The ABC says: We have updated the latest Reporting Standards – 2012 Version 1 – to incorporate these changes and you can now view or download these from our website.
Social Media
Rules have been added to the Business Magazine Reporting Standards to allow the reporting of a basic measure of social media audience(s) on a product’s Multi-Platform Certificate (note: not on the ABC print certificate). This can be reported from January 2012.
The following section N has been inserted and the existing sections from N onwards re-categorised (N to O, O to P etc).
SECTION N SOCIAL MEDIA (MULTI PLATFORM CERTIFICATE ONLY)
N1 INTRODUCTION
You can optionally report your product’s social media audience on an ABC Multi Platform Certificate.
N2 REQUIREMENTS
• We will need to agree the social media audience metric and specific services (as stated by the URL) to be reported in advance.
• The metric can only be claimed for specific services (by URL). For example http://twitter.com/#!/ABC_UK. Note:
* Counts for different services cannot be aggregated.
* You can separately report as many specific services as you wish.
• We will need access to the website where the metric is displayed.
• You must record the metric for each service on the last working day of each month and email your claim for each service to us.
• Depending on the nature of your social media metric or technologies available we may agree a different submission or verification system with you.
N3 METRICS
We have included below examples of metrics that may be reported. These are not intended to be exhaustive. If you wish to report a social media metric that is not identified below please contact us to discuss.
Examples of metrics that can be reported include Facebook likes or fans, Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections.
N4 REPORTING
We will include on the Multi Platform Certificate for each specific service:
• The URL, social media brand, metric label and count for each month covered by the product’s ABC Multiplatform Certificate.
• The average count for the period covered by the certificate (for example the average for a certificate covering 12 months will be the total of the monthly counts divided by 12).
The ABC Business Magazine Reporting Standards Group discussed these changes.
