Editor’s Note: Our Chief Insights Officer, Mark Weiner, wrote this column for PRNEWS November 2021 issue. The findings cited are based on PRNEWS’s survey of 150 communicators conducted in October 2021. Interestingly, his forecast for predictive analytics became a reality when PublicRelay launched its Predictive Suite in January 2022.

The results are in: The 2021 PR Measurement, Tech, and Talent Survey reveals where we are as a profession and where we’re headed, at least in terms of communications research and evaluation. In this column for Measurement Month, I’m focused on one question, specifically, “What’s the next big thing for communications research and evaluation?”  

The Advantage of Predictive Analytics for PR

Everyone answered this question to share their predictions, but, in an ironic twist, only 12% consider predictive analytics as a “big thing.” How odd that everyone felt comfortable aligning on the future, but only 17-out-of-150 respondents believe that research-based predictive analytics will play an important role.

Perhaps that’s why few PR people work in meteorology.

Significant resources are being applied to predictive analytics by savvy research providers who recognize its power to reveal important aspects for planning and activation. Imagine predicting the virality of a news item or a post. How would you like to know where your competitors are headed so you can preempt their position or mitigate any advantage? Consider the advantage of knowing which stories will—and will not – gain traction. How many times have you had to calm a client or an executive over your tepid response to their desire for a vanity press release, or their response to a negative story or a competitor’s announcement?

Why PR Measurement Needs Both Technology and Talent

The pendulum of “what’s important now and in the future” continues to swing. Of course, “near term” and “long term” are important distinctions when contemplating the future, but let’s look at each response to this survey question.

For one, consider the gap between the 5.1% of respondents who believe that what’s most important is “An emphasis on automation, AI and DIY,” versus the 21.7% who chose “A balanced mix of technology and talent.” Could it be that everyone already owns a PR platform? And now that they own it, perhaps they realize that technology in isolation is not the answer (it never was, and it never will be). The question evolves from “which technology?” to “who manages the technology?” and “how do we think about the data?” 

Surprise! Current technology is not a panacea: operators need training – the technology needs training, too. As someone who believes in our uniquely human contribution, I’m encouraged by this phenomenon, and you should be too: it underscores the paucity of talent in PR hiring situations – in the absence of viable candidates, talent trumps technology and you command greater remuneration.

I am encouraged by the lower scores attributed to “Automation, AI, and DIY.” While there’s much more that technology can do, we may have reached the stage where technology development for PR evolves towards iterative refinement. There aren’t many pure breakthroughs left to unleash upon the mass PR market beyond contact databases, media monitoring, and simple media analytics (although I believe that predictive holds great potential). When you consider how the activities most vulnerable to automation and AI are those which are rote and routine, we can see how PR is insulated. How many PR days are so mundane? Given our creative endeavors which require innovative thinking to address chaotic, unpredictable situations, you should have nothing to fear. And, based on the responses, you don’t.

That’s good news: we in public relations are safe from robot replacements and we may look forward to enhancements that make our work easier and faster so we can focus on what we’re singularly capable of achieving.

Communicators Still Want to Quantify PR’s Value

The least surprising responses are two sides of the same coin: “A fully integrated analysis across the marketing and communications mix” and “A solution for quantifying PR’s impact on business outcomes like sales and revenue generation.” A combined 46% of respondents envision this as PR’s next big thing. The two ideas are interrelated because to isolate PR’s impact on business outcomes, we also need to know our relative contribution across the marketing and communications mix.  As such, the second is predicated on the first.

But it’s been PR’s next big thing for 30 years.

The difference is that marketing and communications analytics have evolved dramatically. And here’s where technology shows great potential to boost integrated marketing communications. With cascades of data, business in general and PR specifically can ascend beyond what anyone would have imagined in the past. And these technologies continue to evolve. Now, we have access to lower-cost multi-touch attribution and marketing mix modeling. Multi-touch attribution collects specific user-level data to quickly isolate specific events and assess their impact on conversion (“the customer journey”). Marketing Mix Modeling was first used in the late 1990s. Applying advanced regression analysis, these statistical models quantify the success of marketing and communications activities over time. Unlike attribution modeling, it is much slower, favoring annual or semi-annual analysis and heavily dependent on historical data but it reveals a much bigger picture.

Each in their own way contributes to understanding PR’s impact on business outcomes and explains the ways by which PR interrelates with other marketing agents. When combined, attribution and modeling create an even more formidable platform to accurately quantify PR’s contribution and to inform near and long-term planning and evaluation.

Why ESG is the Next Big Thing in PR

Now for my prediction:  Often the contrarian, I believe that ESG will be the next big thing because it answers so much of what communicators envision for the future. Investment advisory services like Morningstar quantify ESG as a predicate for investment, and they estimate that one-third of all investors factor ESG into their buy and sell decisions. ESG is a function of two elements: a company’s behavior and the reputation it creates for doing good. To a high degree, PR owns reputation. Until now, investors considered reputation to be a “soft asset” that couldn’t be quantified. With the advent of ESG investing, that’s changed. What’s more, compared to attribution and marketing mix models which reveal PR’s ability to generate a few million dollars in revenue, reputation affects billions of dollars in market capitalization. ESG introduces PR to the big money.

PR’s Continuous Evolution

Only time will tell. As is so often true in the evolution of public relations, business, and humankind: the predicate isn’t so much about technology or methodology; it’s about people’s willingness to change. One thing about which we can be certain: our profession continues to evolve and elevate, and these changes will profoundly affect public relations as we know it.

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Mark Weiner is a Trustee of the Institute for Public Relations and the author of “PR Technology, Data and Insights: Igniting a Positive Return on Your Communications Investment.”

Originally published in PRNEWS November 2021 issue.

Today it is harder than ever to protect your brand. Knowing how to shield your company from mis/disinformation can be challenging, especially when research from the CHI 2020 conference highlights the prevalence of people sharing stories on social media, despite not reading past the headline.

With only 26% of Americans feeling confident in their ability to recognize fake news, audiences are more vulnerable to mis/disinformation than ever before. The lack of media literacy – the ability to critically evaluate media content or clearly understand messages – among your target audience may negatively impact your brand if your team doesn’t properly combat it.

If you are not prepared to manage fake news, your audience is more likely to believe stories containing misleading information. But, before charging ahead with a response, PR teams must first understand the distinction between misinformation and disinformation.

What is Misinformation?

Misinformation is inaccurate information shared without the intention of manipulating people. For example, if a news story suggested that a company went under due to the poor financial results they reported in the previous quarter, even if that wasn’t the case, the inaccuracy is most likely unintended. The source of this information may not have been aware it was incorrect and did not necessarily mean to deceive audiences.

