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The New Measurement
Standard: Blog Edition!
At
the new Measurement
Standard: Blog Edition, you'll find most of the same content as here
in the newsletter, plus we'll post all those interesting research tidbits that
don't quite fit into our regular issues. Bonus: It's quick and easy for readers
to comment and ask questions. Check
it out now.
Apr
24
THE
PAINE OF MEASUREMENT
 A
Large Measure of Success:
KDPaine & Partners Is Five Years Old
KDPaine & Partners
will be celebrating our fifth anniversary this Friday
at our new corporate headquarters in Berlin, NH. This success
could not have happened without the many employees and clients who made
it possible. Thank you all very much. And
it's quite a milestone for me personally, someone who thought
they'd be
retired by now. Eight years ago, when I sold my first company, The
Delahaye Group, to Medialink, I thought I was ready to embark on
a new career -- politics perhaps, or teaching...
Apr
11
JENNY
SCHADE'S MAKING IT COUNT
 The
Three Critical Keys
To Business-Relevant Research
How to ensure that you conduct research that
moves the business.
We're
in the research business and we want to be scientific and precise.
It's reassuring to follow procedures and generate lots of data. At
the same time, it's critical to use common sense and make sure that
our approach is going to give us information that improves business
results. Based on
our research over the past 15 years, we present three critical keys
for conducting research that you--and your clients--can really use...
Mar
22
ASK
THE EXPERTS
 Baseball
and Measurement:
Now Who's On First?
Have
new ways of measuring player performance
changed the way baseball is played?
In recent years the baseball world has embraced
new stats for measuring the effectiveness of players and
teams. PR people are fond of saying "You become what
you measure," and we're wondering if that maxim holds
true for baseball. We asked our Special Baseball Correspondents
Bob Cannon and
Ed Peaco to enlighten us: Has the game of big league baseball
changed in response to different ways of measuring the
performance of baseball players?
Mar
22
YOUR MEASUREMENT
READING LIST
Book
Your Ticket To Blogistan
Three
books on blogging reviewed:
Book
reviews by Katie Delahaye Paine
As blogging moves from fringe to center
stage, bookstore shelves are filling
up
with books about blogging. Search Amazon.com's book section for "blog" and
you get almost 5,000 results. Personally,
I think reading a book about blogging is sort of silly. The art is
evolving so quickly, you're better off reading blogs than reading
a book about blogs...
Mar
22
MEASUREMENT
TOOLS
AVE
Gets A Makeover
But it's still just tarted-up output data.
We
were thrilled to see Erica Iacono's article on AVEs in PRWeek.
Ms. Iacono has done her homework carefully and provides a nicely
balanced and up-to-date summary of the AVE controversy. At
The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition you can read
our thoughts on the article (and link to the text of the article).
And if you'd like to learn more about AVEs and how to use alternatives
to AVEs, click here to download
a preview chapter of Katie Delahaye Paine's upcoming book "Measuring
Success: The Data-Driven Communicator’s Guide to Measuring
Public Relationships."
Mar
22
BILL
PAARLBERG'S EDITORIAL IMPERATIVE
PR,
Measurement and the Truth
"Holy epistemology, Batman!
Is measurement the truth?"
Commentary
by Bill Paarlberg, Editor
PRWEEK has
been advertising an upcoming debate on the subject "PR
Has A Duty To Tell The Truth." (Gosh,you mean PR sometimes
doesn't tell the truth? And
here we've been wondering why PR has such a bad public image.) Our
position here at The Measurement Standard is that measurement
is either done correctly or not. We are not having -- or ever going
to have -- the "Should
measurement tell the truth?" debate. In the measurement niche
of the PR profession, we take it as axiomatic that correct measurement is the
truth.
Mar
22
YOUR
MEASUREMENT READING LIST
 Prove
The Value Of PR
Mark
Weiner's "Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian's Guide
to Marketing and Communications."
Book
Review by Katie Delahaye Paine.
This
book is a great 250-page argument for research and measurement in
PR. I hope lots of people buy it. In fact, I hope lots of people
buy it and give it to their bosses. If you don't know anything about
measurement or PR it's a good place to get started...
Last
issue's most popular articles:
Feb 8
THE
PAINE OF MEASUREMENT
 Measurement Standards:
Why Can't We Decide?
