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.

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TYSONS CORNER, Va., (June 17, 2019) – PublicRelay, the premier provider of PR and business analytics, has been named the best Business Information or Data Delivery Solution of 2019 as part of the annual SIIA CODiE Awards. The prestigious CODiE Awards recognize the companies producing the most innovative businesses technology products across the country, and around the world.

“With our solution, communicators get accurate analysis and insights that not only drive communications strategies and tactics, but are used across their business to make strategic decisions,” said Eric Koefoot, CEO at PublicRelay. “We are honored to be recognized by SIIA with this prestigious award.”

“The CODiE Awards have long recognized the most innovative high-impact products in the market and the 2019 winners continue this grand tradition,” said Jeff Joseph, SIIA President. “We are thrilled to spotlight these exciting products and the power they have to revolutionize how we do business. Congratulations to all our honorees.”

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, announced the full slate of CODiE winners during a special Award Ceremony in San Francisco on June 12.

The SIIA CODiE Awards are the industry’s only peer-reviewed awards program. The first-round review of all nominees is conducted by software and business technology experts with considerable industry expertise, including members of the industry, analysts, media, bloggers, bankers and investors. The scores from the expert judge review determine the finalists. SIIA members then vote on the finalist products, and the scores from both rounds are tabulated to select the winners. 44 awards were given this year for products and services deployed specifically for B2B software, information and media companies, including the all new Best Overall Business Technology Product, awarded to the product with the highest scores of both rounds of judging. 10 awards were given as part of the Company CODiE Awards, which recognize outstanding individuals, companies and teams.

More information about the Awards is available at: siia.net/CODiE.

Details about the winning products can be found at http://www.siia.net/codie/2019-Winners

About the SIIA CODiE™ Awards

The SIIA CODiE Awards is the only peer-reviewed program to showcase business and education technology’s finest products and services. Since 1986, thousands of products, services and solutions have been recognized for achieving excellence.  For more information, visit siia.net/CODiE.

SIIA Communications Contact: Benjamin Price, 703.909.4034, bprice@siia.net

About PublicRelay:

PublicRelay is the most trusted media analytics solution for communications and marketing professionals at many of the world’s largest brands. PublicRelay’s clients confidently use its media analysis to plan and measure influencer engagement, reputation management, the competitive landscape, and message pull-through – and tie them back to business objectives. Known for its innovation, superior data quality, and actionable insights, PublicRelay delivers accurate answers to the most pressing strategic business questions surrounding media.

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Challenge: Update an Out of Date Brand Image

A leading consumer advocacy group needed to rebrand itself. Everything about their market had changed dramatically – new competitors had appeared, their mode of publication was becoming dated, and their brand name was associated with this dated perception.  Their competitors offered similar, yet less accurate, information for free. Their significant history as a print publication indicated that their current demographic was aging, and they needed to attract younger members. In other words, they needed to adapt to survive.

In order to tackle the issue of rebranding as a trusted source for consumer research for all demographics, they needed a clear picture of the current state of the perception of their brand. However, they ran into a problem when it came to measuring the impact of their earned media.

The group produces a large quantity of owned media for their members and affiliate websites. Their earned thought leadership was picked up and respected, but their efforts at reporting on that impact lacked precision. Previous monitoring tools worked best for brand mentions, not topics, so they primarily found their own content rather than earned media articles. Without an accurate analysis of which outlets trusted and shared their research, they couldn’t pitch new ones, and without new outlets, they had no hope of updating their audience demographic. 

A compounding factor is that their media coverage spiked rapidly. Their thought leadership was mentioned heavily the day it came out, but was always the first thing cut out of news stories. As soon as they published a finding, they needed to immediately start tracking mentions. Any report that wasn’t created instantly and updated constantly would be borderline useless.

Solution: Accurate and Fast Analysis as Needed

The team brought in PublicRelay to help them cut through the noise of earned versus owned media more easily. Because of this partnership, the group is able to generate analysis around their current news story topics by focusing on third party mentions. Detailed demographic data is provided for each of those outlets and the team can also search for additional outlets to pitch based on similar demographic criteria. 

