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About this Guide
Chapter 1 - Measurement’s rapid rise to acceptance. But are you on board?
Chapter 2 - Proving The Value of PR: Why Measurement Is Important
Chapter 3 - Getting started! Your measurement options and how we created a global system in our consultancy
Chapter 4 - A Step-By-Step Approach to PR Measurement
Chapter 5 - Measuring PR performance across borders – how a global programme works
Chapter 6 - What’s the big deal about the Barcelona Principles – and where do we go from here?
Chapter 7 - You can measure social media
Chapter 8 - Insights Critical for Effective PR but Must Go Beyond the ‘Bleeding
Obvious’
Chapter 9 - The client view of what measurement looks like
Chapter 10 - Measurement: Encouraging realistic client expectations
Chapter 11 - Getting it right: a ten point evaluation checklist
Chapter 12 - What we mean! Definitions and terms
Top Measurement Tips
Like To Know More?
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Our aim is to encourage more PR professionals, working in consultancy and inhouse, to regard PR measurement as an everyday part of what they do.
AMEC is the fast-growing global trade body and professional institute for agencies and practitioners who provide media evaluation and communication research. amecorg.com
PRCA is the professional body that represents UK PR consultancies, in-house communications teams, PR freelancers and individuals. The PRCA promotes all aspects of public relations. prca.org.uk
ICCO is the voice of public relations consultancies around the world. The ICCO membership comprises national trade associations in 28 countries across the globe. iccopr.com
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Measurement’s rapid rise to acceptance
- But are you on board?
Francis Ingham & Jeremy Thompson
As recently as three years ago, this Guide would have attracted only marginal interest.
Not now. The development of the Barcelona Principles was transformational in the way it challenged PR practitioners and evaluation specialists alike to look at the role of measurement in a new, different and relevant way. Measurement, at its simplest level, helps
PR professionals to prove the value of their work.
ICCO and PRCA are delighted to join together with AMEC in producing this PR Practitioner’s
Guide to Measurement.
We have published this online so that it is easy to access wherever you are and on whatever type of screen you are using - laptop, Smartphone or tablet.
Our aim is to remind practitioners that measurement is not an option: that it is a strategic discipline for the public relations industry. It is a new initiative at the heart of ICCO and
PRCA’s work with AMEC to educate PR practitioners as to why it is important to have a measurement framework in their in-house team or consultancy.
We have deliberately involved measurement companies, their clients, in-house PR teams and consultancies in the production of this Guide. Contibutors come from Europe, North
America, Australia and South Africa. The Guide has a truly global reach.
This is only the start.
We plan to update and refresh the Guide at six monthly intervals and we welcome feedback on this first version and what you would like to see included in the first update. Together, we will show how PR measurement is helping to improve performance and promote the industry.
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Francis Ingham & Jeremy Thompson's Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Measurement is the best way to demonstrate the value of your work - use it;
✔ Be clear about your goals, measure objectively;
✔ Don't obsess about a number, focus on demonstrating the link between activities and outcomes.
Director General of ICCO & Chief Executive of PRCA
@ PRCAIngham
Chief Executive, Gorkana Group
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Proving The Value of PR: Why Measurement
Is Important
David Gallagher
Confession: when it comes to measurement and public relations, I am among the recently converted.
Not because I didn’t believe there were ways to measure the outcomes of our efforts (I did) or because I thought advertising-value equivalencies were sufficient (I did not) or because I was not aware of the considerable work and scholarship that had been devoted to the topic by friends and colleagues like Dr David Rockland (believe me, I was made keenly aware).
No, my doubts stirred from a conviction that clients simply did not care. If they did, they’d gladly pay for it. They would spend enough money up front to establish a baseline before PR activity began, and enough money at the end to determine whether the overall effort was worth it.
And in my experience, which spans more than two decades and more countries than I care to count, clients did not spend money to measure PR at any point of the activity. They spent on lots of other things – celebrities and football sponsorships and risk-management consultants and a host of other essentials – but rarely, if ever, PR measurement.
And then that all changed.
Well, maybe it didn’t “all” change, but enough clients started to ask about measurement and, in a few cases, even base their agency selection largely on who presented the best approach to evaluation, to make me question my assumptions. Not exactly a Damascene moment, but enough of a wake-up call for me to begin to see measurement as a competitive differentiator for our businesses in Europe and beyond, and later as a necessity for all of us in PR.
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So what happened? Looking back, we seemed to have gone through a classic push-pull pincer of external forces – economic uncertainty, an explosion of accessible data and a proliferation of advertising-weakening content platforms – and internal developments – global consensus on measurement approaches like the Barcelona Principles, increasing sophistication of PR services and a serious commitment to proving everything by marketleading clients (including our own, Procter & Gamble).
In any case, we now find ourselves in a competitive environment that requires what we at
Ketchum are calling a “prove everything or die” mind-set. Creative ideas and strategic insight must be rooted in data. The impact of our work must be measured not in output, but actual outcomes. And the value of our service must be expressible in the precise terminology of business, not the vagaries of PR. Is it working? The early evidence – percentage of pitches won, the value of assignments awarded, client retention and satisfaction data, and awards earned – all point to yes.
Well, bully for us, you may well say. Our clients still aren’t paying for measurement, and our way of working is more like an art than science, and what about the downside of evaluation, when the numbers don’t prove a positive outcome? Why should we change a good thing?
To which I would reply: carry on as you are, but at your own peril. Yes, you may not need to change to continue to compete, at least for a while. Yes, you may evade procurement teams looking for evidence-based return-on-investment expenditures. And yes, you may well be able to persuade savvy marketers that your ideas stand on their brilliance alone, without need of substantiation.
But by burying your head in the sand you’ll also miss the enormous opportunity measurement presents. All too often, the real value of our work is vastly under-counted. The effect of our advice, service and content is under-represented in year-end reviews. And opportunities to assess the impact of PR activity versus other expenditures go underrecognized as outdated advertising equivalencies or impression counts persist. Accurate measurement is an important step toward establishing the real and usually under-estimated value of public relations.
And here’s the kicker. While at Ketchum we see a commitment to measurement as a fundamental competitive advantage over those who do not, we fully embrace a future in which all of our fiercest competitors share this belief. Why? Because the real power of what we all do can only be unleashed when we’re all speaking with conviction the same language about it – and that language is measurement.
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David Gallagher's Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ The age of measuring outcomes in PR is well and truly upon us.
✔ Avoid measurement at your own peril – and with significant opportunity costs.
✔ A commitment to measurement is as much an industry issue as a differentiator for individual competitors.
David Gallagher
Senior Partner and CEO, Ketchum Europe
& President, ICCO
@TBoneGallagher
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Getting started! Your measurement options and how we created a global system in our consultancy.
Andy West
Measurement was the real bugbear of the public relations sector for a long time. While other disciplines were able to attach concrete ROI figures on the work they were producing for clients, PR was playing around with AVE and other supposed signals of how good your media relations were. The method was flawed from the start: it was comparing apples and pears. There were many in the industry who voiced a concern over the old way, but there was still no new methodology that we could all apply.
During the mid-2000s, something began to change. The media landscape looked different and there was a growing importance of social in PR campaigns. At first, people began to say that social was hard or impossible to measure, but this soon proved to be incorrect. In fact, the prominence of social helped re-evaluate all forms of PR measurement. Enter AMEC and the Barcelona Principles. The industry needed a universal methodology that turned its back on AVE, and this was it. This was the tipping point in the quest to find an authentic and credible measurement framework for the industry.
The need for measurement in PR has been there for a long time. Yet as the world has suffered in economic turmoil, more prominence has been paid to budgeting in corporations large and small across the world. The value of everything has been under scrutiny and so now, more than ever the important of attributing a proper value on PR is essential. PR is not about column inches, it – like anything else – is about making money.
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When AMEC released the Valid Metrics Framework, Hotwire started looking at how this would align to our existing methodology and thinking – something that we have always valued even before this framework came along. While the changes were not hugely drastic, the tweaks we implemented helped align our approach to measurement with this new industry standard. The framework brings credibility and it presents the opportunity to harness thinking across the industry into a force for change across the agency.
AMEC’s Framework acts as a brilliant springboard for adoption within different agencies and is created with adaptation in mind. The primary focus of the Framework – to put business outcome at the forefront and focus of any PR work – is something that can be integrated into any type of PR work, and is something that we adapted quickly. At every stage of the process, from taking the brief through to management, measurement should be involved.
But how to bring this alive through our business? Being a global agency, we carefully considered how we would roll out measurement across the international offices for all of our consultants.
After many in-depth conversations on the topic between different team members, a white paper was drawn up based on the
AMEC Framework. This white paper was released internally, with training and then catch-up sessions used to help inform staff of the changes. The framework was introduced across all levels of the agency from new joiners through to senior management because it needs to be something your team lives and breathes.
International training was rolled out with video and audio conference around our 11 global offices, and then subsequently with the affiliate network. At the same time, we had been road-testing the Framework in some client work. With the account leads selling in measurement to the client, and then leading teams with the new way of thinking in mind, uptake was quick. It was through the early examples of implementing the measurement approach that made international adoption easier.
Following the internal launch, Hotwire released its adaptation of the white paper publicly.
With an event and digital white paper, we brought in speakers to reinforce the importance of measurement within the PR industry and also to offer examples from our own experience.
Now, AMEC’s Framework is part of all the work that we do.
PR has been looking for a solid approach to measurement for a long time and there is no doubt that this goes a long way to meeting that requirement.
As an industry we have to adapt our approach speak to the language of the CMO and not just the PR Manager. Having measurable business outcomes lying at the heart of communication strategy is an important first step in embedding the philosophy of true measurement into PR.
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Continued education at all levels will be required to steer clients away from legacy attitudes in areas such as AVEs but then equally, agencies must play their part in continuing to develop and innovate in all areas of measurement.
Together, the PR industry can and will become fully accountable for its actions and for the investment business makes in it. And as an agency, we have taken the first small steps to becoming part of this shift.
Hotwire’s Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Do the groundwork and engage people at all levels across the agency in the development of the approach before launching internally.
✔ Identify suitable clients with which to roll out the approach, using the success of the deployment to facilitate ‘sell in’ to other clients across the network.
✔ Don’t assume universal success immediately; it takes time and sometimes baby steps are needed
Group Chief Development Officer, Hotwire
Communications
@westofcenter @hotwirepr hotwirepr.com
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A Step-By-Step Approach to PR
Measurement
Giselle Bodie
Public relations professionals today must measure their work if they hope to be taken seriously. Measurement has never been more productive and innovative. With the increasing prominence given to measurement through industry associations, academics and analysis vendors, it is easier to stay tuned to important media channels, keep tabs on competitors and anticipate unwelcome surprises than ever before. But to maximize the value and benefits of a measurement program, it’s critical to set goals and identify key stakeholders for the data. How do you get the process started without spending a fortune or risking repercussions from an unsuccessful program? The tips below are a step-by-step routemap to get you going in the right direction!
FIRST: CLARIFY YOUR
ORGANISATIONAL GOALS
An organisational goal is a broad idea of what you would like to achieve, stated in clear, simple terms. Typically, these over-arching goals cluster around the following:
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
Increase revenue and/or lower costs

