The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

Can the Reputation of Spirit Airlines Be Saved?

How do you evaluate the loss of reputation when a company profits from a dying man?

Spirit Airlines has long reveled in its reputation for low fares, pay-for-everything approach, and iconoclastic CEO, Ben Baldanza. But it may have gone one step too far when it refused to give a refund to a dying veteran who was told by his doctor that he had lost his battle with esophageal cancer and was too sick to fly.

With a simple handmade sign, Jerry Meekins took the battle to Spirit’s doorstep at Tampa International Airport. Not surprisingly the local news media picked up the story and it quickly spread across the country. The response from Spirit was a resounding NO!

The official statement was: "We receive many requests for refunds every day for similar situations. It wouldn't be fair to bend policy for one and not all. We will not make customers who follow the rules pay for those who don't. It's just not fair." (Under Spirit's current policy, customer airfares will be only partly refunded if they die before their flights.)

What's the ROI of a protest?

Now, one might argue, that since Spirit refused to grant Mr. Meekins a refund, the ROI on his protest effort was zero. And that Spirit’s ROI was huge. I’m sure someone at Spirit is claiming that all this publicity earned Spirit a ton coverage for its cheap $197 fares and strict policies.

One way of calculating the impact would be to add up all the potential impressions from all that coverage in online, broadcast, and print media. Using the typically inflated impression counts provided by most of the leading monitoring companies you’d find out that about half of all Americans (155 million) had the opportunity to see something about this story. Which is no doubt worth a gazillion-and-a-half in AVEs. 

Another way to look at it is that 40% of Americans have some sort of tie to the military and/or veterans. And they’re pretty ticked off. So even if only half of those people hear the news, and half of them decide that they will never buy another Spirit ticket, that’s still about 15 million customers that Spirit has lost. What’s the ROI of that?

--KDP

 (thanks for the image to The Tampa Bay Times and Willie J. Allen)

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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. 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.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.

The Golden Ratio, Feng Shui, and the Apple Logo

These first two posts demonstrate the relationship between math and design, thanks to GigaOM. (I tried and failed to relate them somehow to public relations or social media measurement, but you measurement geeks will love them just the same):

The Golden Ratio Otherwise Known as Feng Shui in which Feng Shui and mathematics are discussed as linked by the Golden Ratio.

Design of Apple Logo and The Golden Ratio, where the Apple Logo is dissected and found to be built of components built on the ratio of 1:62

And if you want to see more of how the golden ratio appears in apple design (and human faces) visit this tumblr page.

And if you want to learn more about the golden ratio, visit this wikipedia page:

--WTP

  --Bill Paarlberg is editor of  The Measurement Standard blog and newsletter, and of Katie Paine's book “Measure What Matters.” He is also editor of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, which will be published this year by Wiley.
  Follow Bill Paarlberg on Twitter.

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.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.

Why We Need Social Media Measurement Standards, or, at least, Standard Labeling

The Paine of Measurement

I’m excited to report that the various social media measurement standards-setting bodies that came together at The Conclave last October met again a few weeks ago and made further progress towards a set of standards for social media measurement.

I’m even more excited that the august Media Rating Council, an organization that has some 50 years of experience in establishing auditable industry standards, is now part of this effort. Or, rather, we are part of their effort. See the diagram to the right for how we are organized.

We have broken the elements that we are writing standards for into five sections:

1. Content,
2. Impressions and Reach,  
3. Engagement,
4. Influence and Relevance,
5. Opinion and Advocacy, and
6. Impact and Value.

The first on that list, Content, has been the subject of a great many words of late, see my “How to Get Good Data Checklist” and "How to Fix the 8 Most Common Errors In Social Media Monitoring Data." It seems that the better we get at collecting data, the worst the quality is. While the work of us measurati may never get data collectors to change their bad practices, we can at least provide the clients with ways to get transparency about the ways they collect it.

The group is working on an “ingredients” labeling form that will specify exactly how the data was collected and the parameters for that collection. Not exactly like this, but you get the idea:

  We hope to have that in place by June in time for the AMEC European Measurement Summit in Dublin, as well as the IABC International Conference in Chicago. Never has it been more needed.

Happy measuring:

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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. 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.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.

 

How to Fix the 8 Most Common Errors In Social Media Monitoring Data

Paine Relief

Katie Paine Solves Your Measurement Problems

Problem of the Month: 

"I keep finding errors in my social media monitoring data and management is losing confidence in my reports. What should I do?"

