Katie Delahaye Paine's Measurement Blog

More chaos for Media Relations

If you're in PR and  haven't had a chance to take a deep dive into the latest Pew State of the Media report, stop whatever you're doing, because whatever you're doing probably doesn't matter as much as you thought it did. The findings should challenge many of your fundamental assumptions about how to reach your target audiences these days. 

Think about this: 31% of  adults that Pew surveyed reported abandoning a news outlet because it no longer met their needs. Where are they getting news these days? 15% get news from social media. 72% said they get it from friends and family via word of mouth. And increasingly when they hear about news, they will follow a link that a friend sent them.  

Think that Local TV is important? Think again. Overall audience numbers are down 6% according to the study, and when your local audience does tune it it's for weather, sports and traffic. So just where in that mix, will your carefully crafted press release fit? 

For many of us, this doesn't come as a huge surprise. But for those of you who are still using definitions of "top tier" media that date back more than a year or two. You're probably targeting the wrong outlets.  

 

 

 

Reaching for the wrong metrics

This excellent post by Danny Brown makes a great argument for why the endless pursuit of eyeballs is a waste of time.

Yes, advertisers buy ads on the superbowl to reach a large audience but social media is the opposite of the superbowl. It is, or can be, a conversation between and organization and its stakeholders. Its very nature  suggests that your social media goals should not be "reaching as many eyeballs as possible"  but rather reaching the right eyeballs who have a problem that you can solve.

But that isn't an argument I'm going to solve today.. which is why we have a broad coalition of advertisers, associations and pratictioners who have been working for a year and a half on establishing standards. You can read all about that effort here. And the latest standard definitions for reach, impressions and engagement are available at the SMMStandards Page. I encourage everyone to go read them. 

What's the next excuse

This makes me nuts! Today's headline that greeted me was  "Survey says lack of standards is industry's biggest problem"  I have no doubt that the survey respondents said that, but that is not the industry's biggest problem. In fact, the problem is that conferences and media would rather focus on silly controversies like the validity of AVE, rather than educate the industry on the progress that has been made.

Why was there no link to the the latest standards for social media ? Or why didn't they send their readers here to see the latest in standards for traditioanl media? 

The truth is in this other revealing statistic: 21% of survey respondents  think that measurement isn't necessary, so lack of standards are just yet another silly excuse not to measure anything. A decade ago the excuses were "its too expensive" and then along came a bunch of free or almost free services like Google Analytics to provide a soution. Then it was "ther is no way to measure" and books and white paper flooded the market. What's the next excuse, I can hear it now. "Industry says, the reaons it can't measure is that it doesn't have time-- too busy sorting its socks."