Increase customer engagement and satisfaction

Strengthen brand preference and loyalty

Enhance reputation
SECOND: DETERMINE
KEY STAKEHOLDERS
AND PRIORITISE
Who are your key stakeholders internally and externally, and which are most important to reaching your goals? Practical budgeting considerations may make it impossible to address them all, so start prioritising through some smart initial research:

Talk with key internal stakeholders to see what would spell ‘success’ in communications

Discover where your most important stakeholders are involved in the social and digital space

Listen to what they are saying through online and offline surveys and media content analysis
THIRD: SET SPECIFIC
OBJECTIVES FOR
PRIORITISED
STAKEHOLDER
GROUPS
At the conclusion of this research, meet again with key internal managers to help decide which goals and stakeholders will take priority for the PR and/or social media measurement. Then, set specific objectives for each goal that specify:
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1.
An action statement
2.
A timeline
3.
A target audience
4.
A measurement outcome (usually expressed as a % change).
For example, if a business goal is to sell more homes, an objective might be “ to increase the number of home tours among first-time buyers aged 25-54 by 50% in the following year.
”
Simply focusing efforts in this way will increase your likelihood of success and enable you to modify the objective as you gain history and move forward.
FOURTH: SET "KEY
PERFORMANCE
INDICATORS"
AGAINST EACH
OBJECTIVE
Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable (numeric) measures that enable you to show progress over time for each objective . For example, if your objective is to get first-time buyers into your show homes, some
KPIs might be:
1.
An increase in the number of visitors who sign-up for your homebuilder newsletter
2.
The ratio of posts to comments on your homebuilder website
3.
The increase in home builder profile pages downloaded and attendees to an open house events
FIFTH: CHOOSE TOOLS
AND BENCHMARK
At this point, you’ll need to decide who to measure against. Is it just your own organisation over time or would it be important to measure performance against competitors?
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Choosing appropriate tools and metrics for measurement is vital to the success of the programme - e.g. the AMEC Valid Metrics Framework would enable you to identify the tools and metrics needed to measure your campaign in terms of:

Public Relations Activity – what did you DO? For example, how much content did you create? How many journalist briefings? White papers? YouTube videos? Twitter posts?

Intermediary Effects – how did the media and key influencers (third parties)
RESPOND to your activities across the Communications Phases - Awareness,
Knowledge, Interest and Support?
Are they communicating the right messages, in a positive manner and in a greater volume than competitive messages? Have they endorsed or recommended? You can measure this level by charting progress in both:
✔ “Owned Media” sites - websites, Facebook and Twitter pages, for example.
✔ “Non-owned sites or earned media” - everything else

