By Forrest Anderson—Social media is great. It’s wonderful that we can use it to monitor trending issues and potential threats and review the activities of social media users. But I am very troubled that too many communicators, charged with doing research for the planning and evaluation of their programs, simply dive into social media measures without assessing the broader behavioral and media landscape related to their target stakeholders.
Who and where, exactly, are your stakeholders?
I’ve had many discussions with social and digital media specialists who say, “We do social media because we need to be where our customers are.” This may well be, but, unless you do some upfront research, you don’t really know where your customers are. Targeting only those people on a given medium almost certainly gives you a partial and unrealistic view of any group important to your organization.
I agree that, if you are Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, or one of the many other social media platforms, then your customers are on a specific social medium. But, even if you are LinkedIn, for example, measures of LinkedIn user activities only tell you about your current users. They don’t tell you about your potential users, or the ones that left because they didn’t like your platform.
A more holistic view: Start with why are they your target audience?
What makes more sense is to define the group you are interested in with a set of descriptors related to why they are your target audience. Then do some research to learn about them.
For example, if you’re trying to sell a laundry detergent, you could start by looking at the people who buy your competitive set—perhaps people who buy Tide, All, Ajax, and Wisk—as well as those who buy your brand. Or, if you’re trying to get someone elected in the state of Texas, you might look at those who voted in the last election, or those who intend to vote in the next election.
The point is to begin by defining your audience, rather than by diving into social media. No doubt some of the voters in Texas are on Twitter, but why limit yourself to them? What about all the other voters?
Learn about your target audience: Questions to ask
So, learn about your audience in some manner that describes the population as a whole rather than some subset defined by the use of a specific social medium. Do research to determine:
You will, no doubt, have other questions as well. But among the most important will be those about what media they use and how they use it. For example:
The answers to these questions may reveal that Facebook or Twitter is a great medium for reaching these people. But you might discover that other social media or even traditional media are better. You also might discover that your target audience pays attention to both, and so a program with cross mentions in both traditional and social media could be especially effective.
Finish with quantitative research
Before committing resources to media, you should do quantitative research to learn the percentages of people using social and traditional media, and the specific media they use. You need this information to make decisions about where and how to communicate to best reach your audience.
What matters is not what we find interesting, but what our target audience does
You won’t really know to what extent it is important to communicate using social media—or any other media—until you look at the interests and media habits of your target audience. Simply jumping into social media metrics doesn’t tell you about your target audience. At best it can only tell you about that fraction of your target audience that partakes in the media you track. At worst it will give you false confidence in your research and a skewed sense of who your audience is. That’s just bad research that will lead to bad planning and ineffective communications.
###
Forrest W. Anderson is a 30-plus-year veteran consultant in developing message architecture and managing corporate relationships and reputations. He works with organizations that are going through a change in strategic direction and that are concerned about what will happen if they mismanage their relationships with their key stakeholders. Forrest is a member of the IPR's Measurement Commission.
by Bill Paarlberg — In Delancyplace recently was an excerpt from Daniel Pink’s book Drive about how financial incentives are effective for improving productivity at some jobs, but not at others. Which got me to thinking: What if PR measurement attempts to create a reward structure that just doesn't work for creative PR people? Maybe that would account for why some people are resistant to measurement.
Let me explain. Or, rather, let Mr. Pink explain:
"Behavioral scientists often divide what we do on the job or learn in school into two categories: 'algorithmic' and 'heuristic.' An algorithmic task is one in which you follow a set of established instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion... A heuristic task is the opposite... you have to experiment with possibilities and devise a novel solution."
If your job is creative (heuristic rather than algorithmic) then financial rewards may actually cloud thinking and dull creativity.
Yeah, you say, so what does this have to do with public relations and social media measurement? If you are a PR person who approaches their job in a creative fashion, because your personality is such that you value and enjoy a creative challenge, then the structure that measurement imposes may inhibit your ability to do your job.
Back to Mr. Pink:
"Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus. That's helpful when there's a clear path to a solution. They help us stare ahead and race faster. But "if-then" motivators are terrible for [complex conceptual problems]."
