Final Critique of Katie Paine's "Measure What Matters"
Well this week we finished up reading Katie Paine's book, "Measure What Matters." Through reading the book, we gained insights on why it is important to measure and how to get started with measuring by asking ourselves a lovely set of ten questions to help us with the research step of RPIE (research, planning, implementation, evaluation). I noticed how a lot of what Paine wrote about connected to public relations work in a broader sense than just checking social media.
Starting in Chapter 3, we started learning about how to measure. Paine broke down seven simple steps to "the perfect measurement program," and even included an extra chapter to make sure we understood how to choose the right tool for measurement.
Once we got into Chapter 5, the book more or less started getting slightly redundant. Paine took the time to relate the seven steps of measurement (in one version or another) to so many different situations like measuring public relations in a social media world, the impacts an event/sponsorship has on an organization, the impact of influencers, relationships with local community, what employees think about their organization, crisis management and relationships with salespeople/channel partners/franchises. She also breaks down measurement for nonprofits and higher education. Reading these chapters, she provided specific information on each of these different sectors, but then spent a large amount of time in the chapters going over some reincarnation of the same seven steps we learned in Chapter 3. I understand she was probably just doing this to make sure her audience understood how the basic seven steps could be applied to almost any situations, much like the scientific method comparison I made in an earlier post. However, I got tired of reading the same basic steps of defining objectives, determining how you will measure success, finding benchmarks, selecting a measurement tool, defining key performance indicators that you will use to report with, choosing a measurement tool and finally analyzing the results and using them to improve.
If you can remember these seven steps then you know how to measure. As Paine showed us in her book, they can be applied to any industry/situation. While it may have been torture for me to read the seven steps over and over again, it did prove the point which Paine was trying to get across.
Starting in Chapter 3, we started learning about how to measure. Paine broke down seven simple steps to "the perfect measurement program," and even included an extra chapter to make sure we understood how to choose the right tool for measurement.
Once we got into Chapter 5, the book more or less started getting slightly redundant. Paine took the time to relate the seven steps of measurement (in one version or another) to so many different situations like measuring public relations in a social media world, the impacts an event/sponsorship has on an organization, the impact of influencers, relationships with local community, what employees think about their organization, crisis management and relationships with salespeople/channel partners/franchises. She also breaks down measurement for nonprofits and higher education. Reading these chapters, she provided specific information on each of these different sectors, but then spent a large amount of time in the chapters going over some reincarnation of the same seven steps we learned in Chapter 3. I understand she was probably just doing this to make sure her audience understood how the basic seven steps could be applied to almost any situations, much like the scientific method comparison I made in an earlier post. However, I got tired of reading the same basic steps of defining objectives, determining how you will measure success, finding benchmarks, selecting a measurement tool, defining key performance indicators that you will use to report with, choosing a measurement tool and finally analyzing the results and using them to improve.
If you can remember these seven steps then you know how to measure. As Paine showed us in her book, they can be applied to any industry/situation. While it may have been torture for me to read the seven steps over and over again, it did prove the point which Paine was trying to get across.
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