What is Disinformation?

Disinformation is false information shared with the intention of misleading people. Falsifying details is problematic and is often used to distort the truth, sometimes for financial or political gain. This is often achieved by concealing the true nature of an article, such as sponsored content disguised as editorial pieces, computer-generated imagery, or misleading headlines.

Managing the Media Narrative

Managing the media narrative is essential to protecting your brand against fabricated news and avoiding long-term consequences. In 2021, a study conducted by NYU indicated that “misinformation on Facebook got six times more clicks than factual news during the 2020 election.” If false information about your company goes viral, it can compromise your credibility and the trust your audience has in your brand.

With the tendency of fake news to spread on social media, it may feel challenging to control the pace of the narrative, but there are methods you can use to manage it.

5 Ways to Protect Your Brand from Misinformation

Even the strongest brands can fall susceptible to rumors. If your PR response is proactive and consistent, you can mitigate the harm caused to your reputation.

Here are some simple yet effective tips for protecting your brand against mis/disinformation:

Build Brand Trust

If you have established brand trust with your audience, they will be more likely to question false narratives about your company. Further, when your team responds with a counter-narrative, your consumers will be more receptive because of the pre-existing trust they have in your brand.

When responding to mis/disinformation, rely on the same components that helped you to build brand trust with your audience in the first place. Authenticity, transparency, and consistent messaging can help you to maintain your consumers’ faith in your company in the wake of false narratives.

Look for Signs of Misinformation and Disinformation

Tracking your media coverage can allow you to detect untrue narratives about your brand. Media measurement is an essential tool for observing stories about your brand and its traction on social media. Sentiment analysis is equally as important. It enables you to evaluate content for context, sarcasm, and irony, and with greater accuracy when using human-augmented technology. By utilizing effective media measurement and sentiment analysis, you can detect the early signs of mis/disinformation in coverage of your brand and address the narrative before it spins out of control.

Include Plans for Misinformation/Disinformation in Your Crisis Communications Strategy

An effective communications strategy includes preparation for PR crises, including the spread of inaccurate information. With a detailed crisis plan that provides for various scenarios with appropriate counter-narratives, external and internal points of contact, and trusted media lists, you can respond quickly and effectively. How you act in the first few hours of a crisis can determine the narrative’s impact.

Use Social Media to Evaluate False Narratives

Today, stories that misrepresent brands are most likely to start online. With the help of social media tools, your team can follow false narratives from traditional to social media and monitor how much traction they generate. Predictive solutions, for example, can evaluate the impact of false narratives and help you to identify the stories that warrant a response by determining their probability of going viral. This data enables your team to work proactively and with time advantage.

Own Up to Your Mistakes

If mis/disinformation about your brand is the result of your team’s mistake or a false statement you’ve inadvertently spread, hold yourself accountable and inform your audience. This helps to build brand trust and credibility by demonstrating accountability. Being forthright and transparent when you’ve made a mistake will make your audience more receptive to your response when future incidences of mis/disinformation occur.

A Long-Term Solution to False Narratives

Take a moment to critique your current communications strategy. Is your team prepared to tackle a false narrative targeting your brand today? If not, what solutions or plans do you need in place to make sure people are receiving correct information about your brand?

With a strategy in place, you can protect your brand from mis/disinformation and maintain the trust of your audience. At PublicRelay, our human-augmented technology approach to media analytics makes it easier to track media coverage of your brand and detect misinformation and disinformation in its formative stages. With highly accurate sentiment analysis and advanced technology enabling predictive solutions, you can take a proactive approach to manage your brand.

Click here to learn more!

In the ever-evolving world of communications strategies and campaigns, connecting with your audience through social media is now more vital than ever. Because social media offers channels for engagement that traditional media coverage cannot, it’s essential for your PR team to analyze social content to understand the stories and topics that are reaching and resonating with your audience.

But first, you must identify and learn from the individuals on social media who drive the conversations that matter most to your industry.

What is a Social Media Influencer?

A social media influencer is an individual who has established a following on social media based on their reputation of expertise or knowledge in a certain subject. Their content often generates significant engagement (such as views, likes, and shares) when they post to their social channels. And, as Forbes explains, they are people with large followings that can leverage their audiences to promote different products or services. Influencers can range from those specializing in niche topics, like gardening, to individuals with broader appeal, like popular celebrities or public figures.

Why are Social Media Influencers Important to Your PR Strategy?

Social media influencers are important to your PR strategy because they have established themselves as credible sources on topics relevant to your industry with your target audience. Tracking what they are talking about can clue your communications team in on better ways to reach your consumers and create campaigns that will resonate with them. They can also showcase which topics generate the most engagement and provide a blueprint for the types of messaging that draw the best response from your target demographic.

Ways to Identify the Right Social Media Influencers

Finding the right social media influencers takes a bit of craft; unfortunately, there’s no magic list you can simply search (yet)! A large part of condensing your search begins with defining your target audience as well as your communications goals. In other words, who are you reaching out to and why?

Here are three things to consider when identifying your industry influencers:

Shared Target Audiences

Start by clearly defining your target demographic. This requires knowing more about the who in “who is using my product or service.” Major target audiences are often broken down by demographics, including age, gender, race, political affiliation, spending ability, and geographic location. Creating detailed buyer personas for your consumers will also help you to better understand your audience. Once you know your target audience, it will be significantly easier to find the appropriate influencer who has successfully tapped into that same audience. For example, if you sell athletic wear, your top influencers will be vastly different if your target consumers are teenage girls as opposed to middle-aged men, etc.

Relevant Activity

Next, you must find the “movers and shakers” that are garnering traction in your field. A great way is to track hashtags, keywords, and key topics that relate to your brand on Twitter.

Compile a list of the keywords and topics relevant to your industry, as well as key messages important to your brand, like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, etc. The most valuable influencers are those who have not only engaged your audience on industry-specific content, but also on the broader social issues that your brand is concerned with.

You can also use Google Analytics to isolate the top posts (i.e., those generating the most engagement) within the conversations happening on social media about topics relevant to your field.

Social Media Reach and Engagement

When evaluating the influencers responsible for your industry’s top social content, you must consider the following:

First, how many followers do they have? Their follower count indicates the potential reach of each post.

Second, what is their average number of retweets per post? Along with follower count, the degree of engagement they regularly generate is important when considering their pull. Further, retweets indicate that their follower base is active and that they are posting content worth engaging with. Determining a user’s engagement based on this metric requires a full analysis of their published content, so it’s best to have a team doing this work for maximum efficiency.

