PR FROM THE BEACH

How to measure public relations

 

Following on from my last post, another dangerous perspective in public relations and communication is that it what we do can't be measured. Well, that's just not true and I firmly believe that the reluctance (even after all these years) to properly measure, evaluate and report back on public relations activity is caused by the identity crisis that grips our profession.

Because practitioners find themselves working on the fringes, directed to send stuff out, they don't see - or get involved with - the whole process of public relations - which is building and maintaining the relationships organisations need to keep their licence to operate. They get bogged down measuring (totally irrelevant) newspaper clippings or counting mentions, along with retweets, likes and shares in more recent years. While some of these things might indicate whether or not your stakeholders have heard and understood you, they don't, in themselves, tell you if your relationship has improved or if the work you are doing has adequately supported your organisational outcomes.  For example, has satisfaction, loyalty, trust, commitment or reputation been improved? Have sales increased? Has a policy change been accepted as valid? Have attitudes or behaviour changed? Has the work undertaken increased or decreased the societal or commercial value of the organisation's relationships with its internal and external stakeholders?

There has been plenty of research over the years into the nature of organisational relationships - back in 1999, Grunig and Hon produced some initial research and approaches to relationship measurement and there has been much added since.  Yet still I encounter practitioners still caught up with fake measurement models loosely based on 20th century assumptions of our purpose and its relationship to the organisation. In an attempt to encourage practitioners to think about measurement from a different perspective, here's a three minute overview of the process that I've put together and if it encourages even one person somewhere to rethink their approach to public relations research, measurement and evaluation, it's been time well spent.

Practitioners have an ethical duty to properly research, measure and evaluate their work. It is not a holy grail - more an every day cup at the back of the cupboard that few can be bothered to dig out and use. Making research, measurement and evaluation part of the daily routine will do much to demonstrate the value of public relations - particularly given we live and work in a relationship driven society - and address the question of professional identity. It really is time we measured up and demonstrated just how effective we are.

Expect data denouements to punctuate political performances

The news that the Obama official tweeting for some time under the username @NatSecWonk has been unmasked is no surprise.  They were bound to find him out in the end. The most interesting thing for me about the story was closeted in a simple sentence: 

"It said his travel and shopping habits had been profiled by parsing over 2,000 tweets"

This is an approach we will see more and more of in the months ahead as people become much smarter about using the data available to them. The trail we leave online is long and winding and the option of anonymity reduces by the hour.

Organisations - once they wake up to the fact - will increasingly use data mining to reach their stakeholders and, if they are savvy enough, stakeholders will use data mining to benefit themselves.

The rise of data journalism is not unexpected, but again, is mostly ignored by those who should have woken up to this approach many moons ago. 

So, data, data everywhere - when will they stop and think?

 

No accident that ACC boss stands out

In marked contrast to the woeful Fonterra performances on mainstream media of late, the new ACC chief executive Scott Pickering did an excellent job on Q&A this week following the latest privacy breaches within his organisation.

Unlike his predecessors, this new CE appeared in control of the situation, was able to explain but not excuse, describe what was being done to redress the situation and outline the way ahead for the organisation.

He was properly briefed, had the facts - as he saw them - to hand  and responded well to interview questions designed to throw him off guard. 

I hope that all the wishes he articulated for ACC and its customers come to fruition as it would mean that the organisation that he described as part of New Zealand's DNA will have regained some of the social capital lost so spectacularly in recent years.

Long may he keep working on listening and re-establishing public trust and let's hope too that some other organisational leaders around the country learn a lesson or two about interviews from this fresh-faced CE.

#2010 - A Year in Hashtags

Back at work and wading through remaining relics of last year, I realised 2010 was the year in which hashtags finally made it as the early 21st century headline. As I've been explaining them to people for years, it was great to see this breakthrough point. Whatever was going on, the hashtag became - finally - the defining reference point for the collective consciousness if you really wanted to find out what was going on, who was affected and what needed to be done.

Just days away from the first anniversary of the Haitian earthquake, below are the hashtags that will, for me anyway, signal the step-changes and life-changing events of 2010.

