What to Measure & Monitor

The last topic of this paper 'Evalutation for the social media', our tutor doesn't has the answer to what would be the appropriate method of monitoring and measuring application.

More than 60 million blogs, countless forums and social networking sites, perhaps it's a little bit overwhelming. How can PR practitioners keep track of their client's name and exposure among plethora of the net. There are companies specialise in media monitoring, listed in PR Week, some would offer service to measure and monitor online media.

PR Weeek March 9th suggested to measure and monitor 'most relevant and influential media and influential bloggers', also keep an eye on 'sites are the most active...tracking the story back to where the news first broke, and seeing how it spread'. Citation indexing can help to detect influential sources of news such as links on blogs.

"Basically, RSS TiVos the Net for you. It captures everything on the Web that you care about and pulls it down for you in feeds. The minute something is mentioned about a client of mine on a Web site, I'm alerted to it. That's what makes RSS so powerful." Rubel said on Roger

On top of the keeping track of the traditional media, PR practitioners now also need to target online sources, double the workload. So the old principle still applies really....you can't possibly monitor and measure all but you need prioritise, filter what most appropriate sources best suit for your client say a focus on their particular industry and what the papers, influential opinion leaders are commenting about client's brand. Of course it's difficult to define which websites, social networking sites and blogs are relevant and 'influential'.

PR Week suggest 3 ways of determinng influence:

"number of links between sites, which sites mention other sites most, which sites carry stories that have already been highlighted as bieng influential".

This is where keyword search, SEO, and RSS feeds technologies come in handy.

On the other hand, a simple service like Stats Counter can provide usefull information about website's visitors and their behaviours. Monitoring this will also help PR practitioners to target their audiences effectively.

There's no black/white answer to this solution, no exact method of what to measure and monitor because the social media and ITCs are fluid and constantly changing. The next best solution is the ability to adapt and adopt appropriately, timely, and stragically. Traditional media up to this point is still valid and sometimes blogs do repeat or comment on what has been said in the newspapers, but perhaps on a more personal tone. Then it is worth investing time to engage in those relevant blogs to understand the stories further.

"We can highlight the most important media, but it is up to PR professionals to use that information wisely and ensure that they are engaging with those media" Market Sentinel's Rogers in PR Week March 9th.

For Ogilvy, measuring social media also mean to measure success, ROI and:
If the program is meant to create more

• digital word of mouth
• product or service recommendations
• raise awareness
• raise or add search engine results