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.
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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.
Angela Jeffrey's Salient Insights
This is the fourth article in a series, “Rescuing Ourselves from Social Media Measurement Dinosaur-dom.”
Here we are at Step Three of my Eight Step Social Media Measurement Process. If you’ve made it this far, and you can’t wait any longer for the ‘rest of the story,’ get it all right now at the Institute for Public Relations: “Social Media Measurement: a Step by Step Approach … using the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework.”
Meanwhile, for those of you who like a more leisurely approach, I will continue to share my journey from social media measurement confusion toward comprehension and enthusiasm for the process!
The Eight-Step Social Media Measurement Process
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Last month's article on Step Two (Researching Stakeholders...) left off with the conclusion of critical internal and external research to define the needs of each internal stakeholder group. We also covered mapping a ‘social graph’ to find out who and where the most important internal and external stakeholders are engaged, and executing some content analysis and surveys to hear what they are saying.
Once the Step Two research is finished, it is time to meet again with key internal managers and together decide which goals and stakeholders will take priority for the PR and/or social media program. Once these choices have been made, a practitioner can move to setting specific objectives for each stakeholder group. Remember that an objective must include an action statement, a timeline, and a measurement outcome (usually expressed as a % increase).
Here are some examples of measurement objectives:
Setting SMART Objectives
Kami Huyse, CEO of Zoetica, talks about using SMART objectives in social media in Geoff Livingston’s book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate (Livingston, 2011) and also in her whitepaper, A Commonsense Framework to Measure Social Media (Zoetica Media, 2011). SMART objectives were first developed by George Doran (1981) and were intended as a powerful management tool. The steps to building SMART objectives include making them Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Results Oriented, and Time Bound.
Once SMART objectives have been set for each key stakeholder group, it is time to build the communications programs and simultaneously select tactical measurements, or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
It is important to acknowledge that most plans that get to this point will not be solely designed for social media. They will instead encompass tools from both the online and offline worlds, and may well include tools from paid media and SEO. But, this series will remain primarily focused on social media.
Next month we’ll dive into Part Six, which will focus on how to set social media KPIs against each stakeholder objective. Meanwhile, if you have any measurement needs or questions, I am just an email away at Angela.Jeffrey@SalienceInsight.com.
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Angela Jeffrey is Strategy 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.
The Institute for Public Relations has just released its Top 10 Social Media Research Studies for Public Relations Professionals for the Second Half of 2013. Created by IPR Social Science of Social Media Research Center editors Dr. Marcia W. DiStaso of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. Tina McCorkindale of Appalachian State University, the compilation is available on the IPR website.
The studies were chosen for their rigor of methodology, sample size, findings, and accessibility. Some of the sources included are Pew Research Center, Altimeter, Cision, and Weber Shandwick. Focusing on the role of social media within organizations, topics range from employee education and the PR-journalism relationship, to CEO sociability, sales, and more. Click the infographic to the left to see some results.
Aiming to not only identify important research, but to generate conversation in which practitioners can absorb and contribute meaningful knowledge, the IPR asks friends and followers to share additional studies they think are valuable to professionals. Contact Alyssa Hubbell.
This collection of studies is a follow-up to the Institute’s “Top 10 Social Media Research Articles for the First Half of 2013 for Public Relations Professional.”
The Institute for Public Relations (IPR) is an independent foundation dedicated to the science beneath the art of public relations™. It focuses on research that matters to the practice, providing timely insights and applied intelligence that professionals can put to immediate use. The IPR Social Science of Social Media Research Center (SSSM) is an interactive, comprehensive source for information about social media and its impact on public relations.
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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
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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.
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A year ago, a Facebook fan was worth $174.17. Today it's up to $8.5 million. The New York Times' Stephanie Strom reports this morning that General Mills has included language on its website "...to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, “join” it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes or contest or interact with it in a variety of other ways." Considering that last year GM paid $8.5 million to settle a single consumer complaint over product packaging, this new social media engagement tactic dramatically raises the potential value of a like.
No longer equated to what a consumer might spend, a Facebook like is now worth what a consumer might sue for. Henceforth, in considering the value of social media engagement to organizations, public relations measurement may find that expenses avoided are far more important than such trifles as promoting sales. -- Bill Paarlberg, editor, The Measurement Standard
Update 4/18/14: The NYTimes ran an update today, quoting a not-quite-eloquent General Mills spokesman: “No one is precluded from suing us merely by purchasing our products at the store or liking one of our brand Facebook pages. For example, should an individual subscribe to one of our publications or download coupons, these terms would apply. But even then, the policy would not and does not preclude a consumer from pursuing a claim. It merely determines a forum for pursuing a claim. And arbitration is a straightforward and efficient way to resolve such disputes.”
