This article was originally published in the Institute for Public Relations Research Conversations blog. It is Part 2 of a series.
By Bill Paarlberg -- This is the second in a series of IPR blog posts on the 2013 European Communication Monitor (ECM), an annual longitudinal trans-national survey of European communications professionals. The first post reviewed the demographics, methodology, and results of the survey, which received 2,710 responses from 43 countries. Read the report here.
It’s clear strategic public relations is an important topic for the ECM. Lead author Dr. Ansgar Zerfass addresses strategic communication in his introduction, a chapter of the report is entitled “Strategic Issues and Influence,” and roughly half the rest of the chapters address strategic issues. For those of us excited to see PR move into more strategic roles, there’s good news here.
It has always seemed to me the term “strategic PR” is a little bit tricky. Strategic PR means proactive, far-thinking relationship building, right? But in practice the term “strategic PR” is often vague in meaning, and perhaps more accurately describes practitioners’ aspirations than their functions. In many cases it’s almost synonymous with “respectable PR.” I’ve heard it said that publicity and marketing are PR roles that are *not* strategic, and are often seen as minor, or less respected. But isn’t it true publicity and marketing are vital tactics in strategic plans? So, you can look down on publicity, but where’s your strategy without it?
The ECM report itself is very much devoted to strategic PR. It uses the term “strategic” 55 times. It does not include the word “publicity,” and uses the term “marketing” three times. Note that the ECM appears to use the terms “strategic issues” and “management issues” synonymously (see Management Issues below).
If You’re Strategic and You Know It, Clap Your Hands
To start out, here’s a bonus bit of inspirational insight you’ll only notice if you examine the chart (page 101) that shows career development as a function of professional role. Get this: The respondents who are most optimistic about their careers and most feel their influence and status have increased are those involved in the roles of “strategy and coordination communication” and “consultancy, advising, coaching, key account.” So, does that mean someone who works strategically becomes successful, or that if someone is successful, they get to work strategically? Or perhaps both.
OK, let’s move on to review the ECM’s results in each strategic area.
CEO Communication and Reputation
ECM respondents were in near-universal agreement that the CEO’s communication skills (93%), personal reputation (90%) and knowledge of strategic communication (84%) are important factors for the success of an organization. While 77% of communication departments undertake positioning of the CEO, only 57% worked on a specific communication strategy for the CEO, and only 55% actually monitor the CEO’s reputation. (These varied strongly with type of organization and country.)
Crisis Communication
Seven out of ten respondents had dealt with a crisis over the past year, and nearly half with more than one crisis. There were strong differences between countries – if you hate dealing with crises, consider moving to Belgium or perhaps Norway, where almost half of respondents had no crises at all. The most common crises were institutional, performance, or management. Almost 9% of crises were not real (because they were based on rumor or communication failure), and 6% were caused by natural events. Types of crises varied strongly with type of organization – it’s clear nonprofits experience more institutional, management, and not real crises, while government organizations deal with more natural disasters than others.
How did they handle the crises? 83% used information, 27% sympathy, 18% put up a defense, 17% apologized, and 9% did nothing. Three-quarters of respondents used traditional media relations for crisis communications, 38% used social media. Strategies to deal with crises, as well as the tools employed, varied with the type of crisis.
International Communication
68% of respondents agreed that communicating internationally was important for their organization, and 73% felt it will become more important within the next three years. Only 47% agreed they have “solid structures and strategies for international communication.” Almost half communicate internationally every day. Of those, most deal with more than five countries, and nearly a quarter with over 20 countries. Major challenges include developing sensitive communication strategies, monitoring public opinion, and understand structures of media systems and public spheres.
Gatekeepers and Audiences in the Digital Realm
Respondents mostly agreed that social media (SM) can change the perceptions of external stakeholders (73%) and employees (57%) about their organizations. And 62% agreed that SM changes their own perceptions of stakeholders and organizations. While a majority agreed that employees, consumers, and bloggers were relevant SM gatekeepers for their organizations, only 38% felt their organization had adequate strategies to communicate with gatekeepers. These numbers varied significantly with the level of personal use of SM. These findings also vary by country; why is it that countries in Eastern Europe seem to be more strongly convinced of the efficacy of social media, and prepared to deal with it? The importance of SM communication tools also varied strongly by country. Overall, mobile applications had the largest gap between perceived importance and actual implementation, and thus the most obvious challenge for future effort. After several years of growth, the perceived importance of social media tools is no longer growing, implying that SM has reached some sort of maturity in an organization’s media mix.