Well, many PR people would describe themselves as creative, and they enjoy doing the creative work of PR. Yet public relations measurement puts an if-then framework on the art of PR: It attemps to reduce the heuristic to the algorithmic.
Is it any wonder, then, that there might be some resistance from creative PR people to doing measurement?
###
Thanks to Televisual for the image.
Bill Paarlberg, Editor of The Measurement Standard, has been writing about public relations measurement for 20 years. He is editor of the award-winning "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, and editor of two other books on measurement by Katie Paine, "Measure What Matters" and "Measuring Public Relationships." Visit Bill Paarlberg's page on LinkedIn.
How's your Excel chops? Here is yet another of Sara Silverstein's practical Excel tips videos from Business Insider: Copy your Excel charts and tables to Word using the Paste Link option and they will automatically be updated in Word when changed in Excel.
###
AMEC College, the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication’s online training facility, is running a Short Course on Social Media Measurement from June 16 to July 21. Aimed at in-house professionals and consultants who are responsible for social and/or digital strategy and want to improve measurement practice, the six-week course is open to employees and students anywhere in the world.
They can study in their own time zone, using the College’s secure online e-learning platform, and also have online access to an experienced Course Director.
The course runs from June 16 to July 21 and is being run by AMEC College’s partner, PR Academy. It features three live webinars, which are recorded for later playback if required, and six recorded podcasts or videos, with subject matter experts. A number of short study activities related to aspects of social media measurement will be developed that require the student to practise various short measurement tasks.
“Our course is a must for anybody who advises on social media, wants to improve measurement practice or simply wants to increase their knowledge of social media measurement,” said AMEC CEO Barry Leggetter.
On successfully completing the course, candidates will be able to:
The course costs £599 (US$1,000) for non-members, while AMEC Full Company Members enjoy a 15 percent member discount that reduce the cost to £510 (US$855). Discounts for other members and group bookings also apply.
For further information and booking details, please contact Julie Wilkinson, Assistant to the AMEC executive director: juliewilkinson@amecorg.com T: +44 (0)7765 251 393
###
This article was first published in the CARMA blog.
By Katie Eickhoff — One of the easiest ways to start your development of a measurement plan is to develop measurement goals. Whether you’re looking to find out whether a particular message reached a particular audience or whether you were perceived favorably over a particular period of time versus your competitors, pick something you’d like to learn from your data and then determine how you can gather it. Goal-setting is a vital means of gathering useful analytics and I’m always glad to see when people tout the benefits of goal-setting and consistently flabbergasted when people overlook targeting their goals.
One of the easiest ways to skip that goal-setting step and simply gather information to figure out what to do with later, is automated data collection. And no recent example screams “automated data crunch without a purpose” more than the revelation of the National Security Agency’s breadth of data collection. While collecting data for surveillance purposes and collecting data for the public relations world are certainly far apart in their respective subject matters, the NSA revelation provides a prime example of the questions that arise when a lack of stated goals results in a massive data crunch, with an astronomically-sized margin of error size.
NSA data collection is stated to have no goals, merely this “unsupervised learning” that is touted as being the best way to go about their business. From what’s been reported, they primarily rely on automated programs and algorithms pouring over data sets with no goal (or too general ones to be useful) in mind.
The NSA’s analytics provide a macro example of someone going to their boss and saying “I want to measure EVERYTHING said about us, our competitors, and our customers” and then not setting any goals from that point on. Not only does this waste a measurement budget but it robs the measurement organizer of the ability to set landmarks for success and alienates anyone looking at the measured data. To new team members, owners, and bosses, a lack of a measurement plan/goals is a scary useless thing and you’ll see them rebel against measurement & question whether it’s worth the time or budget.
Keeping your goals within sight of your data is also why it’s useful to have a visible human to check, sample, interpret data as well as modify data collection and analysis methods. Human analysts keep a real-time watch on whether data is meeting your goals and help you develop new goals as new crises arise.
The intelligence business may turn to “unsupervised learning,” but in doing so, they prove that lacking goals makes for data of questionable use both inside and outside of an agency. Setting measurement goals helps prove the worth of your campaign and ensures to parties inside of your company and out, why the data you’re looking at is useful.
