This Just In…

Designing success: Develop your mindset for social media measurement

September 15, 2009

By Ryan Zuk, APR

The following Digital Dialogue column appears in the September 2009 issue of PR Tactics.

McDonald’s sweet tea receives rave reviews, but its long lines do not, according to TweetFeel.com.

The free application measures sentiment associated with people, brands and topics discussed on Twitter. In about three minutes, TweetFeel identified 67 positive comments and 55 negative comments regarding McDonald’s —based on text analysis — for an overall positive rating of 55 percent. Keep in mind that this tool captured just a brief blip in time, and you must value its methodology to gain meaningful insight from the data.

PR measurement opportunities and the tools used to gauge them are proliferating as communicators embrace social media. And PR professionals need to determine which tools are most valuable. Measurement is a broad topic requiring frequent exploration. I recommend developing a proactive mindset for applying it to social media.

Use logic and consider your goals
“Social media applications originally came from the consumer side,” says Marshall Lager, managing principal of Third Idea Consulting. “These sites weren’t built with measurement foremost in mind, but rather just to help people communicate better.”

The immediate social media utility for businesses is listening to, and participating in, conversations that consumers are having about them online, Lager says. “That said, there is certainly a case for monitoring and, while some traditional metrics still apply, there is room for new methods to emerge.”

Brian Solis, co-author of “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations” and blogger at PR 2.0, says that metrics need to relate to the specific things an organization wants to accomplish — not merely media coverage, but also influenced behaviors and activities. He encourages reverse-engineering tactics.

“Define what success ultimately means to you and backtrack through all the actions necessary to achieve this,” he explains. “Having a Facebook or Twitter strategy simply for the sake of having one isn’t really a strategy. How will these activities affect your business? Rather than counting friends and followers, focus on the actions you want them to take — like downloading your content, referring your services or buying your products.”

As your measurement mindset progresses, study your audience further by charting members’ level of engagement on topics critical to your business and across online communities. Likewise, you can gauge members’ influence and authority based in part on their followers, content they publish and their reach via comments, linking and social bookmarking.

Create something meaningful to measure
Solis suggests creating “social objects” with calls to action that you can measure, crediting cartoonist Hugh MacLeod with coining the term.

MacLeod drew cartoons on the back of business cards when first working as a copywriter. This casual hobby eventually became a series that thousands of people commented on and shared with others. Cartoons, in this case, were the objects and sharing them a desired outcome.

As these objects sparked conversations on the social Web, they all linked back to MacLeod, who has since become a Web 2.0 consultant and speaker.

Solis urges practitioners to learn how the real-time Web provides insight regarding peoples’ actions, responses and sentiment — all things that are very measurable, Solis says.
“Once you understand the value of the content you’re sharing, you’re in the best position to create and measure conversations that impact your business.”

Ryan Zuk, APR, is a media and analyst relations professional and Phoenix PRSA Chapter member. Zuk can be reached at ryanzuk@gmail.com and @ryanzuk on Twitter. He also blogs at criticalmasspr.com.

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