Five lies about PR measurement that can sink your strategy and career

By Julie Wright—President and Founder

Twitter: @JulieWright

Last month I attended the Ragan PR Daily PR measurement conference in Miami. The two-day event was crammed with hot tips and excellent case studies on PR measurement–how to design measurable campaigns, incorporate analytics, conduct surveys and develop metrics that matter.

Businessman pointing graphs and symbols Free PhotoIt is increasingly clear to anyone in the public relations profession that PR measurement is something our industry needs to embrace. With marketing budgets and margins under constant pressure, companies are looking to optimize their investments across paid, earned, shared and owned strategies. Not only does PR need to stack up against highly measurable digital strategies, it also needs to take digital paid, shared and owned tactics under its wing to produce more integrated, measurable campaigns.

After two full days of discussion in Miami, I was even more convinced of these truths and returned to San Diego fired up to confront some of the biggest whoppers about PR measurement head on. So here are my top five falsehoods. I’d love to hear your take on this list and maybe together we can all help move the PR field in the right direction.

LIE #1: PR just isn’t measurable.

If you are in PR and truly believe this, you’re toast. Sure, PR is not as easy to measure as digital marketing, but it is far from impossible to measure!

It requires a little more legwork and setting aside some campaign resources to do it well. But, keep in mind, the gold standard for PR excellence has always started with research and ended with evaluation—a.k.a. measurement.

Don’t believe the lie that PR isn’t measurable. Instead, refresh yourself on best practices in PR research and evaluation.  

  • Read “Public Relations Research for Planning and Evaluation” by Walter K. Lindenmann on the Institute for Public Relations’ website.
  • Check out the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation in Communications and their Integrated Evaluation Framework. AMEC has developed an interactive online tool that walks you through each step in the PR planning and evaluation process. The tool is designed to help support campaign evaluation; however, you can just as easily use it to guide campaign development to ensure you’re creating measurable campaigns from the start.
  • Read how others have designed measurable campaigns. AMEC has an annual awards program and shares case studies about the winning campaigns.
  • Check out the measurement resources provided by the Public Relations Society of America. It has collected all the measurement resources and links you could wish for in one place.

LIE #2: Our campaign goal is to raise awareness.

This is also a lie. As Joseph Ogden, BYU public relations professor, threw down in Miami, “If anyone tells you their only goal is awareness, they’re lying.” No one wants their PR campaign to simply raise awareness. They want their campaign to drive people to take some measurable behavior—to buy a product, drink less soda, visit a destination, attend an event, enroll in a course, submit their email, visit the website, vote, download the white paper or make a donation.

Hold yourself to a higher standard and help your client or boss understand that you do more than just “create buzz.” (Eye roll.)

It’s easier if you start by developing an objective that clearly states the behavior you want your stakeholders to take, by when and how often. Once you know your behavioral objective, work backwards and think about your informational objective–the message or knowledge your stakeholders need to receive and internalize—and the motivational objective—the emotional connection they need to make—to drive them to take the desired behavior.

Once you’ve set your intention from awareness through motivation and behavior, you can start to research your stakeholders to find out what their level of awareness and knowledge is and what motivates them so you can develop your strategy.

LIE #3: PR people aren’t numbers people.

That’s B.S. Don’t be boxed in by this lie. Good PR people are good storytellers, and one of the most powerful storytelling elements available to you in 2017 is data. Don’t shy away from it.

IBM Digital Experience Manager Brandi Boatner put it another way during the Miami conference: “Congrats, you’re all data scientists.”

Boatner pointed out the many data streams at our disposal today. There are internal sources that are coming from your advertising, website and internal processes. Analyze them as well as external streams you can study such as news trends, social media trends and competitive intelligence.

Google’s Louis Gray pointed conference attendees to Google Trends, a site where you can see in real-time what the world or the U.S.A. is searching, what news stories are trending and find interesting reports on search behaviors.

If you’d like to dig deeper into your audience’s awareness, beliefs or behaviors, check out Google Survey. Use this tool to cost-effectively add your questions to consumer surveys pushed out to targeted demographic groups via a network of publishers.Image result for PR measurement memes

Or if you have data of your own that you’d like to put into an impressive visualization, Gray pointed to Google Public, a data visualization tool. And don’t forget plain old Microsoft Excel. It will recommend the optimal charts and graphs for you based on your spreadsheet data.

It’s a data-rich world. Your company and clients are collecting data all the time. Extract that data to find amazing trends or to dispute conventional wisdom. Maybe there’s a surprising correlation between weather patterns and shopping behaviors, or day of the week and donations. The point is, you won’t know if you don’t look. And you won’t look if you think it’s outside of your skillset.

