Measurement

Sunday, April 20, 2008

FIR Reviews: Measuring Public Relationships - 04/20/08

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The issue of measurement arises over and over again in the world of public relations. A new book, Measuring Public Relationships, provides a roadmap for both upfront benchmarking and measurement to assess the impact of organizational communications.

Written by Katie Delahaye Paine, Measuring Public Relationships covers everything from the reasons to measure to the tools, outlines the steps required for measurement of any kind of communication, then applies them to each major constituent audience PR is typically tasked with addressing.

FIR co-host Shel Holtz provides an overview of the book in this review.

Download the review here (MP3, 5.5MB, 12:08 minutes), or sign up for the FIR Book Reviews RSS feed to get it and future reviews automatically. For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a such as the free Juice, DopplerRadio or iTunes, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon. To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, sign up for the full RSS feed.

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Measuring Public Relationships by Katie Delahaye Paine
Publisher: KDPaine & Partners, LLC
Paperback, 204 pages
Published in December 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0978989903
Available online now from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and other outlets.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Overcoming key resistence to adopting social media

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I’ve talked before about the reasons companies resist social media. The Arthur W. Page Society and the Corporate Executive Board are out with a study that puts some numbers behind the top reasons for organizational resistance. The study, which targeted more than 30 chief communications officers who are corporate members of the Page Society, revealed nothing surprising, but still, it’s easier to offer counter-arguments when you know what’s holding companies back.

Resistance from the legal department

Lawyers take too much heat for opposing social media. Their job is to be cautious, to advise their employers/clients against things that pose legal risks. The fault rests with leaders who blindly follow legal advice rather than balancing it against other factors. When faced with lawyers who want to put the brakes on new media, offer the following points:

• Lawyers have okayed blogs of all stripes at 58 of the Fortune 500.
• Sun Microsystems’ general counsel is blogging.
• Few of the legal concerns have materialized among companies with blogs.
• The value of engagement in social media, applied intelligently, will easily outweigh the risks (see next item).

Lack of ROI

There have been a lot of developments in the ability to assess the return on investment for engagement with social media. See Kami Huyse’s example of ROI from a social media effort on behalf of her client, Sea World. PR measurement guru Katie Delahaye Paine also addresses measurement of social media quite nicely in her new book, “Measuring Public Relationships.”

In any case, the days of shrugging off social media because there’s no ROI are over. We need to educate the decision-makers about the kinds of ROI being attained by others and how it can be measured for our organizations.

Too labor-intensive

I remember speaking to the CEO of a Dutch company who said his board was concerned about the amount of time spent blogging. He answered that he wasn’t spending any more time communicating than he was before. However, some of the total time allocated to communicating had shifted to his blog because the blog was a more effective tool, in many circumstances, than phone calls, speeches at industry association meetings, and newspaper interviews. He hadn’t given up on those (and other) older forms of communication, but adding blogs to the mix allowed him to use the most appropriate tool for the job.

On the other hand, some social media will require additional labor. Southwest Airlines had to hire additional staff to monitor and approve comments left to its blog. It wasn’t something Southwest hesitated to do, though, given that they had already concluded that the ROI from the blog would far outweigh the cost of managing it (see previous item). If the company takes a strategic approach to its social media activities, the ROI will already be understood (a far better approach than saying, “Hey, we gotta have a blog!").

It’s also easy to start small in order to get comfortable with social media before diving in. I advised one colleague that his company could start with a blog focused on recruiting (a key issue for his company) rather than a Southwest-like blog or a CEO blog. The audience is more limited and the discussion more focused. When the value of that blog proves itself, additional online social activities simply become the next step.

Lack of expertise

This is actually a valid concern, but shouldn’t be a deal-breaker. The solution is to get some expertise.

There are several ways to do this: Hire someone, start small (see previous item) in order to develop the expertise, find someone in your organization who is already engaged and take advantage of their experience or contract with any of the agencies or individuals out there who can help provide you with the expertise you need.

Challenges, not obstacles

I always rolled my eyes at the corporate-speak that positioned problems as “opportunities.” But we who advocate our companies’ involvement in social media should see the resistance as challenges to overcome rather than roadblocks that send us packing. That’s what Northwest Mutual Life Insurance did, according to the Forrester case study. The conservative, 150-year-old financial services company identified the areas of resistence, then found the means to overcome them, ultimately launching an internal blogging initiative. Applying the principles of sound business management to a company’s entry into the social media space doesn’t have to be an oxymoronic concept. 

Friday, January 04, 2008

Del.icio.us bookmarks as measurement?

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Measuring a blog’s impact is a dicey exercise and one that prompts a fair amount of discussion. People seem to be commenting on blog posts less these days, partly because Twitter has assumed a bigger role in these conversations and partly, I suspect, because people just aren’t as interested in commenting.

