Measuring Relationships

In our social media class we are reading “Measure What Matters by Katie Paine. I’ve really enjoyed this book because it gives the reasons why social media needs to be measured, and how you can actually measure.

In Chapter 4 Pain talks about measuring relationships, and if you have read any of post before you know that relationships are a big deal to me. So naturally I liked reading this little section.

Paine mentions research done by Linda Hon and James Grunig and the six components that you can measure relationships with, and once again my kindness is coming forth and I have listed them for you.

1. Control Mutuality:

Stable relationships require that both the company and the publics have a little bit of control over the other.

2. Trust:

There are three components of trust: integrity is believing the organization is fair and just; dependability is believing the organization will stand true to its word; and competence is believing an organization as the ability to do what it says it can.

3. Satisfaction:

A satisfying relationship is one where each party feels positively towards the other and the benefits trump the costs.

4. Commitment:

Both parties need to feel that maintaining the relationship is worth the time and effort. There are two components, continuance commitment, which is a line of action, and affective commitment, which is how the two parties feel emotionally about each other.

5. Exchange Relationship:

This is like a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” type of relationship. The parties do things for each other because one or the other has given benefits before.

6: Communal Relationship:

In this type of relationship the two parties do things for each other because they are concerned each other’s well being. These types of relationships are very important to develop in the PR field (Grunig and Hon, 1999).

There you have it. Now you can go out and measure any type of relationship you have!

Happy Measuring,

Jake