Management Issues
The ECM report includes a chapter entitled “Strategic Issues and Influence.” However, the major question discussed here asks about management rather than strategy: “Please pick those three issues which you believe will be most important for PR / communication management within the next three years.” It seems to me that a management issue might be different than a strategic issue, but the results are interesting, nonetheless. Respondents most often chose “linking business strategy and communication.” The report states that this is “…an issue that has been in the top 5 in the ECM surveys for years.” The next three most important issues were: Coping with digital evolution and the social web (42%), building and maintaining trust (38%), and matching the need to address more audience and channels with limited resources (35%). These choices varied by organizational type.
Not so fast: What are we to really conclude from these results? It might at first seem to be a good thing that the most important issue identified was “Linking business strategy and communication,” especially for those who like to see PR have more of a strategic role. But 43% is less than half… are we to conclude that less than half of European PR pros think linking business strategy and communication is important?
And to Finish, Some Good News: Perceived Influence of the Communications Function Has Never Been Higher.
Respondents indicate that recommendations of the communication function are taken seriously by senior management in 79.4% of organizations. In addition, the communication function is likely to be invited to senior-level strategic planning meetings in 75.7% of European organizations. After falling slightly last year, these measures are currently at their highest point in six years.
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Bill Paarlberg, Editor of The Measurement Standard, has been writing about public relations measurement for 20 years. He is editor of the award-winning "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, and editor of two other books on measurement by Katie Paine, "Measure What Matters" and "Measuring Public Relationships." Visit Bill Paarlberg's page on LinkedIn.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of Salience Insight. Salience Insight is the media measurement division of News Group International – a global provider of business intelligence and media resource services. Salience is a fresh, new global brand which incorporates the former UK-based Report International and US-based KDPaine & Partners, acquired in 2012.
One of the things that has always fascinated me about the PR industry is its habit of interviewing itself and then treating the results like facts, rather than biased opinion. A perfect example is found in the PRWeek/Brands2Life Communications Directors Survey 2013. In this survey, 100 UK communications directors were asked, for eight different PR roles, how well they thought their company was doing. They were also asked how well they thought the industry as a whole was doing. For every role, directors reported that their own company was doing better than the industry as a whole.
To be fair to PR Week and Brands2Life, we all expect biased self-reporting in this sort of survey. Which does include some interesting and perhaps useful data. But still, why do we see so many of these kinds of surveys in PR?
"Fundamentally, this is a self-serving piece of research with which to promote Brands2Life," says Giselle Bodie, Salience Insight Chief Executive. "To me this isn’t “proper” research. It's flawed and the report includes too many typos – neither of which is acceptable from a PR agency. And they are asking these questions of the wrong people. In order to get an objective or accurate assessment, they should be asking anyone but the comms directors – the board generally, the shareholders, the customers, regulators, etc. I think most people reading this will see it for what it is – at least I hope they will, otherwise the PR industry really is doomed."
The always insightful Don Bartholomew is a little more charitable, and points out that this sort of survey can provide valuable information: "If you want to understand the practices and attitudes of a group, say communications professionals, then it is perfectly acceptable to poll that group and assess and track the results. This is essentially what the USC Annenberg GAP Study represents – a survey of 600+ communications professionals about their practices (e.g. how much do you spend) and attitudes (what is important to you).
"If, however, you wish to understand how well communications professionals are performing, you should ask their stakeholders, not the group themselves. Or make it more lively by asking both and assessing the difference in perceptions. It would be much more meaningful if the study had polled CMOs and other C-suite stockholders to the communications function."
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Bill Paarlberg, Editor of The Measurement Standard, has been writing about public relations measurement for 20 years. He is editor of the award-winning "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, and editor of two other books on measurement by Katie Paine, "Measure What Matters" and "Measuring Public Relationships." Visit Bill Paarlberg's page on LinkedIn.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of Salience Insight.
1. What is the formula for the calculation of ROI?
2. What’s the difference between reach and impressions?
3. Define a SMART objective.
4. How do you accurately measure public awareness of a topic?
5. What are Grunig's six components of a relationship?
6. What’s the difference between causation and correlation?
7. What’s the difference between owned, earned, and paid media?
8. What is a LIkert Scale and how is it used?
9. What are Katie Paine's 7 steps to a perfect measurement program?
10. What are the three requirements of influence in social media?
11. What’s the difference between outputs, outtakes and outcomes?
12. What does HITS stand for?
13. Name two methods of measuring the value of PR.
Bonus question: Who is your favorite character on NCIS?
