Mastering Data-Driven Public Relations: Insights with Measurement Expert Katie Paine

WEBVTT

Announcer;  00:00:03,705 --
Welcome. This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others.  
Now here is your host, Peter Woolfolk.  00:00:22,224

Peter Woolfolk:  00:00:23,707 -
Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world. 
This podcast is now ranked by Apple as being among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide, so thank you to all of our guests and listeners for being the basis for this accomplishment. Now question as PR people data is very important for us to validate the effectiveness of our programs for our clients or our employers.  With the digital age firmly upon us, are we now in a better position to provide more and better data to support our outcomes?
Well, my guest today, perhaps, is the most prominent person in the PR measurement arena.  
Frequently called the measurement queen, she is our go-to person for all public relations measurement information, so I am very pleased to announce her second visit to the podcast.  
Katie Paine, our measurement queen, thank you for joining us today.  00:01:19,771

00:01:20,680 Katie Paine
Thank you so much.  I am so honored to be on this podcast.   
It's so much fun and I love, as you know, talking about measurement.  00:01:26,930

00:01:27,019 --> 00:01:27,760
Well, very good.

00:01:27,760 --> 00:01:37,430
Well, now that the public relations has really become awash with digital platforms, will our measurement performance become better?

00:01:37,430 --> 00:01:38,691
Let's talk about that.

00:01:39,813 --> 00:01:40,233
Listen.

00:01:40,233 --> 00:01:42,596
No, here's the problem.

00:01:42,596 --> 00:02:00,215
I have literally talked to clients who have 10 different platforms that they are using to collect data and they're using, you know, seven different platforms to communicate to the world, and they come to me because nothing is getting.

00:02:00,215 --> 00:02:06,640
Either nothing is working or they don't know what it means, or they're just overwhelmed with the amount of data.

00:02:06,640 --> 00:02:17,056
And that's part of the challenge of the digital age is that it's very easy to get so much data that you feel very overwhelmed.

00:02:17,056 --> 00:02:25,480
And most of the communications people I know did not major in math and they are not in the business because they love numbers, you know.

00:02:25,480 --> 00:02:31,884
I mean Excel, spreadsheets and pivot tables are not their favorite tools or what they like to be able to.

00:02:31,884 --> 00:02:36,981
You know what they like to spend their Friday afternoons in or working with.

00:02:36,981 --> 00:02:41,026
So the answer is is that we are overwhelmed with data.

00:02:41,026 --> 00:02:54,674
The good news is that there are two or three major developments that are going to help us deal better with the sort of onslaught of data that we're in.

00:02:56,360 --> 00:03:16,210
Okay, well, let's begin to talk about that, because one of the things that I understand is that people need to set their goals, to identify what they're going to measure and what would success look like, and perhaps that will help refine, if you will, the instruments they might need to use in their individual projects.

00:03:17,473 --> 00:03:18,014
Absolutely.

00:03:18,014 --> 00:03:21,939
I mean you cannot talk about platforms or tools or anything.

00:03:21,939 --> 00:03:28,567
It's literally when I give speeches I always say it's the second to least important thing that you're going to hear about today.

00:03:28,567 --> 00:03:43,770
It's probably the least important thing you're going to hear about today in terms of the actual tools, because if you go into, you know I go into corporations and clients and nonprofits and I say what's the business goal?

00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:52,588
And it's you know, make more money, sell more stuff, bigger market share, get more donations, whatever it happens to be.

00:03:52,588 --> 00:03:56,768
And then I say you know, how does communications contribute to that?

00:03:56,768 --> 00:04:05,812
And they say well, our job is to raise awareness or protect the brand or reduce risk or any of those things.

00:04:05,812 --> 00:04:21,843
And I can promise you, and we'll bet you a lobster dinner, that you cannot use any of the more popular platforms out there, be it Muckrack or Scission or Meltwater or whoever it happens to be, to measure any.

00:04:21,843 --> 00:04:24,607
You can't measure any of those things, those big, important communications objectives.

00:04:24,607 --> 00:04:26,279
You can't measure any of those things, those big, important communication objectives.

00:04:26,279 --> 00:04:29,589
You can't measure them just with a media platform.

00:04:29,589 --> 00:04:45,187
And even if it's a media and a digital platform or a social media platform, or even if it's integrated, unless it ties back to the business priorities or the organizational priorities, you're measuring the wrong things.

