Category Archives: Measurement
Bill Murray Visits RMPR
Today we had the honor of welcoming PRSA National President and COO Bill Murray to our agency to discuss trends he’s seeing in the public relations industry nationally, and how the national and local PRSA chapters are supporting the professional development of members.
Why are we dumbing down a great opportunity as PR professionals?
“Are social media jobs here to stay?” A tantalizing headline by Fortune magazine. Social media and SEO have been where most of the jobs have been the past couple of years. In fact, I’ve been encouraging the PR students I teach to become experts in online marketing and call it out on their resumes. And the list of social media experts has exploded, as they congratulate each other 
profusely on Twitter, Foursquare and LinkedIn, among others.
But this story brings up a good point about whether those jobs will stick around or burst. The analysts in the story hit a homerun when they suggest that pool of qualified candidates has a lot to do with it. Without the strategy and analytical elements that a solid business or marketing background provides, social media and SEO are just sets of tactics. Sound familiar? Read more »
Research, Measure, Repeat.
Regardless of discipline – marketing, communications, social media, PR – planning always begins with some form of knowledge gathering to inform the process, determine insights and outline the possibilities. Interestingly, the final step also entails knowledge gathering, which of course, loops back into what should be an ongoing process rather than something linear.
At the beginning of the process, this step goes by names such as Research, Reconnaissance, Situation Analysis, Listening, or Discovery. It can be formal or informal, qualitative or quantitative, primary or secondary, but it has to take place in order to establish objectives and measure results. At the end of the process, the step is often called Evaluation, Measurement, or Feedback and Adjustment (if the program is to continue).
In a recent Highlighter post, we explored the idea of measuring what counts rather than just counting what can be counted. In addition to the continued efforts by Katie Paine, who serves as an industry advocate on measurement and evaluation, the RMPR Results that Matter philosophy is supported by several other thought leaders and the industry is coming to the first global agreement we have seen on how to measure public relations and organizational communications. Read more »
Measure What Counts
Is PR measurable? Absolutely, yes.
Should it be measured? Again, absolutely, yes.
There’s little question that public relations can and should be measured, but like many things, the rub has more to do with how and what to measure.
In reading an article by Katie Paine, long-credited as one of the industry’s thought leaders on PR measurement, it paralleled something one of my mentor’s used to say, “Rose, just because something can be counted doesn’t mean that it should be counted; instead, measure what counts.”