Target Audience Effects – finally, what ACTION was taken by your target audience? Actions can be hard or soft, ranging from leads or sales increases and efficiency savings to brand awareness, customer loyalty and customer satisfaction improvements. Techniques might include:
✔ Surveys
✔ Correlations and Market Mix Models
✔ Web Analytics
✔ Comparing Earned, Owned, Shared and Paid Channels
SIXTH: ANALYSE THE
RESULTS AND COMPARE
TO COSTS
Data by itself does not equal intelligence. It must be analysed and interpreted to generate actionable insights and recommendations for strategy and planning. It should also provide a means to compare programme costs against identified results.
“ Return on Investment ” is a very ill understood term, and some claim that it cannot be accurately calculated for non-financial programs. However, cost-efficiency metrics such as
“cost-per-targeted impression,” “cost-per-lead” or “cost-per-unique visitor” can be useful. If you DO want to calculate ROI, you should use a true financial formula expressed as a percentage or ratio, as follows:
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SEVENTH:
PRESENTING TO THE
CEO AND SENIOR
MANAGEMENT
A dashboard or scorecard with headlines, bullets and metrics that show performance trends can be highly compelling to the C-suite. Survey results, correlations to outcomes, or solid tracking data from web analytics, will all resonate strongly with a CEO and senior management.
EIGHTH: MEASURE
CONTINUOUSLY AND
IMPROVE PERFORMANCE
Stay vigilant by keeping your programme growing and robust.
Giselle Bodie's Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Always start with asking yourself what you want your evaluation to achieve (sounds pretty basic, but you’d be amazed how many organisations forget this vital step).
✔ Be realistic – on budget, on timing, on scope. You tend to get what you pay for ……
✔ Invest time up front with your evaluation provider – time invested now in defining expectations, scope, budget etc will pay dividends down the line.
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Chief Executive, Salience Insight
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Measuring PR performance across borders – how a global programme works.
By ICCO members Laura Skelley & Michael
Ziviani (PRIA)
When working with global or regional clients, it is very rare that yours will be the country setting the guidelines for measurement and evaluation
(M&E) of PR's success. Usually the
M&E framework will be developed in another country and you will be asked to comply with the established regime. While the system of measurement may be determined outside of your boarders, PR agencies in all countries should provide input to ensure that best practice M&E is being employed.
This is a draft model PRIA will be evolving in the coming months in line with international standards.
There are five key elements that make up best practice measurement and are relevant regardless of the country in which the PR is conducted.
1.
ALL PR programs should be measured and evaluated. Measurement & Evaluation boosts the credibility of PR and helps improve performance of future campaigns
2.
In order to measure and evaluate PR, it is essential that SPECIFIC,
MEASUREABLE OBJECTIVES are set in ADVANCE of the start of the program
3.
These measures must be both TRANSPARENT and REPLICABLE – both across programs and across regions and countries. Examples include quantity, quality and reach
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4.
Communications creates business value in several steps: Activity, Output, Outcome, and Business ROI. Depending on the sophistication of the programs and countries in which the activities are being executed will determine which segments you choose to measure. As long as all countries are MEASURING THE SAME ROI the evaluation program will add value
5.
Communications can and should be MEASURED ACROSS ALL DISCIPLINES –
PR, Social, Events etc. The more complete the picture the more valuable the insight.
There is no silver bullet, one size fits all way to successfully measure PR performance across borders, but there are key guidelines that help ensure consistent measurement regardless of country.
The first step in developing a robust international measurement framework is to determine what you will be measuring and ensure that this is constant across all countries.
Currently, the most common form of measurement is to measure program outputs. Be it volume of coverage, tone and favorability or size and reach, measuring outputs is the most basic way to ensure you are conducting a like for like measurement of program success, regardless of what country you are reviewing.
It is important that each country select a similar number and type of media to track, and utilize the same measurement criteria to rank tone & favorability. What can be seen as a positive story in Australia may be seen as a negative story in China or the UK. A sentiment calibration standard is an important step towards consistent and replicable results.
Regardless of the outputs you decide to measure, Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) should never be included. AVEs have been widely discredited in most countries and regardless of where the M&E program is designed, all countries should ensure they push back if asked to include these measurements.
There is an option to go deeper into content analysis to provide greater insights into PR's impact. The ability of countries to report on deeper content analysis will vary based on skill level, resources and program sophistication. All countries should be able to measure the delivery of key messages, spokesperson impact, depth of discussion around key topics and competitor analysis/share of voice. In order to gain insight across borders, it is again important to ensure that each country is measuring the same things – the same competitors, key messages etc. If one country is focused on competitor A while another country is focused on competitor B – the insights across countries will be skewed.
Therefore, in order to get an edge when measuring the success of your PR across multiple countries it is important to:
1.
Work to a model to keep each country on track and give structure to their reporting. It is important to ensure that this model is customised for your content and resources.
For example, if you are working with countries of vastly different levels of experience and resources, ensure that your model is developed so it can be utilised by the least practised country. Where possible, allow subtleties to be considered, rated and captured.
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2.
Allow for actions from insights. A solid rationale coupled with good analysis creates a firm base for action. Analysis alone will not create value, it simply provides advice to help re-shape strategies to better effect. The action taken from those new strategies is where the value should build from. Often in regional or global measurement, the analysis is not filtered back to the countries in order for them to utilise the insights gained. Ensue you are feeding this valuable insight back to the countries where you are measuring to allow them to take action and refine their programs.
3.
Resource properly. A robust measurement and evaluation program takes resources
– both time and budget. Provide each country with the time and budget to properly gather and collate the information and measure against your model.
Universal adoption of a consistent measurement and evaluation methodology is the key. The term universal suggests a standardised approach. To an extent this is now possible with emerging International agreement on the core measures of volume, tone and reach.
Measuring the success across boarders becomes practical once a model is developed with a clear, transparent and replicable method. Ensure your focus is on consistent measurement criteria, robust evaluation and analysis which seeks to provide actionable insights.
Whilst your country may not be setting the approach you should seek out the opportunity to input/be proactive and confident in providing input…as this will return benefit in the long run.
Laura and Michael’s 3 Top Measurement Tips
✔ Set specific and measurable objectives in advance
✔ Communications creates business value in several steps: Activity, Output, Outcome,
Business ROI
✔ Valid measures of communications results are transparent and replicable metrics of:
Quantity, Quality, Size.
Group Managing Director, Max Australia and
Spectrum Communications
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CEO, Precise Value
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What’s the big deal about the Barcelona
Principles – and where do we go from here?
David Rockland
What’s the Big Deal About the Barcelona
Principles?
Was there an earthquake in Barcelona in
June 2010? Well, if you live in the small world of PR measurement, yes. At the second annual European Summit of PR measurement, representatives of around
150 companies from over 30 countries voted on seven specific principles that finally set a baseline for how to measure PR – what’s good, what’s better, what’s best, and what’s bad.
The Barcelona Principles say some pretty obvious things – set goals before you do a PR program, media measurement needs quantity and quality, measuring target audience change and business results are better than measuring media results, social and traditional media can be measured with the same basic ideas, and transparency is critical. And the principle that probably has most PR practitioners excited is that the use of Advertising Value
Equivalents (AVEs) was abolished as a legitimate approach.
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For most of the fifty of so years PR has been around as a defined marketing and communications practice, measurement was basically around number of clips, number of impressions and AVEs. The latter placed the value of PR as the cost of purchasing the equivalent amount of advertising space.
Often, PR practitioners would then multiply that cost by anywhere from 2 to 7 claiming that earned media was that much more valuable than paid media. What was wrong with this picture?

Clips and impressions alone are meaningless – what if all the clips say that the particular product is terrible, or that the company is run by criminals? Quality has to be a consideration as does whether or not the articles are reaching the right audience. If you are selling lipstick, an article in a hunting magazine probably has little value to you. Or, at the least the guys I go deer hunting with here in the States don’t seem to wear much lipstick that I know of.

It may seem silly to say set goals first, but often PR practitioners have done some exciting program that has little to actually do with the driving the business of the client or organization. You may have had a great party with lots of celebrities, but if it didn’t drive sales, it was just a good party.

As for AVEs, why would the cost of advertising be equal to the value of PR? The cost of advertising isn’t equal to the value of advertising. And, if the articles are negative, why would they be given a positive value. In advertising, you get to say what you want, where you want, and when you want. With PR, you are subject to the vagaries of the editorial process – sometimes you win, and sometimes you don’t. On the other hand, it is often much less expensive than a multi-million dollar ad buy, and with an editorial endorsement can have a much larger impact on sales.

And, is earned media always more valuable than advertising? While I would like this to be true since I work for a firm that produces earned media for clients, the reality is that such multipliers have been proven over and over to not exist generally.
So, the PR measurement world is maturing.
One reason this has come about is that getting data around press coverage is way cheaper than it has ever been. When I went to work at Ketchum, we had lots of people clipping articles by hand, pasting them in a book, and delivering that book as proof of value at the end of the quarter or year. Now, with digital aggregators, getting the coverage is simple and relatively much less expensive. And, with social media, you can get lots of data very quickly.
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Part of that maturation is also a shift from counting earned media, to counting what is much more important – target audience change and business results. Now, you can add a few questions to a brand or advertising tracking survey and know if PR is creating awareness, favorability, purchase and recommendation.
And, with earned media data now much easier and cheaper to get, you can add it into market mix and other statistical models to show the effects of earned media on sales and brand equity. In other words, you can do with PR what has been done for advertising, direct mail and other marketing channels for a long time. The playing field has been levelled.
Part of that levelling is also the understanding of how different channels affect one another.
When we do market mix modelling for clients, what we often find is that each channel not only has its own effects on sales, but also tends to affect the other channels. In other words, advertising and PR, for example, benefit one another. One plus one becomes three.
Is the maturation of PR measurement complete? No, far from it. But, the Barcelona
Principles started the process. From it is emerging a set of measurement standards for PR practitioners that really bring the
Principles into daily practice. And, we will increasingly see certification programs in PR measurement that define what a PR professional needs to know before he/she can really call themselves a PR professional.
Who’s driving this? Well, certainly, AMEC and ICCO have got the ball rolling and are continuing to make progress.
However, what is also heartening to see it lots of others have jumped on board and adopted the Barcelona Principles including large corporations such as FedEx and Philips, and PR member organizations around the world. Many companies like my own have been leading this charge with our clients and the associations we belong to. We see that our business is really driven by the edict “prove everything or die.”
If we don’t switch from silly metrics such as
AVEs to sales and ROI measurement, we will no longer be relevant to our clients. The
Barcelona Principles established the floor of
PR measurement. It will be up to the PR practitioner of the future to define how high the ceiling can be.
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David Rockland's Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Read and understand the Barcelona Principles. Available at amecorg.com
✔ When you report results, place them in the context of the business objectives of the organization as well as against the goals of the communications program you are measuring
✔ Ask yourself how you can move your measurement program to the next level, whether it be to add a quality dimension to media measurement if you are only counting clips, or from a change in consumer perception to its impact on business performance
Partner and Managing Director of Ketchum
Global Research & Analytics and CEO of
Ketchum Change and Global Chairman of
AMEC
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You can measure social media.
Richard Bagnall
Why is it that the mere thought of measuring the effectiveness of our PR campaigns fills us with such dread? Why does it always seem so confusing and overly complex?
For 20 years or more, PR measurement has largely been a reasonably simple process that was dressed up as a bit of a black art.
Media analysis companies focused on using content analysis to measure press clippings and focusing 99% of the time on purely output metrics. What do we mean by that? Well simply put, it's the easy things to capture from the editorial content - metrics like volume of articles, column inches, tone, messaging, company, brand and name mentions, journalists, publications and spokespeople etc.
To differentiate themselves from their competitors, most of the media analysis companies then created their own proprietary scoring systems and indices which took these different metrics, weighted them and then presented them as a single number. They then tried to tell their clients that this number and the other output metrics represented the success of their pr campaigns.
Which of course it didn't.
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Measuring outputs alone is never going to tell a PR professional how successful their PR campaign has been. The analysis industry was answering the wrong questions. PRs were being asked by their bosses to demonstrate the value that their work was creating for their organisation. As an answer they were being provided with a proprietary score based on an output metric of which no one else in their organisation would have heard. And to cap it all off, most of these scores were largely meaningless, and all were flawed. It was no wonder therefore that PR measurement tended to confuse and disengage most of the industry, and consequently that PR has always struggled to prove it's value successfully.
Recognising this challenge, AMEC took a leadership position back in 2010 when it drove through the Barcelona Principles ( http://bit.ly/YqJAB3 ). In a nutshell, these 7 statements encouraged the PR and its associated measurement industry to think more credibly about how to measure communications success by talking the language of business.
In addition to confirming that AVE's were a meaningless metric, the Principles also state that to measure success properly, we need to move on from measuring outputs to focusing instead on measuring outcomes. Put simply, this means that instead of leaving the measurement just at what we have generated (outputs), we need to focus on what this work has actually achieved (out-takes / outcomes) for our organisation. The Barcelona Principles also state of course that social media can and should be measured.
Since 2010 a lot of further work has been done to help the industry think about the correct way to measure social media. AMEC has again taken a leadership position with its social media group working in partnership with other trade bodies around the world in PR and the wider marketing community to set best practice and standards for measuring social media.
At first glance, the massive changes that have occurred in the PR and media industries over the last 5-10 years make it seem that measuring our success must be even more confusing than ever. Many in the industry understandably are desperate for AMEC to come up with a single number that could let everyone know how successful their work has been.
This is not going to happen however. In the same way that a single number was always flawed in the more simplified world of traditional media analysis, a single number will not work when measuring social media. The search for a magic bullet can be called off now as it simply does not and will never exist.
The reassuring news however is that the more things have changed, the more they have actually stayed the same. The right approach to measuring social media is to focus relentlessly on your objectives and then to measure in a manner that reflects them. Think clearly at the outset what it is that you are looking to achieve with your social media campaign. What conversations do you want to join? What thoughts are you looking to influence? What outcomes are you looking to drive?
Don't be tempted to make the same mistakes as were made in the old days. Frustratingly, this is the number one problem that I have found PRs are experiencing with social media measurement. Specifically don't rely on the new SAAS (Software as a Service) platforms alone to monitor and measure your work, they are very unlikely to be able to get you to the tailored measurement and out-take / outcome metrics that you need.
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Instead, think about the different objectives of each part of your social campaign and then how you might measure each in a credible manner.
So for example, if looking to measure the exposure that you are getting with your core audience you should consider measuring the following:

Organisation / brand mentions

Share of conversation

Search rank

Click-throughs

Web analytics etc
If looking to measure the engagement that you are having with your core audience then you might want to consider these:

Comments/posts ratio

Number of links

'@' mentions / Retweets / Retweets as a percentage of the total

Number of bookmarks / likes / votes / 'pins'

Shares & Likes

Subscriber numbers

URL visits

Awareness

Resolution rate
And of course if looking to measure the action that has happened as a result of the social media campaign then you should consider 'out-take / outcome' metrics such as:

Footfall

Purchase / donations

Website visits & downloads

Coupon redemption, endorsement

Awareness etc
Clearly not all of these metric suggestions will be relevant to each campaign, and conversely these are just a few suggestions and not an exhaustive list. As is always the case, the metrics will need to be tailored to what it is that you are trying to achieve.
What you will also see is that not all of these metrics are available from content analysis of the online conversations alone. Instead they necessitate market research, others will involve working with web analytics, and others will need you to work with your marketing or sales team to gather the date required.
By following this approach however you will be able to focus clearly on what success looks like to your organisation and report back in a language that everyone understands.
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AMEC is soon to launch a revised Valid Metrics Framework which will develop this approach into a grid that you can use as a template for each campaign. This will be launched at the
European Summit in Madrid in June 2013 and will then be available for download from
AMEC's website at amecorg.com/social-media-measurement .
In the meantime, you can follow the conversation on twitter with the hashtag #smmstandards and the march towards standards at smmstandards.org
.
Social media measurement must not be allowed to make the same mistakes of the past.
Don't just count what is easy to count and report using meaningless charts hoping that somehow you are providing effective analysis. Instead as an industry we must seize this opportunity to prove the value of our work with credible metrics, that reflect our objectives and really demonstrate our success. The PR industry deserves nothing less.
Richard Bagnall's Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Begin with the end in mind – Measure against your objectives, align your social objectives to those of your organisation
✔ Measure appropriately - Be wary of automation, and counting basic metrics that are easy to count but basically meaningless
✔ A few charts and numbers are not measurement – successful social media measurement needs relevancy, context and insight
And a bonus tip:
✔ Don’t fear measurement, embrace it, it’s there to help guide you not criticise you!
Chairman of AMEC Social Media
Measurement Committee.
Richard@bagnall.net
@richardbagnall
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Insights Critical for Effective PR but Must Go
Beyond the ‘Bleeding Obvious’
Marion McDonald
The best-in-class best public relations campaigns – those that deliver beyond stakeholder engagement and media coverage to create lasting behavior change - are grounded in a strong underlying insight into target stakeholder attitudes. A well-researched and clearly expressed insight is a far greater driver of success than a brilliant ‘PR-able’ idea.
Often considered the domain of advertising creative development, insights are equally the backbone of a successful creative PR idea as they provide a fresh understanding of a situation or trend that moves our thinking from what it is to what it means. This is essential to crack a current ‘stuck’ behaviour or attitude with a provocative new way of framing a situation that sparks reconsideration and support for change.
Let me clarify what I mean by a great insight though. Insights are not merely facts or observations from research, or reading a few online posts. “New mums are under pressure and time poor” or “Hong Kong consumers trust recommendations from celebrities” are examples of messages from the ‘Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious’; not any kind of insight!
Every competitor in a category can access the same information. Great insights come from research, judgment and experience:
Research helps us define what it is
Insights help us define interpret why it is and what it means
The Creative idea is how we connect it together to engage stakeholders at points relevant to their work, leisure or family moments where the topic becomes relevant.
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If you understand how to play “join the dots” then you have the basic skills to build an insight.
Once you’re given the numbers, and you start to connect them, the picture becomes obvious. Digging for insights is essentially searching for the data, numbers and opinions then applying non-linear thinking to spot connections and surprises.
If you understand how to play “join the dots” then you have the basic skills to build an insight. Once you’re given the numbers, and you start to connect them, the picture becomes obvious. Digging for insights is essentially searching for the data, numbers and opinions then applying non-linear thinking to spot connections and surprises.
So where do you get the numbers from? We start by reviewing all existing knowledge and consumer research our client/brand may already have. Often public relations professionals don’t see the relevance of their consumer research to PR messaging, so they may not think to review or share the research with their agency. Start by seeking out existing knowledge.
Then we immerse ourselves in consumer behavior – their likes and frustrations about the category, their true behavior in the category . We try to experience the category as they do.
Social media listening is a great first step. Start with a conversation audit to understand how the category or brand is described. Use social media tools for instant online research.
Cadbury UK is very clever at using its Google+ page and Hangout groups with trusted customers for new insights.
Then get out from behind a computer to gather the dots. Go on ‘home visits’ to see how the category/brand is used in situ. For example, in-home visits for the room air freshener category uncovered that plug-in air fresheners are often concealed behind sofas so consumers don’t notice when they run out.
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Work in your brand’s store for a day as a sales trainee, or in your client’s office to observe what they discuss about the category? My favourite technique is accompanying a sales rep for a day, especially in B2B and pharmaceuticals where experiencing the category directly may not be an option.
Interview customers / consumers - always have your 10 questions ready. If it’s a brand with a consumer call centre, ask to listen in on their call centre line for a few hours to understand brand frustrations
Then, as David Ogilvy said, “stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.”
Information needs time to percolate. I like using a ‘war room’ – a dedicated room where I can post up all my ‘dots’ and visually and seek out connections. I talk team members through the data we have gathered and listen for their questions and comments to see what they reveal.
I read campaign case studies on databases such as warc.com
to learn how similar marketing challenges were tackled in other countries or categories. And I sleep on it for a couple of days to see what emerges.
An insight should immediately make sense when it arrives and spark an ‘Aha!’ emotional response. It should help consumers/customers make connections which they may not have previously.
Express insights simply and brilliantly. This is, in effect, a copywriting exercise and often benefits from working with a professional copywriter. My tips:
1.
Short, sharp sentences
2.
Be category specific – get to the point versus vague general issues like feeling “time poor”
3.
Avoid hard sell – it’s an insight, not a selling line
4.
Use emotion
Get an edge to the insight in a way that makes consumers respond with “yes, that’s so true, and if I’m honest I’ve never thought of it like that myself”.
The time invested in insight development speeds up the idea generation stage considerably, giving you time savings normally spent on generating many more ideas.
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The most critical step is getting out of the office to find the dots. Then invest the time to connect them to build a strong insight that underpins our ideas and creates behaviour change that will positively impact business. This is personally far more satisfying to work on than unfocused brainstorming of ideas with little chance of changing deeply ingrained behavior.
Marion McDonald ’s Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Be PROVOCATIVE! Abandon all goals for broad coverage. Aim for the right impact only.
Become obsessive about "how did this change behaviour?" not how much coverage it got.
Design communications programs from the outset to drive behaviour change, not clippings.
✔ Speak the language of the boardroom! Always strive to link public relations to results that can be ‘banked’ (ie. not clippings or AVE). This may be a longer term outcome (eg. new leads to closing deals 12 months later) or corporate reputation gains that open up access to new resources or cost savings from deeper employee engagement and reduced staff turnover.
✔ Reserve program budget for quality impact & outcome measurement to prove business impact. (Especially at the expense of meaningless clipping reports.)
Managing Director, Strategy & Measurement,
Asia Pacific Region, Ogilvy Public Relations,
Hong Kong
33

