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For many businesses, leads and sales are primary KPIs. But before you can track sales, you have to generate them—and standing out from the crowd on social media is no easy task. Online consumers can anticipate when ads are coming and know when and how to skip them. Fortunately, major platforms, including Facebook, Snapchat and Pinterest, continue to develop new technologies to help generate and track sales, helping to prove the ROI of social media ads.

Marketers are trained to watch engagement, track reach, respond to comments and keep an eye out for influencers on social media. But above and beyond how many shares and click throughs a post receives, the question your senior leaders really want to know is, “What’s the ROI of your social media efforts?” If you want more budget, headcount or respect within your organization, then you better have an answer to that question.

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.

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.

At a networking event last week, an industry colleague asked me if I’ve ever Googled myself. She whispered the question to me as if to self-Google were verboten. Fortunately, we were interrupted by a mutual… Continued

Brands, in an effort to get out a shareable tweet or a super-likeable post, are often caught in a daily trap of shallow engagement with its communities. Your stakeholders — humans just like you and… Continued

You’re halfway through what’s been a rather interesting year in business, politics, brand successes and blunders and Game of Thrones developments. Which is to say: you still have another five solid months to make this… Continued

If that new car you’re shopping for doesn’t have the latest bells and whistles, it’s likely you’ll opt for the one that sports the coolest technology and whose dashboard displays practically everything except your blood… Continued

Let’s assume you are brilliant.  And you’re an inspiration to your peers, an asset to your organization.  Let’s also assume that while you’re an A-player you still have a lot to learn. As the late,… Continued