Answers:
1. ROI = (Gain from Investment - Cost of Investment)/(Cost of Investment)
2. Impressions are the total eyeballs that have possibly been exposed to a story or a post – more accurately described as opportunities to see (OTS). Reach is the extent to which you have reached your specific targeted audience group. For example, if your target audiences is young men between the ages of 15 and 25, you may generate 100 million opportunities to see your messages in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Business Week and the Financial Times, but you have only reached about .0001% of the U.S. population that are boys between the ages of 15 and 25.
3. SMART is: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
4. Awareness is measured with a survey.
5. The six Grunig components of relationships are Trust, Commitment, Satisfaction, Control Mutuality, Exchange, and Communal.
6. Correlation is a statistical test that examines the relationships between variables. Causation is a relationship between variables in which a change in one variable forces, produces, or brings about a change in another variable.
7. Owned media are promotion channels that you control, such as your website, Facebook page, or Twitter account. Earned media is exposure gained through promotional efforts other than advertising. Paid media is exposure generated by advertising.
8. A Likert Scale is a standard response to a question on a survey in which the respondent is offered a five- or seven-point scale to express how much they agree or disagree with a particular statement.
9. Katie Paine's 7 steps to a perfect measurement program are:
10. Influence in social media requires engagement around an individual, relevance to a topic, and frequency of posts around the topic.
11. Outputs are the products of a PR or communications program, like press releases. Outtakes are the changes in awareness or attitude that the outputs produce. Outcomes are the actions that people take as a result of the outputs.
12. How Idiots Track Success
13. Cost benefit analysis and cost efficiency ratio.
Bonus Question: If you say Abby or McGee or Scandal (Huck), you’re hired.
Congrats! You survived the application and interview process, and you beat out everyone else to land the public relations job of your dreams. Now it's your first day in your cubicle or office or at some start-up's dining room table.
You need to get the lay of the land quickly, and you want to assess the state of sophistication of the organization you have joined. So start off by asking the right questions. With answers to the following, you'll know where you stand, and you'll be able to start planning your progress. (And if you don't get answers, well, you'll have learned something about who you are working with. And where your job begins.)
Ten questions you must ask on the first day of your new public relations job:1. Who are our most important stakeholders?
2. What are my SMART objectives and Key Performance Indicators?
3. How does this organization define success?
4. What are our key messages?
5. Who is the target audience for our messages?
6. Where does that audience get their information?
7. How does what I do influence that audience?
8. Who or what is our competition? How do we compare ourselves to them?
9. If I completely excel in my job, and exceed all expectations to the extent that you reward me with a case of champagne, what would be different in this organization? What does amazing success look like?
10. Do you prefer Powerpoint or Excel for my weekly reporting?
(Thanks to HealthcareIT Today for the image.)
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Katie Delahaye Paine is Chairman, KDPaine & Partners, (a Salience Insight company), and Chief Marketing Officer of News Group International. KDP&P delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements. Katie and Beth Kanter are authors of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” published last year by Wiley.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine, Chairman of KDPaine & Partners, will be glad to talk with you about measurement for your organization.
Earlier this week we posted links to stats that demonstrate content marketing's effectiveness, and also a guide to starting a content marketing blog.
Today, for your content marketing / public relations pleasure, we have an infographic that contrasts traditional PR with content PR. (Click on the image to see it full sized.) It comes from Calysto, by way of Measurement Matters' weekly PR and Social Media Cheat Sheet. The Cheat Sheet is a weekly list of a handful of must-read PR and social media stories, and we highly recommend it. -- Bill Paarlberg, editor
Katie Delahaye Paine is Chairman, KDPaine & Partners, (a Salience Insight company), and Chief Marketing Officer of News Group International. KDP&P delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements. Katie and Beth Kanter are authors of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to be published this year by Wiley.
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners, will be glad to talk with you about measurement for your organization.
The headline for this article in PR Daily ("Report: Most PR Pros Are Ethical and Honest") may have been written by the staff at The Onion. And you've got to wonder about the validity of generalizing from 30 interviews. Still, the report says some interesting things:
The University of Alabama's Plank Center's Cross-Cultural Study of Leadership In PR and Communication Management is the largest study of its kind ever conducted. Nearly 4,500 PR pros participated in the online survey. A second phase involves interviews with 150 worldwide leaders, which will be completed and analyzed in 2013. Visit this page for details, or just download the slides.