00:04:46,341 --> 00:05:00,487
So the first step is to identify how communications contributes to those organizational priorities, and it may be as simple as you know building the brand or protecting the brand Well, that's great.

00:05:00,548 --> 00:05:19,867
But then you need some brand research and that's not necessarily only going to come from your, you know, sprout Social account or your Meltwater account or whatever it happens to be, and the mistake that everybody makes in addition to saying oh you know, let's just buy a platform that's going to solve all our problems.

00:05:19,867 --> 00:05:30,595
But the mistake people make is the importance of human understanding in order to draw recommendations and conclusions.

00:05:30,595 --> 00:05:36,692
I just spent the last week analyzing, measuring a crisis for a client.

00:05:36,692 --> 00:05:48,048
You know 809 articles that I had to skim through and look at and code, and you know, figure out what messages were coming across and what issues and themes and who was being quoted.

00:05:48,048 --> 00:06:14,423
All the rest of the stuff is very easy to measure, but it doesn't mean anything unless you can say in fact, during the course of this communications crisis, the theme switched from individual X, y, z, harm to a global political dogfight.

00:06:14,423 --> 00:06:21,904
You know you have to look at the stuff and use your gut feelings and your instincts to understand what's really going on.

00:06:23,189 --> 00:06:30,692
Now, when you just described looking at people's feelings, is that part of what we would call sentiment gauging, sentiment?

00:06:30,692 --> 00:06:33,540
And there are programs to do that sort of thing.

00:06:33,740 --> 00:06:42,764
Here's the problem with sentiment I mean especially automated sentiment is the fact that it's much subtler than that, if you think about it.

00:06:42,764 --> 00:06:47,702
First of all, all measurement needs to start with the audience you're talking to.

00:06:47,702 --> 00:07:37,345
So if you say I'm a big, solid corporation with deep pockets and therefore I can protect you from harm and I couldn't possibly be involved in whatever is that you know you're accusing me of or whatever that might resonate with my dad you know he's dead, but he was, you know, editor of fortune and in those days that made a difference it's not going to resonate with a 25 year old person in somewhere in the midwest who probably spends too much time online and you know, maybe hating all corporations, or they're a farmer and it has nothing to do with them, or you know it's irrelevant.

00:07:37,345 --> 00:07:54,310
And what people and this is where we all have to take a big fat lesson from politics what people care about are their dogs and their children and their neighbors, and what happens, you know, outside their windows and inside their cars.

00:07:54,310 --> 00:08:16,091
And so when people hand me a here's my top tier media list and I'm like that's great, how much do your, the stakeholders in your audience, actually trust any of these publications, because if you read Pew Research right, people don't trust the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

00:08:16,091 --> 00:08:20,370
They trust Nextdoor and their friends on Facebook and their pickleball group.

00:08:20,370 --> 00:08:23,682
And so it's all of this data is.

00:08:23,682 --> 00:08:36,136
You know, I can I can a little challenging to get you know chat data from pickleball groups, but, but you can ask people, you can still survey them and say where do you get your information and what sources do you trust.

00:08:36,136 --> 00:08:39,686
But it's really much more it's not about.

00:08:39,686 --> 00:08:41,591
So back to your sentiment question.

00:08:41,591 --> 00:08:44,618
Back to your sentiment question.

00:08:52,340 --> 00:08:54,365
Sentiment is an algorithm that is applied to a bucket of words that you hope is correct.

00:08:54,365 --> 00:09:05,210
But I use this example all the time when I was measuring a major pharmaceutical company that had teamed up with Google to cure death, ie prolong life.

00:09:05,210 --> 00:09:08,554
But their phrase was you know, we're teaming up to cure death.

00:09:08,554 --> 00:09:15,725
Well, every single article came back negative because some sentiment analysis machine decided the death was negative.

00:09:15,725 --> 00:09:31,524
On the other hand, if I'm trying to prevent it or I've saved a life and stopped somebody from dying, you know all of those trigger words that algorithms pop up and sort of go for you have to go in there and fix, and so you know what is.

00:09:32,365 --> 00:09:35,674
Spend a lot of time these days helping people figure out how to measure.

00:09:35,674 --> 00:09:49,788
You know sort of issues and crisis, because that seems to be what PR is for these days, and you know you're not going to get positive coverage in a crisis, and so what you're going to get is a report that says everything's negative.