###
(Thanks for the image to Chis Campbell via Flickr)
Katie Eickhoff is Social Media Manager/Senior Analyst at CARMA International. Read more of her writing at the CARMA blog.
Angela Jeffrey's Salient Insights
This is Part 4 in the series Rescuing Ourselves from Social Media Measurement Dinosaur-dom. In past editions I have shared my journey from social media measurement confusion toward comprehension and beyond! The journey culminated in a social media measurement white paper published by the Institute for Public Relations: “Social Media Measurement: a Step by Step Approach… using the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework.”
In this series I’m reprising that paper for The Measurement Standard, following my Eight Step Social Media Measurement Process:Today we focus on Step Two of the Process:
Research Stakeholders for Each Goal and Prioritize Them
Organizations have many departments and stakeholders, yet budgets are limited, so you can rarely address all your stakeholders. Therefore, once your over-arching goals are identified, it’s critical to determine the most important audiences to reach for each targeted department (or business unit). After this step, measurable objectives can be set.
Internal Research —The best place to start is to talk with key players within the organization to ascertain where social media can best contribute to goals in areas such as marketing, sales, customer service, HR, and so on. Be sure to identify what PR and social media are accomplishing for them now, and what real success might look like. Write-up the internal research findings and then prepare for external research.
External Research —External research is the single most important step one can take in building an effective foundation. This process consists of three parts and, I warn you, it will take considerable effort. The first step is to create a social graph to identify where in the social media sphere important stakeholders are involved. Steps two and three involve listening to what stakeholders are saying.
Step 1. Creating a Social Graph
Sally Falkow, CEO of Meritus Media, recommends that one create a social graph for each of your most important departments, brands or services. The goal is to determine how best to reach each group and through which social media channels, recognizing that there will be a great deal of overlap. This is a process that may take many weeks if it is being done by hand.
To create a social graph:
While this process can be daunting, the tools listed above are an enormous help. Alternately, you can hire a measurement provider to do influencer identification projects for you. Sally Falkow of www.meritusmedia.com is a great resource in this area. There are more tools listed in the Appendices of my paper Social Media Measurement: A Step-By-Step Approach.
Step 2. Surveying (Offline Listening to Key Stakeholders)
Falkow also recommends running surveys to learn more about stakeholder interests, their opinions about the organization and its competitors, their behaviors, and how involved they are in social media. There are many sources for excellent offline (or online) surveys today, several of which have been included, again, in the Appendix of my paper.
Step 3. Online Listening (Keyword and Message Analysis)
Whether or not a practitioner has the chance to do a survey, a great deal of needed information can be gathered from the conversations gleaned through online listening tools in a Keyword and Message Analysis. This analysis can quickly pinpoint what stakeholders are actually saying about the organization and/or the business unit, and their competitors, in terms of recurring themes, complaints, topics, and messages.
With the sheer number of artificial intelligence, automated social media analysis tools in today’s marketplace, it’s relatively easy to set-up Boolean search strings to find keyword and message hotspots. Automated tools are great at picking out clearly-defined information like product or brand names, but at some point, humans are required to analyze the nuance behind what is being said.
Since no one has time to analyze all social citations about a given topic or message, a simple solution is to pull a random sample of citations from each search. Simple sampling techniques have been provided by CARMA International in Appendix C of my paper. Also, Appendix A of my paper includes five steps toward conducting a keyword/message analysis, as suggested by Katie Paine.
At the end of Step Two, one should have a good sense of the most important stakeholders, where they are active in social media, what they think of the organization/department and their competitors, and how they can be helped. While smaller companies may not have the resources to undertake all of these steps, they are strongly encouraged to select some type of stakeholder identification and listening program since these measures will form the benchmarks for their entire programs.
Next month, we’ll dive into Step Three: “Set specific objectives for each prioritized stakeholder group.” Meanwhile, if you have any measurement needs or questions, I am just an email away at Angela.Jeffrey@SalienceInsight.com.