As part of its on-going Global MONITOR research, The Futures Company, the global strategic insight and innovation consultancy, polled 28,000 adults in 21 markets. Among the results:
Those that felt "a lot" of anger the study described as the "global enraged." A majority of people fitting this profile earned middle-to-high incomes, and had completed higher education. Of the globally enraged:
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(Thanks to Katie Paine and David Phillips for the tip. The image is from The Futures Company.)
The USC Annenberg Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center has published its seventh biennial Communication and Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices (GAP VII) study. This year’s report is the largest and most comprehensive study of the most senior communicators in public and private corporations, government agencies and non-profits in the United States.
The survey provides practitioners with practical information they can use to better manage the communication functions in their organizations; identifies Best Practices against which they can benchmark their own organizations; and pinpoints trends to be aware of as they plan for tomorrow.
Read about it here. Download it here.
Important results for public relations measurement include:
Old School PR vs. New School PR:
Old School
• Measurement of media outputs
• Believe PR focus is on media relations
• Does not believe social media are pervasive
• Reactive/Short-term
• Worried about control
• Consider media relations the dominating discipline of PR
New School
• Measurement of outcomes
• Assign primary responsibility for social media to PR
• Long-term strategic direction
• Embrace multiplying touchpoints, pervasiveness of social media – still with modicum of control
• More likely to believe recommendations are taken seriously
Excellence and Best Practices – Key Insights for Success
The GAP VII findings confirm a set of best practices that were identified in previous GAP studies and are all strongly associated with success variables. Patterns are very compelling and long-lived over multiple GAP studies.
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Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements. Katie and Beth Kanter are authors of the book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to be published this year by Wiley.
For serious writing geeks, not much beats brushing up on AP style. Check out the InkHouse Inklings blog for interesting articles on content curation ("Content Curation is NOT Content Creation"), social media, and PR in general, often from a journalist's perspective. What caught my eye (besides the awesome illustration to the right, which I appropriated because it was so awesome) was "Twenty Five Signs of Spring in Associated Press Style," where you will learn, among other valuable lessons, the way to spell "daylight saving time" (Not "savings," and no hyphen). See also "Words to Retire in 2012."
Don't miss "Twelve Common Mistakes of AP Style," which features "#8. United States, U.S. — An easy way to remember the difference: United States as a noun; U.S. as an adjective. The United States is a country; I travel with my U.S. documents." --WTP
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In this short video from Ragan's PR Daily, NYTimes columnist David Pogue explains how—and how not—to pitch a story. Yeah, it's been out for a year, but it's good...
by Katie "Bah! Humbug!" Paine
As I deleted my 100th electronic Christmas card, all I felt was annoyance -- rather than merry or joyous or whatever it was supposed to make me feel. A good 50% of these mostly cold and soulless emails were from PR firms I’d never heard of. I assume they got my name from Klout or Cision or Vocus or any of the other list peddlers that bring as much joy and relevance to the season as Jacob Marley did. Which got me thinking...
Does anyone measure the effectiveness of these silly things?
The ROI of the Corporate Holiday Card: Making Your Season Blight
I posed the question on Twitter and the answer was a definitive "no." Xmas emails are perceived as a cheap way for companies to “touch” people on their mailing list. I did discover that the ROI calculation for them is inherently flawed: Because most of these cards are created in-house, the time spent to create them is viewed as basically free, (probably because the employee(s) have nothing better to do in the month before the holidays).
A more accurate ROI calculation is probably something like this:
Investment:
20 hours of designer time @ $50 per hour = $1000
5 hours of editing, proofing and copy review @$50 per hour = $250
Cost to email to 5000 names @ $0.03 per name = $150
Total Investment: $1400
Return:
Assuming a 6% click-thru rate, that's 300 clicks, for a cost-per-click-thru of $4.60. Which isn’t too bad.
But what is the value of a click-thru? Since there is no call to action, and god knows it would be in terrible taste to say, “Merry Christmas, now click here to set up a demo!” it is difficult to calculate any real return. So the ROI is essentially $0 at best, but probably somewhere between -$1400 and the value of your reputation.
Now let's look at a more personalized approach.