The client view of what measurement looks like.
Ben Matthews
During the early part of my career, I remember once walking into the public relations office of a large company to talk to a Communications Director.
The fact that there was an actual walled-off office will give you an indication of how long ago this was. The conversation flowed back and forth until it turned to the subject of how he judged success. He simply gestured, sweeping his arm around the room to indicate the vast collage of press cuttings stuck to every vertical surface. Their success was apparently judged in how well they could redecorate their office.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with measuring volume. But it’s a little like a football team judging their success only on their ability to get 11 players onto the pitch.
Thankfully, it really feels the industry has largely moved on from there, driven in no small part by key moments like the Barcelona principles. There is a genuine enthusiasm and desire from communicators to both demonstrate real value, and derive competitive advantage through PR analysis.
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Shooting into an open goal?
I believe the single biggest driver in the success of measurement is how it links back to both the overall PR goals, and the wider business goals. Yet it’s an area that’s often underdeveloped in any measurement approach.
Far too infrequently we ask ourselves questions like, “why are we here?” or “what is our purpose?”. One of the single biggest areas agencies can add value is by challenging their clients on these questions - because they’re fundamental to driving value from measurement. Good PR teams want their agencies to push them and challenge them on goals that are woolly, ill-defined or from time to time, plain bonkers.
I speak from experience here, having worked with Metrica to define our approach - they pushed, prodded and made us validate what we outcomes we really need from our measurement. They helped us separate out the noise from the meaningful insights around our core purpose.
Changing the conversation
For eBay, this core communications purpose revolves around perception change. Last year, 70% of the items sold on eBay were brand new, while auctions only generated around 10% of the $3.75 billion revenue generated in the first quarter of
2013. eBay has moved from an auction house of second hand goods to a global online marketplace.
Yet the media perception of eBay lags the reality and delivering this ‘evolution’ message represents the key challenge. Two years ago, only 19% of coverage reflected the evolution messaging. By monitoring it and specifically targeting media and geographies, the team has driven that metric to more than 50%.
Measurement is a conversation eBay is a business run on conversations, it’s driven as much by informal networks as it is by formal structure. So, we’ve designed our measurement to reflect and promote these conversations. Our scorecards reflect the audiences they’re designed for. We realised that many of the things we measured lacked context, and an explicit link to the goals we wanted to achieve.
To paraphrase Warren Buffet, the danger is that you study what is measurable, rather than what is meaningful. We now have single page reports designed individually for different audiences. As PR professionals, we don’t measure for us, we measure for our stakeholders.
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Sorting out social
Social media measurement is the current focus of much attention, but it still feels like the
Wild West of evaluation – very exciting but a bit of a free for all. The social media Valid
Metrics Framework introduced at the AMEC conference in Dublin last year was a big step forward, but it’s clear that with debates on fundamentals like where the line between traditional and social media lie, we are still a way from consensus.
There is an opportunity for practitioners to help guide companies through this social minefield. eBay receives around 1.5 million pieces of English language social media content per month. The challenge is to turn that volume into consistent and accurate business intelligence – as social has the opportunity to act as early warning system, engager and perception changer. It’s clear we’re only scraping the surface of its potential as a measurement and intelligence tool.
Ben Matthews' Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ To derive value from measurement it must be linked to both PR and the wider business goals
✔ The best agencies challenge goals that are woolly or badly defined
✔ Tailor your measurement for different audiences for maximum impact
Head of Strategic Communications at eBay
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Measurement: Encouraging realistic client expectations
By ICCO member Bridget von Holdt
(PRISA) , ICCO Board Member for South
Africa.
Campaign introduction:
Nelson Mandela International Day 2012 reached millions of people across the world with the key message: “Make the change, Become a Mandela Day Change
Maker” inspired people from all walks of life to make contribute 67 minutes in changing the world for the better.
Working closely with the Nelson Mandela
Foundation, Inzalo Communication, a member of the Public Relations Institute of South Africa (PRISA), developed a PR campaign which achieved its overarching objective of increasing the reach globally. The campaign’s success is that it has guaranteed that Nelson Mandela International Day is entrenched on the annual calendar, thereby almost making it a part of life in South African and continuing the global growth.
Statement of Problem/ Opportunity:
Opportunity
The aim for Nelson Mandela International Day was get the buy-in of the media beforehand so that they can be more involved in the campaign. Because Nelson Mandela is a global icon, this meant that Inzalo would also have to rally support from the international media.
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Criticism/ Problem
The problems/concerns which were identified were mainly related to how people can show support and get involved. It is not about giving money, but about contributing your personal skills and talents to those that are in need. Media across the world need to understand that there are certain themes and they should follow these rather than do what they like.
Inzalo needed to find ways which would safeguard from inappropriate support from the media such as:

Incorrect message and branding

Running competitions that are aimed at raising funds

Running ‘paid for’ features in the media

Promising their audiences an audience with Nelson Mandela
PR Objectives

Build an effective network of media contacts that continuously support the initiative, not just the key dates

Managing the various news and wire networks to ensure that the correct message was filtered down to both local and international audiences.
Research
Because the main target audience was the youth, Inzalo needed to identify “methods in reaching them and understanding how are they communicate with each other and on which social media platforms.
Focus groups were set-up with schools (government and private), universities, student-body organisations and youth media such as Soul City, and Community Team. This was seen as an important part of the campaign’s research and measurement approach.
From these meetings we needed to find out the following:

What are their views about Mandela Day

How they can contribute towards the day

How would we be able to reach the youth
The research was based on feedback received from media clippings; websites and social media responses and input from e-mails and personal interaction with Centre of memory.
Research shows that the awareness levels grew by over 40% over the previous year.
Planning
Planning for Nelson Mandela International Day started in November of the previous year.
Inzalo compiled a detailed database of media who could assist us in achieving our set objectives.
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In the planning phase, key projects were identified:

School Pupil Panel
 Launch of “Mandela Mondays”

University Students Panel

Public Figure Panel

Nelson Mandela International Day Biker send-off
From this, execution dates were set to meet media deadline. Working closely with the
Nelson Mandela Foundation, Inzalo convinced the media to kick start the campaign in and on their different platforms and continue to publicise all planned events as well as guarantee coverage for July.
Execution
After conducting all the research it was confirmed that the best way to reach the youth was through:
1.
Social media; such as Facebook and Twitter
2.
Learning Institution communication; such as posters on campus and schools, online student portals; etc.
3.
Campus media; such as newspapers, radio and websites
4.
National media; such as broadcast, online and print
To implement the campaign strategy, Inzalo and the Foundation agreed that there will be several media activations leading up to the 18th July, ensuring that we had continuous activities that will serve as reminders to the media and the public. This also meant that there will be regular news from South Africa to the rest of the world about Nelson Mandela
International Day.
A number of events were organized:

School pupil panel –March

Student Launch
–May

Mandela Mondays
Public Figures panel –
The third official event was championed by the Foundation Trustee and Housing Minister,
Tokyo Sexwale who give a keynote address. This launch was held to provide the public with the context about Nelson Mandela International Day and remind them about Mandela's contribution to a democratic South Africa.
Local and international journalists and editors were invited to all the events as well as provided with the necessary information on the campaign and its planned events. Presenters and producers from radio and television stations were also contacted to encourage them to create awareness around Nelson Mandela International Day events and to cover activities that were happening leading up to and on the day.
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Evaluation
We began the campaign with research in order to establish a robust planning discipline for the campaign. We ended the campaign with an evaluation of its success based on media clippings, website statistics and social media metrics, as well as input from e-mail and personal interaction with the Centre of Memory at the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
This final analysis research showed that awareness levels grew by more than 40% over the previous year.
Without any doubt, Inzalo Communication can say that all the objectives for the Nelson
Mandela International Day were met.

