Every company presents unique measurement requirements, so it is good that there are many options available for companies looking to begin a measurement program. Measurement firms and agencies organized around a billing model tend to suggest that manual analysis of media is the best way to go (and many have strong practices built on that model), while firms with text analytics software, quantitative algorithms and data warehouse capabilities tend to argue that with the volume of coverage now generated through social media, automated analysis is required for a complete picture of the communications landscape. Of course, technology firms, evolve24 included, admittedly apply manual review to their client’s data, using the automatic translation as a guide to that analysis, while staff-based firms concede the need for automated analysis to help organize large volumes of content prior to review.

And of course, all good solutions also recognize that measurement, whether done manually or through automated systems, is simply a step on the way to actual business insight. The insight is not in the measurement itself (though measurement design and methodology is critical to creating good inputs), and does not ‘fall-out” of manual or automated measurement, but is generated from analysis of the data resulting from measurement, and in the application of that analysis to business-focused problems. Regardless of how you measure, the results of your measurement will always require human analysis to be converted to actionable insight.

There are unique benefits to each measurement approach that a company could chose; what is unique to a technical solution like evolve24 is the capability to collect vast amounts of coverage related not just to the company’s own communications programs, but also around competitors’ communications programs, the conversations taking place in all forms of media about all of the firms in the market and the market in general, and even around larger conversations related to the regulatory environment, special interest or social issues in general that may somehow present a risk or opportunity to the company.

For companies who adopt PR measurement, initial measurement programs tend to be focused on self-examination, seeking to establish the effectiveness and value of work done. The value that firms can create by understanding communications effectiveness and applying those insights has been well established, and are a good first step; measurement allows firms to more effectively establish the desired perception amongst their targets, and allows communications teams to show their value to the organization. However, in the context of providing strategic input for business decision making, measurement of just the company’s own communications presents only a small picture of the overall communications environment, and the impact of that environment on our business. Companies looking to build their communications measurement into a strategic driver for the business need to focus on solutions that will ultimate scale to align and merge with the company’s other business intelligence solutions.

Thinking back on the discussion of social media “listening”, measurement, analysis and engagement I encountered through 2009 – whether encountered online, at conferences and meetings, or in casual conversation – what strikes me in retrospect is the overall focus I perceived toward the “media” side of the social media landscape.

Despite the insistence that the focus was really on shifts in the meaning of “social”, the primary focus of most discussions I encountered last year seemed to eventually return to a focus on the communication media and technology itself, as opposed to the people and motivations at each end of the channel; the very reasons that businesses, consumers and citizens have to be social in the first place.

Having a presence and listening effectively can indeed be very important for many reasons, and there were plenty of great case studies showing the legitimate value of doing these things; whether to demonstrate the potential for success through well-planned social engagement, or to illustrate what could go wrong if one failed to listen and engage around concerns and complaints.

These case studies, even when considered as whole, do not seem to have yet managed to establish a clear business case or approach to a results-oriented “social” strategy framework for business comparable or complementary to something like Porter’s strategic framework. This seems to me to be because many of these cases confuse attention with business impact, and focus on reactions and responses as opposed to actual proactive strategy integrated to business operations.

Take the most obvious case examples: Motrin, United Airlines, or Dominos; perhaps someone out there can point me to the missing conclusions where true business related outcomes of each case are defined.

We know that Motrin did trash a campaign based on blogger outrage, and that surely cost them dearly, but we don’t really know if that was the right decision, nor has it been well established how to even answer that. Was there a sound underlying business reason to completely kill the campaign, or did it just seem like the right decision during a period of panic? There is a clear lesson – don’t be surprised – but this is the problem with most of the best-known cases; they tell you what NOT to do, they provide examples of good and bad reactions to surprises, but don’t really help anyone understand how to be proactive.

There are increasing examples of good proactive approaches to using social media for marketing to targeted demographics, which is the most straightforward and natural (though by no mean simple) approach to the medium, but this is just a narrow slice of the potential value of social media engagement by firms. Throughout this year, I trust we will see greater maturity develop around social media, with a shift away from the hype that businesses need to move into “social media”, and instead toward the recognition that social media needs to become more integrated with business.

