Mar
7
POLITICAL
MEASUREMENT
 Dreams
As Public Relations Measurement?
I Dream of Hillary, I Dream of
Barack
Many
public relations professionals find that media analysis or survey
research are tools sufficient to measure
their programs. The more adventurous bring in external data and
more esoteric measures of success like donations or number of new
memberships or even lives saved. In politics, KDPaine and Partners
has recently used YouTube
video counts to predict primary results,
and our Ms. Paine has ruminated on
the possibility of using the number of political lawn signs as
an election predictor. Not until
now, however, has anyone used dreams to measure political progress...
Feb
28
THE PAINE OF MEASUREMENT
 Why
Are Political Lawn Signs Like YouTube Downloads?
How online measures of engagement have predicted
recent primary results.
Ever
wondered what the effectiveness of political lawn signs is? Supposedly,
every
lawn sign represents six votes for the candidate. Or maybe ten votes,
depending on what you read. And there's a theory in political circles
that if you can get someone to put out a lawn sign, then that person
is committed enough to not just vote for you, but also to encourage his
or her friends to vote for you as well. So, each additional lawn sign
means more than just one more vote, it means more of something even more
valuable and a lot more difficult to pin down: engagement.
Feb
27
MEASURING
ENGAGEMENT
 Ten
No-Cost Ways to
Measure Online Engagement
Featuring
Google Analytics, vizu, xinure, TypePad, Flickr, Facebook,
Icerocket, Twitter, YouTube, Sphere and Technorati.
Feb
27
SOCIAL
MEDIA
 What
Is a Social Network and
Why Does It Matter?
Or...What's the ROI of my living room?
By
Katie Delahaye Paine As everyone who has talked to me recently knows, I'm
a serious social media evangelista. And as I travel around I'm constantly confronted
with business people who say: "Social media? I don't get it! Who has time?
Why should I bother?" My simple answer has always been that it's a way to
engage in a conversation with your customers or your employees. But recently
I been using my living room as an analogy...
Feb
15
BILL
PAARLBERG'S EDITORIAL IMPERATIVE
 Why
Public Relations Measurement Is Like Phrenology
or... Just because it is easy
to measure, doesn't mean it's the best thing to measure.
PR
measurement and marketing measurement often find themselves in
a situation analogous to the 19th-century practice of phrenology.
Way back then, some people
used to think that the shape of your skull indicated your personality
or intelligence. It was a very easy thing to measure, so they did.
And they hung on to it as a serious area of study for much longer
than they should have, because it was far more difficult to measure
personality or intelligence by other, more effective, means.
Click-throughs aren't quite as useless as bumps on the head, but
still...
Feb
15
JENNY
SCHADE'S MAKING IT COUNT
 The
Exorbitant Cost of Not Doing Market Research
Salesgenie.com's
$2.7 million mistake
and how a major retailer avoided making a similar one.
Vinod
Gupta of Salesgenie.com isn't the only top executive to become enamored with
his
own creativity. His recent Superbowl ad debacle reminded me of another marketing
campaign
developed
by a retail chain leadership team. Fortunately, the retail executives had
the good sense to test the materials before going public.
I'll never forget the shock
experienced by the campaign's creators when they saw the reactions of their
intended audiences...
Jan
22
MEASUREMENT
TOOLS
 13
Reasons Why You Need
A Public Relations Measurement Dashboard
And if you have one already,
here's a baker's dozen ways in which your dashboard can help you
do your job better every day.
Including...
#3: Your dashboard tells you if you are winning or losing
key battles; #6: When
you're asked for goals and objectives, your dashboard helps you set realistic
expectations; and #13: Your dashboard gives you ammo to push back
against dumb ideas.
Jan
3
THE
MEASUREMENT
INDUSTRY
 Measurement
Industry Predictions 2008
Who will split, who will hook up,
and what will they be measuring?
Including:
#1: There
will be more partnerships between technology companies and traditional
research firms; and #6: There
will be more correlations, less causality...
Jan
3
PRESIDENTIAL
PRIMARY MEASUREMENT UPDATE
 Obama
Takes Lead From Ron Paul
In YouTube New Hampshire Race
Oprah's support helped, but the most watched
video was his holiday advertisement.
KDPaine & Partners
has been
tracking presidential candidates in YouTube videos that mention
New Hampshire, host of the first-in-the-nation primary. (See
our article from last month here.) According
to the latest data, Oprah Winfrey's support of Barack Obama
gave him as much if not more of a lift on YouTube as it did
in the polls. Obama captured the lead from Republican hopeful
Ron Paul, who had led since August.
Jan
3
CAN
THIS REPUTATION BE SAVED?