Some people have suggested that trackbacks are a better solution (as in this post), but I don’t think so. Jeremy Zawodny prounced trackbacks dead back in mid 2005, citing several others who felt the same way. Spam contributed heavily to the death of trackbacks, but there were other contributing factors. You have to be really geeky just to understand what a trackback is and how it works, and you can’t be at all lazy to use them. Most people just won’t make the effort to paste a trackback URL from a blog post into the trackback field in their own blog. And, of course, only people with blogs can use them, so readers of your post who don’t have blogs can’t use trackbacks to record their interest.

So, how to determine which of your posts were most interesting to your readers?

I wrote a post yesterday about GMnext, which I thought would generate some discussion. I got only one comment. However, I noticed that it was bookmarked to del.icio.us eight times.

Could that be a measurement tool, the number of times your piece is saved to del.icio.us? It’s not valid statistical measurement by any stretch of the imagination, but if you were using trackbacks and comments before to get an idea of your post’s popularity, why not del.icio.us now?

I threw the question out to my Twitter followers, and got a few replies, most suggesting that they watch del.icio.us bookmarks but more for other reasons than measurement, although Maggie Fox says she does. Nathan Gilliatt noted that he’d like to but hasn’t found an easy way to do it. My approach is through FeedBurner FeedFlares, which automatically records when anybody clicks on the “Add to del.icio.us” link and adds the bookmark.

Eight saves suggests to me that this post had some pretty good uptake, even if commenting was anemic. What do you think?

Friday, December 28, 2007

Let’s talk measurement

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Joe Thornley, CEO of Thornley Fallis, is proposing a face-to-face roundtable discussion on the issue of measuring the impact of social media with a white paper as the outcome of the gathering. Joe is suggesting linking the roundtable to both Third Tuesday and the upcoming Mesh Conference in May.

I’m all over this and will make every effort to be there (schedule permitting). I’m with Joe: We’re hard-wired to communicate face-to-face and, while the web’s collaborative capabilities rock, nothing beats an in-person get-together.

I’d also suggest that SNCR—the Society for New Communication Research—get involved. It seems like a match made in heaven.

If social media measurement is a subject that intrigues you, jump in on the conversation. Joe is now looking for participation to hammer out logistics.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Communications measurement: Disrespectful to humans?

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In a recent interview I conducted for For Immediate Release, PR measurement guru Katie Paine tossed off a wonderful line. Noting that many executives want to blog in order to get their feet wet, Katie pondered whether the measurement of such a blog’s success would be “wet feet.”

Honest to God, let’s have a little more sophistication than that and say: “What I’m trying to do is get people engaged in my brand and I’m using blogging as one way of doing that.”

In other words, this most social of media still requires some objectives that can be measured in order to assess the effectiveness of the effort. I raise this in light of an item internal communication measurement guru Angela Sinikas posted to the new communicator’s social network, MyRagan and to IABC‘s members-only message board, MemberSpeak.

Angela was responding to some feedback she received to a series of articles she had written:

...the ethos across Sinickas’ work on communication in organisations is a little distasteful. I’m sure the slavish focus on the organization’s bottom-line concerns makes for effective consultancy, but it disrespects the humans who invest so much of their lives therein.

Not surprisingly, Angela took umbrage to the notion that measurement equals disrespect. Cross-posting to both MyRagan and MemberSpeak, Angela defended her approach to effective communication. I’m quoting the bulk of Angela’s response with her permission:

I have to say, this comment bothered me deeply, on several levels.

Disrespectful to humans?

Before starting my own consultancy in 2000, I worked for 26 years in large organizations, including a university, two corporations and two global consulting firms. I learned quickly that if the bottom line for an organization—even a non-profit one—isn’t healthy, people get laid off from their jobs. To me, that is the ultimate disrespect an organization can show to its humans —- shutting off their income and ripping them away from a major source of self-worth and friendship with little or no warning.

Expecting employees to provide value for the pay they receive seems reasonable to me. Unfortunately, many employees don’t understand well enough how the day-to-day decisions they make and the actions they take on the job can either improve that bottom line or hurt it. That’s where measurably effective communication enters the picture. We can help employees understand the right things to do. When they do those things, not only does the organization benefit, but so do they. They are more likely to continue having jobs in the first place, and are more likely to experience personal success in terms of pay increases and promotions if they’re doing the right things. I see nothing disrespectful in measuring how well we can help that happen.

Distasteful ethos?

I see great value in having communicators measure the impact of communication on the success of employees and the company. I see it as a highly ethical, win-win situation. Nothing in what we communicate is done intentionally to harm employees. Using communication to measurably improve safety certainly helps the bottom line—but it also saves human lives. The success of various communication approaches to dealing with this issue must be measured.

