Every business or organization exists for a reason. It has a purpose, or it wouldn’t be there. It’s pretty easy to understand the goals of a commercial business and see how PR can support and further those goals. Frame your PR measurement around the goals of the business or campaign and keep track of your results. Data and measurement has become an integral part of PR reporting today.
Nonprofits probably have different success measures: donations, funding or other support may be their priority. Public Affairs is one sector of PR that has very different goals, but they are goals nonetheless and can be measured. You might not be working to change hearts and minds in the public, but you should be interested in the hearts and minds of the legislators – both local and national – who can affect your organization.
PR Measurement Tips
- Do some research: Find out how the business, organization or client is perceived by your most important stakeholders
- Establish the overall goal of the organization or business.
- Work out a PR strategy that will support that goal
- Write down your goal/s for your PR activities – make sure they are SMART goals :
- Specific: They need to be well-defined and clear
- Measurable: You must be able to quantify the actions and progress
- Agreed upon and attainable: It’s no good chasing a goal no one else cares about.
- Realistic: The goal should be something you can achieve with your current resources, knowledge and time
- Time bound and trackable: The purpose of measurement is to gauge one time period against another, so you can see progress. So every goal needs to have a time component built in: Increase fans on Facebook by 50% in the next three months. Increase membership by 15% in the next 12 months. Ally four new legislative aides in the next three months. Get a bill passed that supports our cause in the next year.
- Make sure that you have a system to track your activity and outcome (results.) Learn to use Google Analytics and the analytics available on social media platforms.
It makes no difference what kind of business sor organization you work for or in what capacity. You can always measure your work and strive for improvement. As The Measurement Queen Katie Paine said on the PRSA Open Forum today:
The biggest reason to track your results is to understand what is working and not working. I call it “Stop doing the stupid stuff.” Unless you have truly unlimited resources, you are always juggling resources vs the stuff that has to get done. What measurement does is tell you where you are getting the most bang for your buck.
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