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!

While PR teams used to rely on press releases and media outlets to connect with their target audiences, social media’s integration into people’s daily lives has made the public more accessible than ever before.

Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication notes that “as both PR and social media are used to build and maintain trust in the company and their products, it is only natural that the two must be in sync.” Unsurprisingly, social platforms have become valuable tools that are essential to communications teams’ ability to increase brand awareness and perceived authenticity with their target audience.

Why is Social Media Important for Public Relations?

Social media is an important tool for PR because it allows you to reach audiences that previously may have been difficult to interact with. With social media, the world is quite literally at your fingertips. Among this population, industry influencers are an indispensable resource that can help your team communicate key messages and lend weight to them, whether via reach or credibility. In addition, social measurement tools can help you assess the impact of your campaigns and fine-tune your strategy.

How to Use Social Media to Support Your PR Strategy

To effectively use social media to support your PR strategy, you must define your goals. Start broad by first determining your overarching objective. Then develop questions such as:

• What niche do you occupy in your industry?
• How can you distinguish yourself from your peers and competitors?
• Who is your target audience?
• Which platforms does your target audience engage with most?
• What kinds of content does your target audience interact with most?

Delving into these questions and defining clear answers will help you to build a solid foundation to work from. The answers to these questions provide a guideline that you can use to ensure you are working towards your overarching goals as you explore the minutiae of how to do so.

Understand Your Target Audience

While having a large target audience may seem beneficial, it’s more effective to have a narrow and specific description of your target audience. Creating a buyer persona – a detailed profile of your ideal consumer – is one way to do this. Referring to a buyer persona helps to map out the platforms and content that will be most effective in attracting your desired audience. The best way to collect this information is with reliable data and social media analytics. As Business News Daily suggests, “use data to learn about and target your customers based on characteristics such as location, language, and interests.”

Having a focused understanding of your target audience prevents the potential pitfall of spreading your resources too thin or having juxtaposed messaging intending to appeal to various groups of people. The latter of which can appear inconsistent to audiences and confuse your brand messages.

Engage with Influencers

Before the rise of social media, communications teams would have to call media outlets to pitch a story. Now, social media influencers have become a driving force in transmitting messages to target audiences, with research showing that 63% of consumers trust influencers over a brand’s in-house advertisers. In addition to the benefit of effectively reaching audiences that would otherwise be difficult to reach, they also lend authority to messages. Third-party influencers add to message credibility because they are often deemed as subject matter experts by the media.  

Engage with Journalists

Regularly engaging with influencers, especially journalists, can help create genuine relationships that will continue to aid you over time. As Michelle Mekky of Mekky Media Relations explains, Twitter is an excellent tool to use for reaching out to journalists because they “are online for the sole purpose of interacting with the public.”

When identifying journalists, dig into specifics that will help you increase your chances of a beneficial partnership. Decide which outlets fit best with your brand and the journalists from those outlets who regularly write about topics relevant to your industry. You can also scan their Twitter feeds for an indication of the types of stories they engage with to gauge whether you are on the right path.

With this information, you can cater to their interests when reaching out. If your goals and interests appear to align, write a concise message to grab their attention. As Twitter consists of short, fast-paced Tweets, it’s best to comply with those expectations even when messaging someone.

Create a Brand Guideline

Consistency when building brand awareness is the key to establishing familiarity with your audience. Posting social content on a regular schedule and communicating in ways that encapsulate your brand are crucial steps for increasing that brand awareness. Create a brand guideline to help define your brand and establish a point of reference to ensure you have a consistent tone of voice across your social media activity, the nuances of which may differ depending on which platform you are posting. Remember that consistency is what ultimately reinforces your brand. 

Fine-Tuning Your Strategy

Social media is an ever-changing landscape, and you can expect trial-and-error as you find your footing. Knowing what doesn’t work can be just as helpful as knowing what does, and so it’s important to be objectively aware of every failure and success. Using reliable data is essential to assess the impact of your strategy and can help you achieve objectivity. 

At PublicRelay, we can help PR teams assess the impact of their strategy for improving brand sentiment and awareness. With our unique human-AI hybrid approach, we analyze your social, traditional, and broadcast media coverage and provide you with actionable insights to inform your PR strategy. In addition to pinpointing key industry influencers and highlighting the discussions circling your brand, PublicRelay can provide you with both a bird’s-eye-view and an up-close examination of the details. Click here to learn more. 

