Engage in PR

Blogging is such an interesting exercise for me. Much of the time I’m writing away on what interests me the most and seeing that a lot of people are reading what I’m dishing out, some are commenting, some spread the word on Twitter and I’m happy. Every once in a while however you have interaction through the blog that knocks you on your feet, either in a good way or an embarrassing way. The current knockdown is the latter.

This week’s theme has been focused around the critical components of social media: transparency, creativity, interactivity and measurement. I had some great replies to my Utterz concerning the former and one extremely important comment about the latter:

KD Paine Says:

You’re not measuring engagement — what sorts of relationships are you developing, are they enjoying the interaction? do they find it useful? . Numbers are fine, but they don’t tell you the “why”. At some point you need to ask your audience what they think of you.

Katie is right on, of course. I’ve met Katie a few times over the past years, hearing her on panels or giving presentations concerning measurement has certainly honed my thoughts on the subject. She is one of the foremost authorities on measurement, so I’m very excited that she commented. Engagement should have been on my list, not simply because it allows you to get an immediate sense of your impact, but d’uh, it’s the NAME OF MY BLOG! Hence my embarrassment and I thank Katie for reminding me what I was missing.

How does one measure engagement? Certainly some of the ways are through comments (today being a great example) and that is something we addressed in the measurement section, however that is the tippy top of the iceberg. I think Katie sums it up best: “At some point you need to ask your audience what they think of you.”.

The easy way out, of course, would be to do this:

“OK folks, so what do you think of me and my blog?”

That simply is not enough, so here is my plan. On a regular basis (every three months perhaps?) I will:

1) Post an open question for you all to tell me what you think of the blog, asking 1-2 specific questions to help you along the way.

2) Post the same question to my Twitter and Facebook network.

3) Sit down internally with a group of my colleagues, almost a focus group, and ask them what they think of the blog.

4) Ask folks at the next Social Media Breakfast or other such gathering of peers how I can improve the blog, what they like, what they don’t like, etc.

5) Directly ask many of the bloggers that I respect a great deal.

How else do you measure engagement?

Thanks!
/kff

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 5:26 am and is filed under PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.