Katie Paine, one of the measurement industry’s pioneers, brightest minds and arguably most vocal supporters of the role that research and evaluation (or business intelligence) should play in communications best practices–who had this to say about measuring blogs back in 2005–recently published a paper for the Institute for Public Relations called: How to Measure Social Media Relations: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same.
My comment here is an observation on how times have indeed changed, not at all a critique of Katie’s perspective in 2005 vs. 2007. In 2005 the perspective of many in the measurement industry was essentially consisitent with Katie’s: don’t bother measuring blogs. I suspect many would have attached the word ‘yet’ to that back then.
In 2007, Katie’s paper appropriately recognizes that that has changed calling for blogs to be measured using a variety of tools and tactics (a blend of some pre-existing off-line / traditional methods, some new on-line methods).
While the paper is a good thought provoking discussion piece and a healthy contribution to a necessary dialogue, what’s missing (though it might make for a whole other paper down the road, in fairness) is more depth on the notion of measuring and analysing the inter-relationships that make up the social network (and even between on and off-line media). A sort of applied social networking theory used for some time now in sociology. The paper does touch on it briefly but there is a great deal of value in taking this approach to measuring social media.
There are a variety of commercial tools/services/software popping up or that have been around for some time intent on getting at this and that could provide another important layer of context and depth:
Hill & Knowlton’s Influencer Network Analysis / Communications Mapping
Other commercial networking applications ( hat tip to Glenn O’Neil )
Bottom line: if we’re talking about social media, which are really a series of nodes or communities of interest or social networks, let’s look at using social networking theory (and related tools) to measure and analyse them.
Moreover, there’s some great blog discussion to with whether or not we need entirely new models to measure on-line PR.
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A few weeks back I had an opportunity to judge IABC Toronto’s soon-to-be-awarded Ovation Awards. Not long thereafter, an industry colleague, who is judging the PR category of the upcoming Canadian Marketing Association awards, asked for some input on the wording of measureable objectives and evaluating results against those objectives.
While I was encouraged to see the attention paid to measurement as an element of an award-winning CMA submission, I must admit to being slightly concerned with what I saw as far as how some of the campaigns submited to IABC Toronto for an Ovation award were measured. Some fell just short of lighting the kindling clump ‘o clips on fire to measure the height of the spin smoke (partial hat tip to Terry Fallis for inspiring parts of this pithy remark; though he didn’t use it to describe the Ovation-award submissions to be clear). I say this not as a representative of my employer and relating only to our media content analysis (and public awareness/opinion correlation) methodology, but rather as an empassioned advocate of measurement of many methods. Sir Soapbox-a-lot. I should also point out that, tactically, many of the submissions were outstanding and very creative. Clearly there is excellent work going on out there. Let’s just be a touch more strategic about how we’re measuring it.
I’m wondering when we might see awards specific to communications measurement (added as a category to existing IABC or CPRS awards programs or perhaps as a stand-alone) start to materialize in Canada as they have elsewhere. A few among many examples: the Intsitute for Public Relations Research and their measurement commission and the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) Awards. (Transparency: my employer is a member of AMEC). To be fair and clear, the awards wouldn’t recognize that one methodology was used over another, but rather that: 1. objectives were measureable and related to the business and 2. that the measurement methods, whatever it/they was/were appropriately aligned with and demonstrated that those objectives had been met.
Hey, I’ll be the first to recognize that measurement as an awards category isn’t nearly as sexy as ‘best use of_____insert sexy tactic of your choice here______,’ but we need to start somewhere and maybe awards will continue to raise the bar on the dialogue on measurement in Canada.
Certainly, such awards would not be without issues to be overcome. Who judges, for example? My vote would be a cross section of agency types, corporate, government and non-profit practitioners, CPRS and IABC board reps, perhaps a leading academic or two, as well as reps from all measurement suppliers in the country. To avoid conflict of interest, should one or some of the above have an interest in a particular submission, then they leave the judging to the remainder of the group that doesn’t.
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IEG, publishers of www.sponsorship.com, are webcasting a seminar on measuring sponsorships on Thursday, April 19. I’ve seen bits and pieces of this material before. Some interesting stuff, if memory serves.
If you should partake, and if it’s included, keep a keen eye out for ‘Signal Detection Analysis’ borrowed from the field of psychology. Essentially the technique asks the audience (or attendees) to explicitly, and often in an unaided manner, identify both sponsors and non-sponsors in cases (think logo soup situations like NASCAR) where there are many. Can they correctly identify sponsors and non-sponsors at least 50% of the time? Who’s a clear winner? Who are the top performers in a cluttered field? Who’s lost in the clutter? Who are the poor performers? All this is plotted on a matrix.
Be somewhat wary, however, of methodologies such as automated logo (on screen for TV) image identification technology as a sole means of sponsorship measurement as, in my view, it’s the sponsorship equivalent of advertising equivalency.
The Institute for PR also provides some thinking on measuring sponsorships.
In all cases, not rocket science and no single, catch-all (nor should there be) silver bullet solution. Rather, it involves applying (and triangulating, really) multiple long pre-existing research methods; some qualitative, some quantitative.
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Episode #53 (April 3, 2007) of InsidePR, a weekly Canadian public relations podcast hosted by Terry Fallis and David Jones, addresses issues of public relations measurement. Worth a listen.
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