KDPaine’s How-To-Get-Good-Data Checklist

Too much data?!

So you've designed a measurement program, selected your tools, chosen a vendor, and now you can sit back and watch your clean, pure data stream into your inbox.

Wrong.

The truth of the matter is that it's usually not easy to get good data. Even after you think you've made all the hard decisions, you can't just wait as the data flows in. There are a number of confusing details to work out and pitfalls to avoid.

To help you deal with the data collection phase of your measurement project, here is...

KD Paine's How-To-Get-Good-Data Checklist:

1. _____
Sit down and review your search strings with your supplier (s) at least once a month.

• Make sure that all the terms are current.
• Eliminate any terms that are not yielding any content at all.
• If you are doing competitive monitoring, make sure that the searches are parallel.
• Be patient. It often takes time and many iterations to get search strings correct.

2. _____
Have a meeting with all your suppliers to review how impressions, audience numbers and monthly viewers are calculated.

•  Eliminate multipliers, and establish consistent and transparent rules.

3. _____
Accept that you will not get every clip, so don’t try to boil the ocean.

• Focus on what really matters: the media outlets, blogs or other channels that influence your target audiences.
• Get those Influentials to an acceptable level of accuracy.

4. _____
Check your data weekly for the first six months, then once a month on an ongoing basis. Get familiar enough with the results coming in so that you know what to expect. And so that you know when something is going wrong.

• After the first six months you’ll know on average how often you are appearing in the New York Times, the local media, and the key trades. Pick the most frequently covering media outlet and set up a system to check that number monthly. So, after the first six months you’ll learn that:
  • On an average month, the key trade journal mentions your company or the competitors X times.
  • On an average month, Y stories about your brand or one of your competitors appears in the most important business journal.
  • On an average month, you are mentioned in at least Z blog posts. 
• At the end of each quarter, look at the numbers of each individual publication. If you are way below or above average on any one of those, dig into the data and figure out why. It may be that the competition fired its PR team and they went invisible for a month or so. But a far more likely scenario is that somewhere a feed is broken and there are bunch of missing items out there.

5. _____
Do not wait until 48 hours before your results are supposed to be delivered to the CMO in a PowerPoint deck to find out that there are errors in the data. Review any qualitative data at least monthly, if not weekly. Both computers and humans make mistakes.

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Thanks for the image to Workstreamer Blog.

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. Katie and Beth Kanter are authors of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to be published this year by Wiley.

The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners, will be glad to talk with you about measurement for your organization.

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Comments

[John Smith III]

It is somewhat amazing how you still can't teach an old dog new tricks. For years the leaders of the measurement community have been saying that we need to measure impact on target audiences, not just media output. You have even been part of that chorus. Yet here you are spewing the same old media analysis processes and completely ignoring the measures that really matter.

[KDPaine]

I hardly "ignore" measures that matter, I believe I wrote a book on the topic. In fact, if you did a content analysis of all the various pieces I've written in the last year, you'd find that most of them relate to impact, engagement and outcomes.
I'm also troubled by your term "spewing." You clearly don't seem to understand the purpose of this newsletter, which is to provide helpful content to people interested in measurement. When three agencies and two companies call me in a week because they are plagued with bad data from other measurement vendors and I have to tell them that most of the data is beyond repair, because no one did the steps I suggest above, it seemed like a relevant and timely topic.
I'm sorry you don't agree.

[John Smith III]

Actually "spewing" is the right word.

[Heather Rast]

KD, I'm a recent subscriber to your newsletter, and your book sits on my shelf (complete with Post-its stuck on pages throughout). This simple checklist serves it's purpose for me, which is to give pause to consider data roots and regularly examine filters and parameters. To some degree, these things may be elementary but as you suggest in your comment above, can frequently be overlooked by even "big" vendors and companies.

I think Mr. Smith fails to see this post in the larger context of your whole body of work. Perhaps he believes you're pointing to this article with claims that it's a silver bullet solution to gathering business intelligence and insight. I don't believe that to be the case...your book (and more) indicate otherwise. I'd like to add I'm sorry he both missed your message and chose to start an unproductive conversation. Thank you.

[KDPaine]

Thank you Heather for your kind words. I'm always happy to know that someone is putting all those ideas, thoughts and words to work.

Measure On!