00:09:49,788 --> 00:09:52,253
Well, no, not everything's negative.

00:09:52,253 --> 00:09:57,832
A lot of the stuff might be balanced, and in a crisis, that's wonderful.

00:09:57,832 --> 00:09:59,285
Right, that's a 10.

00:09:59,285 --> 00:10:08,850
You get your message across once every 20 articles, and you might get a nice quote from your CEO once every 50 articles in a crisis, and you're doing well.

00:10:08,850 --> 00:10:17,917
So it's all about making sure that your tools and your metrics are appropriate to whatever you're measuring.

00:10:17,917 --> 00:10:26,874
You know and again, the thing that's very top of mind is this analysis I just did, where the top 10 list is your typical top 10 list, your top 10,.

00:10:27,033 --> 00:10:31,109
You know, media tier list is what you expect it, but where's all the coverage?

00:10:31,109 --> 00:10:33,714
Coming from Local newspapers?

00:10:33,714 --> 00:10:52,347
Because ultimately this thing happened in local communities and so local people covered it, and so the bulk of the coverage was in local papers, which local papers or local radio which you know, generally people don't have on their lists anymore, I mean, other than Burrell's and Nexus.

00:10:52,347 --> 00:10:54,051
It's hard to even get them you.

00:10:54,071 --> 00:11:00,910
You know it's one of those challenges that it's not just the sentiment, it's where the sentiment is appearing.

00:11:00,910 --> 00:11:03,517
It's like who's talking about the things?

00:11:03,517 --> 00:11:05,148
Is it a trusted source?

00:11:05,148 --> 00:11:08,578
I mean, you know the, you know the political environment, right?

00:11:08,578 --> 00:11:24,051
I mean somebody could be sitting on my doorstep telling me that the water is coming up above my door because of the snowstorm and you know, storm yesterday or whatever, and I wouldn't believe them because you know they've got the wrong color hat on.

00:11:24,051 --> 00:11:34,216
So a lot of it still goes back to that human touch and the things that we, as communications professionals, know how to do.

00:11:34,216 --> 00:11:51,595
It's just that you know, a lot of it too is and I'll let you get into questions soon, I promise but a lot of it is just kind of understanding that the traditional ways we've thought about measurement as communications professionals have radically changed.

00:11:52,205 --> 00:11:58,674
You know, the big question, the big thing that I've just gotten from this, is that something I think was what salespeople will say.

00:11:58,674 --> 00:12:01,474
If you want to know what people think, ask them.

00:12:01,474 --> 00:12:14,500
So, that means you need to go directly, identify who your audience, who is your audience, and go directly to them, rather than taking a shotgun approach to trying to ascertain how they feel, how they respond to things.

00:12:14,500 --> 00:12:17,120
But you just need to ask them directly how they feel, how they respond to things.

00:12:17,139 --> 00:12:22,697
but you just need to answer them directly and that way you can be more specific in what they feel want, need and those sort of things.

00:12:23,105 --> 00:12:25,323
Well, you know, the great example is Microsoft.

00:12:25,323 --> 00:12:27,793
That did some research.

00:12:27,793 --> 00:12:28,424
They've.

00:12:28,424 --> 00:12:34,113
You know, if you think Microsoft Enterprise software, who do you think buys it right?

00:12:34,113 --> 00:12:39,956
I have in my mind a 50-year-old white guy who's been in the job for 20 years.

00:12:39,956 --> 00:12:41,446
Guess what it's?

00:12:41,446 --> 00:12:45,878
30-somethings, vastly diverse.

00:12:45,878 --> 00:12:51,451
And guess what they think about when they hear Microsoft, they think it's the Xbox company.

00:12:51,451 --> 00:13:04,312
So if your audience thinks of you as a game company and you're trying to sell them enterprise software, you might need to do a little shifting of your brand or your messages.

00:13:04,884 --> 00:13:06,591
You know, it's absolutely so.

00:13:06,591 --> 00:13:07,453
What do people?

00:13:07,453 --> 00:13:09,231
And nobody is not nobody.

00:13:09,231 --> 00:13:16,948
There's a lot of stuff out there about how the buyers are changing in Gen Z and, you know, millennials and everybody else is all going to be that different.

00:13:16,948 --> 00:13:32,416
Yeah, but if you haven't done a survey of your audience for the last three years, you have no clue what's happened, because everything changed with COVID for starters, and then everybody changed in the post-COVID world too.