 The
San Francisco Zoo
Lesson
Number 1: Never have a major disaster during a slow news week.
The
news that
San Francisco Zoo's Siberian tiger Tatiana escaped, killed someone
and then was herself shot might never have made national headlines
had it
not occurred on the one day a year when PR people put their families
before their clients... Jan
3
THE
PAINE OF MEASUREMENT
 My
New Year's Resolutions 2008
Some realistic, some from my wildest dreams.
Friends and I recently
performed our own self-measurement analysis by asking ourselves
the question that I always ask my clients: "Imagine we're sitting
here a year from now, sipping the finest Champagne and toasting to
truly outstanding success over the past year. What achievements would
you need to have accomplished to result in such exuberant celebration?" Jan
3
MEASUREMENT
TOOLS
 Katie
Delahaye Paine's Top Ten Measurement Mini-Tools
The must-have public relations research things
that Katie (and probably you, too) can't live without.
Here
at The Measurement Standard, we are always writing about the
big measurement research tools, like media analysis, or factor analysis,
or surveys. So the other day we asked Katie Delahaye Paine (CEO of KDPaine & Partners
and publisher of this newsletter) to consider the many smaller yet vital
components of her everyday work: What are the small-but-indispensable
tools that she can't live without? Here's her list (and she'd love to hear
what yours are, too)...
Jan
3
JENNY
SCHADE'S MAKING IT COUNT
How
to Develop 20:20 Foresight
To ensure marketing
success, do some research first.
Research.
Evaluation. These two terms often seem to go hand-in-hand. However,
when customer or employee input is sought only after a marketing
program, it all too often becomes "justification" rather than "evaluation." That's
because marketers have a vested interest in supporting what's already
been done. Have
you ever considered that you might not have such a need for evaluation
(or justification)
if you had obtained input before embarking upon an initiative?...
The Measurement
Standard publishes articles on public relations measurement, public relations
research, public relations effectiveness and related topics.
| |
The
Indispensable
How-To Guide, Just $29.95: Measuring Public Relationships
 This
228-page paperback is the must-have practical guide to hands-on
PR measurement. Emphasizing the role and evaluation of relationships, measurement
guru Katie Delahaye Paine provides every public relations professional with
step-by-step research procedures for measuring programs, improving results,
and managing
relationships. To place your order,
call Sheila at the KDPaine & Partners
office: 603.319.1047. More
information here.
Great
Minds on Measurement
 "No
longer is it acceptable to hide poor performance. Measuring is
the gateway to success."
--President
George W. Bush, in a discussion of his No Child Left Behind law
 KDPaine's
Speaking Schedule
(see
this
page for the most up-to-date list):
-- 2/28/08: Palo
Alto Research Center Web 2.0 Forum.
-- 3/6/08: CUPRAP,
Hershey, PA.
-- 4/6-8/08: Media Relations Summit, San Francisco.
KDPaine & Partners
News
(see
this
page for the most up-to-date list)
-- BuzzLogic and KDP&P team up to deliver
greater accuracy, more depth, to social media measurement, more
here.
-- KDPaine&Partners announces DIY Dashboard 3.0,
more
here.
-- KDPaine & Partners
are winners of PR News' Platinum
PR Award 2007, Research & Measurement category, more
here.
-- KDPaine & Partners and CustomScoop are giving the UNC
School of Journalism and Mass Communication database access,
design capabilities and data valued at $500,000, more
here.
 Measurement
Tip of the Month
When is it a good idea to
use the median (the middle number in a series of values) and when should
you use the mean (the sum of the
values divided by the number of values)? You can use either as a benchmark
for understanding how your performance this month stacks up to your performance
in the past, but which you use depends on how the media cover you. If you
tend to get the same amount of stories (or close to the same) every month,
use the mean. If you have big peaks and troughs, the median will provide
a more representative benchmark, as it is not as affected by the unusually
high (or low) points.
Cool
Thing of
the Month
Check out Visual
Thesaurus: a very interesting way to present information. What
if we could write reports or novels in a similar, non-linear fashion?
is this the structure behind role-playing games?
 Check
In On Measurement
Blogs:
It's
easy to use Technorati to search for recent blog posts on
topics that interest you. We've done it with the links below
(but you can enter any search string you like when you are
there):
-- PR
Measurement
-- Public
Relations Measurement
-- Social
Media Measurement
Our
Back Issues are now
organized by subject matter, take a look at this list:
You
will need a subscription to read most
of them.
You know you need to measure your results,
but chances are there's never been enough money in your budget for evaluation. Until
now.
KDPaine & Partners' new Do-It-Yourself Dashboard system combines a Web-based
application with professional consulting to enable PR professionals to customize
their own PR dashboards. Look
here for more information.
|
