Measurement

You want to get this social influencer thing down. We all do. But not everyone can get George Clooney to push their wares, like Nespresso did. Still, you’ve got good products and you need to get the word out. So how do you choose the ideal influencer? And more importantly, how can you tell if your choice was the right one?

It’s critical to keep a vigilant eye on your audience and frequently take its temperature. For example, based on the negative media coverage of big tech, you’d expect the industry’s reputation would be abysmal. Instead of assuming, a researcher used data to test that assumption. Some of the results were surprising.

With the unofficial start of the summer on July 4, Americans break out their grills. Demand for beef rises as a result. How can a vegetarian staple like hummus compete at this time of the year? Sabra Hummus did its homework and combined its research with humor for a campaign that goes to the heart of customers’ anxieties.

There was a slew of PR-related studies released recently. Some contained good news for the industry, others did not. Included in the findings: a good portion of executives in the U.K. don’t know what the abbreviation PR means; earned media remains a good bet; PR firm profitability remains in good shape; and MuckRack has added publisher data to its suite.

With PRNEWS’ Top Women in Healthcare Communications awards luncheon coming up later this month, we asked our data partner Shareablee to look at the most socially active pharma and healthcare insurance providers for the first months of 2019. Clearly, these sectors need to address their social media strategies as both suffered major downturns in consumer engagement vs 2018.

When it comes to making sense of the beast that is Google Analytics, we’ve got you covered at our Google Boot Camp for Communicators, going down July 17 at The Yale Club in NYC. And for those wishing to get their feet wet earlier, looking at the analytics native to big social platforms is a fantastic place to start. Native metrics offered by each social platform can give you a better idea of how well each piece of content you put out into the world is performing. And it’s all free. Here’s how to make the most of those native analytics offerings.

Muck Rack recently surveyed over 800 PR professionals, ranging from coordinators at boutique agencies to Chief Communications Officers at major global brands, to take a pulse on the state of PR in 2019. Among its questions, the survey looked at how communicators are spending their time, their money, and what software they use. Muck Rack will drill deeper into these results at PR News Google Bootcamp for Communicators, taking place on July 17th at the Yale Club in NYC. Looking at these survey findings, it’s easy to see why a base level of tech literacy is not only helpful, but necessary for PR pros— the results remind us that measuring success remains the number one challenge for our profession.

Earlier this month we asked questions of communicators who were honored as PR Professionals of the Year during 2018’s PRNEWS Platinum Awards luncheon in NY. We asked about improving relations with journalists, how brands can maintain a human touch in a tech-driven world and several other topics.

Social marketers often know what tools and resources are worth spending money on, but advocating for that budget, and working with the C-suite to allocate said budget, proves the greater challenge. We spoke with Rajesh Kari, Vice President and Business Leader at Infovision Social, about this exact matter ahead of his appearance at next week’s Social Shake-Up Show in Atlanta.

Measurement guru Katie Paine provides her take on Boeing’s (737 Max 8) and Samsung’s (Fold phone) crisis-management strategies. Her verdict is that neither company did a good job, though the negative implications seem to be lighter for Samsung.