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
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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.
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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.
You've heard it said a million times that for Facebook, you're not the customer, you're the product. Well, here's a “How Does Facebook Make Its Money?” infographic that explores some of how—and how much—you get bought and sold. This is a big graphic so you've got to click here to see the whole thing.
Note down near the bottom the price per click for those ads you see in the sidebar, promoted posts, and sponsored stories.Here's some interesting data I just ran across thanks to the always informative and entertaining PRNewser. Data from Outbrain shows that, when it comes to paid link titles, people click on the bad news, not on the good news. Outbrain drew a sample of 65,000 paid link titles and measured the impact of positive ("best," "always") vs. negative ("never," "worst") superlative words. Titles with negative superlatives got 30% more clicks than neutral titles. And those with positive ones got 30% less than neutral ones. As Alex Bennet at Outbrain says, it may be that people don't trust what appears to be a biased endorsement, but do trust a more critical view. -- Bill Paarlberg, editor
The Pew Research Center, in association with the Social Media Research Foundation, has identified six Twitter conversational archetypes. The infographic to the left (click on it to see it larger) describes each type of conversation network and provides an explanation of how it is shaped by the topic and the people driving it. See more on the infographic here, and then read the full report, Mapping the Twitter Conversation.
You've heard, no doubt, that teens are leaving Facebook in droves. iStrategyLabs has got the stats on that: 3 million fewer of the youth on FB now than three years ago. What you don't hear about so much, but that the same research points out, is that while the kids are down by 25%, the 55-and-over cohort has gone up by 80%, or over 12 million, during the same time period.
Why? The general theory is that the oldsters want to connect with their high school buddies, and the high school kids don't want to party with the 'rents. This has received widespread anecdotal support (I asked my daughter, and Business Insider asked two kids). Also, there's research from the UK. Teens are moving to Twitter, Vine, Instagram, and Snapchat. (Instagram, of course, is owned by Facebook, so Mr. Zuckerberg and the NSA will still have all that youthful data to mine. FB doesn't own Snapchat yet, but they're trying.) Bottomline: For teens, FB is just as over-the-hill as its incoming tide of senior posters. "Instagram is cooler..." says Catherine Calhoon, 14 of West Monroe, LA. --WTP
Media Musings by Andrew Mackay
When Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Meryl Streep are doing it, you know it’s time to sit up and take notice. What's more, U.S. President Obama, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt were caught indulging at Nelson Mandela’s recent memorial service.
So, what new phenomenon are we witnessing? A major initiative masterminded by an exclusive club whose members include some of the most influential and high profile women in the world? The creation of a new US-European political axis?
It’s none of the above, actually. Welcome, instead, to the new "art form" that is the selfie, so popular that it recently entered the Oxford Dictionaries, the arbiter of all matters concerning the English language, as the word of 2013.
The so-called art of self-photography ("self-portrait" would be too grand a term for the spur-of-the-moment self-snap that is the selfie) is the logical outcome of astounding advances in smart phone technology and the power of social media, where hundreds and thousands of these images are posted every day. Social media have given rise to yet another medium, made possible by new technology and the ego-gratifying social impulses it enables.
You won’t find modesty and restraint in the selfie lexicon, but plenty of self-regard and an unquenchable appetite for the oxygen of instant popularity.
Commerce Jumps Into the Picture: The Promotional Selfie
But there are selfies, and then there are promotional selfies. Where there is self-regard, you can be sure that self-promotion and product placement will soon jostle for centre stage.
While Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are, of course, already (and willing) outlets for celebrity wannabes, they are also fertile platforms for marketing innovation. These days, if you have a new bikini, cosmetic, or men’s grooming range to push, you don’t have to negotiate—and finance—‘advertorials’ in mass-circulation tabloids, arrange expensive and time-consuming competitions, or deal with the TV product placement people. No, social media now gives you the means to do it yourself for free, for as long as you like, and when you like—with the added bonus of reaching millions of potential consumers.
You don’t need a PhD in marketing to understand why brands with strong visual associations (think Nike, Starbucks, and MTV) have been quick to join the universal love-in of social media. In this utopian world, where objective critical judgement frequently goes out of the window in favour of the instant gratification of affirmation, brands, celebrities, and products have a willing and captive audience.