Street banners, online banners and radio headlines lead with Mandela Day was a great achievement.

The media list grew to over 2100 journalists from around the world.

The mentions of Mandela Day were proactive and encouraged public participation.
The post publicity demonstrated people of all walks of life in action – government, politicians, actors, celebrities, personalities, and the citizen. Coverage monitoring was managed by the Foundation

Website posts of activities increased – traffic to the dedicated site increase by 70% over last year.

Social media responses grew

Letters of response poured into the Foundation
According to the data, the social media country share of voice was:

United States 34%

South Africa 29%

United Kingdom 6%

Canada 5%

India, Italy and Brazil 2%

Indonesia, Canada, Germany and Venezuela 1% (Each)

All Others 16%
Top Domains

Twitter 88%

Facebook 8%

All Others 4%
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Bridget von Holdt's Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Agree on measureable objectives (to say increase awareness is not an objective)
✔ Agree on measuring criteria and methodology (budget does not always allow for a research company to research a campaign and the impact). And remember to measure all platforms.
✔ ROI – the impact of on the target audience vs the spend on the campaign. (ROI is not about the sales or the impact on the bottom line it is about the reputation, the target audience perceptions / media perception changes and influences)
Director, Inzalo Communications, on behalf of Public Relations Institute of South Africa
41

Getting it right: a ten point evaluation checklist.
Rob Ettridge & Philip Lynch
1.
Set SMART objectives:
Set and agree clear and measurable campaign goals up front. If you put rubbish in, you’ll get rubbish out.
2.
Define success criteria:
Define and agree the campaign success criteria and the base or benchmark you are measuring from.
3.
Agree on methodology:
Define and agree the methodology for evaluation. Is it easy to use, clear, repeatable and consistent?
4.
Agree the focus:
Agree what you are evaluating (quantitative and qualitative) and across which platforms (broadcast, radio, print, online, social media).
5.
Agree frequency:
Agree on the frequency of evaluation and how and when to report back.
6.
Agree budgets:
Agree on the available budgets for evaluation. Will it be integrated into the campaign retainer or charged separately?
7.
Measure quality and quantity:
– Measure the quality as well as the quantity of coverage. Sentiment, share of voice, engagement and message are crucial indicators, especially in today’s digital landscape.
8.
Focus on commercial outcomes:
Measure the effect on outcomes rather than outputs. Have you answered the question: ‘What are the proven business benefits to the organisation?’
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9.
Integrate:
Align and integrate your evaluation methodology with the organisation’s wider business and marketing metrics?
10.
Inform and improve:
Analyse and use the data to assess the effectiveness and inform your next campaign. If necessary re-set the campaign objectives.
Partner, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
Co-author - Director of Media Evaluation at
Kantar Media Intelligence
43

What we mean! Definitions and terms
Neil Wholey
Glossary
(based on AMEC Glossary available here: amecorg.com/2012/06/glossary_plain_speaking )
Every fast changing industry has its jargon. The lexicon emerges to aid efficient communication, but that efficiency is only achieved when everyone knows what the words and phrases really mean, and uses them consistently. This glossary aims to help secure that consistency sooner than otherwise.
Feedback is welcome of course via the comments section at the end, and we’ll update the glossary monthly based on relevant feedback.
All hyperlinks are cross-references. Links to external webpages are indicated by an arrow at the end of the respective entry.
0-9
+1 – allows users of the Google+ social network to recommend websites and other things online; similar in use to Facebook’s Like button.
A
Advocacy – An individual or organisation that is engaged with an agenda, an individual or an organisation and speaks highly of it to others. The act of seeking third-party support through persuasion
Algorithm – a step-by-step problem solving procedure; an established, recursive computational procedure for solving a problem in a finite number of steps.
AMEC – The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication is the global trade body and professional institute for agencies and practitioners who provide mediameasurement, evaluation and communication research.
Audience / target audience – a specified group within a defined public targeted for influence.
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AVE – Advertising Value Equivalents; a discredited approach to gauging the value of public relations(or media relations more precisely). See Barcelona Principles.
B
Barcelona Principles – A series of statements to guide best practice in PR measurement that were endorsed after a vote of global delegates at the AMEC European Measurement
Summit in 2010:

Goal setting and measurement are fundamental aspects of any PR programmes.

Media measurement requires quantity and quality – cuttings in themselves are not enough.

Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity.

Social media can and should be measured. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results.

Business results can and should be measured where possible.

Transparency and Replicability are paramount to sound measurement
Blog – a series of content, typically text or image, published on a web page in sequential date order focused on a subject or issue and encouraging interaction. Also see vlog.
Bot – a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone.
Bounce rate – A ‘bounce’ is when a visitor to a website only views a single page before leaving. Bounce rate is the percentage of visits to a webpage where this occurs. A high bounce rate indicates a lack of engagement.
BPM – Business Performance Management; the disciplined approach to management encompassing metric selection, measurement and organizational learning. The Balanced
Scorecard is reportedly the dominant BPM framework amongst the Global 2000.
C
Click – each instance when a visitor follows a hyperlink from one page to another, or expects some other action.
Cutting: the piece of written material containing messages about the client or its products or an extract from a paper or magazine regarding a particular account. Also commonly referred to as clipping
Communication: the credible, honest and timely two-way flow of information that fosters common understanding and trust.
Copy: the text produced by a consultancy for a press release or article. Journalists also refer to their news stories or features as copy.
CPRF – Council of Public Relations Firms, the trade association for public relations firms in the US.
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CPRS – Canadian Public Relations Society.
D
Download – a copy of a document or other digital file is pulled from a web server to the user’s Internet connected device. When a user accesses a web page, it’s actually downloaded from a web server to the user’s browser, but this isn’t usually what’s meant when the word is invoked.
E
Earned media – third-party media coverage secured through a relationship or news worthy event, rather than paid-for advertising or other means of securing media. Includes on- and off-line media. Often used synonymously with public relations, but public relations is not defined by media.
Engage – occupy or attract someone’s interest or attention; involve someone in a conversation or discussion.
Evaluation – the assessing of the impact and value of a series of actions in achieving desired outcomes from start to finish. The recording of the actions themselves, such as the amount, potential value and frequency is only part of the evaluation process.
Eyeballs – the aggregated published or acknowledged readership numbers for all content in which a brand or organisation receive published content. (See impressions, and opportunities to see.)
F
Forum – an online site hosted by a community to discuss and interact about its area of interest.
Frequency – the amount of times that an event occurs. Often used in conjunction with reach
(seeReach and Frequency).
H
Hits – the logged request for a file on a webpage and images and other digital assets on that page made by a browser, a search engine or a webcrawler. Commonly confused as a count of the number of times that the page has been viewed in its entirety. Also, see media hits.
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I
ICCO – International Communications Consultancy Association.
Impact – commonly used when analysing how much visual presence and ‘wow factor’ a piece of content carries. Is often measured in a number of different ways by different companies and commonly results in the use of a scoring system. Component impact measures might include size of headline, font, article, presence of imagery, position in publication etc.
Impressions – the aggregated published or acknowledged readership numbers for all content in which a brand or organisation receives earned content (see eyeballs and opportunities to see). For web content, an impression is counted as each time some content is loaded into a browser.
Influence – you have been influenced when you think in a way you wouldn’t otherwise have thought or do something you wouldn’t otherwise have done. There is currently no scalable facility to ascertain or infer who or what caused someone to change their mind or behaviour.
Metrics often presented as measuring influence (eg. Klout) do not measure influence, rather the propensity for an individual’s social media contributions to be shared, and the reach of that sharing, and this idea is increasingly being rechristened social capital. However, the degree of influence can be measured on a case by case basis through scientific research techniques such as statistical analysis and randomised controlled trials. These can help develop our understanding of how people are influenced and fine tune generalised approaches.
IPR – the Institute for Public Relations, a US based independent non-profit foundation dedicated to the science beneath the art of public relations.
Issue – a matter, typically in dispute, between two or more interested parties.
K
Klout – a well-known service that purports to measure influence but doesn’t
KPIs – Key performance indicator(s); define a set of values against which to measure success. KPIs must be defined to reflect objectives and strategy, and will be sufficiently robust for the measurement to be repeatable. Quantitative KPIs can be presented as a number, ratio or percentage. KPI’s tend to be:

Quantitative indicators which can be presented as a number

Practical indicators that interface with existing company processes

Directional indicators specifying whether organisational performance is improving or not

Actionable indicators sufficiently in an organisation’s control to effect change

Financial indicators used in performance measurement and when looking at an operating index.
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L
Like – allows users of the Facebook social network to recommend websites and other things online; similar in use to Google+’s +1 facility.
Lurker – someone who reads social media content but doesn’t actively participate in debate and communication.
M
Machined media – content that is automatically discovered, presented and published by machines for humans. May be considered alongside paid, owned and earned media.
Market Research – a collection of disciplines designed to understand the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and organisations towards other individuals and organisations.
These disciplines are often categorised as either primarily qualitative or quantitative research. The topic areas can include both market orientated commercial research to more societal social research.
Measurement – the action of measuring something; ascertaining the size, amount, or degree of something by using an instrument or device; assessing the importance, effect, or value of something.
Media hits – an item or piece of content to be counted or measured. Not to be confused with hits.
Media relations – a component of public relations focused on journalists and bloggers as intermediaries to the audience you wish to reach.
Message board – a script on a website with a submission form that allows visitors to post messages (called “threads” or “posts”) on your website for others to read. These messages are usually sorted within discussion categories, or topics, chosen by the host, or possibly the visitor. A messageboard is also called a web board or a forum.
Metric – a system or standard of measurement; (in business) a set of figures or statistics that measure results.
Microblogs – online short form communication services that facilitate the public exchange of text, video and image links. Popular microblogs include Plurk, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, identi.ca, Yammer, and Jaiku. China tends to have its own popular microblogging sites that include Sina Weibo and Tencent Wiebo.
Mission – a statement of why an organisation exists; often described alongside the organisation’svision and values.
Motivation – reason(s) for acting or behaving in a particular way.
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MRC – The Media Rating Council is a USA based industry-funded organisation established in the early 1960s at the behest of the US Congress after the Harris Hearings on Broadcast
Ratings with the remit to review and accredit audience rating services. It exists to improve the quality of audience measurement by rating services and to provide a better undertstanding of the applications and limitations of rating information. It does this through three main activities:
 to establish and administer minimum standards for rating operations
 to accredit ratings services on the basis of information submitted by such services
 to audit the activities of the rating services.
MT – Modified tweet (see RT); when a Twitter user lightly edits or appends another Twitter user’s tweet before forwarding it to their network.
N
Net Promoter Score (NPS) – an approach to quantifying customer loyalty and advocacy based on customers’ answers to the question: ‘Would you feel comfortable recommending us to others?’
O
Objective – a specific aim of an organisation.
OTS – opportunities to see. The aggregated published or acknowledged readership numbers for all content in which a brand or organisation receives earned content. See also eyeballs andimpressions.)
Outcome – Something that has happened as the result of a campaign. In public relations this would typically be defined as a measurable change in awareness, knowledge, attitude, opinion, behaviour or reputation metrics.
Output – in PR terms, the material and activity that the PR professional generates such as a press release, email, events etc. as well as the ensuing media coverage that is generated.
Outputs will also include proactive communication by an organisation on its owned media channels and properties.
Out-take – what an audience now understands having been exposed to content about an organisation or a brand. Out-take occurs before an outcome, although some pundits ignore out-take and just discuss outputs and outcomes.
Owned media – media channels that are owned by or in the control of an organisation or a brand. Typically these will include websites, company blogs, newsletters and brand accounts in social media.
P
Page views – A request for a file from a webserver whose type has been defined as a page in the log analysis of the web server. One page view may account for many web hits.
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PageRank – According to Google: ‘PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.’
Paid media – content that has been generated as a result of a purchase such as an advert or an advertorial.
Podcast – an audio or video clip that is available for download online to listen to or watch at a time of the recipients choosing. Originally used to describe a series of content, the term is often now used to describe a single piece of content.
PRCA – The Public Relations Consultants Association is the professional body that represents UK PR consultancies, in-house communications teams, PR freelancers and individuals. The PRCA promotes all aspects of public relations and internal communications work, helping teams and individuals maximise the value they deliver to clients and organisations.
PRSA – The Public Relations Society of America is the world’s largest organisation of public relations professionals with more than 21,000 members across the United States.
PRSSA – The Public Relations Student Society of America has 10,000 members at colleges and universities internationally.
Public relations – a management function that focuses on two-way communication and fostering of mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and its publics. Public relations is often defined in terms of earned media, but all approaches to media are valid.
Q
Quantitative – Data that can be quantified and summarised with a numerical figure. Often used to describe quantitative research techniques such as public opinion surveys.
Qualitative – Data that is descriptive and non-numerical. Often used to desckjribe qualitative research techniques such as focus groups. To confuse matters qualitatively gathered information can be quantified in some cases. Similarly in a quantitative survey there may be a box for verbatim qualitative comments. These in turn may be quantified by coding answers and counting how many comments occurred within each code. Finally some data techniques which require significant interpretation, such as identifying customer groups/segments/clusters, might be classed by some as qualitative techniques.
R
Randomised Controlled Trials – Selecting two random samples with similar characteristics and only carrying out an intervention in one; thus enabling any change that occurs to be attributed to the intervention.
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Reach – a dis-aggregated number of people (or percentage of an audience) that have been exposed to content. ‘Reach’ differs from impressions, opportunities to see and eyeballs in that it counts the actual number of people exposed to coverage rather than the number of
‘opportunities’ to see the coverage. It is a widely mis-used term in the industry and should only be used when readership data has been dis-aggregated to take account of cross readership patterns.
Reach and Frequency – a common metric quantifying campaign success predominantly used and accepted in advertising. It couples the reach metric with frequency which is the average number of times that each person has been reached, or exposed, to the content.
Reblog – when a bloger effectively endorses another blogger’s post by posting it facsimile to their own.
Relationship – the way in which two or more people or things are connected, or the state of being connected.
Relevance – closely connected or appropriate to the matter in hand.
Representative random sample – a randomly selected subset of the total data pool
(universe) that accurately reflects the profile of the whole data pool. Defined mathematically but often not as pure in practice as can be impacted on by not all the data pool being accessible. For example, a random sample could be drawn of news clippings publically available online but would necessarily exclude those on paid sites (such as the Times in the
UK). This could be misrepresented as a sample of all newspapers. In market research not all those randomly selected to take part in a survey do take part and initially representative samples can be skewed to those more likely to take part.
Reputation – the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something.
Research – the process of investigating to answer a question.
Resonance – the power to evoke enduring images, memories, and emotions.
Return on investment (ROI) – a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate
ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio. For the avoidance of doubt, there is no such thing as ‘non-financial ROI’. If this phrase is invoked it may be to convey the importance of nonfinancial metrics and their vital role inbusiness performance management.
RT – retweet; when a Twitter user endorses another Twitter users’ tweet by forwarding it to their network.
S
Semantic analysis – computationally trying to determine the meaning of language, of a corpus.
Sentiment – often used interchangeably with tone, but more precisely refers to the feelings the author is trying to convey.
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Sentiment analysis – a subtopic of semantic analysis; computationally trying to determine the author’s emotional regard for or attitude towards something from the text alone; usually expressed on a 3- or 5-point ordinal scale (eg, very unfavourable, unfavourable, neutral, favourable, very favourable).
SEO – search engine optimization; the process of editing a webpage to help maximize its
PageRankand similar quantifications of its relevance to particular search terms.
Significance – the quality of being worthy of attention; importance.
Social aggregation sites – websites that collect content from multiple sources and represents it in one location.
