Mar 24
MEASUREMENT CONFERENCE
IPPRC 2008 Wrap Up
Boot camp for your mind.
As always, IPRRC in Miami was boot camp for your mind. If you can survive three days of stimulating conversation, debates until dawn washed down with quantities of wine, and 100+ presentations to comprehend, you can probably survive anything. I still haven't recovered fully, but at least I've sobered up enough to sum up a few observations. In another month or so, all papers will be published on the IPRRC website. In the meantime here's a wrap up, and about 100 snapshots I took while I was there.

Mar 24
THE MEASUREMENT MAVEN AND MENACE OF THE MONTH AWARDS
Measurement Maven of the Month:
John List
Economics Professor at University of Chicago
When three or more people forward you the same article saying, "You have to read this!" -- it really makes you pay attention. That's what happened with the New York Times Magazine piece about John List and his research on why people give to philanthropic organizations. And, since KDPaine & Partners is doing quite a lot of work in that area, we were thrilled with his main premise: Non-profits need to be making decisions based on data, not on long-standing beliefs that may or may not still hold water...

Measurement Menace of the Month:
Microsoft's "Engagement Mapping"
Not that we don't believe in measuring engagement, but Microsoft throws its weight into the whole discussion without providing any transparency or information as to how they "map engagement," or any details at all...

Mar 24
ENGAGEMENT MEASUREMENT
Are We Engaged Yet?
Engagement in social media: Web stats, visitor behavior, and relationship theory.
Like most other buzzwords, "engagement" has come a long way from its original meaning of "an agreement to marry." It started with the notion that a website or a blog was "engaging" enough to get a reader to develop a relationship with the brand. Advertisers now want to measure a site's ability to create an experience that earns a visitor's loyalty and, with luck, its business. As a result "engagement" now means everything from the number of times that a visitor returns to the site to the time spent online...

Mar 24
CRISIS MEASUREMENT
Three New Measurement Studies Provide Crisis Control Tips
Research presented at the IPRRC has practical results.
PR measurement is not just about demonstrating ROI, but is really about having data on which to make better decisions. Never was that more evident than in the plethora of papers on crisis communications presented at this year's IPRRC in Miami. Researchers studied the impact on crisis communications of everything from involvement to intimacy. Here are three studies with some results that will come in handy...

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...

© 2008 KDPaine & Partners LLC, all rights reserved. Read the Masthead. Meet our Advisory Board. Look here for reprint information.

The Measurement Standard publishes articles on public relations measurement, public relations research, public relations effectiveness and related topics.

Search The Measurement Standard Here

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
"The goal is to transform data into information, and information into insight" --Carly Fiorina

KDPaine's Speaking Schedule
(see this page for details and the most up-to-date list):
-- 3/26: Stoneyfield Entrepreneurship Forum, Manchester, NH.
-- 3/30 - 4/1: Dubai Measurement Summit, Dubai, UAE
-- 4/7: Media Relations Summit, San Francisco.
-- 4/21: LSA Communicators Network, St Louis, MO.
-- 4/22: New Comm Forum 2008, Sonoma County, CA.

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 you are evaluating an event or trade show, survey attendees a couple weeks after the event, rather than at the event itself. Our data shows that typically 20% of those who were in a tradeshow booth (where they left their names) do not remember being there at all. Those people who do remember it, though, can be the source of very valuable information. (From Measuring Public Relationships, The Data-Driven Communicator's Guide to Success by Katie Delahaye Paine. Read about it here, buy it here.)

Cool Thing of the Month
Design your own logo at the Toyota Scion site.

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.