Measure What Matters (February 2012)
A decade ago we talked about relationships between corporations and their stakeholders. Now the relationship is likely to be between… millions of individuals on millions of Facebook pages. And without knowing how to measure those millions of relationships, you are more likely than ever to be lost in a sea of data, words and reactions.
 Katie Delahaye Paine, the author of “Measure What Matters”, uses her experience in designing and implementing measurement systems to give you the tools and tips needed to measure the success and most importantly the relationships of any organization. The book is written for all business, large, small or non-profit, in a way that encourages you to start improving your work.
Many measurement methods are discussed in this book, though one of particular interest is measurement in the social media world. In the recent years, social media has changed marketing strategies all over the world. However, the “common denominator” in the history of social media has always been relationships. As relationships are important to all businesses, Delahaye shows how to build, manage and measure them and how they are directly linked to the success of your organization.
In chapter 4, Delahaye shows how to use social media to discover what the marketplace is saying. Along with types of tools to use, she also explains the pros and cons of manual and automated content analysis. Since manual analysis can be slow or inconsistent and automated analysis are unreliable with, for example, differentiating between irony and sarcasm, the author suggests to use a combination of the two. Further on, she discusses the most common elements to use in coding, such as: type of media, visibility (prominence & dominance), tone, messages communicated, sources mentioned and conversation type.
 Chapter 5 is about how to measure marketing, public relations and advertising in a social media world. To start off, Delahaye explains how the “social media revolution requires an entirely new way of thinking about what we do and how we define marketing success.” It used to be that receiving a response from a company within a day or two was ok. But now, this is not only unacceptable but can result in millions of other comments, opinions and problems. Social media also changed the way we quantify success since now it is best to be measured by assessing engagement rather than simply the volume of impressions. Nowadays, it isn’t about how many people go to your site, but what they do with the information they find there. Later in the chapter, the author goes into detail about the two worlds of social media (what you can and can’t control) and what to consider in both. She also includes step-by-step instructions on how to conduct a social media content analysis.
As the book continues, Katie touches on topics such as measuring the impact of events, measuring what your employees think, how to measure crises, measuring different types of relationships, as well as topics for non-profit organizations, education and much more. The whole book is written clearly and practically providing the information needed to get started.
Delahaye Paine (2011), Measure What Matters. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 252 pages. ISBN 9780470920107
Available in English on Amazon.com |
|