Finally, what kind of influencers are they? If they aren’t a celebrity, their bio will often tell you what kind of content they post and provide links to their other social accounts. Keep in mind that, while a celebrity may have a larger following, a micro-influencer that specializes in your field will likely reach more people interested in your product or service.

Measuring Influencer Activity

Once you’ve identified the right influencers for your industry, measuring their activity can provide invaluable insights to inform your PR strategy.

In addition to analyzing their posts with the most engagement, the keywords and topics they use are also worth tracking. For instance, if increasing your ESG messaging is one of your team’s priorities, look at how your industry influencers have approached the topic.

By analyzing the top social content, you can learn which aspects of ESG, like sustainability or social justice, your audience reacts to most. And, with sentiment analysis, the tone of the conversations around these subjects reveals the direction and strength of your audience’s views on topics central to your industry.

Observing how your shared audience responds to topics relevant to your brand can guide your messaging campaigns. Influencers are successful not only because of their reputations, but because they have tailored their content and methods to reach their audience. Thus, emulating their activity can help you appeal to that same audience.

Utilizing Influencer Insights

In communications, pinpointing the right influencers means that you can tap into the people leading conversations in your industry and use that information to cultivate a more effective strategy for reaching your audience.

PublicRelay’s hybrid approach to media analytics pairs advanced technology with human analysis to help you to identify your top social media influencers and draw insights that can prime your communications strategy for success.

Click here to learn more!

What measures do you use to understand your company’s reputation?

Let’s say you’re using reputational surveys. With the poll results, you can break down public views of your company into various dimensions (e.g., leadership, products and services, vision, culture, etc.) to evaluate your standing.

But how do you know if public perceptions of your company accurately reflect the quality of each dimension, or if they’re the result of inadequate PR?

Take Facebook.

Facebook’s reputation has, without a doubt, suffered over the past few years. According to Axios, the steady decline in the company’s favorability ratings all started when news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in March 2018. Since then, it has been faced with regular negative media attention, from concerns over data protection to claims that the company is aware that its social media service, Instagram, is harmful to teens’ mental health.

Facebook’s deterioration in the public eye has been largely attributable to operational issues and internal information exposed in ongoing legal battles and by whistleblowers.

But what about the company’s reputation as an employer? Consumers have poor views of Facebook as a place to work, but how accurate are public perceptions of the company’s employee experience?

At PublicRelay, we wanted to better understand how well public impressions of a company’s workplace align with how its employees feel. Using data from our employee experience solution, Barometer, and market research firm, Harris Poll, we examined the internal and external perspectives of companies’ workplaces to see what we could learn about employer branding.

What is Employer Branding?

Employer branding is a company’s reputation as a place to work. This differs from the company’s overall reputation which includes its value proposition to customers and instead refers to its value proposition to its employees. Both, however, can be managed with effective public relations.

Though it is most often considered in terms of recruitment and talent acquisition, employer branding is also a facet of companies’ public reputation and plays a role in its overall business success.

Why is Employer Branding Important?

Employer branding is important because perceptions of employee experience can influence consumers’ purchasing decisions. In other words, millennials and Gen Z are socially conscious consumers, meaning they consider a company’s practices – including how it treats its employees – when deciding whether to become a customer.

Evaluating Employer Branding

We analyzed companies’ reputations by comparing two data sources using cross dataset analysis: average employee review star ratings and 2021 Axios Harris Poll 100 reputational survey results.

Harris Poll measures corporate reputation across seven dimensions: Products, Growth, Vision, Trust, Culture, Ethics, and Citizenship. In this instance, “Culture” is defined as public perceptions of or a company’s reputation as being a “good company to work for.”

Facebook’s Employer Branding Disconnect

Generally, there was a positive correlation between a company’s average employee star ratings and its Harris Poll reputation score. In other words, companies with positive reputations overall also had high employee star ratings. And vice versa.

But Facebook is an interesting outlier.

Facebook ranked #98 out of 100 companies overall – with a reputation categorized by Harris Poll as “critical” in its condition. This may come as no surprise.

And, though Facebook is rated number 96 on culture – among the bottom ten “Worst Performing Companies by Reputation Dimension” – the company has an average employee review star rating of 4.16 out of 5 stars, ranking number six out of 48 companies evaluated.

The Role of PR in Employer Branding

This finding represents a gap between actual experiences of Facebook as an employer and public perceptions of Facebook as a company to work for.

Its employer branding disconnect indicates that Facebook doesn’t just have an HR or an employee experience problem, but a PR problem when it comes to its employer reputation.

So, what does this mean for PR teams?

How PR Can Improve Your Employer Branding Strategy

Effective public relations can make the difference between good and bad employer branding.

Here are a few ways you can improve your employer branding strategy that will impact public perceptions of your company as a place to work:

Mobilize Your Employee Brand Ambassadors

Consumers view employees as one of the most credible sources of information on a company. Engaging your employees to become brand ambassadors and promote your company is crucial to improving your employer branding. Hearing from employees who are willing to advocate on behalf of a brand can counter any negative perceptions consumers may have formed about the company as a workplace.

You can start by recruiting employee volunteers who are enthusiastic about working for your company. It’s essential that your brand ambassadors voluntarily endorse your company to ensure authenticity. Not only that, but consumers will also be more likely to trust employee praise if it feels authentic.

In addition, be sure to make it simple. Circulate company news internally and promote positive stories and employee recognition with links that allow employees to easily share it with their networks.

Analyze and Respond to Employee Reviews

Employee reviews on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed provide a wealth of information that can support your employer branding strategy.

Your team can analyze your employee reviews to pinpoint your company’s strengths and weaknesses as a workplace and build messaging campaigns from those insights.

Negative employee reviews present an opportunity, too. According to Glassdoor, “7 out of 10 people surveyed indicated they had changed their opinion about a brand after seeing the company reply to a review.” Graciously responding to bad employee reviews and indicating that the company plans to take the criticism on board can actually improve your reputation.

Build a Workplace-Focused Media Campaign

Perhaps your media campaigns have focused on your leadership team or financial results – all important factors to your stakeholders.

But don’t forget to promote your company as a workplace as an essential part of your PR strategy.

Start by asking: what is your value proposition to your employees? And do your employee reviews corroborate it?

From there, build a workplace-focused media campaign that promotes your desired employer branding and highlights your strengths as an employer.

