IAB sets social media guidelines – Chris Kovac quotes

I was quoted in the latest issue of BtoB Magazine on social media ad metrics and best practices.  You can find the article below.

IAB sets social media guidelines
Recommendations seen as essential to making medium “safe and scalable’

http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090608/FREE/306019998/1109/FREE

Article Snippet

Media buyers also said the guidelines will help them in their efforts to develop and measure social media campaigns for clients.“There is a lot of confusion in the marketplace right now because people aren’t speaking the same language,” said Chris Kovac, social media supervisor at Nicholson Kovac, a b-to-b marketing communications agency based in Kansas City, Mo. “Establishing a common language has to be the first step,” he said.

“Once we’re on the same page, then we can define subgroups of advertising. Is it an interactive banner ad, is it an engagement ad, etc.”

One of the most important things to measure in social media is engagement with users, Kovac said. “We want to measure the behavior—not just who’s clicking on what,” he said. “Then we can understand who are the influencers. For example, we look at how many people are commenting on our blogs and forwarding them to friends.”

Kovac said that while measuring social media is important, it is also hard to standardize metrics, particularly for something like influence.