Measure What Matters

In Principals of Social Media class we started reading a new book by Katie Delahaye titled, Measure What Matters.  According to the book, Measure What Matters offers "step by step guidance to:

• build a list of the top 100 influencers in your marketplace
• Use data to get closer to your customers and determine which outlets matter to them most
• Measure the impact of events, sponsorships, and speaking engagements
• measure your relationships with your local community, members, donors, employees, salespeople, and distributors
• reduce the impact of crises"(Delahaye).

It is important to know how effective it is to "measure" the important aspects of a business.  Chapter 2 gives a pretty good rundown of how to get started in Measuring.  Before you can get started in measurement, you must have a good understanding of your organization.  It is important to get a consensus among the people who will be using and/or contributing to the measurement of data collected.  As discussed in the book, there are 10 questions every communications professional must be able to answer:

Question #1: What are your objectives?
Question #2: Who are your program's target audiences?
Question #3: What is important to your audiences?
Question #4: What motivates them to buy your products?
Question #5: What are your key messages?
Question #6: Who influences your audiences?
Question #7: How do you distribute your product or service?
Question #8: What are you going to do with the information you get from your research?
Question #9: What other departments or areas will be affected?
Question #10: What other measurement programs are currently underway?

The answers to these basic questions are essential for understanding your business.  Once these questions are answered, we can then begin to put our measurement strategies into play.

This book has already proven to me that it is a valuable source for businesses and organizations to understand measurement, as well as those who want a greater understanding of how this sort of measurement works.  I am sure that as we read further into the book, there will be much more information to help us PR folk out in the future!