The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

Video: A Few Measurement Tips From Katie Paine

Here's a video from IABC Calgary, in which Katie Paine provides some measurement tips. (It takes a minute to get to Ms. Paine's advice, and, yes, that background music is a bit much.) --WTP

Gini Dietrich on How to Measure PR

Go read this great article by Gini Dietrich at Spin Sucks: "How to Measure PR: Use These Tools." It includes an inspirational little case study of a content marketing program with the goal of getting people to a free trial. The nice point she makes is that once you settle on what to measure:

"...we know exactly how many people we need to get to the free trial landing page – through content – in order to get them to take it and then what kinds of content – through email – we need to send them so they’ll convert to a customer. It becomes science and math, combined with art, and it works really, really well."

Go read read it right now.

Nice Primer on Measurement from Shift Communications

Christophen Penn at SHIFT Communications has written a bang-up little primer on How to Measure PR. It's presented in 8 concise and easy-to-understand little chapters. They cover a lot of ground quickly, from goal setting to various types of metrics to analysis. Our highest recommendation. In fact, Katie Paine, our publisher, said, "I wish I'd written this." Go read them right now. -- Bill Paarlberg, editor

Video: Goal Setting For Public Relations and Social Media Measurement

Here's a quick little video reminder from Ben Levine, Ketchum’s Research Director, on the importance of goal setting when doing public relations or social media measurement. Thanks to KetchumBlog for the video, and to Don Bartholomew for the tip.

DoSomething.org Gets 1.5 Million Views, But Strikes Out On Donations

Here's a great post from Jeff Bladt and Bob Filbin at DoSomething.org on the difference between data and metrics. Yep, they got 1.5 million YouTube views for their sports equipment donation video, but totally struck out when it came to donations. The moral of their story is: "...analyzing the data is the easy part. The hard part is deciding what data matters."

Bob Filbin's insights on the use of data by nonprofits are featured in Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, the book published last fall by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, which devotes Chapter 3 to DoSomething.org. (Thanks for the image to The Musings of an Urban Christian) --WTP

Waxing UnLyrical -- Count What Counts: #measurePR Words to Live By

Shonali Burke, of the very active and PR measurement-themed blog Waxing UnLyrical, has hosted the #measurePR Twitter chats for three years. (Thanks Shonali!) Both the first and the most recent featured our Ms. Paine (Katie Paine, publisher of The Measurement Standard) fielding all kinds of questions on PR measurement and social media measurement. To the left is just one example of the many informative exchanges during the chat. Pop over to Waxing UnLyrical right now and read the whole transcript. -- WTP

Katie Paine's Seven Basic Steps of Measurement, Remixed for Nonprofit Social Media

Here are Katie Paine's famous Seven Steps of Measurement, in the form of an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, the new book by Katie and Beth Kanter. (Order the book here.) The cartoon, also from the book, is the work of Rob Cottingham. Click on it to see it larger.

While this excerpt discusses the seven steps in the context of nonprofit social media, the logic behind them applies to any measurement program undertaken by any organization. The steps are the same, and are carried out in the same order, you just have to adapt them to your own program and goals.

4 Ways to Calculate What a Visit from the President is Worth -- Without Using AVEs

 A Measurement Makeover for Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, NH

by Katie Delahaye Paine

It was the ultimate measurement irony. Twenty of measurement's best and brightest were gathered in my living room for the Conclave on social media measurement standards and the future of measurement. Then, that very morning, the local paper ran a front page story about the "value" of a nearby visit by President Obama. And how did they calculate the value of said visit? In AVEs, of course!

Daniels & Jeffrey: International Media Analysis Made Simple

On the IPR website you can download a new paper, "International Media Analysis Made Simple," by Mike Daniels and Angela Jeffrey that presents a straightforward 8-step program for designing an international media measurement program. For each step the authors provide a checklist-like series of decisions and procedures.

The purpose of the paper, as they say, is to answer the following question:

How does an organization structure a media monitoring and measurement program that provides optimal international business intelligence in a cost-effective manner?

