I am a member of the Conclave, a group of social media experts that has taken on the task of refining the definitions and concepts in social media measurement that need standards. See this article for more on just who are the various groups that are working on social media measurement standards. The Conclave will focus primarily on earned media, but also include some definitions around owned media. We are not tackling standards for paid media at all.
We are working on five specific areas for standards:
1. Content Sourcing
We are developing a “food label” type of disclosure on all measurement reports and a template of “what a good methodology should tell you.”
The label would include:
- Where does the content come from?
- Scope of content
- How the date is reported (should be the posting date)
- How is the sentiment defined?
- What have you called a piece of content?
- What is the unit of content: post, comment, both, or what?
- How is reach defined: OTS, unique monthly visitors or daily visitors?
- What search terms were used and how? Will we get the detailed search terms?
- How do they eliminate spam?
- What is online and what is real broadcast and real print?
- How do they deal with press releases, coupon sites, and pay for play blog?
- How do they deal with foreign languages and characters?
- How is an item defined? Is the item the post plus all associated comments or is each comment an item?
2. Impressions and Reach
While acknowledging the obvious expertise of the Media Ratings Council (MRC) in auditing audience reach for major media outlets, we also agreed that we need to be very specific about definitions of reach for social media. We have agreed that:
- Impressions count the entire unduplicated audience reached by the media outlet.
- Reach is relative to the demographic you are trying tor each. It tells you how many people in your audience are likely to see whatever it is that is out there. Based on Twitter profiles you can approximate targeted impressions to determine a more accurate reach.
- Each comment on a blog does not carry the same impressions as the main post since the likelihood to see any of them is significantly less, especially after a week.
- In opposition to standard (bad) practice in traditional media measurement of applying “multipliers” to circulation figures, we have agreed that social media should define a discount number for social media. This decision is based on studies that show that less than half of what is on Facebook is actually seen, and probably only 1% of what is on Twitter.
- The number of real (non-spam) comments is the only number that you know you actually reached.
- Engagement is more important than reach. It is not a subset of reach and we agreed we will want separate standards for engagement. Specific engagement depends on your goals and market, audience, and priorities.
- Levels of engagement are defined by the level of effort required. It presumably requires less effort to “like” something than it does to share or amplify.
- Engagement matters, but there are qualitative aspects that you should pay attention that are even more important.
4. Influence and Relevance
- Impact and influence are different things.
- You can define how someone has become engaged, but it is harder to know if you actually influenced them.
- Conversion is an indication that you have influenced someone.
- Include the differentiation of micro-conversions (small indications of behavior) vs. macroconversations that are e-commerce based.
5. Opinion and Advocacy
- Advocacy and evangelism is beyond engagement.
- We use the word opinion instead of sentiment, because we feel that sentiment is overrated. Many products and organizations are never discussed in a way that automated sentiment analysis would be meaningful. Thus opinions become a more valuable qualitative measurement.
- Messaging is a subset of opinion.
- Amplification and repeating your message is advocacy.
- In terms of qualitative evaluation of coverage, there is a hierarchy with tone at the bottom and emotional content at the top. At the very top is rage.
- There should be a measure of intensity of feeling
That there is a progression from reach to engagement to influence to conversion. Engagement is not necessarily an outcome, although depending on the goal, engagement could be the end goal. Beyond influence is conversion and impact – as Don Wright put it, “If you inspire someone to move a body part” that is impact.
Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements. Katie and Beth Kanter are authors of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to be published this year by Wiley.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners, will be glad to talk with you about measurement for your organization.