Social analytics – the application of search, indexing, semantic analysis and business intelligence technologies to the task of identifying, tracking, listening to and participating in the distributed conversations about a particular brand, product or issue, with emphasis on quantifying the trend in each conversation’s sentiment and influence.
Social bookmarking sites – websites and services that allow users to store, manage, organise and share links of content from across the web. Examples include Delicious,
Reddit, Stumbleupon, Digg, Pinterest.
Social capital – a phrase growing in use to substitute for the inappropriate use of the word influencewhen it comes to services such as Klout, PeerIndex, PeopleBrowsr and Traackr.
Social capital is often taken to mean the frequency with which a source’s social media contributions are shared, and the reach of that sharing. Not every social share is accretive to social capital. Social capital is destroyed when stuff is shared in disagreement, disgust or mockery for example.
Social media – media that isn’t traditional / ‘industrial’ / ‘mass’ media; media that is interactive.
Social media spam – can be either content or user accounts (for example on Twitter and
Facebook). The content is often auto-generated and designed solely to promote a sale, a fraud or often to promote porn. The content is mass distributed and has no element of a conversation to it.
Social Web – consists of social media, applications, services and the network of devices.
Splog – a ‘spam blog’ is a blog used to promote affiliate websites with the intention of increasing search engine ranking or to sell products or adverts.
Stakeholder – a person or organisation with an interest or concern in our organisation or something our organisation is involved in. (Whilst this definition includes competitors, they’re not normally classified as stakeholders.)
Strategy – Michael Porter defines strategy to be about selecting the set of activities in which an organisation will excel to create a sustainable difference in the marketplace, and thereby creating sustained value for its shareholders (or sustainable value in the case of non-profits).
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T
The Coalition – a group of PR trade bodies working together to lead the profession towards measuring social media in a meaningful and credible manner. The coalition includes AMEC,
CPRF and the IPR.
The Conclave – a loose body of interested parties looking to extend the work of The
Coalition to include other marketing disciplines which social media also touches.
Tone – often used interchangeably with sentiment, but more accurately refers to the general character and attitude the words convey.
Transparency – open to public scrutiny.
Troll – a person that lurks on message boards and social media properties making inflammatory comments.
Trust – firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.
V
Values – describes what’s important to an organisation; often described alongside the organisation’s mission and vision.
Viral Campaign - a communications campaign which is designed to exploit the potential of the internet to spread messages rapidly. The audience is encouraged to pass a message on to all their email contacts.
Vision – describes what an organisation wants to be; often described alongside the organisation’smission and values.
Visits per session – a series of web page requests from the same uniquely identified client
(eg, laptop or smartphone) with a time limit of 30 minutes between each page request.
Vlog – a blog created using video content, typically focussed on a cause or special interest.
W
Wiki – a website facilitating collaborative editing. The best known wiki is Wikipedia.
WOMMA – the Word of Mouth Marketing Association is a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing and advocating the discipline of credible word of mouth marketing.
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Head of Research and Customer Insight at
Westminster City Council
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We asked all our international authors for their top 3 measurement tips. Here is a summary of what they said.
Francis Ingham & Jeremy Thompson's
Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Measurement is the best way to demonstrate the value of your work - use it;
✔ Be clear about your goals, measure objectively;
✔ Don't obsess about a number, focus on demonstrating the link between activities and outcomes.
Read Francis and Jeremy's Chapter
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David Gallagher's Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ The age of measuring outcomes in PR is well and truly upon us.
✔ Avoid measurement at your own peril – and with significant opportunity costs.
✔ A commitment to measurement is as much an industry issue as a differentiator for individual competitors.
Read David's Chapter
Andy West’s Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Do the groundwork and engage people at all levels across the agency in the development of the approach before launching internally.
✔ Identify suitable clients with which to roll out the approach, using the success of the deployment to facilitate ‘sell in’ to other clients across the network.
✔ Don’t assume universal success immediately; it takes time and sometimes baby steps are needed.
Read Andy's Chapter
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Giselle Bodie's Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Always start with asking yourself what you want your evaluation to achieve (sounds pretty basic, but you’d be amazed how many organisations forget this vital step).
✔ Be realistic – on budget, on timing, on scope. You tend to get what you pay for ……
✔ Invest time up front with your evaluation provider – time invested now in defining expectations, scope, budget etc will pay dividends down the line.
Read Giselle's Chapter
Laura Skelley and Michael Ziviani’s 3 Top
Measurement Tips
✔ Set specific and measurable objectives in advance.
✔ Communications creates business value in several steps: Activity, Output, Outcome,
Business ROI.
✔ Valid measures of communications results are transparent and replicable metrics of: Quantity, Quality, Size.
Read Laura and Michael's Chapter
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David Rockland's Top 3
Measurement Tips
✔ Read and understand the Barcelona
Principles. Available at amecorg.com
.
✔ When you report results, place them in the context of the business objectives of the organization as well as against the goals of the communications program you are measuring.
✔ Ask yourself how you can move your measurement program to the next level, whether it be to add a quality dimension to media measurement if you are only counting clips, or from a change in consumer perception to its impact on business performance.
Read David's Chapter
Richard Bagnall's Top 3 Measurement
Tips
✔ Begin with the end in mind – Measure against your objectives, align your social objectives to those of your organisation
✔ Measure appropriately - Be wary of automation, and counting basic metrics that are easy to count but basically meaningless
✔ A few charts and numbers are not measurement – successful social media measurement needs relevancy, context and insight
And a bonus tip:
✔ Don’t fear measurement, embrace it, it’s there to help guide you not criticise you!
Read Richard's Chapter
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Marion McDonald’s Top 3
Measurement Tips
✔ Be PROVOCATIVE! Abandon all goals for broad coverage. Aim for the right impact only. Become obsessive about "how did this change behaviour?" not how much coverage it got. Design communications programs from the outset to drive behaviour change, not clippings.
✔ Speak the language of the boardroom!
Always strive to link public relations to results that can be ‘banked’ (ie. not clippings or
AVE). This may be a longer term outcome
(eg. new leads to closing deals 12 months later) or corporate reputation gains that open up access to new resources or cost savings from deeper employee engagement and reduced staff turnover.
✔ Reserve program budget for quality impact & outcome measurement to prove business impact. (Especially at the expense of meaningless clipping reports.)
Read Marion's Chapter
Ben Matthews' Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ To derive value from measurement it must be linked to both PR and the wider business goals
✔ The best agencies challenge goals that are woolly or badly defined
✔ Tailor your measurement for different audiences for maximum impact
Read Ben's Chapter
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Bridget von Holdt's Top 3 Measurement
Tips
✔ Agree on measureable objectives (to say increase awareness is not an objective)
✔ Agree on measuring criteria and methodology (budget does not always allow for a research company to research a campaign and the impact). And remember to measure all platforms.
✔ ROI – the impact of on the target audience vs the spend on the campaign.
(ROI is not about the sales or the impact on the bottom line it is about the reputation, the target audience perceptions / media perception changes and influences)
Read Bridget's Chapter
Neil Wholey's Top 3 Measurement Tips
✔ Ensure all project briefs are clear
✔ Avoid jargon but if you must check what the word means and challenge people who use it in the wrong way.
✔ Don’t invent new words deliberately unless they truly represent a new idea.
Read Neil's Chapter
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Thank you for your interest in visiting the PR
Professionals Guide. We intend to update this at regular intervals to bring PR professionals the best thinking from around the world.
For information on the organisations who collaborated to produce the Guide please contact:
AMEC
International Association for Measurement and
Evaluation of Communication (AMEC)
Barry Leggetter , FCIPR, FPRCA
Executive Director barryleggetter@amecorg.com
T +44 1268 412414
M +44 7748 677 504 www.amecorg.com
ICCO
International Communications Consultancy
Organisation
Anastasia Demidova
General Manager info@iccopr.com
T +44 20 7233 6026 www.iccopr.com
www.twitter.com/ICCOpr www.facebook.com/ICCOpr
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Francis Ingham, MPRCA
Executive Director, ICCO francis.ingham@prca.org.uk
PRCA
Public Relations Consultants Association
1st Floor, 17-23 Willow Place
London, SW1P 1JH
Francis Ingham, MPRCA
Director General, PRCA & Executive Director,
ICCO
T + 44 20 7233 6026
Fax + 44 20 7828 479 francis.ingham@prca.org.uk
www.prca.org.uk
Matt Cartmell
Communications Director
T + 44 20 7233 6026
F + 44 20 7828 4797
Matt.Cartmell@prca.org.uk
www.prca.org.uk
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