Here's the Abstract:

More and more organizations need to measure their media coverage globally, but how can they do this cost effectively? This paper takes a very granular approach to helping the reader define business goals and objectives; determine suitable measures; analyze media content needs; evaluate dashboard systems; determine language and analysis processes; develop measurement scorecards; select provider services; sell the solutions internally; and, evaluate their success. Clear pros and cons to every option are provided, enabling the reader to balance the three competing essentials: quality, speed and cost.

Go download the paper right now. -- Bill Paarlberg, editor

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The Valid Metrics Framework, Updated to Include Social Media

About a year ago, at the AMEC Lisbon Summit on Measurement, Ruth Pestana and Mike Daniels presented the Valid Metrics Framework. This practical system for measuring public relations grew out of the Barcelona Principles and a desire to supplant the simplistic and inaccurate Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) with more sophisticated and valid techniques.

The Valid Metrics Framework walks you through the thought process of setting up a measurement system. By segmenting each primary area of a PR program, you can immediately see what metrics go where. Not quite a cookbook, and not quite actual standards, the Valid Metrics Framework has been adapted to include how and what to measure for different types of public relations campaigns. Read this post at the PRSA blog to learn more.

A couple weeks ago at the AMEC Dublin Summit Mike Daniels presented the Updated Valid Metrics Frameworks, which begins to extend the framework to social media.

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Avinash Kaushik: You Are What You Measure, So Choose Your KPIs (Incentives) Wisely!

Avinash Kaushik writes Occam's Razor, and he's always interesting and eloquent and funny. You should read his blog regularly.

Don't miss his recent post "You Are What You Measure, So Choose Your KPIs (Incentives) Wisely!" This lengthy post discusses several pairs of metrics, and why you should or shouldn't choose one over the other (and along the way you get a fairly good education in web marketing analytics):

1. Page Views vs. Visitor Loyalty
2. Revenue vs. Economic Value
3. Time on Site vs. Task Completion Rate
4. % of Search Traffic vs. Share of Global Search Volume
5. # of Followers (or Fans or +1s) vs. Conversation Rate
6. # of Installs vs. 30 Day Actives

Go read Avinash Kaushik right now. --WTP

(Thanks for the image to MyTechOpinion.)

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

 

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 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.

What Do You Think: Are Clickthroughs Still Relevant?

Used to be that clickthrough rates ruled the ad measurement tool box. They were—and perhaps still are—the fundamental way of measuring an online ad’s performance. But times and consumers have changed, and social media is making engagement a lot easier to measure, so clicks are now being judged a bit old-fashioned and not very informative.

 RICG has a post outlining two competing positions on the usefulness of clickthrough rates as a measure of marketing ROI. James Burrows argue that they can help create a better picture of an ad strategy's success. But Manu Mathew alleges that the clickthrough rate is dead and has given way to other metrics that track the marketing experience as a whole.

Last month, Google reported that banner ad clickthroughs continue to drop, down 0.09% in 2010, compared to 0.1% in 2009 (see the mashable report here).

So what do you think? Are clickthroughs still relevant? What do they really measure? Are other measures more useful? Please leave a comment or take the poll to the right. --WTP

Measurement Help from the IPR: Charting Your PR Measurement Strategy

This just in from the IPR:

Members of the Institute for Public Relations’ Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation have written and compiled a series of articles that first appeared in the May 2011 issue of PRSA's PR Tactics magazine. Charting Your PR Measurement Strategy is now available on the IPR website.

Articles included are:

• The Strategic Approach: Writing Measurable Objectives
  by Don W. Stacks, Ph.D. and Shannon A. Bowen, Ph.D. 
• Deliverable Objectives: Considerations for Creating Measurement Plans
  by Jackie Matthews and Pauline Draper-Watts  
• Speak Their Language: Communicating Results to the C-suite
  by Marianne Eisenmann 
• The Big Shift: Moving from Impressions to Engagement
  by Tim Marklein  
• Measuring Influence in the Digital Age: Impressions, Likes and Followers
  by Katie Delahaye Paine.

Please click on the following link to download this paper  http://www.instituteforpr.org/topics/charting-your-pr-measurement-strategy-august-2011/   --WTP

David Geddes and the IPR: Core Reading List in PR Research & Measurement

White papers on the IPR website make up an invaluable core curriculm on PR measurement and social media measurement.

