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.