Measurement-Analysis

[Originally written for The Guardian Media Network .] If media is interesting because it facilitates communication, whether that communication is mediated or disintermediated, then communication is most interesting when it facilitates influence. You have been influenced when you think something you wouldn’t otherwise have thought, or do something you wouldn’t otherwise have done. Simple as, although you wouldn’t think it now that influence is the hot word. The capacity to change hearts, minds and deeds is considered the mark of the great communicator, the compelling personality, the charismatic politician, and ultimately no one wants to communicate without influence; that wouldn’t be a good use of the communicator’s time and energy, or indeed that of those on the receiving end. The focus on making sure you’re influenced back is vital too. Individuals (and organisations) that best absorb the zeitgeist are heuristically more able to respond in ways their audiences (stakeholders) might well appreciate. Influence is complex, and I mean that in the full “complexity science” sense of the word. Complexity is the phenomena that emerge from a collection of interacting objects. The interacting objects could be molecules of air and the phenomenon the weather. It could be vehicles and the phenomenon the traffic. ...

The PR industry view and ‘Big Ask’ - Philip Sheldrake , uploaded by Gorkana Group on Vimeo . AMEC – the international Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication – launched its social measurement consultation exercise with European members and in-house and agency PR professionals on November 17th 2011 at the ‘Big Ask’ conference. I spoke at the conference and the videos of the day have just been posted to Vimeo. In the egocentric nature that is personal blogging, I’ve embedded the video of me above, and videos of the other speakers can all be found here . ...

I’m typing this post sitting on the front row at the CIPR’s PR 2020 event at Russell Square HQ. To my left, Stephen Waddington . To my right, Julio Romo . On stage we have CIPR CEO, Jane Wilson , Dr. Jon White , and ComRes Marketing Manager, Simon Thwaites. ComRes annual survey ComRes conducts an annual review of key market stats for the UK PR industry, and Simon is running through that right now. Interestingly, in light of the PRSA’s current Defining PR initiative, which the CIPR supports, only 44% of ComRes poll respondents agreed with the statement “My friends and family understand what I do for a living.” ...

Public relations is about influencing and being influenced, right? You know, the two-way symmetric model to affect mutual understanding . Right? Well, from my experience, the vast majority of practitioners are looking to exert influence but invest considerably less time divining insight from stakeholders and feeding that back into the organisation to improve decision-making. For the best part of this week I’ve been in Miami hanging out with the members of ESOMAR who invest their entire time trying to work out what’s going on in the minds of customers and prospects. ESOMAR describes itself as “the essential organisation for encouraging, advancing and elevating market research worldwide”. With more than 4,800 members from over 120 countries, ESOMAR emphasises its members’ contribution to effective decision-making. This particular conference series is focused on how social media has transformed market research. There have been two main thrusts so far… Firstly, consumers have become increasingly reluctant to participate in ’traditional’ marketing research approaches. Seriously, why should they bother? And if we’re all egged on with the promise of some kind of reward or prize, how interested are we in responding accurately, diligently? ...

I’m in Miami today at the ESOMAR 3D Digital Dimensions conference. For those of you unfamiliar with ESOMAR, it’s “the essential organisation for encouraging, advancing and elevating market research worldwide. With more than 4,800 members from over 120 countries, ESOMAR’s aim is to promote the value of market and opinion research in illuminating real issues and bringing about effective decision-making.” The Business of Influence – ESOMAR 3D Digital Dimensions Conference 2011 ...

An interesting start to the day today… over to CIPR HQ in Russell Square to deliver a training course on social measurement in the Freshly Squeezed series. I had just 45 minutes with 15 minutes Q&A, and this time constraint combined with the state of best practice in the profession meant I was aiming simply to leave attendees knowing the right questions if not the right answers per se. After all, as the slidestack below teases out, if your organisation, marketplace, stakeholders, marketing and PR objectives, marketing and PR strategy and execution are unique, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that your metrics will be unique too. ...

Are you savvy when it comes to social analytics? If you’re a PR practitioner, the answer to this question must be YES. Marshall Sponder visited London last week as part of his tour promoting his new book, Social Media Analytics – Effective Tools for Building, Interpreting, and Using Metrics (ISBN 978-0-07-176829-0). Having read a draft manuscript of the book, a quote of mine appears on the front cover: “Ignoring this book is akin to ignoring your market.” There is no better independent authority on the tools and techniques than Marshall. Whilst some pundits simply maintain lists of social analytics vendors with some basic feature comparison tables, Marshall has actually used many of them for real. Moreover, he has a peculiar ability to prod the vendors and the engineers that build these services, to get under the hood and separate the actual capabilities from the marketing claims. Marshall is not, however, a public relations practitioner or management consultant. This book does not provide a strategic framework for the integration of social analytics into your organisation. It does not address important issues such as privacy (of customers, employees and the wider public) or ethics. It doesn’t attempt to define a detailed taxonomy of the analytics services out there, or make this a comprehensive market review. ...

If you’re looking for an acid test as to whether an organisation is centred in this social world, as to whether they have a marketing and communications strategy that integrates social media cogently and coherently rather than bolts it on, listen out for questions like this: How much is a tweet / retweet / follower / friend / like / +1 / comment / whatevermetickle worth? If this is the kind of question they’re asking then, in my opinion, they simply don’t yet ‘get it’. If you’re feeling particularly wicked, take your pick of one of these to respond to their question and see if they take you seriously: $0.23 per hundred A ’like’ is definitely worth somewhere between 2 and 3 tweets; sort of around 2.42 A comment has an engagement quotient nine times that of a ‘friend’ If you’re in tech, then a +1 is currently five times more potent than a RT, but the reverse is true for other markets That depends if you’re B2B or B2C Well, can I ask, is there any yellow in your logo? In The Business of Influence (Chapter 5) I include the following table, titled “Maturity of influence approach”. ...

I’ve just arrived in Zurich at HWZ (Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration) for today’s Social Media Conference. I’m delighted to be keynoting at 1.30pm, and here’s my presentation. I know… it’s a bit text heavy in parts. @gabbicahane has already pointed that out to me. I protested that for a slidestack to make sense to those people who are interested but who cannot make the conference, it needs to have more context than some beautiful pictures and seven words per slide. ...

Digital marketing has come a long way in the past decade, as we’ve moved beyond putting existing materials online and learned how to really harness the native advantages of digital technologies. The pace of change continues unabated, and among its most important drivers is data – and the meaning of that data. Every one of us is going to be producing more data describing our use of digital products and services. This is what I like to call digital detritus. Detritus – discarded organic matter which is decomposed by microorganisms and reappropriated by animal and plant life – is interestingly analogous to our regard for, and treatment of, the data that we’re all shedding. Big data When it comes to the increase in data, we’re working on a logarithmic scale: we’re talking about hundreds and thousands of times more. Data in such quantities may well prove to have important new mathematical properties that are attractive to marketers, customer service and product development teams. Moreover, we don’t actually do much with the digital detritus today – it mostly resides in inaccessible log files, although the technology for collating it is becoming increasingly achievable and affordable. What does this mean in everyday terms? ...