Scot posted an interesting blog last week, reminding us all that it takes much more than a collection of tools and a pile of wood to build a house (and it takes much more than a listening platform to develop actionable strategies). Building a house also requires a good understanding of expected results – do you want a bungalow or do you want a McMansion? You need a blue print to show that you’re moving towards those results each day, that the house will have the appropriate number of walls, that it will have everything it needs, and that it will not collapse when the job is done.

Communication measurement works the same way. We know that measurement in communications is important, but we also know that field of communication is as varied as houses can be. Increasingly, communication activities are overlapping, as social media and traditional media evolve and communication becomes more instantaneous. Measuring communications now requires tools that include the best of various tool boxes.

Many communications teams have started borrowing tools from other departments, but borrowing measurement tools from each other could have a series limitations. Teams could be using different software which requires a new understanding and learning curve, or teams might be using completely different metrics that are not compatible with one another. Most importantly, can the tools each department is using meet the cross functional needs that measurement now demands? This incorporation and overlap demands a tool box that houses all the measurement tools you need to meet not only the demands of your communication department but to integrate other departments and operational teams as well.

It seems that the breadth of measurement tools will only grow and leave way for more fragmentation among measurement strategies between the various departments in your organization. Wouldn’t it be nice to streamline your departments under one measurement tool that could meet all your communication measurement, from media monitoring to message analysis to crisis communication?

Just as a pile of tools and wood cannot build a house, neither can a pile of software and collected media content build actionable insights. The tools and materials are certainly important, but in order to become something useful, they must be wielded by practitioners with relevant knowledge and skills, and they must be wielded in accordance to a defined blueprint.

There has been an interesting convergence of discussion lately attempting to set realistic expectations around the generation of business insight from the products of media monitoring tools/listening platforms. Two of the best examples come from a Forrester report on the ‘Total Cost of Listening Platforms’, and a blog by Nathan Gilliatt, ‘On the (Non-) Automation of Insight’.

The key insight in each of these examples is that ‘actionable insights’ do not simply fall-out of media monitoring systems, they must be drawn-out by people with analytic mindsets who can frame questions, conduct methodological research, and bring their own professional experience and expertise to the process of creating insight. Unfortunately, much of the hype around “listening” and social media established expectations that are now shifting to disappointment.

We are all aware that the perceived importance of “listening” has grown phenomenally over the last couple of years, and our industry has seen communications and marketing teams racing to collect everything that is being said about them and their competitors. This created a boom for tools that specialized in advanced searching and collection of web-based media at as close to “real-time” as possible, and generated countless large databases of content. The primary concern of the last few years, exacerbated by marketing efforts in the “listening platform” industry, was simply to collect “what they are saying”. During the boom, the question of what should be done with all of this content once it was collected was of less importance than was simply having the content, and having it now.

What resulted from this focus on collection was at best the production of information that was relevant in a specific context in a specific moment, such as understanding of instant consumer response to a specific ad campaign, or real-time knowledge as to what people think of VMA awards. At worst, the listening tools that were installed have yielded a big pile of data, and a collective “okay, now what?”

This is where these recent conversations pick up the thread – at the point where people are left look at their system, waiting for intelligent insights to fall out. Nathan’s post reflects his observation of growing surprise “that software doesn’t do all the work in social media analysis”, and makes a straightforward case that this shouldn’t be a surprise, after all, as Nathan notes, “if you want to make spreadsheets, you buy Excel. If you want financial projections, you roll up your sleeves or hire a financial analyst.” The Forrester report helps establish the full cost that marketing and communications teams should expect to accrue around their “listening” efforts, noting that one of the most significant costs is the allocation of time and resources to achieving listening goals.

