It is important that every public relations agency, or department, has a variety of monitoring tactics in place to ensure that they are able to measure the success of their public relations strategy.
Unfortunately, the effectiveness of public relations tactics often cannot be measured empirically and as a result, many public relations practitioners fail to effectively monitor and evaluate the implementation of their tactics.
It is important to implement even the most basic procedures to ensure that practitioners understand what works and what doesn’t. Here are some ways to monitor:
Publicity clippings
The most basic and well-known technique is clipping publicity for clients. This ensures that not only the client has a hard-copy of the publicity generated for them by the public relations agency; it also acts as a way of monitoring the client’s media coverage through a variety of media outlets.
Clippings are a useful way to demonstrate the wide range of publicity generated through diverse media outlets such as television, online and print.
Measuring public opinion
Measuring public opinion before and after a public relations tactic has been implemented is an effective way to show clients the improvements made to their profile or brand awareness. This technique allows you to see what tactic has had a great effect and which tactic has not worked.
Public relations practitioners may not always get it right the first time, but by implementing focus groups or customer surveys, this can offer before and after distinctions that are essentially critical when researching if a tactic has reached your objectives.
Social media evaluation
With many companies now using social media to reach a wider audience, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of your social media platforms. It is important to remember that social media is not about the numbers. You may have only 400 followers on Twitter and this number may seem small in comparison to other Twitter users however, social media should be evaluated in terms of interaction.
Your public relations strategy may only be targeted at a niche market, so 400 followers may be just what you want. Social media is a platform to communicate so instead of counting the number of likes and followers your company has received evaluate the amount of interaction your social media platforms are allowing you to stimulate.
With new media becoming more popular, perhaps it is time for public relations practitioners to apply fresh monitoring procedures.
It’s important that public relations practitioners are using some forms of evaluation in order to comprehend the full extent of their public relations strategy.
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Sydney Public Relations Agency, CP Communications provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that get amazing results. Contact us today. For more great tips visit our website www.cpcommunications.com.au.