According to Business Matters, a company’s reputation is crucial to its success. When tracked effectively, it can reveal valuable insights into a brand’s current position in public opinion. This understanding provides a foundation for PR teams to make informed decisions about their communications strategy.

What Are Reputational Drivers?

Reputational drivers are the factors that contribute to a company’s overall reputation. Defining and tracking these key metrics will help public relations professionals to understand their company brand and more effectively manage their reputation.

RepTrak outlines seven drivers of reputation that can highlight an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and areas for growth. As Reptrak points out, these categories can help you pinpoint the different aspects of your organization that are receiving press coverage.

Based on the seven drivers, PublicRelay has developed a framework for determining the essential drivers of corporate reputation that can be tailored to apply to any organization. By using this framework, your PR team can design a media monitoring strategy that effectively tracks the factors comprising your brand.

PublicRelay’s framework consists of:

1. Products and Services. What are the individual elements of the products and services you offer?
2. Business Strategy. What actions has your company taken to meet its business goals?
3. Workplace. What is your company’s workplace culture?
4. Leadership. Does your organization have a clear mission, and is there accountability among its executives?
5. Corporate Social Responsibility. How does your company give back to the community or try to make the world a better place?
6. Financial Performance. What is the state of your company’s financial health?
7. Government Relations. Is your company in-line with industry regulations? Is your company involved in any litigation?

Each driver is connected to a specific facet of your company’s operations. Together, they help to paint a picture of the public’s perception of your brand. The final image serves as a vital tool in crafting a strong communications plan.

Why Are Reputational Drivers Important in a Communications Strategy?

Reputational drivers are important in a communications strategy because understanding the nuances of your corporate reputation will enable you to make data-driven decisions.

Reputation may feel like an intangible concept when you begin developing a communications plan. By dividing it into specific drivers, seemingly vague ideas become concrete and measurable parts of your business. Breaking it down across these seven drivers will help you to focus your messaging on the drivers that are most important to your communications objectives.

For instance, perhaps mentions of your company have been more negative than usual over the past week. By examining media content, you could uncover that negative press has largely focused on your products and services. This insight would allow you to work across teams, flagging the criticism to your product and development team for further inquiry. As a PR professional, you now have the opportunity to help shift the narrative in your brand’s favor. Once you have a firm understanding of which aspects of your brand are drawing attention, be it positive or negative, you can go to work crafting compelling content to balance the narrative.

The framework can also strengthen an organization’s external media capabilities. Once you have identified which categories are crucial to your brand’s current messaging, tracking coverage across all seven drivers can reveal further insights. In monitoring your company’s press coverage, you may begin to see which drivers are underperforming over time. Analyzing your coverage for patterns or emerging trends allows you to make intelligent and informed decisions.

Reputational Driver Metrics

It’s clear that drivers of corporate reputation provide invaluable insights for communications teams, but how do you tailor each to your company’s unique objectives?

Whether you decide to monitor your media in-house or use an agency, tailoring your drivers to your company and industry will ensure you are able to capture your metrics accurately.

When building your communications strategy, begin to consider the individual drivers and how each metric applies to your company and desired brand:

Products and Services

Define each aspect of the products and/or services your company offers. The distinction between the two is that products are generally tangible goods (e.g., a cheeseburger), while services are intangible activities performed by people (e.g., table service).

The benefit to tracking the elements of your products and services independently is that if you begin to see negative coverage of this driver, you can pinpoint which facet is perceived negatively.

Let’s say you work for a software company. When it comes to your products and services, you may want to monitor mentions of the various features of your software, product performance, new releases and upgrades, user experience, and customer service.

Business Strategy

Business strategy refers to the actions your company takes to reach your objectives or remain competitive in your industry. This can include partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, ad revenue, or industry innovation.

For example, strategic business partnerships are known to improve companies’ credibility, long-term stability, and access to knowledge and resources, enabling them to expand the scope and quality of their offerings.  

Workplace

Workplace culture and employee experience are both important factors in measuring corporate reputation. Monitoring the workplace facet of your brand’s reputation could involve assessing coverage of employee benefits, training and advancement opportunities, and mentions of diversity and inclusion efforts.

Stakeholders often view workplace culture as an insight into the company’s alignment with its core values. If a company claims to value people over profit, but their own employees are struggling to make ends meet, then consumers may start to doubt the company’s integrity.

Leadership

A company with a clear mission and executives that align with those values is perceived as more accountable and trustworthy.

Measuring this reputational driver will likely cover mentions of company executives, spokespeople, and potential insights or thought leadership they may offer. Identify every key member of or role in your company’s leadership structure to effectively track this driver.

