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Ask Dr. Paine

Four Quick Questions on Measuring Social Media:
Digg, RSS, Twitter and Second Life

Q: How do I measure Digg and other aggregators?

A: The reality is that Digg can provide a temporary blip in the number of visits to your site, and in your popularity and possibly your ranking. This is important if you are running your own blog. For corporations, you need to monitor how many people are "digging" your bad news, but in terms of good news it will have less impact.

Q: How do I measure RSS feeds?

A: At the moment there is no accurate method to count the number of subscribers to your RSS feeds. At some point someone will come along and figure it out, but for now your best alternative is to add a question about your RSS feeds into your next customer survey.

Q: Do I need to pay attention to Twitter?

A: It's a way to count "friends," but will it ever have any impact on brands? Hard to tell. I'd say, for now anyway, spend your time on things that matter.

Q: Do I need an island in Second Life?

A: If you have something really interesting to put on it, yes. If you were Coos County, New Hampshire, for instance, and wanted a way to show people what things were like way up there without having them make the 3-hour trip from Boson, then yes. (Coos County is a client of KDPaine & Partners, see the blog we've helped them put together, Coos Conversations.) If you're selling just concepts (without strong visuals), then no.

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.

1. You’ll learn how to use hard numbers to prove the results of your PR efforts. (Plus, it's free.)

2. You’ll learn which are the right vendors for your measurement projects. (Yes, it's free.)

3. You’ll learn how to design your program right from the start to be easily measureable. (Plus, yes, it's free.)

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