Solution:

As the volume of data proliferates, I and other measurati increasingly hear complaints about the integrity of the data that many of the popular monitoring systems provide. In fact, the number of decisions currently being made based on bad data is truly frightening. A recent study we conducted discovered that 60% of data delivered to a client was invalid (that includes spam, paid posts, ads for Viagra, and duplicates).

The good news is that you can get cleaner data, but it will take a little work. First, look over my How To Get Good Data Checklist. One of the most important things on this list is to remember to review your search terms with your supplier each month.

Now let's deal with some specific situations. Do any of these sound familiar?

• You know an article appeared in April, but is listed in your June results

 Fix: Check whether your vendor is reporting “day of publication” or “day of collection."

• Wrong circulation/OTS numbers

Explanation and fix: 

For online data: First check the URL. Is your system reporting for all of Yahoo, or the specific blog in which your news appeared? This happens with Facebook data all the time. Routinely, agencies and vendors are reporting “impressions” in the billions. Billions, really? Sure, if you assume that every single Facebook post reaches the entire 850,000,000-member network. (Yes, that is how some firms are reporting the “circulation” for Facebook.)

Let's think about that for a moment. First of all, if your target is the U.S., that includes only about 150 million members. Then you have to take into account that only about 10% of what is posted on Facebook is public. And only about 10% of what is public is actually seen. So at best you’re talking a reach of 1,500,000 for the U.S. Let's not even go there for Twitter. The good news is that Twitter actually tells you the number of followers an individual author has. So why do some organizations report a “circulation” for Twitter of 42 million? Because it’s easier than actually tying the Twitterer to the Tweet. 

For traditional media data: Do a common sense check. Put the data into an Excel spreadsheet and sort by circulation (OTS) largest to smallest. Now visit the URLs of the 10 items with the biggest circulation. Are they for real? For online news circulation, if you use www.compete.com you will only get the root URL, not the subdomains, so check carefully that the URL corresponds to where the item actually ran.

• Spam

Fix: Use the “find” function in Excel to do a search for "Vioxx" and "Viagra" and any other common spam terms.

• Duplicates

Fix: Go to Data in Excel and click on “remove duplicates.”  You can select the appropriate columns. We typically do it on the item URLs.

• Press releases that are picked up because the company’s boiler plate says, "has worked with clients such as..."

Fix: Do a search for “PRNEWSWIRE,” PRWEB,”  or just WIRE, and you’ll be able to quickly identify the press releases.

• Underwriting credits

Explanation and fix: Many of the broadcast clipping services now provide radio, including transpcripts from National Public Radio (NPR) as well as individual shows like Marketplace and Living on Earth. Unfortunately they haven’t figured out that those nice message-rich statements at the end of the broadcast are, in fact, paid underwriting credits. They should not count as “earned” media.

• Mentions from the UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, France and India in supposedly “US Only” clips

Fix: Look for URL domains like .dk, .fr, .ca, etc., and remove them.

• Paid Bloggers 

Fix: Sort all blogs by frequency and tone. If you get one blogger that is consistently positive and posts regularly, check him/her out. I’m not saying they are all paid, but you’ll want to double check. Any blog that has on its home page “I was paid or compensated to write this” is not earned media.

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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. 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.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.

Four Posts on Analytics Best Practices from SAS Voices

Here is the fourth in a series of posts by Georgia Mariani at SAS that discuss analytics best practices: "Best practice #4: Manage expectations proactively." Here's how it begins:

Now that stakeholders realize that you know their needs and you have access to all the data, they will begin wondering, “When am I going to get the reports and analysis that we’ve been discussing?” I have to say… it’s not uncommon for stakeholders to view reporting and analytics software as some kind of all-powerful “magic.” They can ask for anything and instantly get whatever they want, however they want it.

Stakeholder wish lists can get long, unwieldy and unattainable – especially if you are just starting off on your reporting and analytics journey.  This is why best practice #4 - manage expectations proactively is so important. Effective reporting and analytics require that you invest in significant data preparation, integration and planning before anyone can have useful reporting.