CEOs and other leaders are perceived as representatives of company brands. If an executive is involved in a scandal, for instance, it will reflect negatively on the company’s reputation. On the other hand, a company’s reputation can benefit from a CEO with a positive public image.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility is a powerful driving force behind a brand’s reputation. CSR encompasses charitable donations, sponsorship of local community events, or environmental initiatives.

CSR programs say more about a company’s values than the quality of its products and services, but they still impact consumer behavior. In a survey of consumers, RepTrak found that “91.4% of respondents would buy from a company with an excellent CSR program.” Another 84.3% would give a company “the benefit of the doubt” during a crisis if it had a strong CSR program.

Financial Performance

Following media coverage of your brand’s financial performance may involve examining analyst projections, quarterly earnings, or share values. Analysis of this coverage furthers your understanding of public opinion of your company’s financial health and stability.

Financial performance contributes to a company’s reputation because it is an indicator of whether the company can deliver on the other drivers. For example, if a company is doing well financially, it is more likely able to expand its product development, hire more employees, and make charitable donations to social causes.

Government Relations

When tracking government relations, consider monitoring any relevant industry legislation or regulation, and your company’s involvement in litigation. For instance, if your company is cited in an ongoing legal discussion concerning privacy standards across platforms, it could impact perceptions of and trust in your brand.

Manage Your Corporate Reputation

The insights PR teams can glean from investigating their company’s reputational drivers are essential to effectively managing corporate reputation. Analysis of these drivers will help you to craft a targeted media strategy to elevate your brand. By understanding where your brand currently stands, you will be better prepared to achieve your brand objectives.

At PublicRelay, we offer bespoke media monitoring programs designed to help your public relations team understand and reach your communications goals. Build your custom media monitoring program now!

As the communications industry continues to become more sophisticated, it’s vital that your messages reach and resonate with your target audience. While crafting a strong narrative, writing attention-grabbing press releases, and publishing your own content are all important aspects of engaging your audience, these methods are not enough on their own. Today’s public relations leaders must understand how to partner with influencers to effectively deliver their message to the intended audience. In fact, Edelman found that 63% of consumers in a global survey trust what influencers say about a brand more than they trust the brand’s advertisements.

Types of Influencers

Influencers are individuals with established audiences – often in niche areas – that have built trust and authenticity with their audience. By understanding how to engage with each group and how they can impact the reach of your message, you can get the most out of your communications efforts.

There are three common types:

Social Media

Social media influencers are people who engage with your social media content and share your company’s news coverage, ultimately extending your message to their followers.

Reporters

Reporters with established expertise in your industry often have a dedicated following that trusts their endorsements. Further, they have access to publishing platforms which can broadcast your messages to their readers.

Third-Party

Third-party influencers are recognized experts in their field and are frequently cited by the media as an authoritative source. Though they are not affiliated with your company or the media, associating with this type of influencer can lend credibility to your brand messaging.

Why are Influencers Important?

Influencers are important because they increase the reach and impact of your messages by improving their visibility and credibility. By extension, you can improve awareness of and trust in your brand within your industry space.

Visibility

By routing your messages through people with established audiences, their visibility can be significantly increased. You can also target people more directly based on their location, interests, or demographic profile. For example, if Floridians are your target audience, a reporter from a local publication, like the Miami Herald, is more likely to reach that audience than a national publication, such as the Los Angeles Times, despite the latter’s larger readership.

Credibility

Reaching your target audience with your message is only effective if they also trust the source. For this reason, it’s essential to consider the credibility and reputation of the influencer you choose to engage with. For example, if your story is about a scientific discovery, a reporter with National Geographic would lend more credibility than a reporter from ESPN.

How to Find the Right Influencer

Determining the right individual to share your message is dependent on your communications strategy. However, we recommend partnering with those who can best persuade your target audience, rather than reaching out to dozens of people who are not aligned with your goals. In other words, opt for a targeted approach rather than a wide net. To find the right partnership, ask yourself four questions:

Who does your audience hear from and trust?

A thought leader’s visibility and credibility can go a long way in reaching and building trust with your target audience. By researching your target audience and determining their demographic and psychographic profiles, you can more effectively identify their trusted sources of information.

Who generates engagement with media coverage?

Reaching your audience is only the first step. For the best results, they need to engage with your message to build your brand. You can measure metrics, such as social sharing of media coverage, to pinpoint the topics and stories your audience care about most. This method will also allow you to identify the influencers associated with the highest levels of social sharing.