• #Haiti - in January, a 7.0M earthquake flattens poverty stricken Haiti. One year on, the plight of the people living there continues to be dire and help is still needed for the thousands suffering appalling conditions.
• #Chile - in February, Chile is hit by a whopping 8.8M earthquake lasting three minutes. Recovery is faster than for Haiti, but 541 lives are lost, tsunami warnings issued and the rebuild continues.
• #Iceland - the volcanic eruption that paralysed Europe and stalled air travel around the world. The volcano's name - Eyjafjallajökull - was much too long for a hashtag, so either #iceland or #volcano became the mustering point as people wondered if, when and how they were going to get home.
• #Deepwater - when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew out on April 20, the hashtag activity was limited to an active - and angry - conversation among those concerned about what was going to happen next. Amazingly, the companies most closely involved at this point, the owners and contractors respectively - Transocean and Halliburton - deftly slipped into invisibility as 'Big Brother' BP stepped in to try to stem the leak. Very swiftly, hashtags changed with #bpoil, #bpspill, #bpceo, #oilspill among the most used.
• #greece and #thailand both crashed in to the trends maps at the end of April thanks to civil unrest in both countries.
• #allwhites and the Soccer World Cup in South Africa provided welcome respite from the disasters and deaths that had dominated the first half of 2010. Some of my favourite Twitter conversations took place in the middle of the night in June as collectively, Kiwi #allwhites fans settled down to watch the matches together and quip about them online. A personal favourite of mine in June was #wprf as the World Public Relations Forum was held in Stockholm, with much tweeting done by all.
• #wikileaks sprung into action for the first time in July, with the first documents hitting the public consciousness. It was a hashtag we were going to see a lot more of as the year progressed.
• #eqnz - September saw the most devastating natural disaster New Zealand has seen in many years. Civil Defence NZ didn't get the hang of hashtags at all, with ridiculously long hashtags being used by the organisation - even when the community had settled on #eqnz. As the aftershocks continue, the hashtag remains a rallying point for Canterbury - and Civil Defence still hasn't got the hang of them!
• #Chile was back in October as the rescue of the trapped underground miners got underway. Here in NZ, conversation was just as hot and controversial around #paulhenry, after the broadcaster resigned from TVNZ.
• #pikeriver - tragically, in November, our own #pikeriver miners were not to have the same triumphant outcome as those in Chile. Like #eqnz, #pikeriver remains a much-used, much referenced hashtag for those still affected by these two major events, even after the mainstream coverage and commentary has moved on.
• #socialmedia was a continuing favourite in December, but #willandkate got a look in along with #secretsantas and, of course, #christmas.

 

Which brings us to #2011. If #2010 was the year of the hashtag, then by my reckoning, #2011 will be the year of the live tweet chat - so watch out for one you might be interested in and take the opportunity whenever you can to join in. And, as a final note, as we stand at the gate of the year, my hope for you is that all your hashtags be happy ones.

 

 

Measuring up for a month

Been head down for the last few weeks designing and developing a PR Measurement and Evaluation training session for online access - which means that those who can't get to training sessions in the main centres can head online and spend a couple of hours developing a neat evaluation system for your organisation.

Few more days till it is live, but one of the questions that came up during the pre-test was how do practitioners create a measurement and evaluation system for little or no cost.  The simple answer is that unless you want to go out and buy in services, the main 'cost' to developing a system that works is your time and, quite frankly, developing and running robust evaluation and measurement procedures are as much part of our job as any other activity we might take part in.

It really is the old journey analogy - know where you are going, understand what you want to do when you get there, create signposts that allow you to stay on track and be prepared to adjust your journey if the signs indicate that another route will be better.

The Barcelona Principles were agreed in June and, while they are a good starting point and it is nice to have an agreement, there is still a lot of emphasis on the signposts rather than the destination.

So, now that's done, I can resume normal service - just need to redetermine what normal consists of these days!

 

 

Mind the GAP - Proof Positive of the need to measure public relations?

Findings from the latest GAP study have been doing the rounds over the last day or so, with commentary primarily centred on the use of social media. More interesting for me was the data they had pulled together on how communications professionals were dealing with measurement and evaluation. 