But where is the editorial objectivity that can give the consumer, or would-be purchaser, an informed opinion about this or that new product? Until now, the editorial endorsement of a positive review following, say, the launch of a new car or consumer product, has been vital to major brands. Is it possible that what is becoming more important is the ability to harness and influence the critical power that social media instantaneously bestows upon its followers?
See Me, See My Products
In the global village that is social media, anyone can become a journalist, reviewer, critic, or brand advocate. And the selfie is the social media promotional paradigm of the moment.
According to Simply Measured, a year after the Facebook acquisition, Instagram had 100 million monthly active users and had attracted 67 percent of the top global brands. Many are devising increasingly creative ways to engage with their followers in a double whammy that harnesses the visual power of Instagram with the popularity of Facebook.
Caroline Christy, a senior account executive at Chicago-based Zocalo Group, a word-of-mouth, social and digital marketing agency, says the increase in the popularity of selfies has been mirrored by a trend towards visual content from brands, which is reshaping digital marketing.
The Group’s clients are counselled to include an image along with every post shared on Facebook. Images on Twitter are quickly becoming commonplace and even best practice as well, Ms. Christy claims. “We’re definitely in the visual era, as consumers have less and less time to digest branded news. Pictures become the way to express ideas and are truly worth a thousand words,” she says (personal communication).
But What's the ROI?
It will be interesting to see if the use of selfies in brand promotional material does increase ROI, in much the same way that engaging content across social channels has been shown to. We plan to return to this topic, and to how media measurement providers are addressing the challenge, in a future Comment.
In the meantime, the mainly innocuous selfie has spawned a new, and increasingly viable, promotional platform for many of the world’s leading brands to engage with their consumers at a level, and to a depth of intensity, they could once only dream about.
(Thanks to The Cape Times and Lowe Cape Town for the faux celebrity selfies.)
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Andrew Mackay is a UK-based B2B communications consultant and copywriter. The views expressed in this article are his own.
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.
SNCR's 8th Annual Research Symposium included presentations that covered a wide range of emerging communications tools and technologies: From standards to Google Glass to optimizing the classic press release. The longest-standing social media event, SNCR’s annual Symposium brings together an influential group of business leaders, professional communicators, members of the media, futurists, scholars, and technologists from around the globe. The Symposium was moderated by SNCR's founder and president Jen McClure, and hosted by Thomson Reuters in Boston.
The theme that most every one of the seven presentations touched on was that social media is no longer simply another communications medium to be used by PR and marketing, it is a valuable tool that is rapidly becoming integrated throughout all aspects of business and our personal lives. This theme was most deeply explored in Vanessa DiMauro's presentation, but most succinctly stated by Katie Paine: "Social media isn't media—it's your business."
Highlights:
Vanessa DiMauro: Social Business Trends
Ms. DiMauro reviewed three studies to discuss trends in enterprise-level social business. There is a big difference between social business activities, and social media as used by PR/communications. The former includes a broader and organization-wide embrace of SM's advantages. It's clear that, to remain competitive, organizations have to go beyond SM marketing to integrate social experience into core functions and to value SM as related to all business aspects. View the slides from the presentation.
Major points:
Katie Paine: "We Have Standards, Now What?"
Ms. Paine reviewed recent standards progress. View the slides from the presentation.
Best standards usage tips:
Next steps: Clients should pledge to support and adhere to the new standards, and force agencies and vendors to comply. Associations must sign on to the standards and incorporate into award programs.
Best Improve-Your-Measurement Tip: Rank programs on both engagement and resource use, then find the ones that use less resources but get more engagement. Those are your most efficient programs.
Social Media for Social Good: Using Social Media to Raise Awareness About Health Disparities & Health Reform
Moderated by Douglas Spenser, including Aldon Hynes, Elizabeth Krause, Heang Tan, and Alyssa Yacone.
A discussion of how non-profits and governmental organizations are using new media platforms for conversation, ideas, and collective action. In particular, Health Justice CT, a SNCR initiative funded by the CT Health Foundation, has brought together organizations via social media to address racial and ethnic health disparities. See slides here.
Bob Schukai: Google Glass and the Arrival of Contextual Computing
The dynamic and personable Mr. Schukai demonstrated Glass, and gave a preview of some of the apps and experiences that it will enable. Expect public availability at a price in the mid-to-high three figures by the end of next year.