Who covers the right topics?                               

The most effective way to locate reporters who cover topics relevant to your target audience is to monitor coverage of your company, industry, and competitors. You can also find third-party experts in your field by tracking industry news, as well as making note of individuals or sources who are frequently cited or quoted.

Who portrays your company in a positive light?

Focus your resources on individuals who will act as ambassadors of your brand by portraying it positively, rather than those who will neutrally mention it. You can maximize the return on your outreach by tracking the sentiment of various influencers’ coverage of your company and your industry to identify those who will be supportive of your message.

How to Reach Out to Influencers

Once you’ve found the partnerships you’d like to foster, personalize your outreach to ensure each engagement is unique. There are a host of in-depth resources on engagement to guide personalization, from honing your pitch to authors to working with social content creators.

Avoid the automated, semi-personalized emails that only require swapping out names and key details. Personalizing your strategy starts with ensuring your pitch is aligned with the influencer’s interests and expertise. This method will help your message to resonate with their values and build a strong campaign that meets your communications goals.

Measuring Influencer Impact

As you begin including key thought leaders in your communications strategy, ensure you have a media measurement program in place. Not only will media measurement help you develop outreach targets, but it will also allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy.

At PublicRelay, we create custom media monitoring and analytics programs to help each client identify the influencers most valuable to their brand. Launch and measure your influencer strategy today!

Accurate and regularly updated data has become a driving force in the business world. Having in depth knowledge of exactly how everything is performing is no longer a differentiator for your business, it is now a must-have. One effective way of monitoring key data and helping you plan your next move is with a communications dashboard. Communications dashboards display the most important and up to date metrics that a modern business requires.

A good communications dashboard can help a company stay on top of ever-changing news cycles, plan a new PR campaign, monitor an impending crisis or help give a detailed overview of their industry.

Here are three examples of dashboards that have helped PR professionals address their needs, plan strategies and satisfy their curiosity.

Know yourself with an Overview Dashboard

In a world where countless metrics can be tracked, a good business needs to be able to identify what specifically will be the most applicable statistics to track for the goals they are looking to accomplish. The best PR teams need to know how their business is performing, what are its currents strengths and what areas require improvement, so your Overview Dashboard should quickly and easily display the few key data points that answer the question “how are we doing?”.

Whether it’s volume and tone of coverage, social sharing broken down by platform or an-in depth view of key topics, you can gain immediate insights into your principal concerns. By taking the time to tailor this dashboard to your specific needs, you may save valuable time that can be put towards planning how best to use this data to be more agile. 

Know your competition with a Competitive Dashboard

A good Competitive Dashboard can be key to gathering a clear and concise overview of just how you stack up to your main competition. Keeping a close eye on one’s peers can help ensure communicators identify areas for improvement as well as points of strength within their own company.

PR and communications teams may require a side by side comparison of themselves and their foremost competitor, or perhaps they need to expand their view and keep track of all their main competition at once. The ability, not only to monitor competitor metrics, but also to accurately compare and contrast their own performance with others, can help teams answer the question “how are we doing in relation to others?”.

Know your path forward with an Issues Matrix

Last week’s hot topic is often this week’s old news. Modern industries have dynamic news cycles and it pays to stay ahead of the curve on matters both big and small. An Issues Matrix Dashboard can help companies monitor key topics within their industry as well as current news trends.

With this dashboard, PR pros can easily determine what aspects of their industry have been trending negatively, which have been trending positively as well as which matters have been the most talked about.

For teams that need to keep abreast of topical industry news, or for those that are interested in how their industry is portrayed in the media, this dashboard can be an invaluable tool. This dynamic dashboard is perfect for an ever-changing industry and can help answer the question “how is our industry doing?”.

The best dashboards are those with the highest engagement levels and teams that take the time to build these dashboards to their specific requirements certainly reap the benefits that these hubs of information can provide. No two companies are the same and those that cater their dashboards to their individual needs stay informed and ahead of the curve.

Many of us have probably heard of SMART goals or goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. Rather than having a vague notion of what you want to accomplish where success is somewhat subjective, setting SMART goals provides structure to your objectives and maps a clear path to success.

Using SMART goals in PR and communications could look something like, “we’re going to increase positive innovation messaging to the Street by 10% in the next 6 months” or “we’re going to launch an employer brand campaign and earn placements with great place to work messaging in our top 20 outlets that reach millennials in the next 6 months.”

