Tag Archives: metrics

5 Ways Data Can Improve Your Campaign

data photo
Photo by justgrimes

There is an old saying that knowledge is power, and this can also be applied to your social media campaigns. Knowing the data behind why people click on a particular post, what makes your site visitors share that post and who exactly is reading your content can result in a more targeted campaign that has a higher success rate. Continue reading

Social Content Optimization Requires Looking at Micro Trends

What time should we be posting our content? What messages are resonating best with our audience? Is there a day of the week where our content performs best? How do we truly optimize our content on Facebook or Twitter? What kind of content generates the most clicks or interactions? How long does it take before we receive interactions after publishing a piece of content?

If you are managing your brand’s social media presence or working for an agency on behalf of a brand, you’ve no doubt heard these questions from your boss. All of those questions are things we’ve helped to solve in traditional marketing and PR for years, but the question of how we “scientifically” optimize our content in social is relatively new.  Continue reading

There’s an Easier Way to Create Standards: Conform

The latest focal point of measurement fanatics has been standardization. Most recently public relations professionals convened in Lisbon for AMEC (The International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication) to set standards for measuring PR and social media.

While I applaud their efforts, and they were able to make some important steps toward standardization, it seems the whole industry is going at this problem from the completely wrong direction.

The approach seems to be to try to find standard, but unique methods to measure PR and its value. Continue reading

Measuring Your Consumers’ Worth

The Economist Intelligence Unit recently released a report about how the value of customers is being measured. There are some important implications for businesses, and you can download the full report if you want to dig a bit deeper.

One of my favorite quotes from the report was the following:

…measures of customer value that focus solely on transaction activity capture only a fraction of an individual’s behaviour and potential value.

It’s so true. While we always need to tie metrics and measures of social media back to our business goals (and often the bottom line), there is so much more value to the new social customer than the $29.99 they just spent on your website. Continue reading

Learn How to Measure What Matters from the Queen Herself

I recently had the pleasure of reading Katie Paine’s latest book, Measure What Matters, during some otherwise long and boring plane rides. Through 14 succinct but detailed chapters, Katie walks you through how to get started with basic measurement and some good examples of specific situations or types of campaigns you may need to measure.

From tackling finding the right measurement tool to measuring the impact of a conference sponsorship, each chapter can stand on its own as a detailed and real-life example. One problem I have had with other books about measurement is the lack of real examples or instructions to help you go beyond the theoretical math. Not so here. Continue reading

How Do You Use Numbers to Tell You What Works?

The last post I wrote received some thoughtful comments that were far more valuable than the actual post itself, IMO.

John Trader in particular made some really great points, including the thought below which is at the heart of many measurement problems:

“We are so focused on our silos that we tend to forget why we are doing what we do – increase sales and convert leads.”

Instead of focusing only on your own efforts and work, you have to focus on the big picture. At the end of the day, all of our jobs are to drive business outcomes like sales. No matter what tactics or channels you are using, you have to define what is working by what is eventually driving sales or other outcomes. Continue reading

Should User Experience Be a PR function? Should Measurement?

I was listening to a podcast from the Measure Mob the other day, and it made me think about what pieces of social media are owned by PR. More specifically, I mean which pieces we are willing to take ownership of.

The Measure Men offered an example about how marketing folks focus a great deal on how they are driving traffic to the website, but they don’t seem to care about bounce rates or conversions. In other words, they’re only focused on what they think is their job: driving the traffic. The user experience once they get there doesn’t seem to matter to them.

But it’s not just marketing. I think a great many of us are guilty of focusing on our own little silo without thinking about the larger picture. You may drive engagement with your online community, but are your efforts somehow driving increased traffic to your customer services department? Shouldn’t you care about that? Continue reading

Metrics and Cockfosters

I’ve been a bit delinquent in writing my fair share of posts recently due to my recent vacation to London. I spent one glorious week with my little sister and parents exploring one of the oldest cities in the world.

Continually struck by the historic and surreal atmosphere of the city, I often daydreamed about how different my life could be. What if my ancestors hadn’t left for the new world, would I live in London? Would I still giggle at words like Cockfosters and bangers and mash? (Hang with me for a moment, I promise this isn’t an entirely sentimental and introspective post.) Continue reading

Unicorn Metrics

Caution: I am not a Social Media “Expert,” “guru,” “ninja” or “shaman.”

When we counsel our clients about what metrics are important for measuring a successful communications campaign, we often lob oral grenades such as engagement, influence and interactions. These kinds of metrics make you feel great.

But they don’t really exist. They have the possibility to exist and some folks have come close to making them a reality, but for the most part, these metrics are figments of our social media dashboard’s imagination. They’re Unicorn Metrics. Continue reading

How to: Keep Your PR Measurement Resolutions

It’s that time of year. Everyone is making New Year’s resolutions, and if you’re like most other PR or marketing professionals, measurement is on your list initiatives for the year ahead. If not, it’s likely that you want to continually improve and be able to make a greater impact with the same budget, for example. And if you’re like most other people in this world, you’ll probably lose some (or all) of your motivation as the year goes on.

One of the most important ways to ensure proper measurement is to set benchmarks. It’s hard to measure if you have “moved the needle” or made an impact if you don’t know where you started.

The tricky part about using benchmarks to measure, though, is that you have to measure or set the benchmarks in the first place. And as new clients and campaigns emerge throughout the year, sometimes setting the proper benchmarks gets lost in the shuffle. Below are a few tips to ensure measurement will be a part of your New Year. Continue reading