Every business should have key PR metrics in place to track how well activity is performing. But how you evaluate PR to demonstrate return on investment (ROI) has been a lengthy debate for many years. Gone are the days when AVE ruled the roost, measuring column inches to determine its equivalent advertising cost. Then with the introduction of social media, measuring success is a whole different ball game altogether.

These days there are more tangible metrics that are a great way of tracking the value and success of your PR and social media activity.

TOP 5 KEY PR METRICS TO TRACK

Media mentions

This is simply the amount of times your business, product or service is mentioned in the media, whether it’s in print, online or on TV or radio. It is an earned metric that is being endorsed by a reputable source.

Content quality

When we analyse our coverage there are two key things we look out for – the sentiment of the piece, was it negative or positive? We also look at the impact measure, which is simply whether a piece of coverage mentions the client or business in the header or includes a quote or a call to action.

Web traffic

Monitoring footfall to your website is a great way to quantify the success of PR. Securing a follow link through earned media placement is extremely valuable. Using google analytics can help you analyse how much traffic is coming to your website, where it’s coming from and which pages it’s going to.

Impressions

Impressions are the number of times your content is displayed, whether it’s on someone’s feed, no matter if it was clicked or not. A person could have multiple impressions from one piece of content, sharing it from the original publisher and then shared again by another third party. Used alongside reach and engagement, calculating impressions is a useful measurement tool.

Share of voice

Share of Voice (SOV) simply indicates the share of the market you own compared to your competitors. Are you being mentioned in the media or across social channels more than your competitors? These following factors can help you work out your share of the market:

  • Organic keywords
  • Pay per click (PPC) keywords
  • Impressions
  • Reach
  • Revenue
  • Mentions
  • Hashtags
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Abigail