The State of Standards: 7 Organizations Trying to Shape the Future of Social Media Measurement

(If you know of any PR or social media standards-setting organizations not mentioned in this article, we would love to hear about them.)

by Katie Delahaye Paine

A year ago, the Barcelona Principles emerged from the 2nd European Summit on Measurement as a new “standard” for PR measurement. The 7 Principles are, in fact, less a statement of standards than a list of best measurement practices—general enough for everyone to agree on, and just specific enough to provide guidelines to a market hungry for some rules. 

But those of us who worked on the Barcelona Principles weren’t the only ones working on standards. While we were huddling around the topic of PR measurement with a nod to social media (see Principle #4), other groups were hard at work codifying other standards for measurement:

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)

The IAB Best Practices offers definitions and guidelines for the use of social ads (i.e., those ads that demand a certain degree of interaction vs. behaviorally targeted ads like Google Adwords and the ones that pop up on Facebook and Linked in). It also includes detailed guidance on how to use the data, what you can and cannot do with it. Perhaps most interesting is a detailed section on privacy issues.

Web Analytics Association (WAA)

The WAA Social Media Standards is primarily a set of definitions for social analytics terms such as “grabs,” “bookmarks,” “clickbacks,” “posts,” and “comments.” Most interesting is how they define “bookmarks” (those tabs at the top of your browser) compared to how we’ve always used them to describe the whole channel of aggregators, like Digg, Delicious, etc.

Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)

ARF has put most of its guidelines into Stephen Rappaport’s excellent book, “Listen First!” It tells you in detail how to design, use, and implement a social media listening program.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR)

I was part of the group that helped pull together the CIPR Social Media Measurement Guidance. So if you have been following my PR Measurement Blog or The Measurement Standard, what you see in this pdf should not be that new. 

The Institute for Public Relations (IPR)

A committee has been formed and is working on standards with AMEC at the upcoming 3rd European Summit On Measurement. Read here about the Social Media Measurement Workshop (“...the first step towards building Global Standards in social media measurement”). Stay tuned.

Society for New Communications Research (SNCR)

SNCR has a committee and is working on standard guidelines.

Who else is out there working on standards for social media or public relations measurement? I’d love to hear from you.

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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.

Comments

[Hugh Anderson]

Thanks. Good list with a couple of new ones to me. Does the Canadian Public Relations Society deserve a mention for their work in developing the Media Relations Rating Points, or is this out-dated already? + I would be interested in your view of the top 7 commercial organisations advancing the science of social media measurement.