KDPaine & Partners' Holiday Cards
For years, my company KDPaine & Partners has sent out a holiday card featuring an image of our offices. I actually have almost all of them framed in my hallway. Bill Paarlberg -- yes, the Bill Paarlberg, the editor of The Measurement Standard -- does the artwork, and we write a bit of copy that relates to both the card itself and the year we’ve had. In prior years we would also include a piece of locally-made pottery and a recipe for something that could go into the pottery. One year it was chowder for a chowder mug, the next year it was salsa in a taco dish.
Now, I don't expect the whole world to love our holiday cards. And, yes, there's a bit of self promotion in the concept. But the point here is that these cards have some thought and personality in them, and they express feelings in a unique, creative, and heartfelt fashion.
Over the years, we probably spent $35,000 on the cards and pottery. Invariably, after they go out, I hear directly back from clients and prospects who say, “Thanks for the card, and I was meaning to get in touch...” And, return-wise, I know they've yielded at least $200,000 in new business.
ROI = 471%
Value of a better relationship with customers: Priceless
Calendars, Anyone?
This year, I was contemplating the absence of calendars in my mailbox, and asked Twitter and Facebook where they’d all gone. The general response was that, with electronic calendars being ubiquitous, companies have decided that they weren’t worth it. Which in my mind leaves a huge gaping blank space just waiting for me to fill it up with my logo and message. Especially when I got this response from Jim Fetig, (one of the planet’s ultimate Measurement Mavens, and someone who has been getting my Christmas cards for at least 13 years):
“How 'bout a KD Paine and Partners' Measurement Calendar? I'd read my daily best practice with gusto.”
Now, I'm not sure I can come up with 365 days of measurement thoughts, but 12 month's worth certainly seems doable. Let's look at the ROI:
Cost of artwork and design: $1000
Cost to print 100 calendars: $1000
Total investment: $2000
Cost of keeping Jim Fetig happy (given that he’s been our client for 14 years) = Priceless.
And so, my big question here is: In an age when the personalized touch is increasingly preferred -- where we shop local, eat local, and invest locally -- why is it that the majority of organizations take a mass-market approach to communicating sentiments that should be the most personal of all?
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Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements.
The other night at the Social Media Measurement Standards Conclave at Katie Paine’s house in Durham, NH, Frank Ovaitt and I got to talking. We loitered near the hors d’oeuvres table and had a drink.
Frank is President and CEO of The Institute for Public Relations, commonly called the IPR. (He also, by the way, just received the Public Relations Society of America’s 2011 David Ferguson Award.) Frank is a smooth conversationalist, and before I quite realized it, he had delivered an eloquent elevator pitch for the IPR. So I’m passing it along to you. Here, in a nutshell, is what you need to know about the IPR.
The IPR, with offices at University of Florida in Gainesville, is a non-profit organization that prides itself on its independence. Its focus is on supporting research to improve the practice of public relations, and to that end has published more than 500 research papers since its founding in 1956. Its motto is: “The Science Beneath the Art of Public Relations.”
Frank Ovaitt was the also the President and CEO of the IPR two years ago when he retired, passing the IPR reins to Bob Grupp. “I retired for about two months,” he says, ”then George Washington University asked me to come and teach and within a few months I was working with Makovsky & Company. Then last spring the IPR asked me to come back, and so nothing about me is retired any more.
“Things at the IPR are a little different this time around. Our emphasis now is very much on promoting research with more practical applications. Less academically oriented, more business oriented. Research that matters to the practice. We also want to broaden our range of partners, so we need to think about what resonates with CEOs and CFOs.”
Frank goes on to say,
“There are, generally speaking, three kinds of research in PR (and this division is based loosely on one introduced by Jim Grunig):
- In PR — About programs themselves: Planning, measurement, and evaluation;
- On PR — Benchmarking and best practices: What we do as a field and what is excellent public relations; and
- For PR — About the underlying social sciences of what we do. Our trustees believe this is the most distinctive and, unfortunately, least accessible of the three, and that it should be our strongest focus.
“The IPR supports public relations research in five different roles:
- As an aggregator — We find the good stuff and point people to it.
- As an interpreter — What does it say? How can it be used?
- As a grantor — We sponsor research and awards programs to stimulate research.
- As a partner — With other organizations to promote what the field needs.
- And, finally, as a convenor of conferences and programs, mostly with a research component.”
By this time the other guests at the Conclave had arrived and lobster dinner was being served, so we moved into the dining room.