With 382 communication decision makers participating in this latest University of Southern California project, it was interesting to see that those who offered up their activities for scrutiny spent an average of just four to five percent of their total budget on formal evaluation. This makes for an interesting 'PS' to my last post, particularly as the study suggested that corporate participants felt that higher spend on measurement and evaluation meant higher standing with the CEO. 

As the GAP survey summary put it "In other words, the greater the investment in evaluation (as a percentage of the total PR/Communication budget), the greater the likelihood the CEO believes PR/Communication makes a bottom-line contribution."

I don't consider this to be a surprising finding. In fact, it teeters into the realm of Monty Python's 'bleeding obvious'. However, because there are seemingly still so few practitioners operating robust evaluation programmes, perhaps it will take more research findings like this to convince them to get on and do what they should have been doing all along.

I did find myself weeping into my afternoon tea when I read the 'top five metrics' revealed by the research as, still there at 'No.5',  was 'Total Number of Clips'.  Now who in their right mind would take that seriously as a measure of organisational performance, reputational health or relationship strength? 

Obviously, there is a huge business opportunity here for evaluation-savvy professionals to corner the market with great ethical practice, reported well and demonstrating the value of the work undertaken. As professionals, we know that the work we do has value, improves the organisation and its relationships and creates positive change.  So why are professionals so shy about demonstrating this through good research and reporting practices?  The old excuses of cost, fear and uncertainty as to what to do have no place in today's operating environment. 

GAP stands for Generally Accepted Practice and the research is published every two years. The final report from the 2009 study, which outlines best practice, will be released soon. From the reports so far, I fear that we are a long way from best practice in measurement and evaluation, even though it is entirely possible, affordable and achievable.

Measuring Public Relations

Last week saw the 2010 PRINZ Conference, Taming the Tiger, and delegates were lucky enough to have Jim Macnamara on hand to talk through his thinking on measurement and evaluation. It was great to see so many people taking diligent notes throughout his presentation and I hope that it encourages more people to make sure they have a robust and effective evaluation process in place for their programmes. His presentation concentrated primarily on media evaluation and measurement which is really only part of the work we undertake in public relations.  The main purpose of our work is to build and sustain relationships between organisations and communities, and media relations, especially old-school, mainstream media relations, is only one small part of that purpose.

I do find it truly bizarre that the nonsense that is AVE persists as well as the measurement of website 'hits' - I can't wait for the day when both disappear into the ether. Jim Macnamara spent a lot of time debunking both, although some of the research he quoted I personally believe only serves to support the myth that either of those two activities are remotely useful.

While tweeting about Jim's presentation I was sent a message asking what to use instead of AVE and so there are a few simple responses to this below - it is what I've been doing for more years than I care to measure and although simple, it is an approach that provides accurate reporting on the success of programmes.  

• Set your outcomes and measure to those. If you are looking for an improved relationship, then benchmark your existing relationship with research before commencing your programme, monitoring how each phase of activity moves you nearer - or further away - from your desired outcome. 
• Set precise objectives for each phase of your programme and evaluate whether or not they have been achieved. 
• Make sure that each objective contributes to the over-arching outcomes you are working towards.
• Use qualitative and quantitative analysis in your reporting.  There are many tools and techniques out there that will produce the data you need to track your programme and its effectiveness.
• If you are working online, again - know what you want to achieve and why. Don't just throw Facebook pages at it and hope that will do the trick.
• Understand and identify the communities with whom you hope to build and sustain relationships
• Understand and identify where, when and how they get their information. Don't expect them to come to you - you need to go to them.
• Keep your focus. Don't get too distracted with peripheral activities or groups that do not form part of your objectives and outcomes.  Be watchful, mindful and concerned, but stay on track.
• Remember that research, planning and evaluation are a continuous process and need to be looked at holistically, rather than as siloed activities. Each stage informs the next.

Measurement and evaluation is not hard. It is an essential part of what we do and any practitioner worth their salt should make sure that they build a system that allows them to track and report with ease. If you are unsure what to do and are in New Zealand, then come along to one of the PRINZ sessions (that have been running for years now) that will help you create a system that works for your organisation and if you want some help with where to start measuring online activity, here's a paper I put together a while ago that might be a useful starting point. Download Measuring_the_social_web