###
Angela Jeffrey's Salient Insights
In past editions of The Measurement Standard, I have been sharing my journey of learning how to best measure social media. Starting from a state of confusion, it took me a great deal of study and effort to get to the point where I could write a how-to guide that’s been published by the Institute for Public Relations (IPR): “Social Media Measurement: a Step by Step Approach … using the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework.” If you happen to be a social media measurement dinosaur, or just need a handy reference, please feel free to download the paper right now! Or, if you’d like a more gradual approach, join me as I reprise the paper in this ongoing series.
In my last installation, I summarized the major influences that have guided social media measurement standards over the past several years, with a special focus on the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework for Public Relations Measurement. Since I’ve linked most of my work to this Framework, I encourage you to take a look at it for yourself. The Framework provides eight different matrices with metrics ideal for assessing the success of communications programs focusing on product/brand, reputation, crisis, non-profit, issues, education, and more.
I also introduced my Eight-Step Social Media Measurement Process, (below), which simplifies thinking through a measurement program, and makes using the AMEC Valid Metrics Frameworks simpler. Today, we’ll move on to Step One!
The Eight-Step Social Media Measurement Process
|
STEP ONE: IDENTIFY ORGANIZATIONAL AND DEPARTMENTAL GOALS
First, we’ve got to be clear about our overall goals and objectives.
A goal is, “a broad idea of what one would like to happen,” whereas an objective is, “a clearly defined statement that includes an action statement (a verb), a timeline, and a measurable outcome,” according to Drs. Donald Stacks and Shannon Bowen, both of the IPR’s Measurement Commission.
The first step, then, is to identify both organizational and departmental (business-unit) goals that might be affected by a PR or social media campaign. (Step Three will address the setting of specific objectives.)
So, what are some common goals that a social media program might help achieve?
Sally Falkow, CEO of Meritus Media, offered some great ideas during a private training session:
Olivier Blanchard, in one of his many blog posts, added goals like improving customer service (think Comcast), extending digital marketing (think Old Spice and Pepsi), and plugging social media into every department (think GM, Starbucks, and Best Buy).
Jim Sterne suggests that all organizational goals fit within the three categories below. His book, Social Media Metrics, is an excellent read on how to measure each of these goals on a very granular basis.
Katie Paine has presented a slightly different structure for organizational or departmental goals in her blog post, The Social Media Manifesto:
One other goal not mentioned by any of these authors is to increase brand preference and loyalty.
Regardless your organization's mission, what’s most important is to keep your overarching goals simple and clear, and to understand that social media is only one of many channels needed to reach them.
Next month, we’ll dive into Step Two, which will focus on researching internal and external audiences to further refine goals for key business units.
###
Angela Jeffrey is the Managing Director, U.S., for Salience Insight. If you have any measurement needs or questions, she is just an email away at Angela.Jeffrey@SalienceInsight.com. Ms. Jeffrey is a recognized measurement evangelist, thought leader, writer, and speaker on PR measurement and evaluation, and will soon be elected to the PR News Measurement Hall of Fame. Ms. Jeffrey created PRtrak™, one of the first analysis tools to cover print, broadcast, and internet coverage. Most recently, she founded and managed MeasurementMatch.com, a high-level consultancy matching PR clients with measurement providers. She is a long-time member of the IPR Measurement Commission and participates actively with AMEC North American Chapter.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of Salience Insight. Salience Insight is the media measurement division of News Group International – a global provider of business intelligence and media resource services. Salience is a fresh, new global brand which incorporates the former UK-based Report International and US-based KDPaine & Partners, acquired in 2012.
Angela Jeffrey's Salient Insights
A few months back, I shared my sad tale of woe regarding missing the boat on social media measurement. I also shared how I remedied the situation through an intensive nine-month study of books, articles, white papers, conferences, and more. In the end, I distilled what I’d learned into a practical and comprehensive “how-to-do” guide that was published by the Institute for Public Relations: “Social Media Measurement: a Step by Step Approach …using the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework.”
If you too are a social media measurement dinosaur, you may want to download the paper right now! Or, if you’d like a more gradual approach, join me as I reprise the paper in an ongoing series for this column.
