 |
 |
 |
 |
| Vol.
8, No. 9, Nov 2009 |
To The Editor
| Subscribe | Back
Issues |
KDPaine.com | Masthead |
KDPaine's Blog | Reprint
Information | Search |
|||
Social Media Measurement
Notes from the Influence Scorecard Summit by Katie Delahaye Paine The Influence Scorecard Summit was billed as a meeting about the Influence Scorecard, a concept pulled together by Philip Sheldrake, author of The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008.
The goal was to add a bit of sanity into the nonsense currently surrounding social media measurement. Specifically, to agree on some terminology and maybe even methodology to serve as a foundation for a future standard. (Think the early days of IAB trying to define ad banner standards.) My personal goal in being there was to put to rest some all-too-pervasive myths, like the difference between tools and metrics, monitoring and measurement, and counting stuff and evaluating results. The Summit drew a nice mix of vendors, agency types, and all-around smart people, including:
For the record, several other monitoring companies, including Crimson Hexagon and MediaTenor, were invited but declined to attend. We all agreed at the outset that the conversation would be open, that we would encourage participation, and that I would publish a digest in The Measurement Standard. See also the excellent summary and discussion by Marshall Sponder at webmetricsguru.com. Also see the Influence Scorecard wiki: http://influencescorecard.wikispaces.com/. Everyone is invited to respond. Look for more summaries and progress in the next few months. So here goes: To start, some definitions We quickly realized that without some definitions, we would continuously be getting lost in the weeds, so we agreed to the following:
In terms of defining influence, there was a lot of discussion on the science of social networking, led by Harish. We agreed that it wasn't necessary to reinvent the wheel; we could rely on some of his research to help us define influence. However, we also agreed that influence was specific to specific demographics and psychographics. And the same rule applies to reach. In social media reach is subordinate to relevance. No matter how big the reach of a particular blog or Twitterer or YouTube video, if it is not relevant to your audience, reach doesn't matter. So all reach must be calibrated to the market at hand. We agreed that compound reach, or amplification, or the extended network effect, might be best calculated via social network science. We also agreed that historic amplification is more important than potential amplification. Ideally we'd love to have an influence score, which would be some combination of reach, relevance and credibility, but agreed that that was a longer term challenge. In the interim we defined those elements as follows:
We then tackled the issue of defining "engagement" Everyone in the room was well informed of what prominent thinkers in social media had been writing, so for the purposes of our discussion we borrowed liberally from what we considered the best. Such as "35 social media KPIs to help measure engagement" from econsultancy. Which led us to a great discussion as to whether or not you can classify or grade engagement on a scale of 0 to 5, with 0 being completely totally passive, to 5 being "addicted." (See my discussion in "Toward a Definition of Engagement.") As we defined engagement, we agreed that the critical difference was between a spectator and someone who is truly engaged in the brand. Part of engagement is the choice one makes to pass along something valuable to the rest of one's network. One can be a spectator and have influence, and give advice, but not be engaged. An example is a tea drinker who is asked, "Where should I get coffee?" Even though he or she doesn't drink coffee, they might be engaged enough with a brand to recommend a particular coffee. We then debated the difference or level of passion vs. engagement. There is not mutual exclusivity between passion and engagement. You can be engaged without being passionate. But it is unlikely that you would be passionate without being engaged. What are goals for social media? Finally we agreed that our first methodological step might be to help people define their goals for social media. Essentially all goals for social media fall into one of two categories:
There was some debate about a third goal of "improving/changing relationships or reputation," but we generally agreed that that fell under the first goal of profit/revenue/cost savings or sales. We plan to meet again in mid 2010. |
 |
Recent new articles:
The Measurement Menaces of the Month:
Here is the book that gets people hired!
|
|
|
177 Main Street, Berlin, NH 03570 |
|||
