Executive Summary

PR News Measurement Conference

April 21, 2017 – The National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

• A/B testing is crucial to measurement
• Dashboards make it easy to see trends, but are not enough to get to "what do I need to do now?"
• Ultimately a dashboard takes focus away from "I need to contact a reporter" to "how are my stakeholders and customers seeing me?"
• 6 steps to the perfect dashboard: define your business objectives, audit data sources/tools, define the metrics and benchmarks, build the prototype and test metrics, get approvals, find your aha moment and improve.
• If you're offered a trial, don't just click through and look at charts; ask it a question. Apply it to the last thing your leadership asked you about.

• Reputation management is 24/7/365
• Increasing a brand's benefit of the doubt is crucial because something will go wrong eventually
• Every dollar spent must have measurement attached
• Bayer is acquiring Monsanto: They know others have different opinions about this acquisition, and reputation efforts are crucial to powering Bayer through
• Reputation counts—make sure your CEO knows that
• Prove your teams’ contribution to reputational success—then ask for more money

• Try to include variables in reports: timing, trends, possible next steps
• Weapons of choice: pulling info from Google Alerts into Feedly
• Sections of a good report: distribution, interaction, influence, action, internal
• sendable.com does a good job of showing which influencers are engaging with you

• Create a mechanism for surround sound that provides a consistent cadence for the end customer
• Traditional PR can elevate social media and vice versa—both need to work hand in hand
• Have an agreed-upon method for measuring “soft” and “hard” metrics, along with specific goals for each
• Push for budget to include Cision, Radian 6 and other measurement tools that can provide quantifiable results, as well as access to brand website’s Google analytics

• All of us can take small steps to integrate measurement into our campaigns at the beginning, middle and end
• Cutting-edge brands are collaborating with consumers, which leads to co-creation
• Reputation is more important than ever because there are economies being built around it (eBay, Uber, etc.)
• Computers will never replace what PR pros bring to work: creativity, imagination and agility

• Craft your PR strategies and tactics to support your organization’s overall objectives
• Set SMART goals for these strategies and tactics
• Track your progress in achieving these goals; track in relation to organizational results
• Use correlation analysis techniques if feasible to uncover statistical evidence suggesting a link between your media coverage and changes to organizational results
• Showcase dynamic results: create organized, regular reports, understand client/exec needs, learn from mistakes, celebrate successes