Not only will generating earned media coverage dramatically extend the reach of your workplace campaigns, but it will also improve awareness of your employer brand. Further, partnering with key industry influencers will add credibility to your workplace messaging.

Track Your Reputational Drivers

Start measuring your company’s earned media coverage according to reputational drivers to track how your employer branding is represented publicly. Remember, your employee experience can be exceptional, but if the public isn’t aware of it, then your employer branding may suffer.

By tracking reputational drivers, you can distill your workplace mentions from coverage of other dimensions of your reputation to assess your employer branding. You can also gain a more nuanced understanding of your branding because your coverage is broken down by subcategories, such as compensation, advancement opportunities, workplace safety, etc.

Let’s say analysis of your employee reviews indicate that workers value the advancement opportunities offered by your company. But, upon analyzing your earned media, you learn that coverage of your employer brand focuses on compensation and is neutral in tone. With this insight, you can launch a campaign highlighting your company’s advancement opportunities and employees who have scaled the ranks internally. Then, encourage your employee brand ambassadors to share their stories of advancement and growth within your company.

Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your PR

To truly take control of your company’s reputation, you must first understand it. Facebook’s employer branding disconnect reveals the limitations to measuring your brand with reputational surveys alone.

By analyzing multiple data sources, you can deepen your understanding of your brand reputation and determine whether public perceptions of your company are the result of business operations or ineffective PR.

At PublicRelay, our human-augmented AI approach to media analytics enables you to track the topics, concepts, and ideas that shape your reputation. When analyzed against additional data evaluating your reputation, this 360-degree view of your brand will allow you to develop highly refined and impactful campaigns.

Uncover the insights from your employee reviews and start measuring the earned media coverage shaping your brand today!

The ongoing pandemic and changing social values have redefined brand trust and public expectations of corporate brands. Further, a 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer survey found that 70% of consumers feel that trust in a company is more important today than ever before. But what exactly does it mean to today’s customers?

What is Brand Trust?

Brand trust is the degree of faith consumers have in your company to deliver on its promises. In addition to the quality of a company’s products or services, it can also refer to its financial performance or commitment to social causes. More recently, issues related to ESG and CSR have become more significant aspects of consumers’ trust in a brand. This aligns with the 74% of consumers who say that companies’ sizable impact on society and the planet is the main reason it has taken center stage.

Why is Brand Trust Important?

Brand trust is important because customers are more likely to purchase products and services from companies they feel they can rely on.

Trust significantly influences consumer behavior and purchase intent. Edelman’s 2020 survey – which included respondents from 11 countries – found that consumers rated trust as the second most important factor (behind price and affordability) when deciding to buy from a new brand or become a loyal customer.

Despite its importance, Havas’ 2021 Meaningful Brands Report indicates that only 39% of brands are trusted by consumers.

5 Ways to Build Brand Trust

So, what does this mean for PR teams?

Here are five ways your team can create a brand trust strategy that truly resonates with your target audience:

Know Your Audience

Consumers’ values when it comes to trust vary by audience demographics and interests. When studying trust across generations, Morning Consult found that not only are Millennials (1981 – 1995) and Gen Z (1996 – 2012) less trusting of the average brand, but they are also more likely to prioritize ethical concerns when choosing companies to trust. While the two younger generations are more likely to choose brands that align with their personal values, Gen X (1965 – 1980) consumers demonstrate greater long-term loyalty to their chosen brands.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to appealing to audiences, but it’s evident they all expect brands to meet certain standards. An in-depth understanding of your audience is crucial to building trust and maintaining consumer loyalty to your brand.

Define Your Values

Modern consumers favor brands that care about more than just profit. With your audience’s values in mind, consider where your company stands on each aspect of ESG and CSR. Over half of American consumers believe it’s important for companies to take a stand on social, environmental, and political issues. So, rather than steering clear of divisive topics, determine your company’s stance and publicize it. Millennials and Gen Z claim they are most receptive to brands sharing their stances on social media, in particular. Take advantage of your social channels to promote your values and highlight any work your company is doing to improve sustainability, ensure workplace safety, or promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), etc.

Show Authenticity

Research has shown that authenticity contributes to brands’ trustworthiness and perceived value. Use your social media channels to create authentic content and establish a connection with your audience.

According to Forbes, the key to being authentic is to “keep it real.” This means sharing the good and the bad with your audience, being honest and accountable when you fail, and maintaining a consistent, relatable voice across your channels. Your audience wants to feel as though they are hearing from a human being on the other end of your social accounts, not a disembodied corporation.

Ensure Transparency

A commitment to full transparency is fundamental to building and maintaining brand trust, even when your company makes mistakes. You can ensure transparency by being honest about your company’s operations and making information readily accessible to the public. Your consumers want to know that you are accountable to them and aren’t misleading with any of the information you share or withhold.

Two key steps towards transparency include admitting to your failures and outlining your plans to address them, and responding to online reviews in a way that demonstrates your openness to criticism.

Avoid Empty Promises

Audiences are wary of brands who are hopping on the social values bandwagon without making any operational changes towards an impact. You can show your consumers that your company has put action and money behind those values by measuring and reporting your CSR, ESG, and DEI efforts and impact.

Similarly, avoid claiming that your brand supports any values that align with your audience’s if you can’t back them up with evidence that your company is acting. Your audience will hold you accountable.

Measure Your Impact

In this era of uncertainty, it is more important than ever to build and strengthen consumers’ faith in your company. By taking steps to establish trust with your audience, you can improve consumer loyalty long-term.

But how do you know if your PR strategy is resonating with your audience and moving the needle on brand trust?

With the majority of brand work taking place across social platforms, understanding the conversations happening around broad social topics is essential to inform your strategy. You can then use social media listening to evaluate your social presence.

With our human-augmented AI approach to media analytics, PublicRelay can accurately evaluate text for sentiment, context, and multidimensional concepts across social, traditional, and broadcast media.

Click here to learn how you can start measuring your media coverage today!

Social media analytics that make sense of the conversations happening across social platforms is an essential tool of modern PR. Tracking discussions about specific products, campaigns, and companies using social media analytics tools can provide PR teams with valuable insights into their company’s and competitors’ reputations. However, broader social topics, like ESG, have become increasingly important to stakeholders and are a significant factor in business success.

Communications teams must keep a finger on the pulse of the broad social issues, like sustainability, that impact their industries and align with their target audience’s values. With 500 million tweets sent per day, social media has presented an opportunity for companies by providing an open-source of audience perspectives and attitudes on every topic imaginable, with updates every second.

On the flip side, digesting the sheer amount of social data available while extracting reliable insights is easier said than done. That’s where sampling comes in.

