#SMMStandards: A Cross-Industry Effort to Simplify and Unify the Measurement of Social Media

These international standards [PDF] for public relations (PR) and social media measurement (SMM) may be of interest to the non-profit community. They emerge from an international, collaborative process involving communications research and measurement professionals that began in the autumn of 2011 (see below for details about the participants).

The areas of focus include:

1. Sentiment, Opinion & Advocacy
2. Content Sourcing & Methods
3. Reach & Impressions
4. Engagement & Conversation
5. Influence & Relevance
6. Impact & Value

For example, within the resource is a "Sources & Methods Transparency Table", which is designed to address challenges in understanding social media measurement reports from various agencies, research providers, and software vendors. The standardised table mirrors the nutrition tables used by many countries for comparison of calories, nutrition, and ingredients in food products. Specifically, the table captures information about social media content sources and methods to provide full transparency and easy comparison across analyses: What content and channels are included? How is the data collected? How deep is the analysis? Are multiple languages captured (and are they captured via native language queries)? How are key metrics calculated for reach, engagement, influence, and opinion/advocacy? How is sentiment coded? How is irrelevant content (bots, spam blogs, etc.) filtered? What proprietary methods were used in the analysis? What search strings were used?

The #SMMStandards website is a digital hub for posting, linking, sharing, and commenting on these social media measurement standards. It is the home of the #SMMStandards Coalition, established in fall 2011 as a unified standards development effort by the Institute for Public Relations (IPR), Council of PR Firms (CPRF), and the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC). It is also the home of the #SMMStandards Conclave, which extended that effort into a cross-industry collaboration including Coalition members as well as the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Chartered Institute of PR (CIPR), Federation Internationale des Bureaux d’Extraits de Presse (FIBEP), Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communications Management, Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), Digital Analytics Association (DAA), and Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). Several clients have since joined the collaboration, including Dell, Ford Motor Company, Procter & Gamble, SAS, Southwest Airlines, and Thomson Reuters.

The standards will be mapped out in a 4-stage process consistent with International Standards Organization (ISO) approaches: working group development –> discussion guide –> proposed interim standard –> approved industry standard, fuelled by open industry feedback and comment throughout the process. The process is designed to be: market-driven; voluntary/non-exclusionary; infused with broad industry input; supportive of fair competition; and compliant with anti-trust laws.

Editor's note: Click here to access a supplementary set of guidelines, "6 Ways For You To Use The New Measurement Standards: Here's Your Checklist", by Katie Delahaye Paine, The Measurement Standard, June 29 2013. (For example, one suggestion: "If you're an educator, rework the research syllabus to include a section on standards.") To follow the standards on Twitter: #amec2012 and #smmstandards