So, call a meeting with your company’s data guru and start spit balling with your new best friends in I.T.

LIE #4: More data is the answer.

It’s not about metrics. It’s about insights. And it’s not about the quantity of data points. It’s about their relevance to your goal.

Over a third of social marketers reported recently that they struggle to “distill data into insights and actions.” And it’s no wonder. Facebook and Google Analytics are just two sources that can generate a massive amount of data on your target audiences’ behavior.

Going back to your informational and behavioral objectives, it’s important to pinpoint a handful of key performance indicators to show that your message is reaching your target audience and that they are taking the behaviors that your client or boss really cares about.

You don’t need to track them all. You just need to focus on the metrics that matter and then go beyond tracking to analysis.

LIE #5: Setting measurable PR objectives sets you up to fail.

The old saying applies here: you can’t improve what you don’t measure.

It is not a failure to set measurable objectives and then fall short of them.

The failure is in not understanding why you didn’t meet your objectives. Were they not SMART enough–specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time dimensioned? Was your strategy missing an element? Was your target getting the information but not motivated sufficiently or too inconvenienced to take action?

If you’ve set measurable goals, you are forced to ask yourself these questions and better understand your successes and challenges, which will make you better.

The only real failure that should scare you is the failure to even try. Or as another old saying goes, no one plans to fail, they just fail to plan.

Let us know what you think. How has your experience with PR measurement been? What tips or tools have you discovered? What obstacles have you encountered with your team, boss, budgets or clients? We’re all in this together and I’d love to hear what you think. Tweet me at @juliewright or @wrightoncomm.

Dear Journalists, We Can Explain: Things PR Pros Want You to Know

letter to the editorBy Erica Schlesinger, Communications Strategist

If you’ve been in the media relations game long enough – on either side – you’ve seen many a blog, article, and social media post lamenting the mess-ups of PR professionals. There are different ones here and there, but most tend to center around incessant follow-ups, not understanding beats, mass emails and the dreaded… dun dun dun… follow-up phone call!

follow up callNow, don’t get me wrong, journalists – those things are annoying, misguided and a mark of poor (or no) research. So I assure you, I feel you. But I also assure you that for every off-base pitch or umpteenth follow-up you get, there are more carefully-crafted notes from PR pros trying very hard to make you happy. We read your media profiles, we catch up on months or even years of your articles, we make notes about your beats and interests in our media lists and we set ourselves reminders in our calendars to follow up a sane amount of times over a reasonable timeframe.

I asked my conscientious colleagues, some of whom have multiple decades of experience in the field, to share their top things they want journalists to know. Here’s what they had to say:

“PR people are accountable to their clients and/or employer and have a job to do. Part of our job is avoiding speculation and hypotheticals being printed in the media. Another is respecting confidentiality, which might include personnel issues, financial data or a legal matter. We want to provide timely and accurate information to reporters but do sometimes have to hold back. In most of my interactions, the media do understand that and are also just doing their job. We also spend time crafting our pitches to target a reporter’s beat and interests. We are not blasting off topic story ideas, and we welcome feedback from the media to help us improve. We know the media get a gazillion pitches per day, but we crave your feedback and value your time.” – Julie Wright, President

 

“I think a lot of journalists assume we want to insert ourselves or take over their process when we just want to be sure they’re getting everything they need. Journalists often want to talk to the client, but the client is busy running a business and doesn’t have the time to send images, headshots, product fact sheets, etc. Our job – and desire – is to make the journalist’s life easier. Journalists also tend to assume we just want our clients to spew talking points that mean nothing but sound great. The reality is, our clients are passionate about their product. They live and breathe it. We know the best interviews are when they convey that passion in an authentic way, and that’s what we try to help them do. The only difference is during crisis management when showing hot-running emotion – compassion being the exception – isn’t the most helpful for anyone involved.” – Chance Shay, Communications Strategist

 

“I think one thing everyone in the industry forgets is that a lot of PR people were once media and vice versa. So, many of us do ‘get’ what it’s like to be a journalist and what they need to make a story a good one. Also, most of us get the benefit of a good relationship and will often go out of our way to help a journalist. PR people can help with leads or connections that can prove useful and often have their finger on the pulse of what’s hip, new and trendy in a number of industries. Smart media professionals can use their PR contacts as solid resources for story ideas.” – Shae Geary, Senior Communications Strategist

 

