Maybe you’ve heard the saying “In advertising you pay, in Public Relations you pray.”
Unlike advertising, Public Relations professionals can’t rely on budgets and sales to measure their success. This is because Public Relations is earned media and advertising is paid media. What this means is that with PR, the media is choosing to cover your news, rather than being obligated to do so. 
In Public Relations, we can track our hits and leads, but we have so many more ways to show our worth. One approach is to measure intangibles by placing a value to those hits. PR professionals use data to measure how much coverage they receive, but it is also important for us to use that data to our advantage. Visualizing data helps develop new ideas and a clearer sense of what works and what does not. It also helps to show clients why integrating public relations into their marketing plans is important.
The Benefits of Data-Driven PR Reporting:
- Understand that it can be used for more than just looking into the past; it can be used to predict future trends.
- Determine which media outlets cover your content. The outlets that mention you most often are the relationships you want to devote more time and energy on.
- Use data to monitor shifts in outreach and coverage. Just because something worked last year, does not mean it is the best option for this year.
- Make use of the analytics provided by social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, and management software, like HootSuite, to collect data about your digital presence.
- Pre-determine and reach your target market.
The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication launched The Barcelona Principles, which is a set of guidelines that provide a framework for measuring PR. More info can be found here.
If this blog peaked your interest, contact us today to discuss how a public relations plan might benefit your brand.