Finally, guidance on social media ratings

Social media tends to be a good way to gauge the reach and viral impact of an advertising campaign. Now social has joined other media with an official set of guidelines from the Media Rating Council.

In conjunction with the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, the MRC has released its social media measurement guidelines, an in-depth 40-page document meant to outline common practices.

The guidelines were set up through a project involving those organizations as well as a group of social media vendors, publishers, measurement organizations, ad servers and ad networks, and reviewed by buyer-side trade organizations.

The guidelines cover methods used for measuring a number of types of social activity, including tracking and counting users accessing content within social media; interaction and/or engagement with social media content; and consumer “listening” and sentiment.

“In order for a user-action to be considered part of social media audience activity it should be trackable/measurable (publicly or privately), fall within the campaign time period (for campaign level or advertising counting) or defined measurement period and include all valid traffic,” the expansive document reads.

“Examples of trackable/measurable user-action may include interaction (clicks, shares, retweets, likes, favorites, etc.) with social media content, application downloads or social shares from a brand website to social media platforms.”

Also included are guidelines for measuring user-generated content and video. The MRC says third-party independent auditing is encouraged for all social media measurements used in the buying and selling process.

To take a look at the complete document from the MRC, click here.

Tags: measurement, Media Rating Council, social media, social media measurement, social media ratings