Just a few decades ago, most workers made “something.” The economy was defined by industrial output, and jobs usually involved manufacturing products, extracting natural resources or handcrafting tangible things. Those types of job still exist today, but we now live in a world in which the “service economy” —  or the increased importance of the service sector, of which public relations is a part — is a much larger economic force.

Of course, public relations professionals produce “things” too. We write plans, conceive ideas and organize and conduct events — but writing plans and generating ideas isn’t really what we do.

Continue reading " If You Can’t Measure It, It Doesn’t Count "

To calculate a return on investment, you need to connect the communication you did with a change in audience behavior, because virtually all behaviors have a financial impact for an organization. If employees or customers or reporters do something differently, it will result in either an increase in revenues or a decrease in costs. This means you will not be able to calculate ROI based on an increase in awareness or knowledge or an improved opinion. Until knowledge and attitudes result in a behavior change, you have nothing to attach a monetary value to.

Once you quantify the behavior change, usually with the help of others in your marketing, HR or operations departments who monitor those behaviors as part of their jobs, you need to identify how much credit you can take for the resulting behavior change. It’s easiest to do this for situations where no one else was trying to influence a particular behavior so you can take 100 percent of the credit. For example, one friend of mine used communication to get employees to use a special access code before dialing long distance. The telecommunication manager gave her communication full credit for the resulting increase in the percentage of calls made using the access code, which resulted in a $20,000 a month cost savings.

Continue reading " Calculating a Return on Investment (ROI) "

In a recent BurrellesLuce survey, 63 percent of respondents expressed a desire to demonstrate public relations effectiveness. Of those respondents, 44 percent apply qualitative metrics (such as key messages and prominence) to their media coverage, while 42 percent primarily use quantitative metrics. The enlightening results: One in five practitioners who believe demonstrating public relations effectiveness is most important is doing nothing to measure it.

I believe the only way to truly demonstrate public relations effectiveness requires a holistic reporting program properly aligned with your overarching corporate objectives. This means having a tiered approach to managing media relationships according to their priority for your business. The better you are at public relations basics — good writing and good relationships — the better your results and efforts will resonate with your leadership.

There are 101 excuses why you “can’t” prove ROI or why your specific situation is so unique that metrics won’t help. At PRSA-NCC’s “Using Strategic Media Measurement to Showcase Your Success,” an event I attended last week, one public relations professional told a big truth. She said, “I know I should be doing more, but I’m a coward.” Similar to other practitioners of the coward’s way, she provides the technically oriented just what they want: hard numbers. She reports “impressions and AVE” rather than the true impact, value and influence of good media relations.

Continue reading " PR Effectiveness: What Are You Doing To Show It? "

Katie Delahaye Paine, cheif executive officer, KDPaine & Partners, opened up the session by giving an overview of 21st century public relations measurement. Paine stressed, data is what you need to keep your job. You become what you measure.

Key take-aways from this session:

• Measure:
  1. Outputs: time on site, repeat visits, forwards, links and comments
  2. Outtakes: relationships, tone/content of conversation and membership
  3. Outcomes: click thus, donations/orders and signups
• The measurement engagement consists of conversation index, relationship studies and engagement index. Measure the interaction.
• There are 27 types of conversation.
• The Seven Steps of Social Media ROI:
  1. Define the ‘R’ – What are the expected results?
  2. Define the ‘I’ – What is the investment?
  3. Understand your audiences and what motivates them.
  4. Define the metrics.
  5. Determine what you are benchmarking against.
  6. Pick a tool and undertake research.
  7. Analyze results and glean insight, take action and measure again.

Continue reading " True Tales From the Social Media Measurement Trenches "

Barack Obama announced last week  that his campaign raised more that $150 million in September — so much, that they’re considering passing some of these goodies along to Democratic Party committees to try to help grow the party’s majority in Congress.

What is most compelling about this number is the fact that it didn’t come from a few donors with deep pockets. No, Obama’s campaign tapped into the pulse of first-time voters, and motivated them to donate in relatively small amounts through Web ads and e-mail appeals. That’s the ultimate example of building a successful virtual community — engaging your audience and putting them to work for you, with a tremendous impact on the bottom line.

There’s a huge lesson in this for public relations practitioners as we grapple with the worst economy some of us have ever seen. Now, more than ever, we have to justify our existence to marketing and management. There is no better way to do that than by demonstrating the value you bring to your organization, which means if you’re not already doing it, you need to start figuring out your measurement program. And, yes, it needs to incorporate more than “impressions” and “ad value.”

Continue reading " PR Measurement: My “Point of Connection” "