Note the earlier posts as well:

#1: Securing executive sponsorship

#2: Understanding of stakeholders needs

#3: Integrating all the data

--WTP

 

Work Remotely or Remotely Working? Two Articles from USA Today

I have edited this newsletter for 10 years, working from my freelance office at home and, for a month each year, from a one-internet-connection-town in Mexico. Thanks partly to Jonah Lehrer (his book Imagine, for instance) and the lesson of Building 20 at MIT, I am thinking that I need to increase my interactions with other people in a way that will stimulate my creativity

Seems to me other readers of this newsletter may work remotely, and may be concerned about how to keep their creativity and ideas flowing when not always around other people.

So here are two artices in USA Today by Anita Bruzzese (thanks, Linked-In) that may have some good advice for those of us who work remotely:

Recurring contact necessary to make remote work succeed

and

Recreating water cooler especially vital for remote workers

--WTP

  --Bill Paarlberg is editor of  The Measurement Standard blog and newsletter, and of Katie Paine's book “Measure What Matters.” He is also editor of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, which will be published this year by Wiley.
  Follow Bill Paarlberg on Twitter.

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.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.

Marcia DiStaso -- Measuring Public Relations Wikipedia Engagement: How Bright is the Rule?

Marcia DiStaso, (one of the authors of the recent very popular Millennials vs. Facebook research), has today published two papers concerning inaccurate Wikipedia articles and the difficulties involved in correcting them. See the infographic to the right for a summary of findings.

One is a paper in Public Relations Journal entitled "Measuring Public Relations Wikipedia Engagement: How Bright is the Rule?" (Download DiStaso Wikipedia_Survey_PRJ) Here are the first three sentences:

Wikipedia has become almost a staple in society, and its prominence in search engines and frequency of use make it a very powerful website. While the goal of Wikipedia is to be considered an accurate and reliable resource (Wikipedia: Why NPOV, 2012), this study found that the “bright line” rule as co-founder Jimmy Wales has called it, is not working. This rule forbids public relations/communications professionals from editing Wikipedia articles for their company or clients and results in providing the public with inaccurate, outdated, and incomplete information, ultimately undermining Wikipedia’s value as a resource.

The second article covering the same research has been published today by the IPR, "Exploring the Problems with Wikipedia’s Editing Rule for Public Relations." Here is a paragraph:

"The purpose of this article is to provide a thorough cogent explanation of the problems associated with the “bright line” rule and procedures for public relations/communications professionals who wish to edit Wikipedia articles. Hopefully, doing so will aid in the efforts of Wikipedia and public relations/communications professionals to work together for the mutual benefit of accurate and balanced Wikipedia articles."

Dr. Marcia W. DiStaso is Chair of the PRSA Financial Communications Section, and Assistant Professor of Public Relations at the College of Communications, Pennsylvania State University. --WTP

Update: Wikipedia is working on a response, see it here.

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Dan Taylor: A case for analytics: If you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing

This article by Dan Taylor, "A case for analytics: If you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing" gives a quick rundown of why and how small business owners should and can measure. Metrics mentioned include website conversions, SEO, A/B testing, and email segmentation.

Here's are two great quotes:

1. "Analytics can provide deep insights into how your customers think and search, not how you think they think and search."

2. "No analytics+no idea what works+no testing=less customers."

Read the whole article here. --WTP

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(Thanks for the image to Go Fish.)

The Measurement Standard Contents for April 2012

Here is a list of links to posts in The Measurement Standard for the month of April, 2012.

Can the Reputation of Spirit Airlines Be Saved?

The Golden Ratio, Feng Shui, and the Apple Logo

Paine Relief: Katie Paine Solves Your Measurement Problems:
How to Fix the 8 Most Common Errors In Social Media Monitoring Data

The Paine of Measurement:
Why We Need Social Media Measurement Standards, or, at least, Standard Labeling

Four Posts on Analytics Best Practices from SAS Voices

Work Remotely or Remotely Working? Two Articles from USA Today

Marcia DiStaso -- Measuring Public Relations Wikipedia Engagement: How Bright is the Rule?

Dan Taylor: A case for analytics: If you’re not measuring, you’re not marketing

  Reprinted from 2008 by special request:
Does Your University Make the Grade in Social Media?

Rapid Writing by Daphne Gray-Grant
  Oh, The Word Games People Play

Twitter Ads Earn 10x More Than Facebook Ads

Bad Infographics Are the Measurement Menace of the Month

The 6 Trickiest Terms in Measurement—and What They Really Mean

Last month in The Measurement Standard: Here is the the Contents Page from March, 2012.