What constitutes success here is clearly spelled out and your progress can be easily tracked. But if you want to set even better goals, make your goals SMART-ER. Global Managing Director of AMEC Johna Burke explained SMART-ER goals in a recent webcast, adding ethical and revolutionary to the facets of great goal setting.

Ethical Goals

Ethical refers to the data used to measure success. Your PR and communications measurement should be consistent, transparent, and valid, meaning where and how you get your data, the criteria for success, and other metrics can easily and confidently explained. The measured results should also be replicable. If you don’t understand exactly how you get your data, you can be sure your executives will ask the same questions you’re asking yourself. Make sure your communications analysis is transparent.  

Revolutionary Goals

Are the insights from your measurement program revolutionizing your communications strategies and tactics? Streamlining or changing processes inside and even outside your department? Setting revolutionary goals is all about understanding the impact of your results and using insights to optimize strategies. If you successfully increased positive innovation message penetration to the Street by 10% in the last quarter, what impact did that have on your brand and your organization’s business goals? Maybe you’ll see a correlation between the uplift in positive coverage and an increase in institutional investments. Glean insights from the data and results that not only prove your worth, but show you what to do next.

Learn more about SMARTER goals from AMEC Global Managing Director Johna Burke.

Communicators agree vague potential impressions metrics are quickly becoming irrelevant because they don’t provide business value. But how can PR pros demonstrate their contribution to business goals and become more strategic business partners is the question that naturally follows – especially when their executives are accustomed to seeing potential impressions grow ad infinitum.

One way to correlate PR activities to your organization’s goals is to conduct demographic and psychographic audience analysis of your earned media coverage to ensure you’re reaching your target potential audience, not millions of anonymous people. Leverage demographic and psychographic analysis in the following ways:

Demographic Audience Analysis

Demographic audience analysis segments your audience by data points such as age, gender, income, education, marital status, and political affiliation. Compare your readership on these demographics to see if you’re getting coverage in front of people that you are trying to get to take action.

For example, a non-profit organization benefitting children is trying to increase their millennial donor base. They can understand exactly how much of their earned media is currently reaching not just millennials but those above a certain income threshold with children.  Using this information they can determine if they need to adjust their outreach plan.

Psychographic Audience Analysis

Psychographic audience analysis segments your audience by data points such as social and consumer behaviors and future buying intent. This allows you to get extremely granular with your targeting, especially when combined with demographic audience analysis.

Say you work for a utility company and want to get coverage about your organization’s R&D in clean energy in front of a more liberal audience, whereas you want conservative readers to see your message against a certain energy industry regulation. Use psychographic audience analysis to target a specific segment down to the key message.

Benchmark your reach to this segment and improve penetration over time using insights from campaigns as you continually perform demographic and psychographic analysis. It might surprise you what demographics and behaviors drive increased relevant web traffic, report downloads, and other conversions.

Influencer Identification

Use demographic and psychographic audience analysis by outlet to proactively pitch outlets and authors who aren’t covering you or are only covering your competitors, but reach the audience you want to target.

Demonstrating your ability to reach relevant audiences is a business conversation your C-suite will want to have and appreciate your effort to contribute to business goals.  

It’s not enough to count how many brand or product name mentions you and your competitors are getting – you need to know what is being said – and by whom. You need specifics to really understand your position in the market and be able to share that highly valuable insight with your C-suite. You can then use those insights to revise your strategy, reallocate resources, and take advantage of gaps in your competitor’s positioning and messaging if they arise.

1. Market positioning vs. earned coverage

Every communications plan revolves around market positioning. Communications and Marketing teams use themes for their campaigns, web copy, press releases, pitches, etc. But sometimes those messages aren’t mapping to what authors are writing about. For example, one of your competitors is touting an innovation that is revolutionizing the industry. But none of their earned coverage is mapping to that message. What are they writing about instead? How can you take advantage of that gap?

2. Third-party influencers

Many industries have subject matter experts that the media will turn to for comment on a regular basis. These experts can be academics, industry regulators, analysts, and politicians among others. It can be incredibly insightful to understand how these influencers talk about your peers or competitors – especially in articles where your brand isn’t mentioned. Are your relationships with these important influencers where they need to be?

3. Media relations

In addition to uncovering third-party influencers in your peers’ earned media, you can also find new authors or outlets to pitch. The intel you gather will help you craft smarter pitches. Should you reach out to authors that write negatively about your peers? Or those that have never covered you at all? Hear how some of your peers are using competitive intelligence to up their measurement game.