I think that even the softer elements of working in an organization, for “the humans who invest so much of their lives therein,” need to be measured. For example, Gallup has found a correlation between a higher percentage of employees saying they have a best friend at work and the level of engaged employees. Other research has shown that more engaged employees means more productivity and less turnover—in short, a better bottom line. Because management and shareholders care only about the bottom line—no matter what they say in speeches or how much money they spend on corporate social responsibility—we need to demonstrate to them through research and measurement why paying attention to the human elements will help them get the financial results they crave.

What do you think? How much of what we communicators do should be connected to the bottom line?

Angela’s note has generated a lot of lively support for her pro-measurement position—along with some push-back—in both MemberSpeak and MyRagan, including this gem from Patrick Williams:

I side absolutely with everyone here (MyRagan) who says we must demonstrate, in numbers, based on valid, observable quantitative measurement, how the organization’s investment in our work contributes to the bottom line in increased productivity, cost savings, retention, increased sales, safety, product quality, and the like.

I’d add that we must also measure qualitatively, in terms of the employee’s work experience as it relates to engagement; that is, in carefully chosen questions and answers in interviews and fous groups, how our work helps employees understand the meaning of their work and thereby heightens the experience of work.

I side against the common-sensers. The profession is not based on common sense, but on learned disciplines of what works in communication, as an art and as a science.

(It is nice to see some genuine dialogue taking place in venues like MemberSpeak and MyRagan. MemberSpeak is restricted to IABC members, but MyRagan is free to join.)

So...is measurement of our communication efforts disrespectful to humans?

Monday, January 15, 2007

Top Marketing Blogs: an interesting exercise, but anything more?

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Only because I ready Kami Huyse’s blog did I learn that I made Todd And’s Power 150 Top Marketing Blogs list. I came in at #28, just behind Elizabeth Albrycht’s Corporate PR and just ahead of Strumpette. Joseph Jaffe‘s on the list at #11; Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion is #15. Even John Wall’s brand-spanking-new Ronin Marketeer got onto the list at #138. And yes, Kami’s on the list, too (#35), as are Jeremy Pepper, Scott Baradell, Kevin Dugan, Josh Hallett, Toby Bloomberg, B.L. Ochman, Katie Paine, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, Susan Getgood, Bryan Person and a host of others. In fact, the list looks a lot like my RSS subscription list.

So my ego is gratified for the day. On the other hand, I find these lists less and less interesting. How, for example, does this list relate to the one Strumpette cobbled together based on Alexa listings that put Strumpette at the head of the PR blogs with a ranking of 147,633? (I ranked third with an Alexa ranking of 157,829.) Micro Persuasion isn’t on the list at all because somebody judged Rubel’s blog to be about gadgets, not PR.

Also, Todd And’s list includes no non-US bloggers, leaving some significant marketing blogs out of the mix.

Don’t get me wrong; Todd put in considerable work and used a logitcal set of metrics to produce his list. For me, though, lists are less and less relevant. I’d be far more gratified knowing one CMO made a decision that produced extraordinary results after reading a post on my blog. The ultimate measure of the effectiveness of one’s work is not how many are reading or linking, but who they are, how useful/relevant/credible/entertaining they find your work, and whether you were able to influence them.

Still, there’s nothing wrong with getting your ego boosted.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

John Wall’s tutorial on the growing irrelevance of page views

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I’ve been suggesting for a while to clients and workshop audiences that page views are increasingly irrelevant. Steve Rubel argues that so-called Web 2.0 applications built in Flash, AJAX, and other technologies will allow users to see and do everything they want from within a single page, rendering page views as a form of measurement inaccurate. In a comment to Steve’s post, I suggested RSS feeds also diminish the page view’s value. I breeze through several hundred pages ever morning, sometimes twice a day, ignoring sites with no new content and rarely visiting the sites whose content does interest me—I read it directly from the news reader that never touches the web page.

The uptake of RSS has been slow, mostly because it was too geeky for most people to get started. But most browsers have subscription and feed management built in, and Internet Explorer 7 has its RSS integration down cold.

Advertisers, of course, depend on page views to assess the value of a site as a venue for their ads, so as the page view fades from the scene, companies will have to find other means of reaching their audiences. Some people like the idea of ads in the feed. That might work, but ultimately, more creative marketing that moves away from intrusive advertising will be more effective.

In any case, explaining RSS’s impact on the death throes of page views isn’t easy, but John Wall has done a great job with a very short screencast that makes the concept crystal clear. (John is the host of The M Show and author of the new (and terrific) Ronin Marketer blog.) Using the features of IE7, he walks you through the subscription process and how it dramatically reduces the number of actual web pages you’ll visit.