As a TMS reader, you already know many of the efforts that have been made to establish standards and guidelines for both traditional and social media measurement. These include:
Any of these links will take you a long way towards understanding what constitutes good measurement, and toward developing a solid measurement program. But over the coming months, I will focus on two measurement tools that should simplify everything:
1. The AMEC Valid Metrics Framework
I am a big fan of the original Valid Metrics Framework, and also of its newer adaptation for social media measurement by Richard Bagnall, Board Director for Gorkana, and Don Bartholomew, Senior Vice President Digital and Social Media Research for Ketchum.
The original Framework actualized the Barcelona principles with eight different measurement matrices, each providing an array of metrics ideas for assessing the three phases of PR (PR Activity, Intermediary Effects, and Target Audience Effects) through the communications funnel. The matrices address different kinds of PR programs including product/brand, reputation, crisis, non-profit, issues, education, and more. I will be sharing both the original version (since most programs involve both social and traditional media) and the Bartholomew/Bagnall newer social media model within this series.
2. The Eight-Step Social Media Measurement Process
This is a process I developed to make using the AMEC Valid Metrics Frameworks simpler, and to also camp on former work by Katie Paine. Not only does this step-by-step process utilize the Framework, but it includes other insights, comments, and tools suggested by other industry luminaries to make your journey simpler.
Here is my Eight-Step Social Media Measurement Process:
I will leave off here for today, and pick up with “Step One: Identify Organizational and departmental goals" in the next installment. And don’t forget: if you have any measurement needs or questions, I am just an email away at Angela.Jeffrey@SalienceInsight.com.
###
Angela Jeffrey is the new Managing Director U.S. for Salience Insight. A recognized measurement evangelist, thought leader, writer, and speaker for PR measurement and evaluation, Ms. Jeffrey created PRtrak™, one of the first analysis tools to cover print, broadcast, and internet coverage. Most recently, she founded and managed MeasurementMatch.com, a high-level consultancy matching PR clients with measurement providers. She is a long-time member of the IPR Measurement Commission and participates actively with AMEC North American Chapter.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of Salience Insight. Salience Insight is the media measurement division of News Group International – a global provider of business intelligence and media resource services. Salience is a fresh, new global brand which incorporates the former UK-based Report International and US-based KDPaine & Partners, acquired in 2012.
Here's a quick 3-step refresher course on how to use Google Analytics for PR, thanks to an exchange of blog posts earlier this year by two experts on the topic: Justin Cutroni (he wrote the O'Reilly book on GA) and Andrew Bruce Smith (he runs a GA training course for CIPR).
Step 1: From the Basics to Your Very First Dashboard
Start by reading Mr. Cutroni's post Google Analytics for PR. He shows you how to use GA to answer four basic questions about your website:
He also includes some explanation of real-time monitoring and how to set up a custom dashboard with advanced segments. You want an automated email of your dashboard from Google every day? He's got a link to that, too.
Step 2: You Got a Problem with Google Analytics?
Next read Mr. Smith's post, (prompted by the one above) and note his discussion of some of the challenges for PR people using GA:
You might recognize yourself in there, or some difficulties that you have faced.
Step 3: Upgrade to Serious Dashboard Chops
Now go back to Mr. Cutroni's blog for another post " A PR Dashboard for Google Analytics." He's built a GA dashboard with typical PR metrics that you can install for your site with three clicks. (Really, I just did it for The Measurement Standard.) He takes you through each section of the dashboard and shows you how to use and customize it.
###
Bill Paarlberg, Editor of The Measurement Standard, has been writing about public relations measurement for 20 years. He is editor of the award-winning "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, and editor of two other books on measurement by Katie Paine, "Measure What Matters" and "Measuring Public Relationships." Visit Bill Paarlberg's page on LinkedIn.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of Salience Insight. Salience Insight is the media measurement division of News Group International – a global provider of business intelligence and media resource services. Salience is a fresh, new global brand which incorporates the former UK-based Report International and US-based KDPaine & Partners, acquired in 2012.
One sizzling summer afternoon several years ago, as I was sitting on my porch swing here in Dallas, I had a shattering moment of realization. I had totally and completely missed the boat on social media measurement, and was well on my way to becoming a dinosaur if I didn’t do something about it!
