Yesterday (October 19th) is Evaluate Your Life Day. The idea is that you use the day to take stock of where you are in life, where you want to be, what progress you’ve made and where you could make improvements. I don’t have the time or skills to evaluate your life, I don’t even have the time to evaluate my own, but I can give you some tips on evaluating your PR.
When it comes to PR remember it that like a lot of things in life it works best when combined with other complimentary factors such as your marketing, advertising, and branding.
Here are the top ways to check if your PR is working for you.
1. Number of press articles
One of the most effective ways to measure the success of a PR campaign is by looking at how much coverage you got? But it is not just about the numbers it is also about quality of coverage one big piece of coverage in a big publication with a wide audience will increase brand awareness more than getting published on websites that publish every piece of content and don’t necessarily attract your target audience. It’s better to get coverage where your customers and potential clients are
2. Social media reach and engagement
How’s your social media doing? Take a look at your posts and evaluate the likes, retweets, and shares that you are getting around the campaign. According to Smart Insights more than half the world now use social media and 4.66 billion people are now use the internet so there are lots of people out there to target.
3. Analyse your content
You’ve collated your cuttings but is the content good? There are a lot of companies that offer analysis, but they can be pricey. Some basic things to look for include:
· Have your key messages been included?
· How much space were you given?
· Have they mentioned your brand/business?
· Is what they are saying positive?
· How many people will it have reached (how many copies of that paper sell each day/ how many people visit that website/listen to that radio station).
You can read more about media analysis here
4. Website traffic
Another way of measuring PR’s success is by measuring the website traffic before and after the campaign. After that article appeared in the paper did the website traffic rise? When your product featured online did you suddenly get lots of click throughs from that site?
5. Brand mentions
Brand mentions are the number of times your company or product has been mentioned on social media, forums, or other blogs. If you see an increase in mentions immediately after your PR campaign it means it is working well. Although mentions are good, you do need to pay attention to the sentiments of them. Positive comments about your brand strengthen your brand’s reputation. But not all mentions will be positive
6. Website backlinks
Backlinks are URL’s that point back to your website. Backlinks can be used to measure the effectiveness of a PR activity. An increase in backlinks to your website could pincrease your website traffic. If done well they can help increase sales.
Whilst this isn’t an exhaustive list of ways you can measure the impact of your PR it should give you a place to start. Measuring PR isn’t always easy but hopefully by doing the evaluation process you can see what works and doesn’t work for your business and make your campaigns more effective.
Rebecca Slater is a PR Consultant with more than 20 years public relations experience. She is based in Staffordshire but provides support to businesses all over the country.
For more information email sayhello@beckandcallpr.co.uk or visit www.beckandcallpr.co.uk