What is sampling in social media analytics?

Sampling in social media analytics is the process of collecting a subset of social media coverage of a specific topic for analysis to infer what the general population is saying about it. Rather than collecting and analyzing every mention, sampling reduces the amount of data to a manageable volume while maintaining the integrity and accuracy of the findings.

For example, let’s say your team wants to know what aspects of ESG people care about most to refine an upcoming campaign. Social media sampling will gather selections of social coverage mentioning ESG topics using a sampling method that accounts for variation across the larger population. That sample of social content will then be analyzed and yield insights that can be applied to the total population.

Why is sampling in social media analytics important?

Sampling in social media analytics is important because it enables communications teams to distill massive amounts of data on a broad topic spanning social media into actionable insights relevant to your industry.

As broader social topics, including ESG and CSR, become more significant facets of companies’ reputations, understanding public discourse and sentiment surrounding these themes is equally as important as tracking your company mentions to managing your brand.

While standard automated social media monitoring tools can track your and your competitors’ social presences, they aren’t designed to accurately analyze mentions of concepts or complex topics. Human analysis, on the other hand, can more accurately capture this kind of content but struggles with the volume of data across social platforms. However, sampling is a statistically validated method for extracting insights from enormous data sets, like the one made available by social media.

How does social media sampling work?

Essentially, sampling is the process of taking and analyzing small (representative) samples of a dataset to draw conclusions about the total population without having to analyze each data point.

Social media sampling uses a statistical method often used in accounting that arranges large quantities of data into groups based on similarities, then draws subsets of data from each group reflective of the general population. The subset of data is then cleaned and analyzed to generate insights that can be extrapolated to larger populations.

How can you apply insights from social media sampling to your communications strategy?

Social values and priorities can change from one viral Tweet to the next. Understanding the topics and subtopics receiving the most positive coverage and engagement across social media in near-real time can guide your campaigns and help you to capitalize on opportunities to promote your key messages at exactly the right moment.

Here are a few considerations for making the most of social media sampling:

Determine the topics that are relevant to your industry

Consider your range of stakeholders and their priorities. Generally, sampling for social media analysis is best applied to broad topics related to corporate reputation (e.g., CSR, workplace environment, etc.) or timely social issues (e.g., ESG, DEI, gender equity, data protection, sustainability, etc.).

Each of your stakeholder groups will have differing and, at times, competing interests. Outlining the issues relevant to your industry stakeholders (e.g., consumers may care about sustainability and data protection, while employees value compensation and DEI, and local communities are concerned with CSR) will help you define the topics you’ll benefit from tracking.

Measure subtopics

Analyzing the right subtopics will provide your team with a more nuanced understanding of the conversations surrounding each tracked topic and enable you to finely-tune your messaging.

For instance, when measuring social media discussions around workplace environment, breaking coverage down according to subtopics can tell you whether people currently care most about DEI, compensation, or gender pay equity.

Develop a responsive strategy

Communications guided by insights from sampling social media require a PR team prepared to react quickly to changing social values and adjust messaging accordingly.

The insights made available by sampling social media can highlight what people care about most, when they are talking about it, and how to best frame your campaigns surrounding each topic and subtopic to resonate with your audience.

By having a strategy primed to adapt to abruptly changing views on significant topics, your team can take advantage of the nuanced understanding of social media discourse enabled by sampling.

Inform Your Communications Using Sampling in Social Media Analytics

Effective communications require a nuanced understanding of more than your company’s reputation. Tracking the social topics that span social media platforms can change how you deliver your key messages by capitalizing on the trends and nuances of the conversations surrounding them.

Though social media analytics tools that rely exclusively on technology can’t extract reliable insights on broad social topics, employing a statistically proven sampling method supported by human analysis can.

Not to mention, analyzing text for concepts, sentiment, and linguistic devices (like irony, sarcasm, and slang), often used in social media conversations, requires a human understanding that technology alone can’t match.

At PublicRelay, we apply our human-augmented AI method of media measurement to sampling social media content. By combining advanced technology with human intelligence, our team analyzes each social media topic according to the subtopics, sentiment, and concepts relevant to your industry and company. Click here to amplify your social media analysis using sampling now!

Brand credibility is crucial for a company to establish itself and is a key factor in sustained growth. For that reason, understanding brand credibility and how it can be influenced by earned media coverage is an important aspect of managing a company’s reputation. While it is most effectively built over time, PR teams can take several steps to help expedite the process.

What is Brand Credibility?

Brand credibility is the level of trust consumers have in a brand and their perceptions of its expertise. The Association for Consumer Research further explains it as “the believability of the product information contained in a brand, which requires that consumers perceive that the brand has the ability (i.e., expertise) and willingness (i.e., trustworthiness) to continuously deliver what has been promised.” It is an aspect of a company’s reputation that is most often cultivated over time as the quality of its products or services proves consistent and its brand awareness increases.

Why is Brand Credibility Important?

Brand credibility is important because the ability to garner consumers’ trust is essential to brand health. Trust in a company’s product and message, along with confidence in its ability to deliver a consistent and high-quality product, reflects positively on a company’s reputation and sets it apart from competitors. Customers must be able to rely on the quality of the product or service the brand is providing. A 2019 study of trust and risk perspectives of high-value brands noted that “customers adopt trust as a shortcut to avoid complex decision processes that carry risk.” If a company gives reason for skepticism, a consumer is more likely to forgo it for another brand. Overall, credible brands have more forgiving relationships and personal connections with their consumers.

Ways to Build Your Brand Credibility

Brand credibility can be difficult to build because of the time it takes to develop consistency and social proof. It can take years to prove to consumers that your products or services are reliable and for positive reviews to accumulate. However, a brand’s earned media coverage can increase its visibility and boost public perceptions of the validity of its claims.

Here are four ways you can build brand credibility:

Promote Spokesperson Coverage

Coverage of your company spokespeople and executives in reputable or industry-recognized third-party media outlets can establish the credibility and expertise of your brand. By securing bylines or offering quotes or interviews to relevant trade publications, consumers will see that your brand representatives are regarded as credible and experts in their fields. Even simply having a quote appear in a priority outlet can help build the integrity of your brand and perceived expertise. Further, contributing articles to industry publications or being cited for thought leadership can be an additional boost to your spokespeople’s reputations as experts.