I had enjoyed a great decade in the field of PR measurement, which had started with my family’s creation of PRtrak, the industry’s first desktop tool for the measurement of broadcast, print, and online media. PRtrak has been acquired three times, and is currently owned by BurrellesLuce. I’d had a great run in management positions with PRtrak’s acquiring firms (VMS and SDI), served on the Institute for Public Relations Measurement Commission, written half a dozen white papers, spoken at industry events nationwide… and was generally considered an expert in the field. Moreover, I’d spent the last several years working on an exciting product for VMS that brought traditional news and advertising together!
But VMS and I had both missed the social media explosion. Not good.
So, I embarked on a nine-month journey to delve into every aspect of social media analysis. I read books, white papers, and articles. I took training sessions, and attended conferences and webinars. I played with various tools and tried a great many demos. I summarized everything I’d learned into a huge volume of notes, and then finally developed it all into a white paper.
I'd meant my white paper to be a help for other "dinosaurs" who might need a boost to catch up. But it turns out that it makes a very practical and comprehensive how-to-do guide to social media measurement. So this past spring the Institute for Public Relations Measurement Commission published it: “Social Media Measurement: a Step by Step Approach … using the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework." Please go download it right now and start using it. And let me know what you think, so I can improve the next edition.
I'm honored to have my work recognized this way by the IPR, and I'm so glad to be no longer parked in the Jurassic period. What a wonderful conclusion to a life experience that could have been quite dreadful!
Why am I sharing all this now? First, as Managing Director U.S. for Salience Insight, I’d like to be transparent in getting to know you all, and to also serve as an encouragement that you, too, can master social media measurement.
Second, I am going to reprise parts of this white paper as part of a new column for TMS. To get started I’ll review my Eight Step Process in brief, but will expand more on the AMEC (the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication) Valid Metrics Frameworks. Most important, the Frameworks for social media have been changed since the paper was published, so I’ll review all of that, as well.
Stay tuned for the first in this series next month!
###
(Thanks to the Badge Collectors Circle for the image.
Angela Jeffrey is Managing Director U.S. for Salience Insight. A recognized evangelist, thought leader, writer, and speaker for PR measurement and evaluation, Ms. Jeffrey spent two decades in PR, advertising, and marketing before starting her own firm, Houston-based Jeffrey Communications. She also created PRtrak™, one of the first analysis tools to cover print, broadcast and internet coverage. More recently, Ms Jeffrey founded MeasurementMatch.com, a consultancy aimed at matching the right measurement providers with the right clients. She is also a member of the Institute of Public Relations’ (IPR) Commission on PR Measurement & Evaluation and an active speaker at many industry conferences.
You've seen articles like this recent one at Ragan's PR Daily: 10 Top Tools for PR Measurement. Those ten are probably great tools, but I doubt if they are actually the best tools for you to use right now for that project on your desk.
I wish I could tell you the #1 public relations and social media measurement tool for you. But I can't. It's just too complicated.
The thing is, PR and social media measurement programs vary a lot. And there are many, many different tools available. Does that mean it's difficult to pick the best one for your project? Is it really a tough thing to decide which measurement tool is the right tool for the job?
Sounds like a great idea for a future article. For now, let's ask a couple measurement heavy hitters how they decide:
Angela Jeffrey says, "The best advice I can give for choosing measurement tools is: Don’t make “free” your number one criterion. You can spend all your time screwing around with the latest this and that, and never get the job done. Do a deep dive into researching what is available; make the case for some budget for the tool that brings the most functions into a single place; and buy it!”
Katie Paine says, "I've looked at a lot of tools, but I typically go with my all-around favorite: Excel. Within Excel you can create a database of your items, score them, create a Pivot Table and then do just about any analysis that you need. In the data toolset, you can run basic correlations, T-tests, r, and a bunch of other stats, against web analytic data and/or Facebook insights or Hootsuite data. If I was on a desert island and only had one tool, my choice would be Excel."
Stay tuned for more on this topic. -- Bill Paarlberg, editor (Thanks to joe-ks.com for the image.)
