Measurement

Let’s agree that PR measurement is not just about numbers and tone. It’s about how communicators can use accurate and insightful data to influence business decisions and develop strategic guidance. Former CCO of Fortune 500 companies and current trustee of the Institute for Public Relations Jim Simon offers examples of how companies derived strategic insights from PR measurement.

For the third article in this five-part series about measurement-related issues, PR News and partner PublicRelay, a media monitoring and analytics firm, held a Communications Leadership Roundtable in New York during this holiday season. One dozen senior communicators discussed the challenges of refining and cleaning data, among other measurement-related issues.

There is profound uncertainty about the uses of data and of the value of the communications data that communicators share with senior leaders, according to a recent survey of communicators at the director level and, separately, at the VP level and above. The survey from PR News and PublicRelay, a media monitoring and ana­lytics firm, looks at the day-to-day role of measurement and media analysis.

Digital communications makes nearly all actions and results quantifiable. This should enable communicators to have an easier time proving the value of their work. It’s more complicate than that as this survey from PublicRelay and PR News discovered.

Communications executives have begun in earnest to make their way into boardrooms, C-suite meetings and the critical business conversations at their organizations. But the pace is not fast enough and the courage of their convictions… Continued

Is your company adding to the problem of content pollution? It is if the stories and video you produce fail to engage their intended audiences. Of course, should you avoid measuring for engagement and share of voice, for example, you’ll never really know whether or not your content is resonating. Fortunately, measuring is easily done today. The hard part is stepping out of your comfort zone, abandoning flawed vanity metrics and aligning measurement with goals and targeted audiences.

This second article in a 5-part series about measurement we compile cases where communicators have moved beyond the fundamentals of measuring data to prove ROI and instead focused on using insights mined from data to change the way they operated their business. The series is produced with partner PublicRelay, a media monitoring and analytics firm.

Measurement is said to be PR’s albatross. Heck, many PR pros entered the field specifically so they could avoid working with numbers. Fortunately, measuring and mining data for PR insights are far less complicated operations than measurement naysayers would have you believe. Advocating for measurement programs, our author says you can begin a measurement effort simply and inexpensively.

At PR News’ Measurement Boot Camp in New York on Nov. 9, 2017, Shilpa Mehta, principal analytical lead, Google, discussed three common sins of “dashboarding”—these are missteps that would indicate the problems you’re having have less to do with built-in C-suite skepticism and more to do with your dashboards, despite your laser focus on meeting business challenges.

In this first article of a five-part series produced with partner PublicRelay, a media monitoring and analytics firm, we will examine the common challenges of measuring communications data so it can be turned into useful insights that will help not only communicators but the business overall.