Media Relations – What Are You Measuring And Why?
Media relations can be defined as your interactions with media representatives such as reporters, journalists, and editors for the purpose of promoting your business through establishing a relationship with them. In the modern world, media relations (MR) also refers to social networking and with bloggers and other key influencers related to your niche or industry.
There are a number of ways to measure your MR in order to determine the success of your strategies. Some indicators will be more important than others. What you measure will depend on what media and services you are connecting to your audience with.
Press release distribution services
If you send out press releases via a distribution service, you should get a fairly detailed report on the success of each. This can include:
Views
Downloads
Pickups
Mentions
Traffic to your site
Every good press release or other contacts with the media should have a call to action (CTA) in order to help determine whether or not anyone has paid attention to it. One of the easiest ways to do this is to set up a special landing page (or 2) that are unique to each press release you send. Then you can just look at your traffic logs to see how many visitors you get and what action they take.
Your main actions will be to subscribe or to buy something. Subscribe is a safer choice because you want to build a relationship with a niche-related journalist or prospective customer over time. Getting their email address can, therefore, be a lot more important than making a sale. Build a landing page with a chance for them to download something of value in exchange for their email address. Then track the number of signups for the offer.
Mentions
Paid and free monitoring services will track mentions on the Internet. Some will also track mentions in social media. Set up your words and phrases to monitor and check these regularly to see how well you are extending brand awareness and reach.
Social signals
Social signals will differ depending on which network you are using. Facebook will show Likes, Shares, and Comments. It is not enough to just be seen, but engaged with, as well. Twitter can also be a powerful tool that can get the word out to the media about your business. Follow prominent media representatives. Use their hashtags when posting content, and the press release and their name so they can see what you are posting. Then check engagement in terms of likes and re-tweets.
Direct contact
If any media rep contacts you directly, treat them like gold. This could be the start of a great professional relationship in which they use you as a valuable expert resource whenever they are writing a story and a person you can pitch to whenever you have something worth publicizing.
For every media relations effort, be sure to track the result to see the uptick in traffic, subscribers, sales, and media placements, and do more of what works best.
Call us today to speak to one of our PR specialists: 1-800-713-7278
