Measurement

Following are guidelines to use when tracking ROI in your social media efforts:

PR is transforming so fast that tried-and-true techniques and metrics no longer apply. Do PR pros have to reinvent the wheel before the hammer of accountability comes down from above?

Following are guidelines to help start an inexpensive digital measurement program and some traps to avoid:

Why is it so hard for us as an industry to scrap the publicity-by-the-pound theory or the veiled attempt to use fuzzy math to track messaging and somehow make a leap that because the client message was in a story a consumer actually bought something?

With over 60 vendors competing in the social media monitoring and analysis space, the overwhelming options make it a real challenge for buyers to know which service they should subscribe to. Here are 10 important questions PR pros need answers to before making a decision on a monitoring service:

n a survey this year from the American Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) and Institute for Public Relations (IPR), 520 PR professionals worldwide weighed in on the topic of measurement. While 88% believed measurement was an integral part of the the PR process, 77% said they were currently tracking their programs.

It’s the age-old question that still stumps many PR professionals: What’s the most accurate way to measure public relations? It’s relatively easy to count numbers of clips, but that doesn’t reflect the full scope of a public relations initiative. The hard part is accounting for the intangibles, such as swaying public opinion.

There may be no such thing as perfection but you can come close with your measurement campaigns if you do the following:

Now that you are hired, what does the client expect you to deliver? What do you need to achieve for the effort to be considered a success? An organization has made the choice to invest in your firm and now you will need to devise a plan to deliver that return on investment.

According to a survey of more than 400 communications professionals conducted by PR News and BurrellesLuce, the two most important media categories that help execs attain their goals are print and broadcast (38% and 24%, respectively), with social media coming in fourth at 15%.