00:13:32,416 --> 00:13:45,181
World too, and so what your audience feels, thinks and believes today is nothing like what it was feeling, thinking and believing in 2020 or 2021.

00:13:45,181 --> 00:13:45,582
And these people?

00:13:45,582 --> 00:13:48,729
I'll get on one minor thought box.

00:13:49,370 --> 00:13:59,868
If you are doing brand studies or surveys of some sort of your customers only once every two years, you are wasting every single penny you're spending on it.

00:13:59,868 --> 00:14:04,447
Things happen faster than that and what you should do is be doing it every quarter.

00:14:04,447 --> 00:14:16,350
If you can afford it, do a small survey every quarter or at least do a decent, sizable study every six months so that you know what's going on, what are the trends and where people are getting information.

00:14:16,350 --> 00:14:33,967
The other big thing is you can also, with all this digital stuff, it is a lot easier to, at least depending upon what systems you have and depending upon what marketing tools you happen to be using.

00:14:33,967 --> 00:14:48,437
But it is a lot easier to figure out what your audience is doing and if you have a database of customers, it's pretty easy to figure out how often they go to your website or how often they visit your catalog or whatever it happens to be.

00:14:48,496 --> 00:14:55,768
I mean, there's a lot more of that kind of data around that we didn't used to have and I'm not dismissing that at all.

00:14:55,768 --> 00:14:57,075
You have to ask them.

00:14:57,075 --> 00:14:58,725
But you could also look at their behavior.

00:14:58,725 --> 00:15:05,438
If you have a lot of customers or if you have an online store or anything.

00:15:05,438 --> 00:15:11,465
People were saying to me the other day well, what am I going to learn from looking at my website traffic?

00:15:11,465 --> 00:15:17,394
I'm like, how about if they're coming in from I don't know social media?

00:15:17,394 --> 00:15:19,395
You know a referral from.

00:15:19,395 --> 00:15:22,221
You know some publication or a speech that you did?

00:15:22,221 --> 00:15:28,798
You know it's like yeah, you can learn a lot from some of this digital data that's out there if you use it correctly.

00:15:29,326 --> 00:15:36,458
And you know that's the thing I was going to focus on, because measurement also depends upon what your project is or what it is you're trying to measure.

00:15:36,458 --> 00:15:48,729
The measurement also depends upon what your project is or what it is you're trying to measure Click-throughs how many people have gone to the website, how many people responded to our email, outreach or newsletter, those kind of things.

00:15:48,729 --> 00:15:57,721
So that portion of it again, I guess has to be defined clearly and that will help identify what the tools are that can be more specific and accurate in terms of getting that data.

00:15:58,184 --> 00:15:59,892
Yeah, it's what I call the acceptable.

00:15:59,892 --> 00:16:02,845
You have to find the acceptable proxies right.

00:16:02,845 --> 00:16:06,336
So I'm not going to necessarily know.

00:16:06,336 --> 00:16:20,912
If somebody comes to my website just totally randomly and wanders around and eventually ends up buying an e-book from me or a class from me, I'm going to know where that person came from.

00:16:20,912 --> 00:16:28,100
If it's in MailChimp, if I put a tag on it when I put it out there.

00:16:28,100 --> 00:16:34,716
If I put it on LinkedIn, I know where they're coming from and I know that they're reading it, and then I know where they're going.

00:16:34,716 --> 00:16:49,841
I can figure out what they're doing at my site and I can create an event, a goal conversion in Google Analytics and get you know know exactly how much that post in LinkedIn you know brought in in terms of revenue.

00:16:50,365 --> 00:16:58,620
So there's ways today that earned media can fact track their digital footprints.

00:16:58,620 --> 00:17:11,285
The big thing is you have to get agreement from your senior leadership and your bosses and everybody else who's going to see your metrics that this is the acceptable proxy.

00:17:11,285 --> 00:17:25,751
I mean, one of the most eye-opening conversations I had was with a bank, and one of the most eye-opening conversations I had was with a bank, a government bank, and their goal in life was to be the most credible source of financial information.

00:17:25,751 --> 00:17:27,432
And I said, great, we can measure that.

00:17:27,432 --> 00:17:28,973
And they said how can you measure that?