Does Your University Make the Grade in Social Media?

(Back by popular demand, this is a reprint of an article that appeared in The Measurement Standard in 2008.)

Benchmarks you can use from KDPaine & Partners' study of social media usage at five academic institutions.

by Peter Kowalski and Katie Delahaye Paine

Social media is a new and unfamiliar development for many companies and institutions. It is growing so quickly and taking on so many new forms that many organizations are at a loss to understand its present use and future possibilities.

Georgia Institute of Technology found itself in just that position. It wanted to organize and improve its institutional use of social media, but needed help to understand the myriad options, and to develop effective new programs with realistic goals.

Georgia Tech is home to some 22,000 scholars, faculty, and administration. It is consistently ranked in U.S. News & World Report's top ten public universities in the United States. Georgia Tech is in competition with other top-ranked universities for students, faculty, and research grants, so it was important for it to understand not just its own social media usage, but also how it compared with that of competing academic institutions.

To better understand its social media presence and options, Georgia Tech asked KDPaine & Partners to undertake a major study of social media use at academic institutions. Presented below are the major results of that study, as well as benchmarks that institutions of higher education can use to compare with their own use.

Social Media: Where to start, and what to expect?

It was clear at the start that social media was an important communication tool, especially for reaching for Georgia Tech's student audience. For U.S. Internet users:

• More than 70 million people watch more than 2.5 billion YouTube videos per month.
• 8% of Internet users keep a blog.
• 38% of online teens read blogs.
• 3% of online teens consider blogs their first news source.

Earlier research had shown that social media is an important tool for academic admissions departments, and in many cases is more commonly used in academia than in the corporate world (Barnes & Mattson, "The Game Has Changed: College Admissions Outpace Corporations in Embracing Social Media"). In this case, 88% of responding admissions departments said that social media was Very Important or Somewhat Important to their marketing/recruitment strategy. 61% said that they used social media. In particular, 33% used blogs, 29% used social networking, and 19% used video.

So Georgia Tech had no doubt that social media was important. The question was how important, and which media were more important than others?

Research Goals

With the above concerns in mind, KDPaine & Partners designed a research program for Georgia Tech. The following major goals were decided upon:

1. Determine specifically what presence and activity Georgia Tech and peer institutions had in social media.
2. Advise Georgia Tech on what it should be doing in social media: What changes should it make to its present programs, and/or what new programs should it add?
3. Set benchmarks for Georgia Tech to judge its results by after it implements its new social media program(s).

Research Methodology

To best achieve these goals, it was decided to observe and explore a range of social media channels for Georgia Tech as well as a small group of peer academic institutions. Typical patterns of traffic and usage could then be determined.

Four peer institutions were chosen by Georgia Tech as its closest national competition for students, faculty, and research resources.

The following social media channels were observed:

• 50 external blogs in 7 categories
• 114 institutional blogs produced by peer institutions
• 1668 YouTube videos
• 811 items on Facebook (Broken down, this was 405 network discussion posts, 53 freshman group discussion posts, and a sample of 353 popular topics. Note: KDPaine & Partners did not look at any student profiles or retain names of any individual students. All items examined were available to any user with a Facebook account.)
• Social bookmarking sites, including Digg, Fark, Newsvine, Reddit, Slashdot and del.ic.ious.

Data was gathered for a 30-day period between September and November of 2007, and included all references to Georgia Tech and the four peer institutions. To ensure comparability and a manageable data set, content related to athletics was not included. To allow context comparisons, back content for discussion volume was collected for Facebook groups from January - November 2007.

Research Results

Goal #1:
Determine the social media presence and activity of Georgia Tech and the peer institutions.

Summary chart of net results for all media across all institutions (click on the chart to see it larger):



Findings for specific social media:

Blog Findings
Over all the external blogs (those not hosted by an institution) studied, the median number of comments per blog post was roughly 3 (depending on category), and this amount of activity is a good benchmark of reasonable traffic. But the average number of posts per comment was 13, a level that generally indicates strong engagement. And, if the topic was controversial, a post got as many as 35 comments. After 3 days most comments were made, and after 14 days there would almost definitely be no additional comments.

