This blog post is the first in a series on PR measurement and reporting. It comes from
Rob McMurtrie, Vice President at Porter Novelli Seattle. 

Most PR reports are like soap bubbles – pretty to look at but not very strong. The problem is circulations, article counts and tonality of coverage tell business leaders very little about the impact public relations is having on the company’s goals. And when they start asking probing questions about the value of these measures – POP! – there goes YOUR reputation.

More PR professionals need to push beyond their comfort zone and start creating strong analysis of their results. Securing good coverage – which is what these traditional measures evaluate – isn’t the goal of our profession. It’s the prerequisite.

So what to do instead? Index your coverage results and correlate them with other, more meaningful data. The three steps below highlight a simple way to do that.

First, reduce the cost and time spent on collecting prerequisite data. A lot of PR folks and agencies still have a “clip book” mentality – that it is critical to capture every single mention of your brand or product to fatten up that clip book. While there are certainly cases where finding all relevant coverage is important (in times of crisis, for example), getting to 100% coverage capture is very expensive and isn’t necessary to get a statistically valid sample that will index your coverage results. There are tools available that can help automate that process and free up tracking dollars for more meaningful projects.

Second, determine what data you can get from inside your organization. Here’s a hint: Don’t start with sales! While understanding PR’s impact on sales is considered the “holy grail” of measurement, it typically requires very expensive ROI analysis that accounts for the influence of all aspects of the marketing mix. Instead, try some simple steps like looking at social media reaction to an announcement as a proxy for how you impacted customer perception and attitudes or evaluating inbound web traffic from publication sites immediately after coverage hits. After a recent new product launch for a small consumer products client, we were able to show that traffic to the website doubled in the week following due to referrals from sites featuring coverage we generated.

Finally, start thinking about measurement as a process, not an end product. Many PR pros consider their job complete when they have a number they can share with management. The number is only part of the story, however. What is critical is the insight derived from that number. Having a consistent and repeatable measurement process makes deriving those insights easier because you can analyze your impact over time – whether it is quarter to quarter or across a particular series of events. That consistency allows you to understand how changes positively or negatively impacted your results and to design better programs, products, etc. It also allows you to iterate as you get access to new and different forms of data.

It’s important to note that these same steps can be used not only for traditional media but also for social media measurement which many of us are increasingly being asked to tackle.

Make a commitment this summer to leave the soap bubbles to the kids and start constructing a measurement program that will last long after Labor Day!

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Rob McMurtrie is Vice President at Porter Novelli Seattle. He has 15 years of experience developing local, national and international marketing communications programs for clients and has spent 10 years developing Porter Novelli’s award-winning measurement programs.

Rob’s measurement work was recognized with the 2008 PR News Platinum Award for Measurement and Evaluation and the 2008 Iron Sabre Certificates of Excellence for Evaluation. Rob is active in the Seattle community and frequently speaks on PR-related issues.

You can follow Rob on Twitter (@robmctree) or connect with him via LinkedIn.

Is earned media the PR campaign Holy Grail? The PR practitioner’s quest to garner earned media might drive a campaign, but we have to be honest about realities of engagement.

If you’re still not sure of the difference between each type of media, here’s a bit of a breakdown:

What you pay for. This includes paid advertisements, TV spots, radio spots, news releases (you paid for distribution and you own the content), web banners, paid searches, etc. This type of media is often targeted at new markets or “strangers”.

What you own. This includes your corporate website, microsites (your Twitter account, for example), your company’s Facebook page, branded collateral, a live event you put on for clients, etc. This is often targeted at current and future customers.

What you earn: This includes focused social media content (retweets, for example), organic blog posts (this means a blogger talks about your company or product without incentive), videos, cover stories, etc. This is often targeted at existing and potential brand advocates or fans.

In a way, none of the media you garner is free. The planning and management of the campaign itself could be labour intensive and costly. And, more often than not, you’ve paid for a conversation starter (beware: you might get in to hot water if you try to buy the entire conversation).

The advantage to paid and owned media is that mentions are more predictable. You control the owned outlets, and you likely produced the content you’ve bought. It’s the aftermath of that campaign initiation – the earned media – that comes littered with nuances and subtleties. This is likely because earned media is often based on trust. Journalists and bloggers are often hesitant to talk kindly about a brand if they don’t fully believe in the cause. If they don’t trust your product, they won’t promote you. And, don’t forget, it doesn’t count as earned media if it’s incentive-based mentions (like sending a blogger a freebie to get them to talk kindly about your product).

It’s not always easy to differentiate between the different levels of media mentions. Especially when it comes to earned media. If you use a media monitoring service here are some first steps to take once you’ve performed your searches:

• Categorize your content: organize your clips based on paid, owned and earned.
• Clean it up: go through the earned media to make sure the “earned” really happened organically; that the mention happened without incentive or payment; re-categorize if necessary.
• Scrutinize: be sure that if you’ve categorized a clip as “earned” that it’s more than just a name drop – did the mention result from your campaign? Was the earned media positive or negative? Did that mention lead to more sharing? If not, does it make sense to keep it in the “earned” pile? Is it worth reporting on?

In the end, a solid campaign is built around successful engagement. No engagement, no sale. You’ll have to take time to monitor what’s being said about your brand. And the levels of engagement should be the focus.  Don’t forget some of that media can be negative. So be honest with yourself – knowing the true landscape will give you a better chance to improve.

When I think of a traditional media coverage clipbook, my mind wanders to the set of Mad Men. I imagine a stack of paper piled high on a desk with an ashtray and a decanter. By comparison, today’s clipbooks have evolved to become leaner and greener.

The New Clipbook

Clipbooks have always been an important tool for sharing media mentions of campaigns and issues with internal audiences, usually senior management teams. In the past, the sheer heftiness of a clipbook was a satisfactory indicator of PR success and effort. In the not so distant past, clipbooks spoke to advertising value equivalents (AVE) or volume of mentions and focused on traditional print and broadcast media. Now clipbooks speak to an understanding of influence or relationship insight and focus on digital media such as blogs and social media, as well as traditional media.  As the popularity of AVE in measurement wanes, we are exploring new measurement possibilities for digital content, replacing volume as a key success indicator.

Digital means real-time global collaboration

In the past, the activity of finding and sharing news articles between groups in different regions presented a challenge for communicators trying to coordinate a cohesive corporate response. With clipbook content and publishing tools now available online, geographically disparate teams are benefitting from real-time collaboration. Groups can contribute to the clipbook during their working hours, regardless of time zones. Digital distribution makes it possible to share clipbooks at any time. A digital format is also easily viewed on mobile devices, keeping people in the field aware and up to date.

Saving trees and time

Digital means less paper and more trees saved, but digital efficiency also extends to workflow.  Today’s clipbook tools can and should be a simple extension of your media monitoring practise. Spending time cutting, pasting and formatting articles is almost as painful as it was to snip them out of newsprint and type up transcripts. So choose the tools that can make the tradition of clipbooks as lean and green as possible. And speaking of tradition, whatever happened to those office decanters?

What’s the role of a media clipbook in your corporate culture?  What is the balance between traditional media and digital media sources?

By Joanne Kern, Training and Education Manager, MediaVantage