Measure What Matters: Online Tools For Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships

by Katie Delahaye Paine

In an online and social media world, measurement is the key to success If you can measure your key business relationships, you can improve them. Even though relationships are "fuzzy and intangible," they can be measured and managed-with powerful results. Measure What Matters explains simple, step-by-step procedures for measuring customers, social media reputation, influence and authority, the media, and other key constituencies. Don't draw conclusions or make key decisions based on guesswork. Instead, Measure What Matters and the difference will show in the most important measure: your bottom line.

Genres: Business, Social Media, Nonfiction, Leadership, Communication

272 pages, Hardcover

First published February 10, 2011

Reviews

[Vassilena · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book has not aged well. The measurement criteria are very vague and don't take into account the complexities of today's Internet environment. It has a good overview of PR measurement methods, but most of them won't serve to the new media environment and are only available to large companies with big budgets or require a huge time investment. If you're a digital marketer, you're better off looking for a book on Google Analytics and social listening platforms.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ms. Paine's clear listing of what to do to monitor your company or institution's key relationships is very valuable. She explains how the relationships between companies and their customers has changed drastically with the rise of social media. I appreciated her numbered steps and examples of some of her own client's struggles with adapting to the new methods for measuring engagement. It isn't a matter of number of hits on the Internet or widgets sold anymore. What's important now is whether those hits deliver key messages or build positive relationships with those your organization is trying to reach.

My only criticism of the book is its repetitiveness. I listened to it as an audiobook and found that several chapters not only refer to other chapters but repeat the information given in them. I suspect that this title would better serve as a reference to spot check that your company is truly "measuring what matters." Use the appendices and numbered lists to selectively create and evaluate your marketing plans. Reading it all the way through isn't necessary to extract the important points.

[Tiffany daSilva · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there was some awesome nuggets in this book that I will definitely be using in my day to day life, I thought the book was a little repetitive. I think the book might not be made to read beginning to end just where you need it most.

Some of my favorite tidbits were:
- Detailed Media content analysis Guide - It was detailed and gave you a great framework to create your own.
- Prioritizing Your Audience using Sticky Dots - That is, when you're looking to prioritize which audience is the most important give all your stakeholders a sticky dot, tell them it's worth $1 million dollars in budget and ask them to put it near the audience that matters most. The audience group with the most dots is where you focus first.
- Kicking Butt Exercise - When looking to find out what a project takes to be successful ask your stakeholder the following questions: What does it look like when they're kicking your butt? What does it look like when you're kicking butt?

All in all the book was helpful but I felt like it could have been simplified a bit. It felt like a collection of blogs that weren't quite edited enough for redundancy.

[Victor Vrsnik · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Nifty stuff," concludes Larissa and James Grunig in the Foreward. A must for anyone who takes their PR or Social Media work seriously enough to get in the habit of measurement and evaluation. If you care whether your communications hit objectives, read this. It answers the why and how to develop a measurement program. Best quote goes to David Dozier, "Dominant coalitions [ie senior management] tend to value and support communicators who first demonstrate their worth."

[Michael White · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm currently writing a dissertation on measurement and PR, this book was recommended to me. For a book published in 2011 I found it rather out of date. Absolutely no mention of semantic analytics which is where the industry is moving towards. Having said that this book is one of the better ones on the market.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read on social media. The tactics for measurement and monitoring described in this book are immediately applicable. I love that the book is written to cover all aspects of business: corporate, non-profit, higher education. There is without a doubt something for everyone in this book when it comes to strategic use of social media and communications.

[Rusty Fulling]

July 2011 - Excellent read for ideas on "measuring what matters." Applicable for profit and non-profit organizations. The author provides easy to understand examples of measurement and best of all examples on how to apply the results.
Also included in the book is The Grunig Relationship Survey.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very practical, well-written guide to measuring what matters in today's public relations environment. The team and I will be trying out Paine's 7 steps to measurement in a planning session soon. That'll be the real test of how good this book is.

[Imelda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for PR and social media practitioners. A good start to understanding how to measure. I go back to it and research every time I set up a new account. Also helpful for keeping track of successes for LinkedIn and resumes.

[Keith Johnstone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obviously an essential book for anyone studying strategic communications but it needs more real life application included and perhaps some consideration of a non US environment. No doubt though that Ms Paine is highly skilled and knowledgeable in this area and has lots to teach

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. It is laid out in a very effective manner so that it makes clear some old concepts in addition to introducing some new ones. Pretty much a must read for anyone working in Social Media.

[Angela Whiting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book about everything you need to know about managing successful online relationships with social media. It had great practical how-to measure advice!

[Julio Alvarez Álvarez del castillo Gonzalez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gran guía para armar un esquema de medición de resultados

[loafingcactus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very, very practical real world examples of finding what needs to be measured in customer relations and how to do it. Great reference list on PR measurement.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good information and references.

[Fajar Uswatun]

wanna read