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I finally had a chance to listen to the 10th NMRcast (NMR - New Media Release) featuring Chris Heuer, Shel Holtz and Brian Solis. Good stuff. Among the topics discussed was "metrics." Ahh, metrics! --- the age-old bugbear of PR.

"Measurement" has taken a bit of a backseat in the PR 2.0 era. Companies have been more concerned with buzz, with conversation and community-building, than with Return on Investment. It's been a refreshing breather but no doubt we'll be grounded at some point when a CMO or CEO asks, "How can you prove that a million 'friends' on MySpace will improve our business? How will we know that this Second Life campaign has been a success? If we don't get any more 'hits' for a Social Media release than a traditional release, why should we do it?"

As more case studies for successful Social Media efforts rise to the surface, it will be both harder and easier to make the case for 2.0-style thinking. Just as the Tylenol Scare (and the drug-maker's wonderfully transparent response) made the case that corporations need to plan for crisis, the PR industry is now on the look-out for success stories that will "prove the case" for social media planning.

Meanwhile, however, Social Media successes could be just as often outgunned by failures and flame-outs. Bloggers, YouTubers, vloggers, citizen journalists, stealth marketers --- we're in a new Wild West.

Maybe we'll wind up focusing more on community-building than revenue-building? With every consumer empowered to make/break corporate reputations, maybe PR will be measured by its ability to keep the genie in the bottle? Perhaps we'll be lauded for ensuring that every article and blog post cited legitimate data sources and multimedia? Or maybe we'll get more credit for coming up with ideas that empowered consumers to re-mix our clients' brand in their own image?

I've been a long-time advocate of the concept, "Reputation Drives Revenue." It's our agency's tagline! I'm no stranger to Excel spreadsheets. But I also won't miss 'em when they're gone.