Their research topics are very broad, covering nearly all sectors of the consumer market. They use industry-specific tags for each article, giving them insights into which specific industries and the accompanying outlets that value their thought leadership research. With these benchmarks in place, they can create specific media outreach plans for each market segment.

With the granular nature of the analysis by topic, industry and demographic, they have access to an incredibly deep and specific set of insights. They are no longer hampered by noisy data clouded by their own articles, or by the fact that their brand does not get mentioned often as the brands noted in their research.

These reports are ready as soon as the group’s research is finished – before it is even published anywhere. As soon as the findings are made public, the reports begin measuring every single brand mention, creating accurate data for the group in near-real-time.

Result: Measuring a New Name, New Audiences, Increased Trust

The rebrand had three major components: launch a new brand name, reach new demographic audiences, and become the trusted source for consumer product research. Their new earned media measurement and analytics program enables the team to not only analyze the progress on each of these core components over time but also make more strategic tactical decisions along the way. 

First, to manage their name change, they set up a view that alerts them whenever their previous name is mentioned. They then contact the authors and outlets who referred to them incorrectly. Not only does this allow them to effectively supervise their name change, it also gives them access to reporters they may not have had reason to contact in the past. 

Second, to manage their demographic shift, they needed to see who they were reaching. PublicRelay analysts were able to append detailed demographic data to outlets so the media relations team can understand where they’re hitting the mark and where they need to find additional outlets to target. For example, they published research relating to childcare. The research was picked up by a number of new outlets that reach an audience of millennials. Those outlets have a relatively small audience and had not been on the team’s radar as it had been calibrated to audience size, one of the few data points they had access to previously. Now they can easily find all outlets with the demographics they need to reach.

Finally, armed with insights about how their earned media is impacting their brand perception, the group began focusing on sign ups to their paid service. By integrating their existing Adobe Analytics with PublicRelay, they are now able to view a direct conversion pipeline. They can see where their thought leadership is mentioned and backlinked, see who clicks through to their site, and finally see if that person converts and signs up for a membership

Overall, the consumer advocacy group has access to a deeper level of data and insights than they ever had access to before. Modernizing their earned media measurement program has enabled them to modernize their brand. The teams are better informed about how their work is impacting the broader business goals and are continually optimizing their programs.

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“My boss isn’t asking for data or measurement results so why provide it?”

In Mark Cuban’s words, “the greatest value you can offer a boss is to reduce their stress.” Your boss wants you to think ahead of them, not the other way around. This is the case I make when PR execs tell me they don’t need to measure because their boss doesn’t ask for data-driven results.

Let’s think about it this way – imagine you’re the boss. Someone shows up in your office with a suggestion or even a full-blown solution to a problem that has been nagging you – but one that you had not assigned to anyone. Your immediate reaction is probably something like, “Wow, you mean we can solve this thing without me having to go through the pain of figuring out every last detail?”

Talk about relieving stress. You had absolutely NO expectations of receiving this wonderful gift. More importantly, you now know this person thought through this issue and can do the same with other problems without being prodded. In fact, you will probably leave them alone because you trust they have their arms around problems before you need to intervene. Incredibly powerful.

In my experience, a sure-fire way to succeed where there are no expectations is by using data and analytics in the corporate communications function. It seems hard to believe, but there are businesses that still don’t use data to drive their communications strategy. It’s not for the lack of data and analytics tools; many tools exist, and many public relations practitioners use them.

Yet PR professionals have all sorts of reasons why they don’t measure. The most common reason I hear is, “the boss isn’t asking for data or measurement results so why provide it?” Using data to back up a sound communications strategy is no different than the marketing department measuring the impact of a campaign or using a net promoter score. You do these things because they make sense, they drive strategy, and they improve execution.

If a public relations practitioner provides quality analysis on the effectiveness of a campaign or the overall department’s contribution to shareholder value, then the CEO naturally will have greater confidence in their ability to manage their department. Moreover, the CEO likely will trust them and let them keep moving forward – and will look forward to the next report. Build it, and they will come.

