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The Measurement Maven and Menace of the Month Awards

The Measurement Maven of the Month:

Michael Hakkert, Senior Director of Corporate Communications, Juniper Networks, Inc.

Michael Hakkert has been using PR measurement to make better decisions for as long as we've known him, more than a decade now. First at Cisco and now at Juniper Networks, Hakkert has always demanded the highest quality objective research. Even more impressive, he really uses it, not to justify his existence but to make decisions about what needs to be improved or tweaked within the program. -KDP

The Measurement Menaces of the Month:

Companies That Do Fake Social Media Measurement

This month our Menace Award goes out to all the upstart wannabes who have jumped on the social media measurement bandwagon, but who have little insight or experience to offer. We're not going to name names, but there are a host of new players claiming to measure social media, when in fact all they are really doing is monitoring and categorizing the news and producing some sexy charts. Anybody can go to Technorati and search for something (click here and you'll do it right now for "social media"), but that's just asking a machine to collect some data. Measurement means more than just data, it means applying insight and experience to the right data.

Let's be clear here: The technology that tracks your brand or your competitor's brand is not measurement. Producing a chart that says your traffic is up this month or that you have more links this month than last is the easy part. Anybody with a halfway decent NLP or text mining software package can do that.

It's what you do with the data that is the hard part; that's what turns numbers into measurement. Measurement means providing highly accurate and reliable data, including human verification of results and extensive data checking to make sure that the results are what you think they are. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, measurement means studying the data to figure out what it means and what it doesn't mean, and what the client should or shouldn't do as a result.

So the next time someone claims to do social media measurement, find out if they are just shoveling a pile of data. If so, invite them to come and collect their Measurement Menace of the Month award. -KDP

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