MeasurementCamp – collaborating to make sense of measuring social media
The background
Traditional digital marketing has been around for at least 10 years now. During that time benchmarks and standards have built up around this form of promotion. We have tried and tested techniques to measure and apply best practice to this area. At present, no such principles and values exist in relation to measuring social media and online PR. Queue MeasurementCamp.
MeasurementCamp was born on a rainy mid-February evening in London as a result of a Chinwag event dealing with the subject of Measuring Social Media where our MD, Will McInnes was invited to be a panel member.
It became clear to Will on the night that what was needed was an open source set of agreed measurements for social media. This was confirmed by the feedback of the various audience members after the event. So what started as an off-the-top-of-the-head suggestion by Will quickly became a journey to devise a set of standards (using the Creative Commons model who work to ‘offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their work while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved’).
An open forum was proposed, it was named MeasurementCamp. It may have first been suggested by Will however the idea does not belong to him, nor to us here at NixonMcInnes or the funkalicious digital, social media crowd that was present that evening. The web belongs to everyone, so whilst Will may have laid down the gauntlet for such a movement, he can’t take all the credit for it. It was formed from a discussion, a debate and most importantly the natural inquisitive nature inherent in us as a human race, the need to justify and measure things. Some might call it progress or at least a way to kick it off.
The audience
Come one come all. The event is open to everyone who has an interest vested or otherwise in measuring social media. You might be from a social media or digital agency, you might work in an organisation dealing with analytics or you may be an all important client who has a digital brand. At MeasurementCamp you will meet all three types of breed. There are peeps from the agency world such as Hotwire or Dare, representatives from the world of analytics such as Onalytica and Nielsen Online. Last but not least there are representatives from the client side; people like Bauer, University of Southampton, Make Your Mark and Hyperlaunch; individuals who are buying this social media shizzle from people like us, individuals who work in marketing and are obliged as part of their role to prove ROI.
The purpose
The purpose is continually evolving, however at the core is the desire to create a set of open source resources which allow interested parties to measure their social media communications online and offline.
What is understood is that you and a lot of people like you have to prove that social media works in the campaigns that are being devised. We don’t really know how to do this yet. However we’ll certainly give it a blooming good bash.
The manifesto
All good movements have a manifesto, something for the audience to get behind. A municipal declaration of the principles and intentions allayed to the purpose of the assembly. In other words a set of values that can be worked to and from by the group that help them focus on the task in hand.
The citizens of MeasurementCamp believe:
1. that social media are about relationships and language. This makes conversations difficult to ‘measure’ by existing metrics
2. measurement is important and we strive to find clarity in and derive better insights from the work that we do
3. technologies to measure will probably be proprietary but that to use these technologies effectively we as a community can help one another to develop understanding and resources to fill the yawning gaps in our own education and knowledge
4. whatever we produce together should be freely available for others to use and improve, and that together we are stronger than apart
5. whilst every case is different and unique, there are benefits to common standards and approaches around the world and across regional boundaries
What we have learnt so far
MeasurementCamp is not aiming to develop a ‘one-size fits all’ approach. The development of the project is based on an understanding that measures will vary greatly on a client-by-client basis and the network in which we are communicating/participating. We are consistently learning, we do not profess to have all the answers, yet!
Resources
In true social media style a wiki has been created as a central resource where the pioneers of MeasurementCamp (and actually anyone who chooses to) can collate their findings and gather together a pool of resources to help develop clarity around ‘what’ to measure rather than ‘how’. These resources may not be measuring devices themselves. They may come in the form of information as guides, a framework, suggested units of measurement, icons, basic software or tools, or other stuff entirely.
What next?
Does this sound good to you? Do you want to immerse yourself in the challenge? Check out the MeasurementCamp wiki and get yerself along to the next event. You never know you might have some valuable contributions to add to the melting pot. Together we are powerful, get involved!
MeasurementCamp would be nothing without the commitment from people to provide their valuable time and contributions. Particular thanks goes out to Helen Lawrence – Dare Digital, Flemming Madsen – Onalytica, Robin Grant – 1000heads, Sam Michel – Chinwag, Lauren Fisher – Propellernet, Adrian Moss – BottlePR/Focus, Simon Quance – Hyperlaunch, Robin Wilson – Bite PR, Giles Palmer – Brandwatch, Daljit Bhurji – PR & Social Media Consultant, Jonathan Hopkins – Bite/Shed/middledigit.net, Tim Hoang – Rainier PR / New Media Knowledge, Jenny Brown – jenny-bee.net, Ged Carroll – Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, Kelvin Newman – SiteVisibility, Craig Hepburn – STA Travel, Dan Thornton – Bauer, Mark Rogers – Market Sentinal, Chris Reed – Fishburn Hedges, Drew Benvie – Hotwire, Helen Aspell – Univeristy of Southampton, Luke Hay – Wired Sussex, Dom Whitehurst – Hotwire, Richard Bagnall – Metrica & Measurement Matters, Karl Havard – Propellernet, Jason Ryan – iCrossing, David Hughes – iCrossing, Tim Callington – Edelman, Simon Collister – Edelman, Drew Davis – Chameleon Net, Katie Barber – Digital Outlook, Rachel Clarke, Chris Applegate – Outside Line, Anjali Ramachandran – http://www.one-size-fits-one.blogspot.com/, Alex Burmaster – Nielsen Online, Katy Howell – Immediate Future, Michael Blowers – Media Evaluation Research, Ben Bland – Ryan MacMillan, Damien Mulley – Mulley Communications and Aliya Zaidi – e-Consultancy.
Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacesuitcatalyst/536389937/
Ruth wrote this on 01.08.08 – 1 comment
It's filed in the Events & conferences, Industry news, Social media, Strategy, Web analytics box
On January 15th, 2009 at 5:19 pm, Ruth responded:
Take a look at this:
The MeasurementCamp wiki is slowly getting useful, this list in particular may help those doing research/mapping work:
http://measurementcamp.wikidot.com/tools-for-measurement