We’ve all heard the quote “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”. Well it’s possible that sometimes there can be. As explained by author Jay Baer: “If your stories are all about your products and services, that’s not story telling. It’s a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger”. If the PR content that is produced is just spouting about how great a company and their product/service is, then it’s possible that the audience won’t read any further than the introduction. There’s also a chance that the audiences view of the company will become slightly tarnished as a result.
This is exactly why content needs to get across a client’s key messages, while looking at the wider industry landscape in terms of challenges and opportunities. It is also important for them to appear in the right media and get to the right audience. And it’s here that PR can be measured, linking back to ROI.
Arguably, the efforts of PR can all be wasted if the outcome is not measured effectively. As a junior account executive, here at Whiteoaks, measuring PR is something that my job role revolves around and is a strong part of our 360PR strategy. By writing articles on a client’s specialist area, addressing industry trends and challenges, the messaging is more targeted and relevant to the target audience. This helps get into target publications and meet the campaign deliverables.
We measure the impact of the content by monitoring each client’s target media and various other media outlets for coverage achieved. Again, tying back to the campaign deliverables. We will also assess the media that it has appeared with and rank them in relation of relevance and importance to that client.
Measuring PR can also help gauge what content is found interesting and relevant, helping to guide the direction for future content. By having a ‘quality over quantity’ approach to content, we can build and maintain relationships with publications and earn a reputation for providing good quality, thought-provoking and interesting content.
Overall, if you aren’t measuring content and its success, how can you really tell the impact that PR is having, how engaging the content is and if you are really getting across what the client wants to achieve from PR? By measuring content it can be just as rewarding for us as it is the client, seeing the successful results come through that we as a team have put our efforts towards achieving.