Big point: Wearable computing is about contextual computing. It's always on, and it's always interacting with what’s going on around the wearer.
What Glass means for measurement: Some very precise measurement will be possible. For instance, Google will be able to charge per glance, by serving ads and monitoring wearers' eye movements.
Nora Barnes: Social Media Trends Among the Fortune 500 & Inc. 500
Dr. Barnes presented results of the fourth year of an annual study of SM adoption in the biggest and fastest growing companies. Compared to the Fortune 500, the Inc. 500 is more active in blogging, Pinterest and Foursquare. But the Fortune 500 is more active in Facebook, Twitter, and especially, blogs. View the slides of the presentation.
Highlights for Inc. 500:
Highlights for Fortune 500:
Ingrid Sturgis: The State of Mobile Banking Adoption
Ms. Sturgis examined the adoption of mobile banking among the underserved in the U.S. Thanks to the mobile money system M-PESA, paying for a taxi ride using your mobile phone is easier in Nairobi than it is in New York. I found it fascinating that a valuable business concept originated in the third world and then potential in the first. See the slides of her presentation here.
Sally Falkow: 2013 Online Newsroom and Media Relations Survey
Ms. Falkow discussed the disconnect between journalists who very much want images and video, and companies who don't provide sufficient of these media in their press releases and in their online press rooms. The inclusion of images and especially video greatly increase the views, time on page, and SEO of press releases (and articles), yet companies appear reluctant to supply them. See this video.
A fascinating dynamic behind this situation was discussed. The ranks of journalists have been cut by roughly 1/3 recently. As a result, most journalists now are both overworked and inexperienced, and so they rely almost exclusively on Google searches to do research. And they very much rely on online press rooms for material. So SEO has become more and more important for press materials. Yet few companies do adequate SEO on their press materials. See the slides from the presentation here.
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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.
Business Insider has a couple of interesting pieces on social media usage around the world, especially in China. At "Confused By China's Social Networks? Here's A Simple Infographic..." you'll learn about China's various social networks, and the size of the top dozen. "The Planet's 24 Largest Social Media Sites..." is a subscription service teaser, but you'll still learn interesting things, including:
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!
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(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.
The always-insightful Don Bartholomew has posted 20 questions and answers from a recent webinar he did with Carma. Well worth a read. Here are some of the questions—visit his MetricsMan blog for the answers:
-- WTP (Thanks to AMEC for the photo.)
In a study published at PLOS ONE, (Schwartz, et al., Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach) scientists at the University of Pennsylvania examined the language used in 75,000 Facebook profiles. The research shows that the language a person uses reveals a surprising amount about who the person is. The researchers found that they could predict a user’s gender with 92% accuracy. They could also guess a user’s age within three years more than half of the time. From the Abstract:
We analyzed 700 million words, phrases, and topic instances collected from the Facebook messages of 75,000 volunteers, who also took standard personality tests, and found striking variations in language with personality, gender, and age. In our open-vocabulary technique, the data itself drives a comprehensive exploration of language that distinguishes people, finding connections that are not captured with traditional closed-vocabulary word-category analyses. Our analyses shed new light on psychosocial processes yielding results that are face valid (e.g., subjects living in high elevations talk about the mountains), tie in with other research (e.g., neurotic people disproportionately use the phrase ‘sick of’ and the word ‘depressed’), suggest new hypotheses (e.g., an active life implies emotional stability), and give detailed insights (males use the possessive ‘my’ when mentioning their ‘wife’ or ‘girlfriend’ more often than females use ‘my’ with ‘husband’ or 'boyfriend’). To date, this represents the largest study, by an order of magnitude, of language and personality.
See also this artice at Mashable. -- WTP
Business Insider has a new report out on social media demographics. The teaser article includes some interesting stats, including:
Last week at The Conclave, two dozen wise and experienced measurement experts worked on polishing up the social media measurement standards posted at smmstandards.com. They pondered the future: "Now that we have the basic standards in place, do we need to continue to meet?"
The answer, arriving this morning thanks to Business Insider, is Yes: "'People Don't Use Words Any More': A Teenager Tells Us How To Use Emojis Properly." Apparently, emojis are all the rage for texting among the younger set. And the very high-brow set as well, see Fred Benenson's Emoji Dick, a translation of Moby Dick into emojis using Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
Here's a leg up for the Conclave in developing measurement standards for emojis: iTunes sells a translator.
-- Bill Paarlberg, editor (Thanks to So Says Miss Brightside for the emoji sample.)