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Is there any topic in communication more controversial, stress-inducing and nerve-wracking than measurement? Many communicators seem to move from calm to outright panic at the very idea: They got into this business to avoid numbers, and now someone says they have to do math!
But measurement doesn’t have to be math-whiz territory. There are ways to measure your PR and social media efforts that don’t involve correlations, regression analysis, confidence intervals or even arithmetic.
Ask yourself some questions first.
To make measurement work, you have to know what you want to accomplish. Maybe you want to get media attention. Fine, but why? And don’t just say that you want it because media attention is good.
Ask yourself whether your PR and social media plan is really aligned with your organization’s business plan. You need a real objective, with a specific goal over a specific time frame. Perhaps your objective is to reach a certain audience segment in the next six months, such as Facebook users over the age of 55 or people who work in manufacturing in South Africa. Maybe you want to focus on a specific business area like tire dealers or individual consultants. Or perhaps you merely want to increase traffic to your web site or increase the number of people who follow you on Twitter.
Whatever your objective, you must also consider your audiences and stakeholders. Do you know where they spend time online, what they like to read or view and who they tend to trust? What research is available about them? Check out studies like the Anderson Analytics survey on marketing trends, which reveals that social media use continues to rise. The Pew Research Center offers comprehensive data on media usage patterns and trends. Your organization’s marketing department or agency should also be able to shed some light on this.
Don’t forget to examine the PR and social media tactics you’ve already used. What were the strengths and weaknesses of each campaign, initiative or plan? The formal process of stepping back to self-evaluate can be very valuable.
5 steps for measurement without math
After you’ve contemplated the questions above, you can follow these steps for measurement without tears.
1. To what extent did we achieve our main goals?
This is the simplest and, in my opinion, best measurement of success. Performance against objectives is universal in business, easily understood by management and nearly bulletproof at budget time. Just make sure your objectives are well thought-out and include specifics and time frames. Most important, they should connect as directly as possible to the business objectives of your organization.
2. Did we reach the people we wanted to reach?
A mention in The Wall Street Journal may be everybody’s goal, but its readers aren’t necessarily those who would buy your product, think highly of your organization or take action in support of your initiatives. Deciding whom to reach is an important consideration. Brad Rawlins’ paper Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations provides a four-step process for prioritizing stakeholders,
- Their relationship to the organization (retirees, customers, community members, employees, etc.).
- Their specific attributes (including power over the organization or influence on it).
- Their level of involvement in the organization (especially when there’s a problem).
- Their relationship to the business strategy of the organization.
Once you determine who you want to reach, you need to ensure that your messages are getting through. Did your blogger outreach result in positive coverage for your organization? Was there positive discussion on the blogs, Facebook or Twitter about your products, services or perspectives? Did the news media write about you in a positive tone? The key criterion is the tone of these media mentions—if it’s not positive, it doesn’t count.
For example, a regional governmental organization identified its most important stakeholders, revisited its tactical plans to be sure the methods of communicating with them were the right fit, and evaluated success in the right context for each. For example, without a “product” to sell, the main objective for the communication team was educational: more academics accessing the organization’s research, more opportunities for professional staff to be quoted in the media, and more people accessing research and information on the organization’s web site. By linking specific objectives to each stakeholder group and evaluating the success or failure of current methods, they were able to change their strategy appropriately. That, in turn, led to changes in qualitative and quantitative metrics.
3. How do we stack up against our most important competitor?
You can compare yourself to all 20 firms in your competitive set, but that can be time-consuming and expensive. Evaluating your communication results against just one or two other competitors will still provide you with a great feel for where you should go strategically.
A regional bank whittled down its competitor list and evaluated its media coverage using the following criteria: tone, who was quoted, strategic messages, and products or services discussed. It also used more quantitative methods. It’s fairly easy to compare your news releases and public statements to news media coverage to get a good feel for whether your messaging is making its way into the coverage. Do the same analysis of your competitor’s messaging and subsequent media coverage. Social media also offers similar opportunities for analysis. Look for your messaging in online discussions and compare it to that of your competitors. You also can look for patterns in the discussion—what do people talk about when your organization isn’t participating?
4. What do our employees think/know?
Ask employees for their opinions about your organization’s marketing campaign, media coverage and Facebook presence. This doesn’t have to be a formal or scientific survey (although it’s nice if it is those things every year or so)—just reaching out to a small group or using an intranet poll can be enough. This practice is especially valuable when employees can see the fruits of their feedback. Remember that making employees into ambassadors for your organization is a way of getting new talent in the door and gaining new customers.
For example, one international company conducted a content analysis of its internal news vehicles and found that there were just 17 out of more than 1,000 news stories about its European businesses, even though those businesses were growing at a much faster rate than those based in the U.S., and there was a specific leadership objective to increase business literacy among employees. The findings led to a change in the organization’s editorial strategy, with a specific decision to reach out to leadership and communicators (both formal and informal) around the world to boost the story count. Two years later, the European story count has risen to 277 (with similar rises in other business units). Employee perception about the accuracy of corporate communication increased more than 13 percent, comprehension of the company strategies increased nearly 10 percent and knowledge about competitors increased almost 7 percent.
5. How have these things changed over time, and how might they change in the future?
Take all four of the preceding tips, and look back at how different the answers would have been six or 12 months ago, and why. Then look forward 12 months to anticipate how things might change. Use this brainstorming technique to help you plan your strategy and tactics for the coming year.
Measurement is mainly about thinking and planning—it can be quantitative and therefore predictive, or it can be qualitative and descriptive. Either way, it doesn’t have to be a math problem.
Sean Williams is the owner of Communication AMMO, a strategic communication consultancy focused on measurement and evaluation, internal communication and planning. He is also an adjunct professor at Kent State University and moderator of #icchat, the Twitter-based biweekly discussion on internal communication. Sean is a board member of IABC/Cleveland. Connect with Sean on his blog, Communication Ammo, on Twitter @commammo, LinkedIn or via e-mail at
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