Leverage Your Social Media Channels

Using social media allows for a direct connection between a brand and its consumers and paves the wave for establishing trust with your audience. According to a 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer special report, “four in 10 consumers say they are unlikely to become emotionally attached to a brand unless they are interacting via social media.” Being active and present on social media can show an attentiveness toward customers’ concerns, and allow a brand to boost its perceived authenticity which, in turn, fosters trust.

Build Social Proof

Social proof refers to the tendency of people to look to the opinions of others to guide their actions and beliefs. Social proof is vital to public relations because people’s judgments are shaped by others when they’re uncertain of how to feel about a new product or brand. There are several ways to build social proof that will resonate with your target audience.

For instance, positive reviews from past customers serve to confirm the quality and reliability of your products or services for prospective customers. Likewise, testimonials from existing clients or relevant influencers are useful for building trust among a shared target audience. Recent research has even found that celebrity trust in a company can significantly impact brand credibility.

Evaluate Your Strategy

Brand credibility takes time to develop, and some tactics may work better than others. Monitoring the impact of your spokesperson coverage, social proof, and influencer strategies on the portrayal of your company in earned media coverage can indicate whether your PR outputs are resonating with your target audience.

Build a media measurement program that tracks the metrics and industry topics that matter most to your reputation for data to guide your messaging and approach. By tracking your company’s earned media coverage, you can evaluate the impact of your campaigns on your brand credibility and learn from your competitors to inform your communications strategy.

Measuring Brand Credibility

Brand credibility is an essential facet of brand health. It cements a company and its representatives as reputable, allowing it greater longevity. Being mindful of the factors that contribute to perceptions of trust and expertise is crucial for PR teams looking to build or improve credibility.

With our unique human-AI hybrid approach to media measurement, PublicRelay can help your team benchmark your brand against competitors and gauge your impact in obtaining high brand credibility. Start measuring your earned media coverage now!

Environmental, social, and governance concerns are becoming increasingly pressing and attracting the attention of both corporations and consumers. According to PwC, consumers and employees now expect businesses to invest in “making sustainable improvements to the environment and society, not just comply with regulations.” In fact, they found that overwhelming majorities (over 75%) of both consumers and employees are more likely to buy from or work for companies that share their values across the various dimensions of ESG.

As the importance of ESG grows, it plays an even more significant role in companies’ brand reputations. For this reason, it’s vital to strengthen your ESG communications strategy to shape and manage your company narrative.

What is ESG?

ESG (Environmental, Social, and [Corporate] Governance) is a framework for assessing a company’s sustainability and conscientiousness across three categories of interest for “socially responsible investors,” according to the Corporate Finance Institute. While it has been a prominent topic in the world of investing for a while, companies are becoming more concerned with their overall ESG practices and initiatives as a brand. These issues broadly fall under the blanket term “business ethics” – a company’s morals and values, which they may express through their policies, statements, and actions. While social responsibility may not seem as vital or urgent as financial performance to the success of a business, it can make or break a company’s reputation. Most reputation management crises can be classified under one or more of the three dimensions.

Why is ESG Important?

ESG is important because it helps guide companies’ business approaches by considering the values of the next generation of consumers. According to FirstInsight, Generation Z consumers, in particular, are making even more purchase decisions based on sustainable retail practices. SmallBusiness also points out that companies with a strong ethical identity tend to maintain a higher degree of stakeholder satisfaction, in turn leading to greater financial results. Furthermore, ESG best practices help to maintain a good reputation in the public eye, making consumers more likely to purchase from and remain loyal to a company.

ESG Framework

Each of ESG’s three components includes a set of criteria that businesses can be evaluated by:

Environmental

Environmental criteria involve a company’s attitude and actions on climate change issues. The use of renewable energy sources, waste management programs, and environmental protection fall under this category.

For example, there has been increasing pressure on corporations to lower their consumption of single-use plastics. The Plastic Waste Makers Index recently found that twenty companies are the source of more than half of all single-use plastic thrown away globally. Environmental initiatives like the one undertaken by Coca-Cola – which aims to have its packaging comprised of 50% recycled material by 2030 – signal to consumers that a company is taking ownership of its eco-footprint and takes ESG concerns seriously.

Not only can environmentally-conscious practices help businesses save money – complying with environmental regulations avoids costly tariffs – but going green can also boost sales with 78% of people more likely to purchase a product that is clearly labeled as environmentally friendly. Overall, businesses can maximize profits and improve their brand identity by appealing to modern, environmentally conscious consumers.

Social

Social criteria refer to a company’s relationships with its various stakeholders, including employees, customers, investors, and local communities. For instance, employer brand has been highlighted as a significant aspect of company reputation, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Evidence showed that companies that were respectful, understanding, and flexible towards employees during this time were more likely to have favorable ESG rankings among consumers.

Social criteria also consider businesses’ role in social issues, with 60% of the U.S. population saying that how a brand responds to racial justice protests would influence whether they buy or boycott the brand in the future. Further, consumers want to see companies take a stance on prominent social issues and back up their views with concrete actions. For example, during the Black Lives Matter movement, the public paid close attention to which corporations were coming out in support of people of color. Not only that, but a study by YPulse found the younger generation of consumers expected brands to follow up on any social media statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement with donations or by changing their business practices.

Governance

Corporate governance criteria describe how a corporation is managed from the top-down. In other words, how key decision-makers respond to crises while protecting the rights of their stakeholders.

Governance encompasses financial and accounting transparency, as well as workplace practices. For instance, the MeToo movement shown a light on companies’ corporate governance, with many forced to examine whether they had enforced policies and practices that ensured a safe working environment for women.

Neglecting or failing to follow healthy corporate governance standards can be detrimental to business and can have lasting ramifications not only for a company’s financial performance but also for its brand reputation.

How to Improve Your ESG Communications Strategy

Given how impactful implementing an ESG strategy can be on business performance, it will continue to play an important role in public relations for years to come.

PR teams must effectively communicate their company’s ESG goals and the actions they’re taking to achieve them. By setting and publicizing targets, businesses allow their employees and the public to hold them accountable to their goals, garnering more trust in the process.

Here are a few ways to improve your ESG communications strategy:

Know Your Audience

Understanding the values of your audience is a vital step in strengthening your ESG strategy. By examining survey and polling data, you can assess which elements of ESG are most important to your target audience. This will make it easier to cater your ESG communications approach to each demographic. Market research allows you to prioritize coverage of the issues your target audience cares about most, whether that’s your company’s contribution to the racial justice movement or efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. You should also evaluate the best way to reach each demographic. For instance, regularly updating social media platforms may be a great tool to engage younger consumers in your socially responsible accomplishments. Likewise, a monthly newsletter in the inboxes of employees can be a fantastic way to keep them involved.

