole article.
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We, and at least a small fraction of the rest of the world, got all excited in April when a wood pellet businessman from upstate New York made a plausible-sounding claim to 50% of Facebook, based on very early contract work for Mark Zuckerberg.
Well Facebook has just seriously de-friended Mr. Paul Ceglia and his now apparently bogus suit. Facebook’s investigators have uncovered evidence that not only is Mr. Ceglia a repeat con-artist cliche (he's been selling unbuildable land in, yes, Florida), but his email “evidence” is likely faked.
Read the story at Business Insider: “OKAY, WE'RE CONVINCED: The Guy Who Says He Owns 50% Of Facebook Is A Fraud.” --WTP
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It’s been a good year for the public relations measurement business, says new AMEC research which shows that the sector has emerged from recession with double digit growth of 14% in 2009/10 compared with 2% in the previous year. Should make for a festive time at the upcoming Lisbon Summit on Measurement.
Also in the results:
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Here is a list of links to articles and posts in The Measurement Standard for the month of June, 2011:
The All-Purpose Answer to PR Measurement Questions: Measure Business Impact -- Part 2, Social Media
Public Relations Measurement Is More Important than Public Relations Outputs
Your Web Metrics: Super Lame vs. Super Awesome
How Content Turns Prospects Into Customers: The Content Grid v2 Infographic
Best Times to Email: Infographic
The Measurement Standard Summer Reading List
AVEs Receive $10 Billion in Media Coverage, ROI of 54,321%
Daphne Gray-Grant’s Rapid Writing
The Tyra Banks Approach to Writing: 3 Reasons to Work from Models
Brian Chappell on Choosing Social Media Monitoring Tools
Tim Marklein on the AMEC Summit: Rethinking ROI for Public Relations
Beth Kanter: 7 Tips on How to Make Measurement Fun
Jorge Portugal is Measurement Maven of the Month
Why Social Media Measurement Standards Are a Good Thing: NYC vs. Orlando
Oh, Really?: Angry Comments Cause Negative Perceptions of Corporations
2011 Lisbon Conference Early Returns: Slides, Summaries, and Voting Results
3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t (And 3 Reasons Why You Should) Measure PR: Sean Williams
Facebook Fraud Flameout: Zuckerberg: 1, Ceglia: 0
PR Measurement Industry Shows Double Digit Growth
Lisbon Preview: What to Expect at the 3rd Annual European Summit on Measurement
The State of Standards: 7 Organizations Shaping the Future of Social Media Measurement
Erin Hawkins and Leah Cook are the Measurement Mavens of the Month
IPR Case Study: Starbucks and Edelman Win Big Apple 2011 Best Use of Research Award
Proof that Social Media Is Irrelevant For Purchase Decisions?
A Red Card for FIFA: Can Its Reputation Be Saved?
Calculate Your Social Media Potemkin Score
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many… Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders... But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” 
