Measuring What Matters With Katie Paine

In the first two chapters of her book, '"Measure What Matters," Katie Paine wastes no time in helping her readers understand what to measure and why when it comes to social media. I like the way she set up the first chapter in her book. Paine made beginning to learn about measurement less painful than I had imagined (I couldn't not make this pun). She starts off the book by explaining why social media matters so much in today's world. She points out how nowadays, "customers talk to and trust each other more than they do companies. They choose how they spend their time and money based on recommendations from people with similar tastes and profiles. They trust, and therefore prefer to do business with, companies that are open, honest, and authentic" (5). This little section reminded me of the principles we learned about at the beginning of my introduction to public relations course. Dr. Fleck really drilled in the concepts of openness, honestly, transparency and authenticity. The small section also made me think about social media influencers and how this is now something businesses have to take into consideration. At Ohio Northern University's social media workshop I was able to listen to Colleen O' Morrow from Mediasource speak about social media influencers and how to use them to promote your brand. The world of social media marketing and measurement is constantly changing, and it is hard to keep every tactic and strategy updated in these marketing books. This being said, I still took a lot from the first two chapters.

Paine spent the remainder of the first chapter advocating for why we should measure at all, and dispelling myths of measurement. Paine says we should measure because data-driven decision making saves time and money. Measuring also helps allocate budget and staff because it allows you to realize what is or isn't working for your organization, and you can adjust the budget and staff accordingly. Furthermore, measuring helps gain a better understanding of the competition by providing insight into your competitive strengths and weaknesses. Measurement also gets everyone to agree on a desired outcome, because you have to know what you want to measure before you measure anything at all (similar to SMART goals in public relations). Finally, measurement gives you reasons to say "no." This is great because it allows you to turn down ideas that will not work within your measurements, and can help you realize what needs to be done.

After dispelling myths like measurement being a punishment, measurement being strictly quantitative and measurement being expensive, Paine dives into getting started with measuring in Chapter 2. Paine emphasized how "accurate data is the key to both the success of your measurement and to the decisions you base on it," at the beginning of the chapter (19). She then set up 10 questions to ask yourself to essentially make sure you are setting SMART goals. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed. With these SMART goals we have to be sure to define our objectives, know the target audience, know what is important to our target audience and know the company's key message. Paine instilled this knowledge to the reader through a set of questions to ask yourself instead of using a nice acronym, but whatever works for you is great. Paine also provided a six step process for choosing and reaching consensus on measurable objectives. Everything Paine lays out in this book is designed to be easy to read and understand, which is something I really liked about it. I am so glad that we are now on our last book for the class, and I hope the next 12 chapters are set up in similar ways.