PRINT™ Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it called PRINT™?
PRINT™ represents the social media footprint or identity of the brands and organisations that are assessed. The PRINT™ acronym reflects the attributes that Sociagility considers to be the most significant contributors to achieving competitive advantage through social media.
What is the PRINT™ Index?
The PRINT™ Index is a number that shows the overall social media profile and performance for a brand, organisation or other entity, relative to a defined set of comparison brands and benchmarks. Statistical analysis shows that the PRINT™ Index is significantly correlated with brand value, growth and reputation and, as such, it provides a Key Performance Indicator for social media performance.
How is the PRINT™ Index calculated?
The PRINT™ Index for a given brand is calculated based on performance across multiple social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) and in the context of the brand’s own formal web presence. For each channel, five attributes are analysed: popularity; receptiveness; interaction; network reach; and trust. By combining the scores for each channel and attribute, and normalising these against the comparison set, a relative performance metrics – the PRINT™ Index – is calculated.
How does PRINT™ differ from other influence scores like Klout, PeerIndex and Kred?
Whilst the PRINT™ methodology and free influence metrics like Klout,PeerIndex and Kred all produce a series of scores, that’s about where the similarities end. Firstly, PRINT™ measures more than influence. Secondly, PRINT™ is comparative across a group of peer brands that you define, not the entire universe. Thirdly, PRINT™ is focused on showing brands where they can achieve competitive advantage – the PRINT™ Index is just the top-level summary of performance. Finally, and most importantly, the PRINT™ Index has been proven to correlate significantly with brand value and growth. During the course of our research, we also looked at correlations between this and Klout and PeerIndex scores, and found no such correlation.
How have the five attributes been selected?
Popularity, receptiveness, interaction, network reach and trust are the attributes that Sociagility considers to be the most significant contributors to achieving competitive advantage through social media. This is supported by our research linking the PRINT™ methodology to brand value, growth and reputation.
What are the exact metrics that contribute to the channel/attribute scores?
Each channel and attribute combination is made up of a selection of indicative metrics, using publicly available data. Some of these are raw measures (e.g. friends, followers, fans, subscribers, etc.) but others are ratios that we have specifically chosen and calculated in order to ensure we are comparing like with like (e.g. engagement per thousand followers, subscriptions per day, etc.).
Why isn’t Google+ included?
Google+ is still very much in its infancy when it comes to use by brands (brand pages were only made possible at the beginning of November). However, as brand use of Google+ increases, we anticipate adding it to the PRINT™ methodology as another source of social media performance data.
Why isn’t LinkedIn included?
Until very recently, brands had no capability to control company pages on LinkedIn, and thus the activity that took place there did not reflect the organisation’s own performance. For now at least, there is very little brand-community engagement taking place on LinkedIn so it would be difficult to incorporate any meaningful data into the PRINT™ methodology.
How are the scores weighted?
We have applied no weighting to the metrics that contribute to the PRINT™ Index.
How much does it cost?
A base-level PRINT™ Comparative Analysis, which includes a benchmarking report plus detailed channel and attribute investigation, costs just £950 (US $1,500 at current rates). After this initial analysis, follow-up reports can be produced on a monthly, quarterly, six-monthly or yearly schedule for significantly less. Bespoke versions can be created for organisations with more detailed requirements (e.g. multiple brand/country profiles to analyse). Full pricing information is available here. We also offer special pricing for agencies.
Do you offer special pricing for agencies?
Yes we do. If you’re a digital, PR, advertising or other marketing agency, we’d love to talk to you about how you and your clients can benefit from PRINT™.
How significant is a ‘significant correlation’?
In layman’s terms, we found there was at least a 90 per cent probability that the relationship between PRINT™ Index scores and brand value, growth and reputation was real (i.e. not a result of pure chance). In statistician’s terms, we found that the following correlations were significant to at least the 0.1 level of confidence:
- Brand value and PRINT™ Index scores
(Test 1: r (45) = .39, p < .01; Test 2: r (25) = .5, p < .02) - Brand growth and PRINT™ Index scores
(Test 1: r (34) = .37, p < .05; Test 2: r (25) = .33, p < .1) - Brand reputation and PRINT™ Index ranking
(Test 1: r (34) = .33, p < .1; Test 2: r (25) = .4, p < .05)
Some customers use some channels more than others – how is that accounted for?
The PRINT™ methodology can be weighted by channel based on relative usage/importance of that channel to a specific audience or audiences, putting social performance in the context of target customer segments. This allows reports or tracking to be tailored closely to brand strategy. Brands may supply their own research, or we can obtain data for specific demographics on request.
What kind of ‘actionable insights’ can I expect to receive?
A PRINT™ Comparative Analysis can provide a number of useful and practical indicators which can be used in marketing strategy and programming. They include: a single comparative, score; a Key Performance Indicator for social media marketing; lead and lag indicators to show areas that require defending or improving; and the nature of competitor or benchmark brands’ social media performance – by attribute and by channel – and their strong and weak points.
What does the product look like?
A PRINT™ Comparative Analysis consists of a scorecard and up to 25 insight charts. Examples are provided in the sidebar on the right of this page.
How is the product delivered?
The PRINT™ Comparative Analysis requires no demos, meetings or conference calls (unless you really want one). We send a simple briefing form to complete by email, ask any follow-up questions, and, unless it is a rush job, within a couple of weeks provide your scorecard and analysis back via email. If you choose to, you’ll then automatically receive a periodic update showing what’s changed across the set.
How does this compare to free metrics like Klout and PeerIndex?
There are lots of really useful online tools that offer an indication of individual performance on specific social networks. Klout and PeerIndex are probably two of the best known. The PRINT™ Index is much more comprehensive and has been designed from the ground up for measuring the social media profile and performance of a brand or organisation. By contrast, in our research we also compared the Klout, PeerIndex and Dachis Social Business Index scores for the top global brands with brand value, growth and reputation and found no statistically significant correlation.
Where do all the metrics come from?
All the individual metrics that contribute towards the PRINT™ Index score are publicly accessible (they have to be in order to look at competitors), but we calculate our own specific ratios from these to ensure they are relevant to each attribute and channel. The benefit of this is that we don’t need authorization for our software to access private social network account data or website analytics.
Couldn’t I just work this all out myself?
You probably could, but we’d be willing to guess that it would take a long time to come up with a methodology, validate it and then build the software to gather and analyse it quickly and flexibly. It did for us!
Get started with PRINT™
Current Sociagility clients can contact us to learn more. If you’re new to Sociagility, click here to get started with PRINT™.
