The Paine of Measurement

Blogs and Measurement

Bogs are clearly the place for new ideas to be born, to be spread about, debated, shot down, reborn and maybe even agreed upon. A great case in point is this PR measurement discussion that flew back and forth in the blogosphere recently:

It all started with a great posting by former Measurement Maven Andy Lark about why we don't blog...

...which then got picked up by preeminent blogger, podcaster and 21st century communications guru Shel Holtz, who reminded us all that we need a simple response to management's request for "value..."

... which is a request we've heard here at The Measurement Standard about a dozen times before, so I decided to put my thinking cap on...

...and so arose the idea of PRV which stands for the PR Value Ratio (see also our article in this issue)...

...which set off a lively debate about the value and need for PR measurement, and the value of "gut instinct..."

...which lead to our Measurement Menace this month.

Mind you, most of this was happening during the holiday break before New Year's, when we should all have been spending time writing thank you notes and replacing the batteries in new toys, rather than debating any of this. Instead, the blogerati jumped on the PR measurement bandwagon big time and got all kinds of tongues a waggin'.

All of which is good news for the industry. For nearly 20 years myself and a growing number of others have been sending out newsletters, emails, giving speeches and aggressively communicating the need for PR professionals to be accountable and to back up their decisions with solid data. So this recent discussion in the blogosphere was music to my ears. And what is very cool is that the activity in the blogosphere is itself becoming the measure of success; the comments posted in the last week on various blogs are in essence direct feedback, direct measures of the impact of our efforts.

We've been telling clients this for years, but never experienced it directly ourselves. (Yes, I know, in the past in this column I have given reasons why you both should and shouldn't measure blogs.) The blogosphere -- in fact all CGM -- is a great way to listen to the opinions of your target audience. Not that a dozen or so postings are quantitative research, but it's certainly a clearer indication of what people are thinking than no research at all.

Which brings me to my final point. Many of the postings in the blogosphere activity chronicled above made me want to jump up and down and object and/or get defensive. There were a couple that I felt compelled to respond to because they brought out the passion in me, whether it is passion for what I do, passion for the industry, or passion for the truth. But there were others to which I didn't respond since it wasn't really necessary to stir up any more ire. In truth, sometimes the best response is no response at all.

Good lessons learned all around.

Wishing you a Happy New Year,
and large measures of success,

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