Define Your Narrative

Understanding your purpose as a company and what you can contribute to society is inextricably linked to ESG performance. Set clear and achievable goals and ensure that you have internal buy-in. In doing so, you are setting the standard for a united ESG strategy with the support of your stakeholders. The next step is to communicate those goals to relevant stakeholders through a cohesive narrative. A memorable ESG mission statement is a simple but effective way to get a message across. A perfect example is Starbucks’s sustainability initiative, Shared Planet, which they describe as a “commitment to do business in ways that are good for people and the planet.”

Promote your company’s ESG goals by sharing success stories, converting ESG data and outcomes into infographics, publishing employee testimonials, and writing press releases. Develop strategies for getting your company’s ESG experts cited on key topics and share relevant content with publications to increase your company’s visibility. Decide what your key messages are and make sure they are being heard.

Evaluate Your Strategy

As you continue to spread your chosen ESG narrative, it’s essential to track earned media coverage and note which communications efforts are most effective. Incorporating media monitoring and analytics will put the efficacy of your ESG communications strategy to the test. By understanding key message penetration and sentiment around your ESG initiatives, you can adjust your communications strategy accordingly. You can also glean insights from your industry and competitors’ earned media coverage. By gauging what is or isn’t working for them and your shared audience, you can carve out your unique brand voice. Measuring different forms of engagement, such as social sharing, can also be a very useful tool in determining the success of your strategy. After all, what use is a fantastic press release showcasing your ESG initiatives if nobody reads it? Media monitoring can gauge whether the right messages are reaching the right people.

Build a Better Strategy

A strong ESG communications strategy is essential to PR teams’ ability to manage their company reputation. With an in-depth analysis of your company’s earned media coverage, your team can craft campaigns in line with your stakeholder’s values as they evolve. Understanding how your company and your key competitors are performing on the various dimensions of ESG will provide you with a clear path towards achieving your communications goals. The ability to accurately discern sentiment, context, and nuance has never been more relevant, which is why PublicRelay’s human-AI hybrid approach to media monitoring is even better for analyzing ESG topics than a purely automated tool. Click here to learn more now!

Communications teams have the incredible responsibility of managing their company reputation across all forms of media. What may appear to be a simple task spans a seemingly infinite number of online outlets, print publications, and social sites with constantly changing discussions. Not only that, but conversations around your brand can quickly become cacophonous and make it difficult to decipher how your brand is represented.

What is Reputation Management?

Reputation management is the act of influencing or controlling public perceptions of a company. With the increasing shift towards digital media, the practice requires consideration of traditional, online, broadcast, and social media.

Managing your reputation is both active and reactive and is shaped by three types of coverage: earned, paid, and owned media. Paid media relates to advertising, earned media encompasses traditional media coverage and social discussions, and owned media refers to content published by your organization, like your company website, blog, and social media.

Why is Reputation Management Important?

Reputation management is important because it can help your company build trust and brand loyalty in an era when consumers are more informed, demanding, and skeptical than ever. As younger generations amass more buying power, monitoring your brand can also help ensure your company stays relevant in a highly competitive market. For instance, Gen Z favors authenticity, fun, and tech when they consider brands – do you know how your company is performing in those areas?

The factors influencing how a brand is perceived expand far beyond the scope of typical business operations: they now encompass social and environmental responsibility, corporate governance, and community relations. PR teams are even developing practices around CEO activism to maintain a reputation that connects with today’s consumers. Investing in reputation management can help your company make sure it is represented favorably by the media and that its portrayal stays relevant.

Steps to Build a Reputation Management Strategy

Building a reputation management strategy begins with identifying your reputational drivers: the key aspects that construct your brand’s identity. After determining the topics that drive your brand’s coverage, implement a data-based media strategy to track your key messages and develop strategies to correct divergences from your desired brand. Monitoring competitor coverage can also help your team to predict trends and develop internal strategies for crisis response.

Identify Your Reputational Drivers

Start by identifying the key factors that drive your company’s reputation, also known as reputational drivers. At PublicRelay, we have developed a framework of seven essential reputation drivers that can be applied or adapted to any company: products and services, business strategy, workplace, leadership, corporate social responsibility, financial performance, and government relations.

Reputational drivers work together to help paint a cohesive picture of the public perception of your brand and should be tailored to represent your company and industry. Maybe your company has reworked its communications themes for 2021, and emphasis on diversity is crucial. After all, a growing number of consumers are changing their consumption habits to frequent more diverse businesses. Using the reputational drivers “workplace” and “corporate social responsibility” you can track sub-categories such as “diversity” and “DEI initiatives” to accurately assess your performance on specific facets of your reputational goals.

Your team may not yet know the full breadth of the drivers that comprise your corporate reputation. Tracking key industry competitors or launching a whitespace program to monitor PR strategies and discussions in your sector are excellent, in-depth starting points to understand the reputational drivers of both close competitors and larger organizations.

Monitor Your Coverage Using Real-Time Data Analytics

One of the most effective methods for ensuring that your messaging and earned media are consistent with your reputational goals is using real-time analytics. Tracking the volume, tone, and sharing of media output that mentions your company can help you determine how often your key messages are discussed, the sentiment surrounding them, and how readers engage with your coverage.

Using real-time analytics also allows you to pivot and adapt your brand messaging in response to public interests, political activity, and global events. For example, environmental, social, and governance topics have exploded over the last 12 months, with global standard-setters announcing new ways to comprehensively measure and track businesses’ ESG initiatives.

However, be wary of fully automated real-time data analysis solutions – AI and Machine Learning can only accomplish so much when analyzing articles for sentiment, significance, and social context. Alternatively, if humans analyze your data, you can access a richness of reputation analysis that allows for a more useful data set. For example, how can AI determine how ethical your brand appears in earned media? According to McKinsey, ethics are a key aspect influencing decision-making for Gen Z, and human analysis will ensure your coverage is accurately evaluated for such nuanced social issues.   

Develop Data-Based Strategies for Crises That Threaten Reputation

Tracking your company messages and those of your peers can also help shape your approach to crisis communications. When negative publicity threatens your brand’s reputation, you can use data from the experiences of competitors faced with similar crises in the past to inform your response. Whether the move is to remain quiet as coverage passes or issue a carefully worded statement, competitive tracking can give you the foresight to deftly maneuver potential challenges.

