Rebecca A. Denison is a “klutzy, bubbly youngin’ taking on social media and PR measurement.” (Hey, those are NOT my words to describe her!). Today’s post is by an up-and-comer in the public relations profession; a woman I’ve been fully impressed by since I first met her on Twitter. Rebecca blogs over at One True Sentence (link above), and you can see her measurement topics appearing just about everywhere in PR blogs and circles. She’s got some fabulous posts on her blog about measurement, and how perfect is it that she segues from the series on Influence last week. Thanks, Rebecca, for sharing your expertise here; I’m so jazzed!
REBECCA A. DENISON SAYS:
Recently, Jayme wrote a great post which included some thought-provoking questions to start measuring your personal social media success (be sure to read the comments, too – tons of wisdom there). She also mentioned Klout as one tool she has used recently to measure her influence online.
I will be one of the first to jump at the chance to tell you why you should never rely on just one tool (especially an automated one) to measure influence. Influence is too contextual and situational. But that is certainly not my point today.
Personal success, much like influence, is entirely contextual and situational. This is never truer as when people, brands and companies search for the best ways to use social media. And so like influence, you just can’t automate the measure of personal success. Not with a single metric.
I joined Twitter in July 2009 when I was still a recent college graduate and searching for my place in this thing they call the workforce. Being a complete nerd, I literally wrote out the goals I had and how I would measure them. At the end of the day, my goal was to find a job, a company, a role that I fit into perfectly. But I was also looking to make a name for myself and share my passion with other nerds like me. I measured things like job offers and interviews, but also how many people referenced me as a thought-leader.
Everyone will have different goals for their own success in social media, but there will always be direct and indirect methods to show how far you’ve come. And it all starts with your goals. So let’s start there.
Standardize measurement of your personal success
1. Write your goals with pen. Goals don’t have to be nitty gritty. Think big picture. At the end of the day, if you were completely happy with your success, what would that mean? Would you have thousands of followers on Twitter? Would you be running a business through social media? Dream!
2. Define your terms. So let’s say you said you want to be a thought-leader. What does that mean exactly? Does that mean you’re well known? Does it mean your blog posts get read a lot? Maybe you are retweeted a bunch? This is where you get nitty gritty to really understand all the pieces that make up your goals. Think about setting time limits here, too. Do you want to be a thought-leader next week or next year? Give yourself time or even set smaller goals through the next year.
3. Find direct measures. Go through all of the pieces you defined above, and write down all the direct measures you know of. If you want to be retweeted more by next month, that’s an easy way to track, right? Using a tool like TweetDeck, HootSuite or CoTweet, you can easily find out how many times others share your thoughts. If you think there is a direct measure but don’t know what it is, do a bit of digging or ask around (even ask me). Don’t focus on finding an answer for everything, though!
4. Brainstorm indirect measures. For those terms that you just can’t find an easy way to measure, this is where you have to get creative. Something important to me was to be a source of expertise in measurement. I used the number of times someone recommended me as a person who might know the answer to track this. Not direct, but it’s close! If you’re a small business owner and want to increase foot traffic but can’t track your customers every hour of every day, try tracking foot traffic during lunch on Thursdays. If you see an increase, you can guess that overall traffic is increasing, and you can probably think up other ways to measure it more accurately, too.
5. Set yourself up to succeed. Once you have an idea of how you will be measuring, set yourself up to measure properly. If you want something to increase or decrease, make sure you measure a benchmark for comparison later. If you will need to use a tool to help you, sign up now and start tracking even if you won’t need the data yet. Trust me when I say measuring retroactively is much trickier.
How do you measure your own personal success? Even if you don’t take it too seriously, how do you measure progress?
Rebecca, I really like your list:
Write your goals
Define your terms
Find direct measures
Brainstorm indirect measures
Set yourself up to succeed
I would add one more to the list: Schedule updates and do them when scheduled.
I like to update things around the first of the year. Everyone talks about “new years resolutions” then, so for me it is great timing to take stock of things, figure out which goals I reached, which ones I failed at, and why… Sometimes when I am writing the goals down, I even post them. (https://www.johnakerson.com/blog/2010/01/my-6-targets-in-2010/ )
I try to think about the goals half way through the year – on June 26th, to be specific.
Still – Great work!
Great addition!! You should always check in on goals. Never set it and forget it. Checking up allows you to adjust and adapt, and sometimes you can even set more goals if you’ve completed some!
I am going to make an admission here — I’m probably the most horrifying PR person b/c I have personal goals floating around in my head. I’m nowhere near as goal oriented as Michelle Quillin, my bud at New England Multimedia, and I have no record of goal setting (like a journal or some such).
I am thinking that we who are more right brain and free spirited (that’s the correct side, right?) are not natural at this. How can someone be more goal oriented; isn’t it ingrained in genetics? That’s my excuse!
That’s a good question. I think it’s very much genetic. I’m the mind of person who makes a to do list nearly every single day, and I feel like a day is wasted if I can’t cross off at least one thing.
The only recommendation I’d have is to set up a calendar alert to remind yourself to evaluate or set goals. I have a friend who even puts 30 minutes in her schedule every now and then to do this.
That makes me feel better…I have always kept schedules in my head, although I LOVE the concept of daytimers. I’d always buy the dang thing and there it sat unused. (Then, I became a mom and my memory changed.) To do list every day????!!!! Oh, dear Mother Earth.
Jayme, do you know how many Day Planners Scott has bought over the years that sat unused? You two are so alike! I’d roll my eyes whenever he brought home a new one, knowing he’d never use it. The intention was there, but he just doesn’t think like that.
After years of “keeping it all in his head,” as you do, he now uses Outlook religiously, and is trying to get our equally-free-spirited-and-right-brained daughter to do the same. She’s resistant.
I don’t have a to-do list everyday. I have a 3×5 card… with a list on it… of stuff that, when I wrote it the day before, I thought that I would like to accomplish that given day.
In the oceanic galaxy of stimuli that is my universe of swimming distractions, tasks, deadlines, responsibilities, interruptions, interests, and opportunities thrown my general direction each day, that little list makes a difference.
I don’t think of it as a formal ‘to-do’ list, because I don’t rank myself as a success or failure based on the percentage of completions. If I have a list of 7 things waiting for me in the morning, and get 5 done, from my perspective, that is likely to be at least 3 or 4 more than I would have gotten done without the list.
I like to think of it as a low-budget, simple, pre-digital productivity-enhancement tool. 🙂
Oy.
Rebecca, I’m with you. I have several to-do lists going, too. A large whiteboard next to my desk, with sections for various areas of my life (there are 6). A notebook in front of me for “gotta get these done today!” items. An ever-growing list of blog post ideas (not that they get written, but I have them). A small piece of paper for recording items as they come across my desk.
Honestly, I would sit in my pajamas all day and surf the internet mindlessly, being carried along by every distraction, if I didn’t use to-do lists. When I’m feeling especially unmanageable, I use a digital timer.
One of the last things I do every night is to make a list of things that I want to do “tomorrow.” When I get up, my list awaits. That has proven pretty powerful for me. ymmv
First of all Rebecca – thank you for your excellent post! The world needs more of us nerds.
Jayme, I think “organized” v. “not-organized” is a function of personality type. Do you know your MBTI? Quite possibly you’re a “P” like me – as opposed to the “J’s” who are very organized, always on time, etc. I’ve learned to fake it somewhat for business but in my natural state I look like a hurricane!