Measuring Progress in Social Media and Public Relations

In any marketing campaign, it is important that your team sets goals before you measure success. In creating goals, look first to your business goals. This should be done from the first meeting with your public relations or marketing agency. Your agency should provide you with results on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, depending on the structure of your agency/client relationship.

• Measure media with quality not quantity or AVE
• Understand how others change as a result of PR gained

Success, should not be based on the number of:

• Press Releases
• Byline Articles
• Meetings/Interviews
• Even Opportunties missed
• Mentions
• Likes/Follows
• Speaking engagements
• Events
• Awards
• Article tone
• SEO Ranking
• Blog responses
• Competitor Comparisons

Success should instead be based if your business objectives are being met.

PR Lessons from Obama, Romney and other political candidates

With the political conventions upon us, to nominate candidates for President of the United States, and the slew of campaign commercials set to convince voters who to support, we should remember these lessons in marketing, that the candidates teach us, each year:

• Stay on message.
• Don’t be afraid to speak your mind, but remember who you are talking to and who is listening.
• Empower your stakeholders to do something each time you engage them.
• Guard your reputation, in the end, it is all you have.
• Build a brand in way that resonates across generations and parties. Voters are like shoppers, many vote/buy on impulse once they are in the voting booth.
• Create trust before you need it.
• Budget accordingly – issues, media relations, messaging and research staffing can be expensive in politics and in the business arena.
• To build trust – Convey credibility through a vision, mission and values, early and often.