“PR pros and journalists need each other. In the age of information overload, we can help journalists do their jobs more efficiently and effectively. And I promise, some of us do have interesting and intentional things to say! It’s really hard for me to see Tweets disparaging PR people when I just finished writing an entire article for a journalist because he was too busy to write it himself, or saying we can’t meet basic deadlines when I have a whole system in place to ensure I always do just that. I get it – when you see a cringe-worthy mistake, it can put a bad taste in your mouth. But most of us do put effort and care into what we send you.” – Molly Borchers, Senior Communications Strategist

 

“If we don’t hear otherwise from you, we’ll assume our pitches work for you on some level. If the approach doesn’t, but you’re interested in the news itself, let us know. I’ve received emails simply saying, ‘Hey, this is cool, but my deadline is always X day – can you send to me another day of the week next time?’ or ‘My lead time is a little longer than most monthlies – in the future, get the info to me four months in advance.’ It’s quick feedback that’s appreciated, and we’ll take heed. And if you’re not interested, let us know. We won’t follow up. But I’ve had media people on many occasions say, “Yes, I love this idea, I’ve just been swamped – thanks for reminding me” after circling back. We don’t want to annoy you. Oh, and unless the situation truly calls for it – I won’t call you. Promise.” – Erica Schlesinger, Communications Strategist

journalistBoth media and PR experts are under lots of pressure, day in and day out. There are deadlines to meet, pieces to write and people to please. So no sympathy needed, no snark involved – let’s just keep it copacetic and make great stories happen, together.

PR pros, what would you add to the list?

Journalists, what do you think? Do you find most PR pros you deal with are worthy of a bit of a break – or still don’t get it?

 

Four Press Release Best Practices

By Danielle Cobb, Communications Coordinator

Every couple of years the press release is declared dead. Yet the thousands of press releases issued over newswires each and every day are proof that its obituary hasn’t been written yet. Companies don’t need to issue press releases to get media coverage, but doing so has its benefits:press release seo

  • Establishing credibility
  • Showing business momentum
  • Search engine optimization
  • For public companies, communicating valuable information to shareholders

Press releases get a bum rap because some companies issue them to announce trivial things like new websites, minor upgrades to products, and other things that frankly, no one cares about. That said, if your company has important news to share, the press release is still the best vehicle to get the word out.

Your press release is a direct reflection of your brand. You don’t want it lining your media contacts’ trashcan, do you? Are you making press release writing mistakes that you don’t even know about?

Here are four press release best practices:

Give Your Headline Some Sizzle

I hate to say it, but most press release headlines are boring. This is your opportunity to bring the reader into your world. Don’t squander it! It’s a cutthroat world out there and the headline might be the reason someone decides to give your story a chance…or look the other way. Powerful adjectives and active verbs are a great start for eye-catching headlines.

As a rule, the headline should be simple and short so people (and search engines) don’t get lost. Clear language is essential, and avoid jargon at all costs. Make it interesting and always consider the WIIFM (What’s in it for me?).

Take the Leadinverted pyramid

It’s a best practice to write press releases in the “inverted pyramid” style. That’s why the lead is so important. It’s the first thing people see (after the headline, of course), so the most important details should come first. Also, it should be engaging enough to capture the reader’s attention.

Creativity is key here. How many times have you heard a boring, static lead that reads, “Today, company X is excited to announce…?” And that’s supposed to be enticing? Think again!

After you’ve written your standout lead, the first paragraph should cover all the bases – the 5 W’s: who, what, when, where and why.

It’s All About the Verb, Baby!

Press releases are different from an article in that you aren’t trying to paint a picture, but rather give a piece of news with all the facts. You need to be clear and concise, but also keep it interesting. A good way to do that is to use active rather than passive voice. There’s a big difference between “Molly ate the pizza” and “the pizza was eaten by Molly.” An active voice is more engaging and brings your verbs to life.

Another important element to consider is “person.” Person shows who or what does the action. Never use the second person, “you.” Always write in the third person. (i.e, “the reader,” “the buyer,” etc.)

Let Your Creativity Flow with Quotes

ideaJust because a press release provides serious facts doesn’t mean you can’t get creative with it. Every press release needs a bit of excitement, and quotes are a great way to add some color. A best practice for quotes is to limit them to two – three sentences. They should also be written more colloquially than the rest of the press release. Here is the standard format for quotes:

“This is the first sentence of my quote that should introduce the big picture idea,” said Danielle Cobb, communications coordinator, (W)right On Communications. “The second sentence validates the first sentence of the quote. The third sentence can provide supporting facts or an emotional appeal to back up the big idea from the first sentence.” Finally, keep in mind that the punctuation should always be placed inside the quotation marks.

These are just some of the guidelines we follow when drafting press releases. If you have any other best practices, give us a shout in the comments below!