Measuring and Monitoring Impact

Jay Krall's article in PRSA Tactics gives you three ways to look at on-line metrics: reach, engagement or authority. For example, retweets show both reach (quantifiable number of people who read and thought it was important enough to share) and engagement (the act of retweeting).  

He talks about the need to rethink page views and consider inbounds links from quality sources - the Google algorithm factor.  Facebook Likes? They are reach and engagement, but deceptive.

Writing on social media's impact on Middle Eastern revolutions, Ed Schipul and Daniel Keeney validate this point. Speaking of the expansion of social technologies, if one person has 500 Facebook friends and each of them have 500 friends, within two degrees of separation you have a potential of 250,000. Go one more degree: 125 million. As they aptly said:

"So is CNN still the "Worldwide Leader in News" that it claims to be?"

Not measuring and monitoring asks for any organization or person to become the next Hosni Mubarak, or Jim Tressel. Add the speed of stepping through those degrees of multiplication and it is easy to understand that organizations must be nimble and quick to react. By listening, you get the early warning.

They deliver a second big hitter:

"Too often, calls on communicators to deliver information are aimed at making our organizations look better, which has the effect of glossing over the problems: 'Don't look over there - look over here'."