###
Vocus has released a new guide, "How to Track and Measure Social Media Marketing." It includes basic, practical information. Measurement newbies will find it a bit inspirational too. Well worth filling out the form to download. You want to know where to start in tracking Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest? Or using Google Analytics? Great, check this out.
On the other hand, this guide won't help you much if you are already past Measurement 101. Or if you are interested in actual strategy, as in what the heck social media is actually supposed to do for your company or organization. It doesn't spend much time on the current hot topics of social media measurement: relationships, engagement, and influence. If you want something a little more indepth but still practical, see Angie Jeffrey's Social Media Measurement, A Step-By-Step Approach.
Also, it's a little heavy on the sales funnel concept. Now I know ye olde sales funnel is often useful, but it's over a hundred years old. The complexity of modern -- especially social -- media makes it an analogy less useful these days. (See "Social Media Is Not a Used Car Lot, So Why Do We Keep Trying to Cram People Into a Sales Funnel?") Isn't it time to update sales models to be less one-dimensional?-- Bill Paarlberg, editor
Below is a brief excerpt from Angela Jeffrey's "Social Media Measurement: A Step-by-Step Approach." This is a very practical and useful guide to social media measurement that will immediately begin to help you improve your social media programs. Click here to download it now at the IPR site and get started. If you want to learn more about it first, read our review here. Be aware that the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework that Ms. Jeffrey builds her guide around is now being updated. When complete, changes will be posted on the AMEC site.
[The Eight-Step Social Media Measurement Process is] a process developed by this author to make implementation of the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework simpler, and was based on earlier work done by Katie Paine. This step-‐by-‐step guide not only works through the framework, but also provides comments and suggested tools from industry luminaries.
The Eight-‐Step Social Media Measurement Process
1. Identify organizational and departmental goals.
2. Research stakeholders for each and prioritize.
3. Set specific objectives for each prioritized stakeholder group.
4. Set social media Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) against each stakeholder objective.
5. Choose tools and benchmark (using the AMEC Matrix).
• Public Relations Activity
• Intermediary Effects
• Target Audience Effects
6. Analyze the results and compare to costs.
7. Present to management.
8. Measure continuously and improve performance.
###
Angela Jeffrey is is the new Managing Director U.S. for Salience Insight. A recognized evangelist, thought leader, writer, and speaker for PR measurement and evaluation, Ms. Jeffrey created PRtrak™, one of the first analysis tools to cover print, broadcast, and internet coverage. Most recently, she founded and managed MeasurementMatch.com, a high-level consultancy matching PR clients with measurement providers. She is a long-time member of the IPR Measurement Commission and participates actively with AMEC North American Chapter.
Over at the Ketchum Blog is a post by David Rockland, "What Bill Gates and Measurement have in Common." Mr. Gates says what us measurement types already take as gospel, (but it sounds more profound coming from Him):
“You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal.”
Mr. Rockland passes on some excellent measurement tips from Microsoft, including:
"Think about the end outcome that you are trying to drive and prioritize the measurement of that. It is not the piece of content that matters, it is the change in attitudes and behaviors that the content drives."
Go read the whole article. --WTP
By Bill Paarlberg, editor
If you have any responsibility for evaluating the effectiveness of social media, you should hop on over to the IPR website and pick up Angela Jeffrey's new and practical "Social Media Measurement: A Step-By-Step Approach." Better yet, just download the pdf here right now, because you'll want it have it on hand. This is a very well-researched and practical guide that is designed to, yes, take you step-by-step through measuring social media. But it's a whole lot more as well.
Under the guise of a guide to measurement, Jeffrey introduces many valuable related topics, including how to create a social graph, the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework, and what ROI is and how to (or not to) use it. This paper doesn't introduce new research or original material, what it does do very well is to organize a lot of existing material into a practial guide.
AMEC has recently published an underwhelming and self-aggrandizing online Definitive Guide to Measurement. They'd do well to look at Jeffrey's paper to see how to do it right.
Jeffery states in the comments on the IPR site that she "went to school" to put this paper together, and it shows. No doubt plenty of students will in turn be going to school with this as a reference, because it covers the subject in a way that provides plenty of background, reference material, and introductions to related subjects. Over half of the 37-page paper is devoted to appendices listing companies, services, and additional techniques. If you've never done correlations in Excel, then this paper is worth looking at just for those handy instructions alone.