Returning to the pile of tools and wood – it should be clear that someone with carpentry skills will be needed to turn this into a house. Why would we expect any different from a pile of software and data? Tools and raw material in the hands of a novice will yield average results at best. In the hands of an expert they will yield lasting architecture.

evolve24 has been tracking the health care debate to see how it is affecting the reputation of various stakeholders. The project is generating lots of interesting numbers, but the first thing that jumps out of the data is the undeniable impact of the issue on the reputation of everyone involved. We’re following all the key players, from the Executive Branch and Congress to the most invested industry stakeholders and interest groups, and it’s clear that simply being associated with the issue comes with an unnerving amount of reputational risk.

Of course, this isn’t a shocking discovery. There’s a lot on the line, and people are watching. And we know health care is a controversial issue. It’s laced with uncertainty and complicated by the motives of deeply entrenched interests who don’t much care for each other – we would expect the issue to affect reputation. But, even considering these factors, the degree and volatility of reputational risk associated with the issue came as a bit of a surprise, and got me thinking about the unique challenges of managing reputation when involved in high-profile political debates.

Lobbying campaigns often become key drivers of corporate reputation in these situations (think Big Oil). Especially in the age of infotainment, lobbying attracts a high volume of media attention and tends to work its way into conversations about partisan politics and political corruption, which can generate dangerous levels of distrust and skepticism among stakeholders. Lobbying can also spark CSR concerns when sensitive environmental or social issues are involved – sometimes creating entirely new image problems, sometimes undoing the progress of past campaigns. In the worst case scenario, lobbying efforts become the public face of a corporation or industry due to concentrated political strategies, as we’ve recently seen with health insurance companies (remember when healthcare reform became health insurance reform?).

Regardless of how they’re created, most reputation problems associated with lobbying are usually ignored, written off as the “cost of doing business”. This is the wrong approach. Because lobbying campaigns operate at the intersection of business and government, they simply require different reputation management strategies than those employed in the more traditional practices of PR or marketing. In addition to the reasons listed above, these situations deserve special attention because lobbying the federal government can broaden stakeholder networks to include all taxpayers (i.e. pretty much everyone). Understandably, this expansion dramatically increases exposure and, by association, reputational risk. These risks include increased legislative and regulatory threats (it’s easier for politicians to impose costly regulations on groups viewed unfavorably by voters) and the infliction of hard-to-repair reputation damage (when lobbying efforts are used as the basis for opponents’ political attacks).

The good news is that these risks can be neutralized – but not without a clear understanding of the relationship between lobbying and reputation. This begins with the recognition that, critical as lobbying efforts may be, their benefits can be counteracted by the reputation issues they create.

Effective reputation management strategies must integrate lobbying efforts, consider the risks discussed above, and communicate good-faith reasons for participation in the political process. Transparency and honesty are key here: of course lobbying is primarily intended to help business, but that certainly doesn’t imply any wrongdoing. Lobbying is just one small part of corporate activity, so consider leveraging positive reputation from other areas against political attacks: being accused of corrupting the democratic process or using influence for corporate benefit that runs contrary to the public interest? No need to engage in mud-slinging, but why not respond with evidence of how corporate behavior generates benefits that extend far beyond executive offices? When you think about it, it’s easy to see how these things can be tied together. You just have to be willing to confront the “L word”.

Of course, this all hangs on the assumption that behavior can be justified; that lobbying efforts can withstand the scrutiny they so often encounter. When they cannot, there’s not much we can offer in the way of advice. But when this holds true, corporations should stop treating lobbying as a necessary evil too toxic to be discussed in the public forum – such denial only amplifies the problem, and it really doesn’t have to be that way.

So you are measuring the impact of your communications campaigns, and the next logical thing to do is sit down and use the results to design your campaigns’ next steps. But wait, you say, as you take your first look at the results. Can this be true?

Your flagship campaign has not performed for your brand as you would have hoped; consumer sentiment wasn’t as positive as expected, and the reputational impact to your brand was flat. In fact, programs that required less time and money performed better than your primary campaign.

