Good people thinking badly

I believe almost everything Jeremiah Owyang says, and have great fondness for many of the people involved in the discussion that produced this  Social media Measuremement Whitepaper

but there's so much wrong headedness here that I am missing out on cocktail hour to blog about it.

First of all the notion that

"The crux of the issue in the social media arena, however, is in the fact that social media measurement, unlike those in other disciplines, thus far seems highly subjective and completely unique to the interpretation of the entity doing the measuring. It is one thing to measure with a great deal of confidence a market leader’s changing market share from year to year, but quite another to determine the extent of damage to a company’s reputation after its CEO uses company funds to, say, purchase solid gold shower curtain rings for his home."

PR people have been measuring relationships and the impact of negative news for decades, and social media is actually easier because you can now listen in o conversations, and track the activity via web analytics.

At the same time, no universally agreed upon measurement metric (or metrics) seems to be emerging, leading to the need for identifying and defining multiple social media attributes that an organization can examine and consider as part of its strategy. And while most agree that measurement tools and processes of the future will need to be flexible, having some kind of benchmark across the industry could yield benefits.

The reason that no one standard exists is that there is no one single objective for a social media program -- or for any PR program for that matter. If you ask a room full of people what their goals you probably won't get any two to agree, so how can you expect them to agree on how to measure the movement towards those goals in one uniform way ?

“There are so many companies out there doing measurement right now,” said Jeremy Pepper, a PR specialist and currently Vice President of PR at Weber Shandwick Worldwide, “that there needs to be some standard so that we can go back to our companies, to our clients, and say, ‘This is the standard, this is what this means.’”

Sorry Jeremy, but you clearly don't get social media, if you think that a standard metric will tell people what it means. What it sounds like you're looking for is a common way to measure impact. Well, you could start with sales, I suppose. Isn't that what you're trying to achieve. Why do eyeballs matter? In the olden days if you reached enough eyeballs often enough you might sell something. But that's not how people make decisions today. They make them based on relationships and trust, and engagement. Without those components, you won't make the sale. The holy grail is a measure of engagement, but even the definition of engagement varies depending on whether you're an advertiser, a seller of media, a corporation or a non profit.

Sorry to inform you folks, but a standard metric will not solve the problem. Listening to your customers will.

Comments

[LopezADELINE24]

I took 1 st business loans when I was 32 and it supported my relatives very much. However, I need the short term loan once more time.

[kdpaine]

Serves me right for trying to blog in a hurry. But the paper showed up here http://tinyurl.com/288hyj and I made the mistake of assuming it was recent. I agree that you do need to be specific about what you're measuring in social media. Measuring engagement on Facebook is obviously different from measuring engagement on YouTube or a newsgroup. And as for a standard, the problem is that there is no standard goal or objective for social media. There never will be a standard metric that is equally meaningful to Southwest Airlines, State Farm Insurance, Raytheon and IBM because the goals of their programs are as different as the conversations and discussions that people have about them. You say we need standards to show progress over time, but overly simplified metrics and made-up indices based on meaningless data don't show progress. What shows progress is movement against a market-based benchmark and on-going competitive analysis over time. I think what we are lacking isn't standards, but benchmarks. Most organizations don't do meaningful accurate measurement because they don't look at the full competitive environment. They insist on having one number to show how well they're doing, while the competition is eating their lunch.

[Phil Gomes]

The irony of Katie playing the "you don't get it" card while misspelling the word "media" and even "measurement" (as "social meida Measurmement Whitepaper" as of this writing) is high art.

[David Jones]

Didn't this paper come out ages ago? Pepper hasn't been at Weber for some time now.

[Jeremy Pepper]

Sorry, Katie, but you must not really understand clients (specifically Fortune 500 clients) or simple monitoring (which is the basis of measurement).

First, you would know that I have not been with WS since October. That's six months.

And, while I have no feelings one way or another about WS, to paint them as not getting it because of a quote from, well, at least a year ago as not getting it is ... well a joke showing that you do not get it.

Let me break it down simply for you, as I do remember the quote and the context.

There needs to be standards in measurement, as there needs to be standards in most things we do in public relations. Why? Because clients need to show movement to their bosses. It's a simple idea - we need standards to show movement or success across the board, so the agency can make the client contact look good and she/he can look good to her/his bosses.

So, not really sure about the attack on me not getting social media. Working in it for the past 10 years, I sure as hell believe I get it better than the charlatans and scam artists that have been coming out of the woodwork, looking less to move the industry forward and more to just make a quick buck.

But, if you want to set the standard in measurement, go for it. That is your industry, and if you want to take the torch and get corporations to buy-in, that'd be great.

And that's the thing that independents forget: you have to answer to higher ups that want to see some movement. Yes, it's a conversation - but there is something to measure. Or, well, there would be no measurement companies.

[Steven Maimes]

Social media needs to be specifically defined in discussion: do we mean message boards, newsgroups and blogs? And what audience are we addressing? My job is to analyze social media and I must tell you it is highly subjective even when there are quantitative “facts.”

If you say that relationships, trust, engagement and listening to customers is what is important in social media – then I would say: how important?

In most industries, only a small number of people (maybe 10%) pay attention to social media as one of their sources of influence. The major sources of influence remain mainstream media (includes broadcast) – mainstream media has been filtered, edited and often full of propaganda and opinions – HOWEVER, this is the media that has the most influence on most of our decision making.

In most cases, social media remains a minor source of influence. Then we need to go back to what are the sources of social media: message forums and newsgroups are for the most part not very useful and probably less then 10% of the content has any value and the readership may be very small. Blogs on the other hand are sometimes written by journalists and influential industry people so have more value...

Basically, I just want to say that social media is the most SUBJECTIVE media that we allow to influence us.