Tag Archives: sm measurement

Lazy Marketers and Faux Measurers Make Us All Better

Hear me out. The other day, Jay Baer wrote a blog post that made my blood boil. Absolutely boil. I’m sure my eyes bugged out at my desk, and I think I may have cursed a few times while reading it.

But you know what? It made me think. Hard.  As did the comments, so read the conversation when you can.

While I get frustrated with tools like Klout claiming to be standard measure or metrics, what really frustrates me about these tools is they help lazy marketers be lazy. These tools builders know that busy marketers and other professionals using social media are looking for one-stop solutions, so they attempt to provide one. And once that tool is out there, there’s no stopping anyone from using it as they want, even if it seems ridiculous to most of us. Continue reading

Attribution: Measurement’s Only Unsolvable Problem

Education. Time. Budget. Resources. Foresight. Successful measurement and analysis is prone to numerous roadblocks. (What did I miss?)

The big upside to the four problems I named: in an ideal situation these problems can be solved: Continue reading

Measurement Granularity Depends on your Goals

Sometimes I find myself thinking (and talking) in circles about measurement. Often when I get going on a new project or concept, I find myself lost in the weeds and forgetting the big picture. This, of course, is a deadly measurement sin.

Where I most often get stuck is the nitty, gritty granular details of measurement. Do I want to look at tweets and retweets separately? Do I need to break sentiment out by channel or roll it up?

What I’m forgetting is that all metrics and measurements should tie back to a goal. If I need to slice and dice the data 100 different ways to show success, so be it. But if I’m just doing it because I can (and because it’s fun), it’s most often a waste of time. Continue reading

Measurement and Data Analysis Should be Built into Culture

We keep hearing about “big data” lately. At least I do. Data is suddenly everywhere we turn, and more companies are popping up to help us collect and make sense of it.

A few years ago, big data was for IT or analysts or nerds. Marketers and PR folks are slowly jumping on the big data train, too, and companies that are learning to integrate and mine data for insights are getting ahead.

On a smaller scale, more and more we all need to understand how to find value in all of the data our consumers are producing each day (and data which results from our own work). It may not reach the scale of big data, but there are still hidden treasures hidden among news, tweets, check-ins, blog posts and Facebook pages. Continue reading

Success Metrics Should Propagate Success

My boyfriend was recently asked to help review a new Masters program plan for a local university. Part of this plan included success metrics like the following:

–       Number of students enrolled in the program

–       Feedback on courses and professors from students (through annual surveys)

–       Number of students who find employment (upon graduation or within six months)

–       Number of students who receive a promotion or other recognition (upon graduation or within one year)

While the first two are valuable metrics for other purposes (budgeting, curriculum building, etc.), I would not necessarily consider these to be success metrics. Continue reading

Tuck(er) and Roll With the Punches

I took a big step in recent weeks. On Saturday, July 2, I adopted a cat from PAWS. His name is Tucker, and he is ten-month old ball of energy who has already stolen my heart.

Because I am a first-time cat owner and a major nerd, I thought of a few ways I’d keep track of how well I’m doing. My family had cats growing up, but I don’t really know all the ins and outs of owning one myself. I wanted to make sure I had a way of tracking my success and his health and wellness in his new home.

I should tell you my goal was just to have a happy and healthy cat who seemed to tolerate me well enough. 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

Klout Adds Context to Automated Influence?

Klout recently announced its latest feature: +K. Similar to Google’s +1, Klout asks that you give users a +K for each topic for which they have influenced you. In theory, Klout scores will now include context and topical relevance.

For example, if you look at my profile topics, you could give me a +K if I have influenced you on social media measurement or public relations. Each user gets five +K’s each day, which means you have to be registered to give others feedback and cannot give unlimited feedback. You can also give a +K to each topic for a person once each week. So if I give you a +K for social media on Monday, then I cannot give you another +K for social media until the following Monday. And +K’s will not last forever, they have an expiration date.

Klout explains that influence can change over time. While there are plenty of people who are influential about SXSW in the first few months of the year, there is hardly anyone talking about it right now. So I may give you a +K for SXSW in March, but a +K for summer beers in June. Influence can be fleeting, and it can grow and shift over time, and Klout is trying to account for that. Continue reading

Can mPACT Measure Your Online Impact?

mBLAST recently launched a free version of its tool mPACT which claims to find influencers based on topics or keywords. mPACT looks through, “a database of over 25 million articles, 8 million blog posts, and 753 million social media entries.”

So there’s no doubt that there is plenty of data to be had. But does their algorithm work? mPACT assigns an influence score as well if you sign up for the Pro account, but it’s unclear what metrics factor into this score.

I ran a couple of tests to see how well the tool works for finding influencers. 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