Learn more about Frank’s vision for the new focus of the IPR by reading his posts on the IPR website.
Read more about the Conclave, see the attendee list, and see some photos here.
--WTP
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Sex in the City and Ragan’s PR Daily receive our Measurement Menace of the Month Award for promoting make-believe public relations.
I read a disturbing post the other day on the Samantha Effect. It suggests that a surge in applications for PR programs in higher education is driven by interest in the glamorous life of Samantha Jones, a character on Sex in the City.
Thousands of the show’s young fans have been Carried away by the alluring yet utterly fictitious career of Samantha, who owns her own PR agency. To them, the PR profession appears to be a series of fun parties and events, requiring only a pair of Jimmy Choo heels, a little black dress, and a “people personality” for success.
How do you measure that? AVEs, according to Ragan’s PR Daily.
I’ve never met Jessica Epperly, but judging from her recent piece in Ragan’s PR Daily, her role model is Samantha Jones. “Advertising vs. PR: How to measure the value of editorial coverage” has no more credibility than Samantha’s career.
Need more proof? The very first comment on Jessica’s piece was from Lauren, a journalism student at the University of Missouri, who says, “This article has taught me more than most of my professors.” Shame on those professors if a publicist’s puff piece full of inaccurate information can replace classes at a leading educational institution.
What is up with Ragan running such a piece? You know and I know that AVEs are bad, and that every reputable organization, PR firm, and measurement provider has signed onto the Barcelona Principles (which discredit the use and practice of comparing PR to advertising). So why did Ragan run it? Don’t they vet anything?
In fairness to the folks at Ragan, the brouhaha that erupted in the comment section did prompt Ragan to solicit an oped from my colleague Shonali Burke who urged us to consign AVEs to the graveyard. (See also Chuck Hemann's response to that article, with many excellent comments. And if you’d like to learn more about AVEs, we have plenty of coverage here at The Measurement Standard. Start with “AVEs Are Porn for PR,” then see the list here.)
Finally, this issue raises an interesting question about the media that cover our industry: What is—and should be—the role of the media in the coverage of PR? Is it to follow the guidance of the leaders of the industry and help lead the profession to a higher plane? (As PR Week did when they banned the use of AVEs as a metric in their annual award submissions.) Or is it to serve the lowest common denominator by recommending a fictional measurement tool?
Our purpose here at The Measurement Standard is to encourage people to base decisions on reality. And so we award both Sex in the City and Ragan’s PR Daily our Menace of the Month Award, for promoting make-believe public relations.
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Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Measure What Matters, the new book by Katie Delahaye Paine from Wiley Publishers.
Read more excerpts at the Measure What Matters blog. Or just go ahead and order the book from Amazon for $15.60. That’s an amazing 45% off list price.
From Chapter 2 of Measure What Matters, “How to Get Started”
10 Questions Every Communications Professional Must Be Able to Answer Before Beginning a Measurement Program
Before we get into the specifics of measurement, you will need to have at hand some basic information about your organization. Work though the following 10 questions and do your best to find the answers if you don’t know them already. What’s most important about this exercise is achieving consensus among the people who will be using and/or contributing to the measurement data you will be collecting. Getting everyone on the same page is an absolute necessity before you can begin to implement a measurement program.
Question #1: What Are Your Objectives?
While it may seem facile and simplistic to actually put this question on the list, I am amazed at the number of people I’ve met with who cannot answer it. Or, even more frequently, they have objectives that are not measurable. You must start with a thorough understanding of your company’s or organization’s business objectives. And if they are not written down somewhere, ask your boss—you might have a very interesting conversation.
I sometimes help my clients through the process by asking them to shut their eyes and imagine that it is the end of the year, and they are celebrating enormous success: Corks are popping, champagne is flowing, and bonus checks are being passed out to everyone. What is it that they are celebrating? Another way to define your mission is to frame it from the opposite perspective. Suppose your department was wiped out tomorrow, how would the business suffer? Later in this chapter you will find a detailed step-by-step procedure for working with a team to develop measurable objectives.
Question # 2: Who Are Your Program’s Target Audience(s)?
This is another question that may be pretty obvious for some companies, but it never hurts to get it in writing. The important thing is to define the audience as specifically as you can. No matter what your business or organization, the answer to this question is not “Anyone with a pulse.” There is always, within any market, a set of customers who are the most profitable, the most valuable. These are the ones you want to target.