Jeffery pulls in lots of advice from numerous heavy hitters in the measurement world, and acknowledges her debt to previous authors of similar guides. This includes Katie Paine, whose Seven Steps to PR Measurement have been a staple of the field for 20 years, and are a major feature of her books "Measure What Matters" and (with co-author Beth Cantor) "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit."
An innovation here is to combine a practical cookbook approach with the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework. If you're not familiar with the Framework, or, if you've felt daunted by its apparent complexity, don't worry. Jeffrey provides a straightforward introduction and explanation of how to make use of it. It's well worth getting to know. Yes, it presents the best ways to assess your progress, but it's really a condensation of the state of PR art and practice. It will help you understand what PR efforts to make, and how and why to make them.
Although she uses it here to help choose measurement tools, the Framework could probably have been the basis for more or most of her paper. Jeffery says she wants to expand her paper in the future, and she'd do well to have the Framework be a part of that.Unfortunately, Jeffrey provides no link to a general how-to introduction to the Valid Metrics Framework. This may because the only one out there is buried on the AMEC site and mostly invisible to anyone not looking very diligently. She does link to this presentation by Mike Daniels, but see also this article by Angela Jeffrey herself.
Update: In December 2013, AMEC posted How to Use the AMEC Valid Metrics.
###
Bill Paarlberg, Editor of The Measurement Standard, has been writing about public relations measurement for 20 years. He is editor of the award-winning "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, and editor of two other books on measurement by Katie Paine, "Measure What Matters" and "Measuring Public Relationships." Visit Bill Paarlberg's page on LinkedIn.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of News Group International.
by Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard
The International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication ((AMEC), the UK Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA), and the International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) have produced an online "Definitive Guide to Measurement." The Guide is a handsome and vibrant compendium of 12 well-written chapters from experts in Europe, North America, Australia, and South Africa. As you read it you get a sense of the tremendous energy and activity of AMEC and its members. Some heavy hitters in the world of measurement have contributed to the Guide, including Giselle Bodie, CEO of Salience Insight, a company owned by News Group International. (The Measurement Standard is a News Group International publication.)
While the Guide claims that it is, "an everyday practical desktop reference source for PR professionals," it is not. Nor is it "Definitive," as its title claims.
It is certainly a collection of separate contributions by smart and experienced measurement experts. But it is not organized to cover the entire subject of measurement, nor is it structured to make its material useful for the reader. There is, surprisingly, no search function or index.Most of the Guide's content is about AMEC, measurement's importance and recent history, case studies, and broad advice for general measurement strategy. It includes lots of big photos of the contributors. While it does have some useful advice of a practical, how-to nature, most of that is buried in other text and difficult to quickly recognize, locate, or refer to. Most readers will never dig far enough to discover, for instance, that Marion McDonald's chapter includes brilliant tips on expressing insights, or that Richard Bagnall's chapter has some great practical social media measurement tips. Ms. Bodie's chapter is the only one that is organized to provide practical advice that is quickly accessible by the reader.
It is interesting to note that the Guide barely mentions the recent industry-wide efforts and successes in setting public relations and social media measurement standards. In fact, the Glossary (Chapter 12) does not even mention standards. It does list The Coalition and The Conclave, which are two of the major groups dedicated to developing measurement standards, yet somehow does not use the word "standards" in its description of them. The Guide does, several times, discuss the Barcelona Principles, emphasizing that they were adopted at the AMEC European Measurement Summit in 2010.
The concept of an online measurement reference guide with practical advice is a great idea. The authors of the Guide say they plan to update and refresh it in the future. Let's hope they provide more information of a practical and useful nature. And let's hope the material is organized for the convenience of the reader, so that information can be quickly and easily located.
Bill Paarlberg, Editor of The Measurement Standard, has been writing about public relations measurement for 20 years. He is editor of the award-winning "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, and editor of two other books on measurement by Katie Paine, "Measure What Matters" and "Measuring Public Relationships." Visit Bill Paarlberg's page on LinkedIn.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of News Group International.
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
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.