Measure What Matters

Preface

“We talk about the quality of product and service. What about the quality of our relationships, and the quality of our communications, and the quality of our promises to each other?”

—Max De Pree

I am amazed at the continuing significance of the quotation above: What about the quality of our relationships? It is an essential and perennial question that lies at the heart of our social and business lives. Many of the examples of corporate relationships that I used in my book Measuring Public Relationships are included in this new book as well, and all of them ring just as true today as they did then. Now, just as then, measuring what matters means measuring relationships.

The difference is, of course, that everything in our world has changed. In just a few short years the social media phenomenon has radically shifted our political, social, and—especially—corporate landscape. Traditional media outlets are closing daily. Marketing is moving dollars out of traditional advertising and into social media strategies at a breakneck pace. And the illusion of control that corporate communications once thought it had over its messages and stakeholders has vanished forever in a sea of tweets, updates, and blog posts.

Success, timing, media, and PR have all been redefined by social media. Success can no longer be measured in terms of reach or frequency, since neither is particularly easy to determine in this new space. Success must now be defined in terms of outcomes: What do you want ...