Measure What Matters Chapters 3 & 4

Chapter 3 from Measure What Matters by Katie Delahaye Paine focuses on seven steps to get the perfect measurement.

Those steps are:

1. Define your goals and objectives: why are you launching this plan or pursuing this strategy? What is the “R” in the ROI that you are seeking to measure. In other words, what do you want to get out of this.
2. Define your environment, your audiences, and your role in influencing them. You need to know what is going on around you so you know what it is you are measuring.
3. Define your investment: what will it cost? What is the “I” in ROI? There are a lot of costs that go into choosing your program including money, time, even the opportunity to choose a different program.
4. Determine your benchmarks. You must have a base to measure from. Think of comparing yourself to your competitors or a big player in your industry.
5. Define your key performance indicators: what are the metrics you will report with? Some can be determined with output measure.
6. Select the right measurement tool and vendors and collect data. You must pick the tool that will be most beneficial in answering your questions correctly.  
7. Turn data into action: analyze data, draw actionable conclusions, and make recommendations. The data you collect is useless unless you turn it into actions. Now that you have your answers change your work.

Some form of these steps is found in every form of measurement. You are also able to adapt them to fit the measurement program you are trying to do.

Chapter 4 focuses on choosing the right measurement tool. There are many choices in measurement technology and to get the right program you should have the right answers. What are your trying to measure? Measuring communication is very different than measuring preference. Then you need to know if you want your data to be analyzed automatically or manually. Measurement technology can determine: they type of media, how visible it is, the tone in which it is written, what key message is communicated, sources mentioned, and the type of conversation.

There are also many ways that data can be gathered and each way has different positive and negative aspects. Using an online survey is fast and inexpensive but is limited in reach to mostly English language speakers and those with emails. Using paper surveys takes a long time but it has better sampling. Lastly using phone surveys is very quick but also very expensive. Each type of measurement requires different programs and will result in different data. Be sure to choose the right type of measurement for your company.