Photo credit: Yoel Ben-Avraham
The Media Rating Council (MRC), an industry media rating organization, has released its Social Media Measurement Guidelines for public review and comment. The public comment period runs through Oct. 15.
The organization developed the guidelines in an attempt provide common practices for measuring social media activity. According to MRC, they also are intended to:
- Establish and document good practices of measurement,
- Improve practices and disclosures used by practitioners,
- Educate users of social media data from all segments of the digital media industry,
- Establish recommended audit processes and benchmarks that allow third parties to validate practices and disclosures of social media measurement organizations.
Vendors seeking accreditation for any social media measurement processes would be assessed against the guidelines.
“This step by the MRC is a necessary step to assure that social media monitoring services are assessed consistently,” said Katie Paine, a PR measurement expert and CEO of Paine Publishing LLC.
Establishes Common Practices
The MRC says the guidelines are designed to “establish a detailed set of methods and common practices for entities that measure social media activity.”
The Social Media Measurement Guidelines establish definitions and baseline metrics for original content authorship, subsequent engagement and resultant reach. They provide guidance for social media coverage and projection, measurement within applications and outside them, measurement of User Generated Content (UGC), collection and use of aggregated social media platform data, filtration, reporting and audit guidelines.
“Social media is a growing, viable and powerful medium for advertising and brand message transfer, making it increasingly important for brands to be able to measure the impact of their social media investments,” said David Gunzerath, SVP and associate director at MRC, in a press release. “The MRC is committed to continuing to promulgate standards and guidelines for media measurement, for the benefit of all parties in the media industry, which is why we have worked with some of the industry’s most knowledgeable experts to create these social media measurement guidelines.”
In addition to the MRC, the guidelines principal co-sponsors include the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) Social Media Committee, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). Media advertising buyers and sellers, measurement vendors, auditing organizations, and others also participated in their development.
The media industry established the MRC in the 1960s to self-regulate rating services and improve the quality of audience measurement.
For questions or comments about the guidelines, contact Ron Pinelli Jr., MRC vice president of digital research and standards, at rpinelli@mediaratingcouncil.org, or visit the MRC website.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