Question # 3: What Is Important to Your Audiences?
Once you’ve defined your audiences, you can go about determining what issues matter most to them: What inspires them? What scares them? What are they most passionate about? Where do they go for information? The closer you get to identifying an audience’s passions, the closer you are to understanding why they are loyal to your company or brand.
Question # 4: What Motivates Them to Buy Your Products?
This is perhaps the most salient question for your measurement program; the answer will determine what you measure. You need to connect your actions with the ultimate purchase decision. If you sell a commodity product and what motivates purchase is price/value, then you need to measure the extent to which this concept is being communicated to your marketplace. However, if you are selling a service and what motivates purchase is the long-term relationship with the brand and/or the salesperson, then you need to be measuring relationships or brand engagement.
Question #5: What Are Your Key Messages?
If you haven’t articulated them yet or don’t know what they are, do research to figure out what messages will resonate most forcefully with your target audience(s). Key messages should reflect what makes people buy your product or services, or what distinguishes you from your competition.
Question #6: Who Influences Your Audience(s)?
Who else influences your target audience and what are the secondary influences on your business? Enumerate all the traditional media, websites, online publications, politicians, nongovernmental organizations, peers, educators, discussion groups, industry gurus, and so forth that your customers take into account when they decide to do business with your company.
Question #7: How Do You Distribute Your Product or Service?
Through what channels do your customers purchase your products? Which do they prefer? Which does your company find most convenient or profitable?
Question #8: What Are You Going to Do with the Information You Get from Your Research?
Never ask a question to which you don’t want to hear the answer. Make sure you can act on all the information you get and can make changes and improve performance as a result. If your report is going to the CEO, you will have 20 seconds or less to get your message across, so your report must make an impact like that of a billboard. If it is going to marketing, the report should be short, but detailed enough to include brand data as well as corporate data. If it is for market research, you’ll need to provide cross tabs, verbatims, and other supporting data. If it’s for the VP of communications, you’ll want to make sure your results provide a big-picture corporate overview as well as the details as to why certain results are what they are.
Question #9: What Other Departments or Areas Will Be Affected?
Who will be involved in implementing changes as a result of your measurement program? This is one of the most important questions, because without buy-in from all departments to change their behavior or strategies, your measurement program will be a waste of effort. Whoever might have to change as a result of your measurement needs to be involved in the process of designing the measurement program. Without their buy-in, change will not happen.
Question #10: What Other Measurement Programs Are Currently Underway?
What data do you have access to? What metrics are already being collected? You may be able to tailor new measures to complement existing ones. For instance, sales or lead tracking data could be compared to marketing activities and measures.
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Read more excerpts at the Measure What Matters blog. Or just go ahead and order the book from Amazon for $15.60, an amazing 45% off list price.
Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement. Katie Paine is a dynamic and experienced speaker on public relations and social media measurement. Click here for the schedule of Katie’s upcoming speaking engagements.
Public relations is an incessantly maligned and abused industry—right up there with oil companies and lawyers. So it's a real delight, let me tell you, to see Gregory L. Vistica, president of the Washington Media Group, featured as the Quotation of the Day in today’s New York Times:
“We basically decided on principle that we couldn't work for a country that was using snipers on rooftops to pick off its citizens.”
(Washington Media Group dropped Tunisia as a public relations client after that nation cracked down on protesters.)
Bravo!
--Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.
The excellence theory of public relations is a fundamental and defining statement about what effective public relations is. The excellence theory is the result of a 15-year comprehensive study to determine what are the characteristics of excellent communications and of the companies that do excellent public relations. This study was done in several phases by Jim and Lauri Grunig and David Dozier, and funded by the IABC.
I wrote to Jim Grunig to ask for a definitive summary and bibliography for the excellence study and theory. Jim pointed me to “Excellence Theory in Public Relations,” a three-page article from the Encyclopedia of Communication, published by the International Communication Association. Click here to download “Excellence Theory in Public Relations” from the Encyclopedia of Communication. It includes a summary of the project and the theory, and a list of the most important publications. Here is the official citation:
Grunig, J. E. (2008). Excellence theory in public relations. In. W. Donsbach (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Communication, Volume 4 (pp. 1620-1622). Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell 2008.
Other sources on the Excellence Project:
--Bill Paarlberg, Editor, The Measurement Standard
The Measurement Standard is a publication of KDPaine & Partners, a company that delivers custom research to measure brand image, public relationships, and engagement.