Comments on: Impressions Of And In Social Media Measurement

By: Impressions of and In Social Media Measurement « Media Bullseye – A New Media and Communications Magazine

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:01:49 +0000

[...] This entry originally appeared at the author’s blog, Social Media Explorer. [Disclosure: CustomScoop provides monitoring, [...]

By: Making an impression on social media measurement | Liberate Media - social media and online PR consultancy

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:34:48 +0000

[...] a veritable feast of information and insight into the issues of a client-based query on measuring social media impressions. The post also contains additional comment from K.D.Paine at KD Paine & partners. If [...]

By: Recent Links on Ma.gnolia at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 06:59:51 +0000

[...] Impressions Of And In Social Media Measurement | Social Media Explorer [...]

By: MartinEdic

MartinEdic — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:36:39 +0000

I was just commenting elsewhere (not Disqus, unfortunately) on the use of SM measurement tools by government agencies and several commenters brought up the 'big brother' issue. As Marcel notes you should remember that public participation in social media is just that: public (one to many). You don't have the protections that things like phone conversations (one to one). Companies like Techrigy and Radian6 are not spying, we are observing and collecting publicly available information. I suspect there is going to be a lot of discussion when government agencies start routinely using these tools.

By: JasonFalls

JasonFalls — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:44:34 +0000

That clears it up. Thanks for letting us know about your tool. I'll have to dive in and check it out.

By: MartinEdic

MartinEdic — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:39:06 +0000

Sorry Jason, I try not to get too overt in my engagement! I'm Director of
Marketing for Techrigy, developers of SM2, our social media monitoring and
measurement tool. We help people manage brands and reputation across the
social media eco-system including blogs, wikis, forums, microblogs, social
networks, user-generated content and more. We also provide a complete suite
of analysis tools including sentiment, demographics (age, gender,
geo-location), authority ranking, trend and theme analysis with extensive
charting tools and reporting options. Users can configure and export over 30
data fields from our results. There is a free, fully functional version
(limited in the number of keywords and search results) available at
http://sm2.techrigy.com.Does that answer your question? Glad to join the
dialog.

By: JasonFalls

JasonFalls — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:28:52 +0000

Thanks Martin. Very good points to consider. Please don't hesitate to let us know who you're with, though. My apologies for not knowing off the top of my head. Relevant links to your service are welcome.

By: JasonFalls

JasonFalls — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:27:37 +0000

Bravo, Steve. Another great illustration of the crux we're in when talking about measurement. And on that note, I should go call (on the phone) a few folks to just say “hey” and check in. Thank you, sir.

By: Steve Woodruff

Steve Woodruff — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:11:16 +0000

If someone asked me to an ROI calculations on the various interactions I have in my father-son relationships, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with the data. This much I DO know, however: success is more likely by engaging in conversation and interaction with my kids. Failure is likely when it's neglected. That's good enough for me – in family relationships and in business networking.

By: Marcel LeBrun

Marcel LeBrun — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:04:05 +0000

Hey Jason,
I like your extension of the "phone" analogy regarding your view on PR owning social media. The unique characteristics of the social web as a communications medium definitely make it different from other media and I certainly agree that PR has the right skills to provide leadership here.

For instance, customer service front line staff today are entrusted to be the voice of their brand in one-on-one conversations with customers who call in with questions, problems, etc. They are generally provided with training, guidelines, etc. But, the social medium is different. Conversations with customers on the social web happen in full public view and with a permanent record of the conversation. This does require a clear strategy, guidelines and training which PR is well positioned to provide to the rest of the organization.

I really like the clarity though that PR shouldn't be the only one allowed to place calls, but rather be responsible for strategy, training, guidelines, etc.... showing people how to properly behave using the "social phone".

By: MartinEdic

MartinEdic — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:47:40 +0000

I find myself agreeing with Marcel, a competitor of ours. The critical difference, which those seeking the Holy Grail of ROI, often fail to grasp is that social media is not static information like the first iteration of the web. It is a communication layer. Measurement is a lot more complex than tapping into a API and pulling out numbers. Sentiment, demographics, location, authority- these things don't come out of an API call. We pull up to 35 different pieces of data for each search result in SM2 and then we supply extensive tools for understanding how that fits together. You not only want to understand the conversation, you also need to understand who's doing the talking and who, in turn, is listening.
There's another dynamic that measurement must deal with: the dynamism of popularity in social media. Tools like Buzzmetrics that ignore lower authority sources are a problem because those low authority sources can break a story or start a brushfire just as easily as the big media sites. With exponential, one to many communication, social measurement can get very complex, both to monitor and engage.