Views from the West – A blog about public relations & social media in the Rocky Mountains

Elizabeth Jumel, APR, senior counselor & social media manager

For all of us in public relations, we should have a high Klout score, right? (Don’t know what your Klout score is? Visit klout.com to enter your Twitter handle and see your score.) But, is a score really what matters when gauging the value of social media? Or, is it the raw numbers, like how many followers or fans you have, that matter most?

Many of Denver’s 2010 PR predictions mention the increasing importance of social media measurement, as do numerous articles, like this one written by Amber Naslund, director of community relations for Radian6. Amber suggests it’s not about counting, but more about what it is you actually want to accomplish with social media.  Doing things like setting measurable objectives and committing to a social media strategy that makes sense for your business (not just makes sense because it is social media) are a couple of suggestions. Sounds a lot like what traditional PR programs do to evaluate success.

In the end, we really have to answer why. Why are you using Twitter for your company? Why is a Facebook fan page important to your customers? Let’s have our social media measured for its strategic purpose (brains), more so than its stats (beauty).