Measurement

Lou Williams was one of the leading advocates for having public relations research, measurement and evaluation focus on the outcomes of PR campaigns rather than message outputs. Through speeches, workshops and seminars, he did his best to help make PR measurement and evaluation more meaningful. He once scolded judges of several of the industry’s major awards competitions for not being critical enough while assessing research and measurement.

There’s a line in the movie “Molly’s Game” I think you’ll appreciate. As the young and future Olympic-level skier Molly Bloom was learning the sport from her father, he gave her this advice on the… Continued

Communications professionals are well aware of the business value they bring to their organizations and to their clients. Communicating that value to the C-suite, though, has historically been a struggle, which is no small irony. The availability of digital data has proven to be a mixed blessing for PR professionals. The data is there to show a multitude of communications successes but, for CEOs and CFOs, data that doesn’t connect directly to business goals can seem devoid of value and meaning.

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.