Ryan MacMillan

Another beast we’re wrestling with at the moment is social media metrics - how to de-fluff some of the current ways in which people try to measure audience engagement and communication effectiveness in this area. It’s going to be a while before we have something meaningful to say, but in the meantime expect to see a few regular updates, requests for feedback and simple cries for help.

Leo and Dan are leading this project - but I’ve been endeavouring to keep up as best I can. And during my very shallow research (thanks Wikipedia…) on traditional forms of measurement for customer engagement, I happened upon some interesting thoughts on Kirkpatrick’s Levels. My thought is this: could we get somewhere meaningful by combining this thinking with the 1:9:90 thought regarding the differing behaviour of creators, contributors and consumers online?

To begin with, we would measure the extent to which people:

1. Arrive

2. Consumer

3. Understand

4. Apply

Then, at the final fourth level, we could make measurement a little more manageable by being a bit more granular and considering these types of behaviours:

a. Single responses

b. Succession of related responses

c. Basic conversation (one channel, one topic)

d. Advanced conversation (many channels, many topics)

e. Community participation (around a shared objective)

f. Creating/leading a community

Is this going somewhere interesting? Answers on postcards.