Identify the Threats Worth Addressing

Negative articles about your brand will inevitably be published from time to time, but not all bad press is worth addressing. Coverage that threatens your desired brand may be worthy of a response if published by a high-reach outlet or if it garners significant social sharing, as both factors could snowball into additional negative coverage or even result in a communications crisis. Social engagement is especially important, as sharing spreads articles across websites, amplifying their reach exponentially.

Predictive analytics can help your team to see around the corner when it comes to topics with high potential virality, allowing you to know before an article goes viral if it constitutes a potential threat to your brand reputation.  This mechanism can also help you anticipate positive coverage, enabling your team to capitalize on sharing trends.

Start Managing Your Reputation Today

Reputation management is one of the greatest responsibilities of PR and communications teams. While paid and owned media are internally controlled, earned media relies on both a proactive and reactive management strategy best implemented with reputational driver analysis as they appear in the media. With real-time data analysis, your communications team can track how your brand messages are portrayed across earned media, how social users engage your campaigns, and how peer messages appear in the press. A comparative analysis can also allow your company a representative insight into the market, identifying how your reputation stands against peers and what you can learn from their mistakes.

PublicRelay can help your team reactively and proactively track topics that might throw a wrench in your brand management plans. Our new predictive momentum score allows our clients to see the likelihood of an article will going viral on social media. To know if a topic is trending enough to warrant a crisis management-level response, we also offer predictive alerts to notify your team hours in advance of an article that might go viral so you can begin strategizing. To learn more about how PublicRelay can help to manage your brand, click here.

Media monitoring is the process by which a company keeps track of its media coverage. This practice benefits PR and communications teams in many ways. Most notably, a good monitoring program allows a company to more effectively manage its reputation, one of the greatest assets of any business.

Tracking media coverage has become an increasingly essential part of companies’ PR strategies. With the introduction of social and digital media, coupled with media content that is readily available to people on smart devices, a successful monitoring program is crucial to staying on top of your company’s public image.

Why is Media Monitoring Important?

Media monitoring is important because it helps you stay up-to-date on the latest trends in your industry and provides your PR team with the opportunity to proactively manage your brand. Having a strong monitoring system in place allows your team to listen to and take note of what is going on in your industry and how your business is perceived on a day-to-day basis.

If you want to increase your brand awareness and demonstrate your team’s impact, media monitoring will support your PR team with these goals.

The Best Metrics for Media Monitoring

Many metrics can be used when monitoring media. Selecting the correct metrics when establishing your monitoring program will provide your team with the data necessary to inform your strategy and reach your communications objectives.

Several essential metrics that can provide your PR team with an overarching view of your company’s and your competitors’ media coverage are:

• Volume and tone of company mentions
• Key message penetration
• Top authors and outlets
• Competitor and industry coverage
• Social media coverage and engagement
• Sentiment of coverage
• Potential impressions

Why Media Monitoring Should Be a Part of Your PR Strategy

Here are a few of the ways media monitoring can support your PR team:

Manage Corporate Reputation

By following the topic and tone of and engagement with your company’s media coverage, you are better prepared to build or adjust your communications strategy accordingly.

With the ability to track what is said about your business, your PR team can quickly react to negative coverage and respond to such stories or mentions constructively, therefore mitigating potential PR crises. It also allows your PR team to identify opportunities to capitalize on positive coverage or trending topics in your industry.

Track Your Key Messages

Key message penetration is an excellent indicator of your brand awareness and the effectiveness of your messaging campaigns. With a media monitoring program that can detect keywords, concepts, and topics related to your campaigns, you can assess the extent to which your key messages have been picked up by the media. You can also determine the sentiment of that coverage, how many people were potentially exposed to it, and the level of social engagement it has received. This level of depth and insight will allow you to evaluate your existing strategy and inform future campaigns.

Know Your Industry and Competition

Beyond your company’s coverage, the coverage of your competitors and industry holds many insights.

Competitive intelligence is a simple way to stay on top of the latest industry developments and trends and to determine your company’s share of voice within your industry. Share of voice gives your team the chance to see how your company is faring directly against your competition. Monitoring your competitors also allows you to identify the topics driving their positive and negative coverage, and that which generates the most social engagement.

Measure the Effectiveness of Your Communications

Media monitoring is a great tool that allows your team to measure and improve the effectiveness of your communications. The insights gained can help you to determine whether you understand your target audience, you are reaching your target audience, and if you’re getting the type of engagement that you are striving for.

With a monitoring tool or service in place, the data is collected automatically, allowing you to perform an ongoing evaluation of your approach. Quality data from monitoring your media can reliably inform decision-making and accurately measure the impact of your communications.

How Does Media Monitoring Work?

Planning and correctly implementing a monitoring program is vital to ensuring the tool’s success for your PR team. If your team doesn’t do the appropriate planning, it’s likely your monitoring program won’t deliver the full extent of its value. A successful planning process will ensure that the program your team develops provides advantages from the beginning.

There are three core steps necessary to make the most of your program:  

Set Objectives

The first stage of planning your monitoring strategy is setting your objectives. What do you want to learn from your media coverage? Knowing this will help you to figure out the type of metrics you need to measure. As a starting point, monitor your company coverage fully, as this will provide a base-level knowledge of your brand. It will also allow your team to measure the impact of your communications over time and compare coverage to previous periods.

Establish Reputational Drivers

Perhaps the most important step is determining the drivers of your corporate reputation. Reputational drivers are the factors that contribute to the overall public perception of a company. Defining and capturing these brand elements will help your team to understand and manage your corporate reputation.

At PublicRelay, we use a framework of essential drivers to guide the planning of your monitoring program. Several core drivers that can apply to most businesses include workplace, leadership, financial performance, and government relations. These drivers, which are mutually exclusive and capture every facet of your company, offer a clearer picture of what is shaping public perceptions of your company.

Gather and Interpret the Data

After collecting initial media data, you can gather and interpret your metrics. The interpretation of the data is what aids you in understanding your business, your competitors, and your industry. As your team interprets the collected data, you can now make changes to your campaigns as needed. With this information, your team can see what works, where you can improve, and which of your key messages are captured by the media. 

With sufficient planning and accurate data collection, your team can draw actionable insights and improve your PR and communications strategies.

Elevate Your Media Monitoring Program

Media monitoring is essential to helping your PR team understand how well your current strategies are working and how your team can continue to plot a path towards future success. To take your strategy to the next level, consider incorporating media analytics into your communications process.

At PublicRelay, we offer clients accurate and in-depth analyses of their media coverage. With our media monitoring solution, we can help you to build a foundation of nuanced, high-quality data to assess the effectiveness of your messaging campaigns. Demonstrate the success of your communications strategy and start tracking your earned media now!