David Geddes, Ph.D., is Chair of the Institute for Public Relations Commission on Measurement and Evaluation. Recently he posted a handy guide to the papers on PR research and measurement that are available at no cost on the IPR website. As he says:

We have papers on setting measurable objectives, on research for communications planning, on measurement techniques, on social media measurement, and on measuring ROI, as well as other topics. These white papers fall somewhere between papers in academic journals, chapters in textbooks, and articles in trade media. They are intended for the practitioner.

The balance of his post categorizes and introduces some of the most important papers. This is your reading list. --WTP

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The Single Answer to Every Measurement Question: Part 3, Measurement with Limited Resources

This is Part 3 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 are 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 measurement on a limited budget.

How to Do Measurement With Limited Resources

Q: I work at a medium-sized PR agency (20 people or less) with luxury travel clients who don't budget for measurement—social media or otherwise—but do want it as part of their PR program. What services do you recommend to show value / results / measurement? Cision and Vocus have great programs, but they are not affordable for smaller agencies. What is?

A: Google Analytics and Google News. 

Q: With limited funds or time, how is it best to measure the impact of a public relations or communications campaign? Any new and simple techniques for pre- and post-testing?

A: SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang surveys of your stakeholders are virtually free as long as you have a reliable list of email addresses. If you don’t have a list, you can go to an event that your stakeholders are attending and collect responses there.  It depends on what you’re measuring and on what matters to your stakeholders. 

Q: With the corporate purse ever tightening, what is the most effective way to demonstrate the ROI for PR focused on driving brand reputation and consideration?

A: Analyze your media coverage for reputational content and then correlate that with web analytics, Net Promoter Scores, or customer surveys. 

Q: What meaningful metrics can we use to show real results of our communications efforts, without dedicating a great deal of one employee's time or paying a lot of money to a consultant or service? 

A:  This question is based two fundamental fallacies:

• 1. Measurement is something that shouldn’t take time or dedicated resources—Wrong! 
  Most good businesses invest a great deal of time and resources in research, measurement, and business intelligence. They see these tools as critical to assessing the health of the business and understanding how to improve performance.
• 2. The purpose of measurement is to show results—Wrong! 
  This sounds like you’re doing measurement to get a “gold star.” The point of measurement is to show what is working and not working and thus improve the efficacy of what you are doing.

Q: How can my department’s media relations efforts make the biggest impact and impression on senior leadership with a $25,000 budget for tracking/measurement?

A: Use Google Analytics to tie your media efforts back to actual interaction with customers on your website, blogs, etc.

Q: How can a one-person PR department get her arms around measurement and really do it justice when managing everything else? And how can one person track and really manage all the things happening? What is an effective way to do this?

A: Look at it as improving efficiency and results rather than measurement.  When you think of it that way, wouldn’t you be willing to allocate at least 10% of your time to it? Most of the time good metrics can prioritize your time and allow you to focus on what is really important.

Now go back and read the first two installments of this article:

• For Q & A to do with linking PR and business goals, see Part 1 of this series. (13 questions)
• For Q & A to do with measurement of social media, see Part 2 of this series. (11 questions)

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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.

 

Measure What Matters is “A tremendously good book: it’s a treasure. An absolute doozy of a read.”

Here’s another rave review for Measure What Matters, Katie Paine’s new book on public relations measurement and social media measurement. Reviewer Bob LaDrew over at For Immediate Release has a great many very nice things to say about Measure What Matters, including:

[Measure What Matters is] the best written, best argued book on social media measurement that I have read... A tremendously good book… it’s a treasure. AN ABSOLUTE DOOZY OF A READ. Makes great points… incredibly accessible and incredibly useful. I can’t recommend it strongly enough… The book is a joy to read for a language nerd.

Listen to the whole podcast here. To read excerpts from the book, visit the Measure What Matters blog. And you can click right here to order Measure What Matters right now at Amazon.

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-- Bill Paarlberg, editor, Measure What Matters and The Measurement Standard

 

The All-Purpose Answer to PR Measurement Questions: Measure Business Impact -- Part 2, Social Media

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.