We don't have
standard measures because there are no standard PR programs.
We
in the PR world have been jabbering on about needing measurement
standards for at least the last twenty years. Despite the best
efforts of the Canadian
PR Society and others, we're no closer to achieving that goal... Feb 8
PR
AGENCY REPUTATION INTERACTIVE DASHBOARD
 Public
Relations Agency Reputation Update
PR’s reputation continues
to suffer in the blogosphere.
Here's
the latest update from KDPaine & Partners' on-going analysis of
the blogosphere reputations of the top ten PR firms (including an interactive
dashboard where you can create charts and view the data, agency by
agency). New results show that recent negative coverage has eased,
but there is considerably more hostility towards PR firms now than
there was back in the summer...
Feb 8
CAN
THIS REPUTATION BE SAVED?
 Consumer
Reports
Product testing organization
slips up, but recovers nicely.
Consumer
Reports released a report concluding that most child
car seats were dangerous, but then had to recall the report
after discovering that the research methodology was flawed. Ouch! It's
a researcher's worst nightmare...
Feb 8
LETTER
FROM THE EXPERT
 Research:
Key to a Seat at the Table
Jim Grunig shares evidence for the strong correlation
between use
of research and a strategic role for PR.
Studies
are beginning to show that research is the answer to the question
of how public relations can get a seat at the table,
become more strategic, and serve a counseling rather than a messaging
role...
The Measurement
Standard publishes articles on public relations measurement, public relations
research, public relations effectiveness and related topics.
|
|
 Great
Minds on Measurement
 "The
great enemy of clear language
is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared
aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted
idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink."
-George Orwell
From
Our Blog Edition:
April
23: PR
Measurement Must Trust But Verify: Today it's comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings,
tomorrow it's you.
We all know there are as many ways to fudge the numbers as there are
measurement programs. Bias, whether conscious or unconscious, can and
does creep into even the most careful research. Here at The Measurement
Standard, we're certain that the PR profession will jump light-years
ahead when everybody's measurement results are verifiable by some third
party or technique.
So it is nice to see that the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is requesting
that comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings submit to a third-party audit of
their web measurement processes... Read
more on this in The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition.
Apr
10: Measuring
Social Media and the Death of Page Views: Beyond AJAX, Where Is Social
Media Measurement Headed?
Kami Hulse at Communication Overtones makes some interesting points about "meaningful
measures of the relationships a site or blog is building," see her
post ("Eight Meaningful Measures of Social Media").
I second her view that page views is crude and uninformative. The reason
it is used is because it's an easy number to get, not because it's a particularly
meaningful measurement. Social media is about relationships. Measuring
social media with page views is like measuring a friendship by the number
of phone calls. It says something, but not much. (With some exceptions: "Hey,
you don't return my calls anymore?") Read
more on this in The
Measurement Standard: Blog Edition.
Apr
4: Why Does PR Always Have To Be Working So Hard To Prove Its Worth?
The other day Katie Delahaye Paine sent me some charts she uses in her
presentations. Included was the sort of chart that shows how much more
effective PR is than other marketing efforts, and demonstrates how PR
delivers results for much less money.
We've all been seeing this sort of chart in one form or another for
years, for decades even. And it's not just the odd chart, it's whole
research studies and presentations and books. PR people always seem to
have to prove that they do their job well. Especially as compared with
advertising.
Why do PR people have to keep trying so
hard to demonstrate their own worth? They're always waving some charts
and graphs and yelling about how PR really does work.
What does PR have to prove? Read
more on this in The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition.
Mar
29: Email Stats Galore Are Great, But What Can You Really Do With Them?
If you do email marketing you'll want to check out EmailStatsCenter.com,
which posts email research stats from a great many sources on a great
many email-related topics.
I just love reading a tidbit like "Average time allocated to a newsletter
after opening it only 51 seconds. - Jakob Nielsen (2006)" and thinking
about how that reflects on how we do The Measurement Standard.
Do we have anything like this for PR measurement? I can imagine a vast
online compendium of public relations research results... Read
more on this in The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition.
Apr
11
Measurement
Blog Action To Check
In On:
To track
recent blog mentions of "PR measurement," go
to technorati.com.
Hey, we've done it for you already, just
click here!
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.
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