• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 15, 2015

Ad industry media ratings watchdog the Media Rating Council has released a set of “Social Media Measurement Guidelines” for public review and commentary. A 30-day public comment period will extend through Oct. 15.

The MRC didn’t say when the guidelines might be ratified as official, but said the goal is to “establish a detailed set of methods and common practices for entities that measure social media activity.”

Once ratified, the council said the guidelines would be used as part of the framework for auditing and accrediting social media measurement suppliers seeing accreditation.

The MRC said the guidelines establish official industry “definitions and baseline metrics for original content authorship, subsequent engagement and resultant reach. In addition, they provide guidance for social media coverage and projection, measurement within applications and outside them, measurement of User-generated content (UGC), collection and use of aggregated social media platform data, filtration, reporting and audit guidelines.”

The initiative's principal co-sponsors, along with the MRC, include the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A's) Social Media Committee, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).  The project also included the participation of a large group of organizations that included media advertising buyers and sellers, as well as measurement vendors, auditing organizations, and others.