But what if the report has bad news? The only thing worse than bad news is you not knowing about it and having no plan to deal with it. Any quality PR analytics solution will provide insights to help you gauge the scope of the issue and develop an appropriate response. Scope and context are important because it is not uncommon for some people to blow things out of proportion, particularly when it comes to media. Any PR strategy must have measures to show that the problem has, in fact, been fixed. If you don’t measure it, how do you know if you have actually fixed the problem?

What if the CEO is the problem? Some public relations people who report to their CEO believe you can’t get data out of the news. I have met them. I have also seen a PR executive, armed with solid data, face down a bunch of engineers – and win. Data can help convince your CEO of the true nature of the issue when they think a negative story is a catastrophe, or worse, dismisses a substantive problem as “fake news.”

Despite all this, I still come across PR execs who demur. To them I say: Who do you think is the best communications team in your industry? Find them, and ask how they drive their strategy and tactics.

If they don’t say “with data,” I’ll buy you lunch.

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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.  

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The PR profession is moving away from impressions, reach, and AVE metrics because they cannot be used to answer how PR is affecting business outcomes. They are also single data points that don’t illustrate the value of your work. At a recent PR conference, one of the speakers asked, “Have you ever wondered why there isn’t a ‘PR Equivalency’ metric?” Excellent point.

Attributing how your Communications work is impacting the business, requires a comprehensive measurement program. Not a “magic bullet” metric that cannot be defended. Your PR measurement program should enable you to correlate your earned media analysis data with other data points from the business – website traffic, revenue, reputation, donations, membership, hiring efforts, etc.

PR Attribution technologies may provide media tracking options beyond link tracking – tracking visitors from earned media articles back to your website. There are three important questions to ask any vendor, especially if you are trying to attribute revenue:

1. Are my attributed articles relevant?

Repeated studies show that even in news stories with rich keyword matches, less than 25% are actually relevant to the brand.

  • For example, a burglary at the jeweler next to the Starbucks does NOT mean that the visit to the Starbucks web site had anything to do with that news story
  • For example, the redevelopment of a local office building that is next door to the local office of McKinsey & Company is not a relevant McKinsey news story.

2. Will the articles be toned for my brand, product, or message?

 If you do not take into consideration the tone on these additional data points, you may end up attributing sales or website hits to articles that are negative and clearly not driving sales.

3. Can I understand exactly how my results are calculated?

If anyone challenges your results or wants to dive deeper into your numbers, can you defend the “credit” you’re taking? Be wary of the “black box” calculations masquerading as PR Attribution.

Your PR Attribution efforts should yield reliable and defensible analysis that can hold up to scrutiny in the C-Suite and the Board Room.

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PublicRelay’s Media Analytics solution earns prestigious industry recognition

TYSONS CORNER, Va., (May 1, 2019) PublicRelay, the premier provider of PR and business analytics, today announced that its Media Analytics solution was named a 2019 SIIA CODiE Awards finalist in the Best Business Information or Data Delivery Solution category. Finalists represent the best products, technologies, and services in software, information and business technology.

PublicRelay’s Media Analytics solution utilizes powerful machine learning technology paired with trained analysts to deliver trusted data and actionable insights that clients leverage to enhance strategies and tactics, align themselves with the broader business, and boost collaboration across the entire organization.

The SIIA CODiE Awards are the premier awards for the software and information industries and have been recognizing product excellence for over 30 years. The awards offer 76 categories that are organized by industry focus of education technology and business technology. PublicRelay’s Media Analytics solution was honored as one of 137 finalists across the 44 business technology categories.

“The 2019 CODiE Award finalists are some of the most innovative, high-impact products in the market. We are thrilled to place a spotlight on these innovations and the power they have to transform the future of how we do business.” said Jeff Joseph, President of SIIA.

“Communicators and PR professionals are being asked to make more data-driven decisions. Gone are the days of reporting on output counts that do not help them align their work to business outcomes,” said Bill Mitchell, CTO at PublicRelay. “Our clients are able to access rich, accurate analysis mapped to their particular business goals. This allows them to speak the same language as the rest of the organization and quickly become more strategic partners to the business.”  