And for institutional blogs (hosted on the domains of an institution, like gatech.edu, for instance), we found that roughly 2 out of 5 postings included at least one key message of the institution. Note that this level of message communication is about what one would expect for articles in traditional media. This is a counterintuitive result; the institutions are writing their own blog articles, so we would expect a somewhat higher level of message communication for the blogs than for traditional media. (GT has suggested that this result is likely due to its desire to generate content that is less calculated, less "marketey," and more authentic.) Thus a good benchmark for message inclusion in articles in internal blogs is at least 2 out of 5.

YouTube Findings
This study found 19 types of YouTube videos. See Sidebar #2, below.

Social Bookmarking Findings
As for social bookmarking, we found a rough median of one submitted item every other day, with a lot of variance between schools.

Facebook Findings

This research found 27 types of Facebook conversations. See Sidebar #1, below. Also:

• Less than one percent of users used network-level discussion features.
• By September, discussion hosted by freshman groups decreased 99%.
• Almost 1/3 of content posted to profiles was related to a home institution.
• 22% of Facebook discussion was related to the asking and answering of questions, second only to advertising (30%).
• 56% of questions went unanswered, but most unanswered questions were not related to the institution.
• High school students accounted for 8% of all questions. Almost all of their queries were answered.

Special Research Question #1:
What subject matter consumes the bulk of the discussions across all social media – Campus life? Faculty? Research?

The data shows that the answer to this question will never be simple. Academic discussion is much more fragmented and diffuse than corporate or nonprofit discussion. University society and interests are far more diverse, and so the answer is usually, "These three or four things," or, "These three or four other things." It is rarely just any one subject that audiences discuss.

In general, dominant topics of discussion for each medium are:

• YouTube- Students, Campus Life
• External Blogs- Research, Institution News
• Institution Blogs- Campus Life (when institution related), Science/Education (overall)
• Social Bookmarking Sites- Research, Institution News
• Facebook- Campus Life

Special Research Question #2:
What is the influence of traditional media?

To what extent does content in the traditional media trigger social media content, or is distributed via social media channels?

• Although traditional media has some influence over social, it is not a full predictor of content or visibility in social media.
• On average, bloggers included as many as six links to external content in a post. The third most common link source was traditional news media sites.
• Of all of the links to pages on Peer#1.edu that were found in our population of external blog posts, 26% of them were links to content found in the newsroom.
• On Facebook, traditional news media sites were the source of 25% of popular items posted to profiles.
• One third of content on social news sites was from traditional media sources.
• Twice as many hard news stories were posted to social news sites as features.

Goal #2:
Advise Georgia Tech on what they should be doing.

Recommendations to Georgia Tech Based on Overall Analysis

Analysis of the data lead KDPaine & Partners to make the following recommendations to Georgia Tech:

1. Add tactics targeting social bookmarking sites to traditional media program plans. Learn what gets bookmarked for sites relevant to your institution and the most common sources of seeded items, and put those on your priority media lists in the hopes that you can get listed on social bookmarking sites.
2. Encourage individuals (especially faculty), rather than departments, to maintain institution blogs.
3. Engage directly with popular external bloggers.
4. Limit engagement with Facebook to contact with group officers.
5. Focus on creating YouTube playlists of thematic content already found on the site.

Note that recommendations #1, #2, and #4 are definitely counter to current practice, based on our observations. Also, #5 is original and innovative; to our knowledge no one does it yet.

Goal #3:
Set benchmarks by which Georgia Tech can judge results after they have implemented their social media program.

KDPaine & Partners' data provided summaries of activity for both Georgia Tech and the four peer institutions. As Georgia Tech enacts new programs, it can compare itself to these benchmarks to determine if it is meeting with success compared to its past, and compared to its peers.

Can other schools use these social media benchmarks?
Yes, other academic institutions can benchmark their own social media programs against the results of this research. While the actual data collected is proprietary, and the analysis was done in many categories and subcategories (see the sidebars below: "27 Types of Conversations," and "19 Types of Video"), the summary statistics given in the chart above are sufficiently robust to suggest benchmarks for other institutions of higher learning.

There are only five institutions in this sample, so the benchmarks given here should be considered directional. Still, this study is one of the first of its type, and there are as yet no other benchmarks of this sort to refer too, so these are relatively informative.

It is tempting to anticipate that these effects will vary with certain attributes of institutions. For instance, we might expect that smaller schools, with their more cohesive social atmospheres, might have more success with social media programming than big public and private institutions. However, we tested the social bookmarking data for effects based on size of student body, size of incoming class and price of tuition; none of were found to have an effect.

