WOW! Measurement’s Day has Finally Come!

By Angie Jeffrey, APR

Guess what? Measurement and evaluation are on the rise with corporations increasing their budgets considerably over the past two years. Allocations for measurement and evaluation have risen to 9 percent of total PR/Communications program budgets, up from just 4 percent in 2009.  And this is happening even during today's economic troubles!

The news comes from USC Annenberg's recently released Seventh Communication and Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices (GAP) Study, which provides PR practitioners with data they can use to better manage their PR and communication efforts, and with information on key trends and best practices against which they can benchmark. The GAP VII Study is the largest and most comprehensive survey to date, with the participation of more than 600 senior-level PR/Communications practitioners in the U.S.  The study was led by Jerry Swerling and his team from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; partners included The Arthur W. Page Society, the Institute for Public Relations, PRSA and IABC.

The study provides insights into a variety of topics in PR, but I will focus on just the Measurement and Evaluation results.  According to the study’s news release, how you measure really is linked to success. 

“Companies using outcomes measures, such as influence on stakeholder attitudes and opinions, the bottom line, etc., are much more likely to say they have a good external reputation and are successful than are companies that rely on traditional “PR output” measures, such as clips, impressions and advertising equivalency.”

(What the study didn’t ask was how many respondents use their output measures to LINK to outcomes like leads, sales, or survey scores through simple correlations.  Consider this a shameless plug for CARMA Connect, which does just that!) 

Anyway, the researchers say the pronounced rise in measurement budgets speaks to the improved ability to measure web content via social media monitoring tools, but also may indicate a more strategic view and use of public relations.  The latter is an encouraging thought.

The chart below shows the most common items being measured by corporations,  some of which may surprise you – like “Influence on Employee Attitudes” ranking #2.  (Ratings range from “1=Don’t Use” to “7=Use Significantly”).  More sophisticated measures really have gained in importance while the clip analysis is still a mainstay.

 

Of course, you will not be surprised to see that Metrics for Digital/Social have increased greatly in importance in the last two years, increasing from 3.1 in 2009 to 4.6 in 2011.  And, the use of Primary Research for Pre- and Post-campaigns also has made big strides. 

I hope you’ll take time to download the study, as it's rich in mission-critical information. Meanwhile, congratulations to my good friends from the IPR Commission on PR Measurement & Evaluation, Forrest W. Anderson and David Michaelson, Ph.D., who contributed to the study.  Great work, guys! 

CARMA at the PRSA NCC Measurement Panel

Thanks to PRSA's National Capital Chapter for hosting yesterday's panel discussion on the latest measurement trends and practices, with a focus on how PR professionals can better analyze, interpret, and understand their media performances in the increasingly blurred social media landscape. Featured panelists included Barbara Coons of Edelman/StrategyOne (@StrategyOne), Johna Burke of BurrellesLuce (@GoJohnaB), Scott Arenson of Golin Harris (@scottarenson), and CARMA's own Alan Chumley (@alanchumley). A couple of key takeaways from the panel:

- Don't go into media measurement blind: As Coons said in her piece focused on public affairs "craft metrics specific to the end objectives." Burke had another great insight that "until 'busy' is a metric, we need to go by our organizational objectives."

- Go beyond the data and numbers: Per Coons, this is necessary to "see the insights the data presented."

- Related to the above, make sure humans stay involved: Burke stressed that "you still need the human approach to figure out what it [the data] means," while Arenson characterized the person who evaluates the data as "the opinion leader."

Alan also emphasized thinking about ROI vs. roi in his presentation, "Think Bigger, Integrate, Correlate," which focused on the quickly eroding dividing lines between PR, marketing, and advertising. Theorizing that because these fields are becoming a cross-discipline, cross-disciplined measurement is necessary. The takeaway here was considering analytics in terms of value, integrating multiple disciplines into PR strategies, and using a broader range of methods for analysis (topics also discussed in CARMA's white paper, "The 7Cs of Social Media Measurement").

