If there’s one thing that PR people like, it’s seeing where they come on a performance table. I guess we do it so much for other companies, we get a little bit excited when people rank us. Personally, I’m not generally a fan of these things, unless they’re based on firm facts that are difficult to manipulate (like turnover stats or profitability).
So when I was sent a press release from Sociability about the top global PR agencies’ social media performance, I tried not to jump to conclusions before I saw it. After all, the old adage, ‘you can’t manage, what you don’t measure’ is true enough.
The Global PR Network Social Scorecard ranks agencies based on their “social media effectiveness, power and engagement”. And I have to say, the microsite is well executed, with the ability to drill down and compare agencies head to head.
Sociability - Edelman vs Euro RSCG. Which has the best social media performance?
That said, I’m not entirely in agreement with the methodology as assumes that the best measure of being a ‘social’ agency is to have a website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube presence. Agencies might not want to have a Facebook presence (it’s not often that useful in a B2B context) and other networks are available (Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc.). It’s also biased towards the bigger agencies, but that’s symptomatic of it being a global survey and based on the Holmes Report rankings.
I did ask Niall Cook from Sociability about these things on my G+ page and he said that they are hoping to add Google+ in due course, while LinkedIn “doesn’t have enough useful data to contribute effectively to all the different areas that our model looks at”, which is an insight in itself.
Still, it’s worth a look, so check out http://pr.sociagility.com to see where your agency appears.
Notes on Sociability’s analysis:
Sociagility’s PRINT™ methodology – the same as is currently being used to track the performance of Olympic sponsors on the London 2012 Social Scoreboard – has been applied to the leading PR networks in the Holmes Report Global PR Agency Rankings 2012. This proprietary system underpins the firm’s range of social media planning and measurement services, which can be licensed by agencies to inform and demonstrate the value of social media campaigns for clients.
Thanks Phil. Really respect your insight and feedback.
One thing is for sure: there’s a high degree of correlation between how a brand fares on rankings like this and how supportive they are of the methodology used to rank them!
Niall
I won’t disagree with that Niall! Cheers for the comment and engagement.
Hi Phil,
The rankings of companies based on social media influence is an interesting approach. Do you think it would be useful to analyze the social media activity of companies in general (i.e. like a Klout for companies)? Not necessarily for ranking purposes, but for deeper analytics, like finding the most active employees, or finding ways to improve the activity of a company’s social media accounts (both corporate, and employees).
(Disclosure: I am working on a tool that tries to do that).
Thanks,
Horatiu
Hi Horatiu
Thanks for your comments and questions. To answer your questions, yes, it would be useful for companies to analyze their social media activities – in fact, most of my clients want to do just that. We advocate social media monitoring tools, but it becomes extremely time-consuming and therefore expensive to do competitor monitoring, especially for large consumer brands. You can always use tools like Klout, Peer Index and Kred for company profiles, but that doesn’t measure the conversation about those companies, only the effect of their profiles.
Would be useful to hearing about your tool when it’s ready…
Thanks
Phil
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your insight. I agree with you that although monitoring for individual accounts is getting better and better with tools like Klout, PeerIndex, Kred, monitoring at the company level is esentially broken.
I sent you an e-mail with details regarding SociaLook (it’s currently in beta).
Best Regards,
Horatiu
There’s a high degree of correlation between how a brand fares on rankings like this and how supportive they are of the methodology used to rank them.
I agree with you that although monitoring for individual accounts is getting better and better with tools like Klout, PeerIndex, Kred, monitoring at the company level is esentially broken.