Of course, the more new programs are developed, the more new data will be available for future comparisons. What was very obvious in the data was that different institutions were trying to help to guide their social media content, though for the most part, it was organic, gritty and, well, natural. Using a horticulture analogy, we're talking about watching plants grow to figure out how we can use grafting and other techniques to get plants that we want.

Sidebar #1:
27 Types of Facebook Conversations

In this study, KDPaine & Partners identified 27 specific types of conversations taking place in Facebook, including:

1. Acknowledging receipt of information

2. Advertising something

3. Answering a question

4. Asking a question

5. Augmenting a previous post

6. Calling for action

7. Disclosing personal information

8. Distributing media

9. Expressing agreement

10. Expressing criticism

11. Expressing support

12. Expressing surprise

13. Giving a heads up

14. Responding to criticism

15. Giving a shout-out

16. Making a joke

17. Making a suggestion

18. Making an observation

19. Offering a greeting

20. Offering an opinion

21. Putting out a wanted ad

22. Rallying support

23. Recruiting people

24. Showing dismay

25. Soliciting comments

26. Soliciting help

27. Starting a poll



Sidebar #2:
19 Types of YouTube Video

In this study KDPaine & Partners identified 19 types of videos posted on YouTube:

1. Advertisement
2. Animation
3. Demonstration
4. Event/Performance
5. Fiction
6. Film
7. Home Video
8. Instructional Video
9. Interview
10. Lecture
11. Montage
12. Music Video
13. News Broadcast
14. Promotional Video
15. Sightseeing/Tour
16. Slide show
17. Speech
18. Television Show
19. Video Log

 

Oh, The Word Games People Play

Rapid Writing

by Daphne Gray-Grant

Word games will sharpen your writing skills for the serious work you have to perform.

Can you recall being a little kid and making mashed potato volcanoes, with gravy taking a starring role as lava? Green beans made perfect swords, broccoli stood in for trees and two strategically placed green olives and a slice of red pepper turned a cheese melt into a happy face. Tons of fun, remember?

Okay, well, I'm not going to encourage you to start messing around with your food again. But I do suggest you take that same playful, eyes-wide-open attitude that kids display while eating and turn it in another direction. In short, I want you to play with your words.

Words are the building blocks of writing, and while we need to do serious work with them -- like write brochures, produce web copy and churn out reports -- we can also lean from playing a few games with them. You know, take play seriously -- like kids do.

Today, I'm going to suggest two activities for you. Both are interesting and fun, but they also have a serious purpose.

Game Number 1: Try to produce a piece of writing without once using the verb "to be." That means editing out all of the following:

• Am
• Is
• Are
• Was
• Were

I first heard about this exercise years ago, but Paris-based copywriter John Forde (whom I interview in my book, 8½ Steps to Writing Faster, Better) recently jogged my memory about it. Avoiding the verb "to be" forces you to select more interesting lively verbs -- ones that help your readers form visual images in their minds' eyes. And this leads to more compelling writing.

Game Number 2: Can you tell an entire story in a single sentence? Apparently, yes you can! And I'm grateful to person who alerted me to the website One Sentence Stories. As its name suggests, the site challenges readers to tell a true story (no fiction permitted) in a single sentence. The result? Limits inspire creativity. Some examples from the site:

• It was one of those exams that you absolutely must pass if you want to continue in the program, and I failed the set-your-alarm-clock-properly portion.
• As you were breaking up with me, all I could think about were those mornings when you compared the Pop-Tarts and gave me the one with more frosting.
• I married my husband on our first date, but it has taken me more than 5 years to decide what color to paint our dining room.

Fun, eh? Here’s one I’ve made up:

• Our four heartbeats quickened when the ultrasound technician turned to me and said, "Hey, you have three munchkins in there." (Yep, I'm the mother of triplets.)

Obviously, these exercises are mere games. But just as chess or bridge will hone your mind, so too, word games will help sharpen your writing skills for the serious work you have to perform. Write without the verb "to be" and you will gain practice at finding interesting, more engaging verbs. Write a one-sentence story and you will learn how to go for the literary jugular -- by being pithy, concise and attention-grabbing.

Okay, enough reading. Go out there and play!

(Thanks for the image to Ridiculous Human Things.)

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.

