Stories by Jerry Ascierto

More than 5,000 press releases are issued each day and reporters get roughly 100 pitches daily via email. So, how can you produce a release that stands out from the crowd? That was the question tackled by Mandy Menaker, head of PR and brand development for Shapr, and Erin Burke, director and vice president of APCO Worldwide, at the PR News Press Release Writing Workshop at the Yale Club in New York.

Leave it to a media company to offer a mini-case study in media relations. ESPN cut around 100 jobs on Wednesday, about half of which affected on-air talent. While the cuts were expected, they went deeper than many industry-watchers anticipated. Thanks to ESPN’s transparency about the layoffs, many of its talking points in its prepared statements became the foundation of coverage from media outlets.

Two weeks after United’s reputation, and stock price, took a hit after airline security forcibly removed Dr. David Dao from a flight, it was American’s turn to deal with a passenger crisis. On April 21, a young mother was reduced to tears during an argument with attendants. The incident—which included a fellow passenger nearly getting into a physical altercation with an attendant—was captured on video and quickly went viral. But unlike United’s response, American quickly apologized, suspended the attendant and didn’t blame the victim.

Videos of a man being dragged off of a United flight Sunday night have quickly spread through the web, drawing widespread condemnation and outrage. While United CEO Oscar Munoz publicly apologized the next day and said the company was investigating the incident, he took a decidedly tougher stance in an internal letter to employees. Instead of acknowledging that the company’s “established procedures” might need to be re-examined, Munoz doubled-down, citing policy and effectively passing the buck. Worse yet, the letter went on to shift the blame to the passenger.

Each April, PR News inducts into its Measurement Hall of Fame communications professionals who have played longtime leadership roles in helping to define and expand industry measurement strategies, programs and standards. This year’s inductees—Elizabeth Rector, John Gilfeather, Richard Bagnall and Mike Daniels—will be honored during a special ceremony April 21 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. during PR News’ Measurement Conference.

Before she measures the success of any campaign, January Williams begins with the question, “What am I asking the audience to do?” Williams, the director of online communications and outreach for the nonprofit Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), doesn’t try to be all things on all platforms. While some initiatives, like increasing the CDF’s number of followers, are easy to measure, most of what the organization does—when issuing legislative calls to action or fundraising, for example—is all about engagement. Here are three ways she uses analytics to drive action.

The competition for attention on Facebook is intense, and seems to grow more heated every day. Just because somebody is following your brand on the site doesn’t mean they’ll automatically engage with your content. Yet, one of the most common mistakes content marketers make on Facebook is in focusing too much on lead generation and not enough on building a community and offering content of real value, says Chad Berndtson, director of content marketing and social media at B2B cyber security firm Palo Alto Networks.

Trying to separate the signal from the noise when it comes to PR measurement can be a daunting task. There is so much data at your disposal that it’s tempting to try and embrace it all. But one of the most common traps companies fall into when starting a measurement program is in taking too wide of a view of what should be measured, says Jessica Onick, corporate public relations program manager at B2B software firm Citrix. “The biggest mistake that we as PR people make is the tendency to want to measure the universe,” she said.

As PR pros know, measuring the effectiveness of social media posts can be tricky. Many measurement strategies emphasize vanity metrics such as reach, impressions, shares or retweets, but those KPIs can be misleading. Just because a tweet is re-tweeted multiple times doesn’t mean users actually are clicking on the link found within. So communicators must separate quantitative and qualitative metrics—volume vs. quality—for a more complete picture, says Danielle Brigida, national social media manager at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Measuring the impact of social media posts can be tricky. Many social media measurement strategies revolve around “vanity” metrics like reach, impressions, shares or retweets, but those KPIs can be misleading. Just because a tweet is retweeted multiple times doesn’t mean users are actually clicking on the link found within. So, communicators must separate quantitative and qualitative metrics—volume vs. quality—to get a more complete picture of how social media posts are faring, says Danielle Brigida, national social media manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.