Performance Metrics that Matter (Part One)

Communications and PR professionals are required to wear a lot of different hats, crafting strategies that reach consumers not just via traditional media, but through an array of channels that each require a unique touch. This level of complex strategic planning is critical to success, but it also makes an age-old problem more difficult than ever: tracking and quantifying the impact of our efforts.

To do this, PR and comms practitioners need to move beyond traditional media coverage reports, shifting their focus to comprehensive media intelligence programs that combine technology with human judgment and discernment to provide meaningful insights to their company or brand. A truly impactful media intelligence program correlates media coverage with key business outcomes and offers a deeper level of analysis and actionable insights that your organization’s executives and stakeholders can appreciate.

The first step is understanding which performance metrics matter the most. In this two-part series, we’ll explore eight unique metrics that every comms pro should be tracking for their company or brand. Along the way, we’ll also share how these metrics can inform meaningful insights for your brand or company, and how Nexis Newsdesk™ can help you get to the heart of the matter quickly and efficiently.

Let’s take a look at the first four metrics that matter.

Visibility, Trend and Sentiment  

Keeping tabs on how the media covers your organization, how that coverage has trended over time and the aggregate sentiment of those stories is a basic, but very important facet of media intelligence. Newsdesk automatically compiles and visualizes many of these important data points, quickly identifying when spikes in coverage have occurred, which headlines drove those spikes and detailing how favorable your coverage is on the whole.

Media and Social Media Landscape

Once you have established the shape and scope of your coverage, the next step is understanding what’s being said, who’s saying it, and which outlets, geographies, influencers and journalists are most relevant to your organization. Again, Newsdesk offers these insights at the push of a button, teeing up which outlets wrote the most about your brand, which stories were the biggest drivers for viewership, and which people or brands are mentioned most frequently within those stories.

Pro tip: Newsdesk allows you to filter search results by several different media types, which means you can take a deep dive into how coverage shakes out in print versus digital, as well as on social media platforms.

Key Message Penetration

After getting a handle on the breadth of your coverage and investigating where it’s coming from, it’s time to delve into how your messaging works in the real world. Key message penetration examines the frequency, prominence, context and depth of the messages that resonate most with the media and influencers.

To accomplish this, you’ll need to review all the coverage you’ve compiled so far to see how frequently and prominently your spokespeople deliver your organization’s key messages. These messages should also be cross-referenced to see how they’re performing against your competition. Taking this step will provide powerful insights into which messages are resonating and which aren’t …valuable information for adjusting your message strategy moving forward.

Industry and Market influencers

Current trust of traditional media is extremely low, with just 36% of U.S. adults saying they have “any degree” of trust in the media. This growing sentiment has seen marketers rely more and more on the influence of individuals with large personal platforms to help spread the word about major company news.

That said, research into which influencers are a good fit for your company—whether they be individuals or industry trade organizations—is ever more important. You need to know who their brand’s key influencers are, how strong their voice is and how they can be engaged in more meaningful ways. And don’t forget to identify your company or brand’s biggest critics, so a plan can be developed to counteract any negativity they may spread to their networks.

As you can see, identifying the data required to build a truly comprehensive media intelligence program takes a tremendous amount of research time… and this post only covers half of the steps we’ve identified! Stay tuned for part two of this series, when we’ll explore the next four metrics that should matter most to every PR and communications professional.

Interested in making your media intelligence program faster, simpler and more efficient? Sign up for a Nexis Newsdesk free trial today!