The SIIA CODiE Awards are the industry’s only peer-recognized awards program. Business technology leaders including senior executives, analysts, media, consultants and investors evaluate assigned products during the first-round review which determines the finalists. SIIA members then vote on the finalist products and the scores from both rounds are tabulated to select the winners. Winners will be announced during the   Business Technology & Company CODiE Award Winner Announcement Party immediately following TechConText, June 12 in San Francisco.

Details about each finalist are listed at https://www.siia.net/codie/2019-Finalists.

About the SIIA CODiE™ Awards

The SIIA CODiE Awards is the only peer-reviewed program to showcase business and education technology’s finest products and services. Since 1986, thousands of products, services and solutions have been recognized for achieving excellence.  For more information, visit siia.net/CODiE.

About PublicRelay:

PublicRelay is the most trusted media analytics solution for communications and marketing professionals at many of the world’s largest brands. PublicRelay’s clients confidently use its media analysis to plan and measure influencer engagement, reputation management, the competitive landscape, and message pull-through – and tie them back to business objectives. Known for its innovation, superior data quality, and actionable insights, PublicRelay delivers accurate answers to the most pressing strategic business questions surrounding media.

SIIA Communications Contact: Benjamin Price

bprice@siia.net

+1 (703) 909-4034

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PR News’ recent Measurement Conference provided an interesting glimpse into the state of PR measurement and analytics, bringing together a cross section of practitioners. Some attendees had fully integrated PR measurement strategies and others were just starting to look at PR measurement and analytics. Wherever they were in their journey, it was encouraging to see so many communicators in one room who recognize the importance of measurement and analysis to not only help them prove their value but also become more proactive and strategic business partners.

A few common challenges emerged regardless of experience level. Whether they were seasoned data analysts or measurement newbies, many continue to wrestle with these issues when it comes to creating an insightful PR measurement strategy:

1. How to Tie Your PR Measurement Strategy to the Business

Starting with the first session and throughout the day, speakers unanimously agreed that reach and potential impressions metrics are quickly becoming irrelevant. As AMEC Global Managing Director Johna Burke pointed out in her session about the Barcelona Principles 2.0, if you have 6 billion impressions but can’t walk out on the street and have one person tell you about your brand, it’s probably a fake metric. To implement a PR measurement strategy that provides insight, you must root your metrics in the goals of the business.

I think all communicators can agree with this premise, but attendees’ first question was: how do I actually do that?

The simplest and best answer is to have a conversation with your senior leadership about the company’s priorities and how you can contribute. Once you know the challenges they’re trying to solve, you can bring forward insights that matter.

2. How to Attribute Business Impact

The ways in which you can attribute your business impact are not always obvious. Even after you’ve had the conversation with senior leadership, it might take some creative thinking to determine how you can contribute to that goal. If your CEO says, “our only goal this year is to grow by 30% percent,” you might feel pressure to tie to a dollar amount. But unless you’re an online retailer or similar direct to consumer business, this is very difficult and PR pros should be wary of metrics like AVE’s that claim to do so.

Think creatively about this goal: will you be recruiting new sales and marketing employees? You’ll want to be known as a great place to work. Trying to attract a millennial and Gen Z audience? They want to do business with socially conscious organizations.

Using accurate and relevant data, correlate how your work impacts:

3. How to Find Agreement and Get Buy-In

Most questions throughout the conference revolved around how to get stakeholders on board with a new measurement strategy. If executives are accustomed to seeing growing impressions quarter over quarter, how can you convince them that new metrics are more valuable?

Panelists agreed you can’t completely rip the rug out from under them. Show them impressions, but then introduce a metric that actually provides an insight into a business challenge they’re trying to solve. This is a sure-fire way to get buy-in from senior leadership. Try introducing demographic and psychographic data that shows what percentage of your coverage and key messages reached your target audience – not just 6 billion anonymous people. Those are conversations that the rest of the business can understand.

Getting people on board with a new measurement strategy requires asking a lot of questions of your stakeholders, from executive leadership to teams outside your department like Marketing and HR. It’s worth the effort to ensure agreement across stakeholders and align your metrics to business goals from the outset of your PR measurement strategy.

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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.

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