Some of the panelists' presentations are already available online. Find Barbara Coons' slides here and Alan Chumley's slides here (or the video of his presentation).

So how did discussion of the media measurement panel fare on Twitter? Here's our look at some graphics speaking to the nature of the conversation during the event:  

Aside from the obvious attention on the panel itself, StrategyOne's Beltway Barometer (a research product that targets the most politically elite, influential, and engaged citizens living in Washington, DC and the immediate suburbs) displayed a decidedly strong showing in the Twittersphere. Below, the word cloud hits on speaker topics with quite a few links to photos/presentations thrown in there for good measure.

 

These word clouds of Extracted Entities and Popular Phrases reflect general information on yesterday's panel as well as the overarching theme of social media measurement strategies.

The full Twitter analysis on the #prsa_ncc hashtag from this morning is available here.

CARMA USA's Paper on Social Media Measurement

We've blogged before--though in brief only--about the 7Cs of social media measurement and the 5Ps of influence. 

Here is an expanded piece that we've been tinkering with and we'd welcome feedback on. 

It articulates the 7Cs, the 5Ps, UPPERCASE ROI vs. lowercase roi, the need for a multi-method aproach, and some high level for now thinking on layers of an 'index' of sorts.     

Book Bag for Social Media Measurement

Looking to school up on social media measurement?  There are so many fantastic blogs on the topic and so many smart folks (and so many great hastags and lists) to follow on Twitter.  There are even some great (and some horrible) presentations on the topic in LinkedIn / Slideshare.  So many of each of these, in fact, that a blog post citing many of the best would be impracticle.

So this post offers up a few key hard copy (OK, e-reader if you prefer) books on the topic:

• @jimsterne's Social Media Metrics:  How To Measure & Optimize Your Marketing Investment
• @avinash's Web Analytics 2.0:  The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity
• @kdpaine's Measure What Matters: Online Tools For Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships 
• @wemetricsguru (Marshal Sponder's) Social Media Analytics: Effective Tools for Building, Intrepreting, and Using Metrics
• @thebrandbuilder (Olivier Blanchard's) Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization

What's in your social media measurement book bag?    

What's YOUR definition of an 'influencer?'

In advance of the June 3 conference on PR Measurement in Washington DC, PR News Online is asking for definitions of an 'influencer' in social media.  

PR News will 'feature' the top 10 answers at the conference and on prnewsonline.com

Here's my answer:

Influencer=5 P's

• Popular:  visible, vocal, has a substantial following, reach.  In-bound links, trackbacks, subscribers, bookmarks, followers, friends, views, listens, saves, downloads, etc. 
• Polarized in tone:  neutrality does little to drive influence way or the other.  A clearly positive or negative  view will polarize readers/followers and is more likely to drive cohesion and mobilize advocates and have those advocates coalesce around a core theme, idea, or call to action.    
• Prolific / Relevant / Frequent:  raw author contribution and # of on-topic, related posts
• Prominent / Authoritative:  are they an idea starter or spreader; source or spider?  They may be prolific but are they prominent?  Are they highly inter-related, inter-connected, and centrally located in the network?  How engaged is this person’s following in a dialogue?  How much dialogue is there and what is its nature?   Here we need to reconize, though, that authority is contextual and topical.  One might be an authority on PR measurement but not on 18th century Russian literature. 
• Promoter / Advocate:  how many of the followers/commentators active contributors advocating, endorsing, advancing (or the opposite) your position?  Are they adding links, tags.  Is the nature of the language they are using inter-connective, expanded, clarifying, reinterpreting?  RTs, digs, fans, votes, buzzups, up/downloads, shares, likes, invites, favorites, embeds.  (More active than the metrics in popularity)

Of course, measuring influence (or potential to, really) is only part of a more systems, network analysis, social capital-informed approach to social media measurement.  For that, we need to consider the:

The 7 C's of Social Media Measurement

What's YOUR definition?