Twitter Ads Earn 10x More Than Facebook Ads

This video from The Washingon Post presents the results of a new study that found that Twitter ads earn about $3.50 CPM, and Facebook ads earn about $.30 CPM. Says Simon Mansell, chief executive of TBG Digital, "I don't think Facebook needs to be worried, but it's a good sign for Twitter's ad business, if they can scale it."

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Bad Infographics Are the Measurement Menace of the Month

Infographics are the quintessential example of marketers thinking that social media is a cheap and easy way to promote themselves.

by Katie Paine

I’m a metrics geek, a data devotee, and the Measurement Queen. So, theoretically, anything that makes measurement and data more palatable should be an instant +, right? So what’s my beef with infographics?

I don't have a problem with all infographics, just the ones based on bad data. Too often infographics are pretty to look at, but have no substance to back them up. I see them as the Kardashians of measurement.

Here's an example. "The Value of a Social Following" appeared in PR Daily and is the equivalent of Kim’s short-lived nuptials: Designed for no other reason than to attract attention and comments, and not based on a solid foundation.

The infographic, produced by Imbue Marketing, includes typos, wrongheaded ROI thinking (the cost to acquire a follower is not the same as his or her value--and neither of them is ROI), and cites four feeble "sources" that provide flimsy evidence to support the graphics.

No self-respecting marketer or communications profession would build a strategy on dubious research, so why should the same professionals believe any of the data in this infographics.?

Infographics are the quintessential example of marketers thinking that social media is a cheap and easy way to promote themselves. The reality is that with infographics you get what you pay for. Those that are based on real facts and research are very expensive. The ones that are thrown together based on shoddy research and dubious facts are also very expensive—to your reputation.

I now know to trust nothing that Imbue Marketing says. And shame on Alan Pearcy and the folks at PRDaily for even promoting this stuff.

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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. 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.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.

The 6 Trickiest Terms in Measurement—and What They Really Mean

by Katie Paine

One key to getting good data is to be able to communicate accurately about just what you want. The lingo of measurement includes a few terms that have, well, somewhat variable definitions. Often depending on just who is trying to sell you what. Here is your guide to a few of those tricky definitions.

When you hear any of the following terms or words, make sure you ask the person using them what he or she means by them. And if their definition does not match the one below, be very, very careful who you are dealing with, and what you are buying.

1. ROI

ROI is an acronym that stands for Return On Investment, an accounting term for a specific calculation of financial results. The formula for calculating ROI is:

ROI = (Gain from Investment - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

That’s it. There is no other definition, despite the many uninformed people who use ROI as if it means "results." So unless you can calculate net gain, you can’t measure ROI. Many people seem to think that ROI and measurement are the same thing. They are not.

2. Measurement

Measurement is collecting data that will help you make informed decisions about your performance. Good measurement should tell you what is working and not working in your programs. Measurement is often mistakenly used to justify someone's job or program or budget; it should not used to justify anything.

3. Impressions

Impressions are the circulation figures of a magazine or newspaper. Impressions, reach, and opportunities to see are often used interchangeably. But they really aren’t. And they are numbers, not measures of success. Frequently, when people say that we need a standard measure for PR, they refer to a Nielsen Number. That “number” was in fact a rating that measured the potential reach of a television broadcast. It was invented to provide a broadcast version of impressions.  Today, people want a Nielsen Number for social media, which is very difficult to come up with, because about 85% of all social conversations take place in private places such as email or private Facebook pages, or off-line all together.

4. Social Media: Earned vs. Owned

Most people want to measure social media, but they blur the lines between earned and owned social media. Conversations that you start on your Facebook page or YouTube channel are owned social media, and it is relatively easy to measure their success via Facebook Insights or Google Analytics. Earned social media is made up of all those things you can't control. Like all the Tweets, blog posts, and other activity that is swirling about in the cyberverse that may mention you, but in ways that you may or may not find desirable. Remember, there is a reason they call it earned.

5. Share of Voice

To media measurement people, share of voice means comparing the number of items that mention your brand to the number of those that mention the competition. And it is expressed as a percentage, as in: "Your share of voice this month was 66%." So, anytime you see the word “share of” (as in share of voice or share of mind) you should see a percent sign (%).

6. Share of Mind (Mindshare)

Share of mind or mindshare is the percentage of survey respondents that remember your brand compared to your competition. You determine share of mind by asking a question like, "What companies come to mind when I say 'laptop computers'?"

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Thanks for the image to Find A Math Tutor.

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.

 KDPaine & Partners' Facebook Page.