Digging deeper into the results, you find that your program received the amount of coverage expected, but the public didn’t receive or respond well to the intended message. Negative coverage consisted of bloggers lambasting your brand and your product. What had been designed as an offering to make lives easier, and promoted as such, was interpreted by this audience as “impractical” and “insincere”. As you look even deeper into the negative content, you find that people are saying things about the offering that simply aren’t true!

This happens frequently in the exchange of information between companies and the media, both social and traditional. The reality is that media messages may be translated, truncated, or interpreted in a way that we wouldn’t necessarily expect. Sometimes the truth gets so twisted that the responses to our initial communications are off-base and downright false.

The reality is that it doesn’t matter if the claims made against your offering are true or not, and a simple presentation of more facts to correct misunderstandings is not always enough. Why? Because perception is reality. Once an emotionally-charged perception is formed, whether it is through a news article, a blog comment, word-of-mouth, or direct experience, that is how your potential customers will feel about your offering, your brand, and your company until they are helped not just to think differently, but to feel differently. And emotionally-charged perceptions are based on more than your offerings; they are usually based on your offering as filtered through another concern, such as your bonuses compared to their paychecks (think banks), your production methods (think Kathy Lee), your impact on the environment, and a host of other issues.

The good news is that as communications professionals you have the capability to measure and investigate not just the volume of what you said to your audience, but the details of how your audience responded. Now you’re equipped with quantitative results that go beyond ad value equivalency and share of voice. They include more complex metrics that allow you to better understand your target audiences – what are their underlying concerns? How can your media messages help allay those concerns? These metrics can be used to help design your program as well as measure its success after the launch. Armed with quantitative results, you can now make the necessary adjustments to return your potential customers’ perceptions back to center.

With the focus on social media, we all spend a great deal of time focused on how external stakeholders can take control of a company’s message, and impact their reputation.

Today, National Public Radio ran the first of a three part story (here) that has the potential to become a reputation issue for several airlines, as well as the FAA. The report is about issues arising from several airlines’ decisions send their airplane repairs abroad in order to cut costs. The key to the most compelling issues raised in the story? The involvement of a primary but often overlooked stakeholder group: employees.

A company’s reputation amongst its own employees is an area of reputation to which firms should pay explicit attention. A sense of shared community is inherent, but the effort to hide issues from this stakeholder group is the most difficult, while the opportunity for direct and immediate communication is strongest. In a reputation crisis, a positive perspective on the firm from an average employee will have stronger impact than a press briefing from a manager, while an otherwise strong external reputation can be eroded quickly by employees who hold the company’s practices in low esteem.

Back to today’s example: In the broadcast version of the story, the reporter indicates that he went to El Salvador to look into one of the companies performing the outsourced airline maintenance. He explains that he sought to speak with management of the firms, but they would not speak with him.

A business refusing to address press is usually not a smart option. In this case, it led the reporter to forget about management’s perspective and instead to track down some employees and ask them about the U.S. airlines they are working with. They were more than happy to oblige, and the result was not great for the firm. In today’s story they discussed having put a crucial part of a door in backwards so that it broke during flight, and tomorrow we are promised that mechanics at the firm will tell us about “troubling practices on the shop floor”.

It is not clear why the maintenance company’s executives would not talk to the reporter, after all, they are simply performing a legal business under FAA regulations, aren’t they? Well, whether or not they are covering up some bad behavior, their mistake was to assume that they could control the message about their company, and their mistake should be a lesson to all companies.

As a very smart client of ours likes to say, the key to a good reputation is to “behave well, and communicate what matters”. If you are a company that is not behaving well in the eyes of some stakeholder group, then your communications will ring false. If you are behaving well, and you communicate what matters to your stakeholders, you will have happy stakeholders, and no cause for concern.

Companies may erect policies to try and control the communications from their employee stakeholder group, but for most companies, this is neither iron clad, nor sustainable, especially if this group has something to say about the company’s behavior. Reputation management involving external stakeholders like customers, regulators and advocates cannot resort to rules and policies around what can and can’t be said, and no company should assume that reputation management for internal stakeholders be any exception. In this case, the airline maintenance company needs to jump on the clueplane, ASAP.