00:17:28,993 --> 00:17:43,161
You know, obviously you could do a survey, an indicator that somebody might find your content, your financial information, credible.

00:17:43,161 --> 00:17:49,163
And they thought about it for a minute and they said, oh, obviously, if they follow us on social media, they must find us credible.

00:17:49,163 --> 00:18:03,249
And if they download this white paper that we just wrote, that's a sign of credibility, because obviously they seem to think it's most, it's important enough.

00:18:03,249 --> 00:18:07,440
And if they read to the bottom, or they watch all of our videos, or if they consume all of our content in its entirety and I can be wasting time if they don't find us credible.

00:18:07,440 --> 00:18:10,626
So those are all indicators of credibility.

00:18:10,626 --> 00:18:16,330
So one way to measure things would be to survey their audience and say do you find us credible?

00:18:16,330 --> 00:18:20,412
On other ways to say, okay, here are people doing these things.

00:18:20,412 --> 00:18:27,669
If those downloads, or whatever they happen to be, go up, it must mean that more people are finding you credible.

00:18:28,734 --> 00:18:42,476
You know again I get back to it because I'm looking at what you pointed out earlier is you know, what is it that you're trying to measure and then finding the proper tool to use it, because there's so many different things, you know.

00:18:42,516 --> 00:18:44,624
Corporate reputation, for instance, is another one.

00:18:44,624 --> 00:18:50,884
Boeing is having a heck of a time out there now and I don't think it's too difficult for them to measure.

00:18:50,884 --> 00:18:59,547
But you know, they made some missteps a long time ago but never made any preparations or took serious action to correct it.

00:18:59,547 --> 00:19:10,729
And internally, people are continuing because they find out that some internal measurements or activities have not been applied because they're still having problems.

00:19:10,729 --> 00:19:33,326
So people have to look at exactly what it is and what process, and maybe also even who's doing the measurement, because if some folks don't know how to do it, the fact that they're trying to do it, you know, again comes out with the same result, which is not good well, some of the smartest people that I've ever worked with, you know, have been made.

00:19:33,527 --> 00:19:39,487
May I'm not saying they did, but they may have been doing measurement all wrong for quite a while, you know.

00:19:39,487 --> 00:19:41,241
I mean, that's kind of why I talked to them.

00:19:41,241 --> 00:19:49,317
It's why they come to me is that they've been measuring one way because that's the way their predecessor did it and that's the way everybody's always done it.

00:19:49,317 --> 00:19:50,460
And guess what?

00:19:50,460 --> 00:19:56,183
Maybe it's not the best way to measure in 2024.

00:19:56,183 --> 00:20:03,605
It might have been the best way to measure things in 1919, but not necessarily today.

00:20:05,979 --> 00:20:36,845
We haven't said the AI word yet, but that's another thing that is going to radically change things very quickly is that you're going to be able to put and I've seen this done you're going to be able to put all your content into Gemini or ChatGPT4 and say analyze this, tell me how often this guy was quoted, tell me how many times this phrase appeared, tell me what the gist of it is, you know, and you'll get an answer.

00:20:36,845 --> 00:20:40,365
That's the other advantage of having everything be digitized these days.

00:20:40,365 --> 00:20:46,040
You couldn't do that with the old New York Times print copies, you know Well, you know and again.

00:20:47,924 --> 00:21:02,321
I guess it's a combination of knowing exactly what it is you want to measure then, knowing that you identify the proper tools to measure it and also find competent people to know how to use those tools.

00:21:02,321 --> 00:21:05,497
So I think it's a combination of all three of those things.

00:21:05,497 --> 00:21:08,726
So people first have to say, well, what are we trying to find out here?

00:21:08,726 --> 00:21:16,363
And then you know the best way of doing it to getting the results that we feel will accurately give us the information we're looking for.

00:21:16,904 --> 00:21:27,843
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it, and the truth is is the fact that a lot of communications departments in larger corporations these days are hiring data analysts.

00:21:27,843 --> 00:21:36,685
They've decided that it's easier to teach a data analyst about PR than it is to teach a PR person how to analyze data.

00:21:37,236 --> 00:21:38,559
Right, I've noticed that happening.

00:21:39,703 --> 00:21:43,525
Yeah, and you know it's funny because I get the request.

00:21:43,525 --> 00:21:45,382
I'm like, do you know anybody who can do this?

00:21:45,382 --> 00:21:51,616
I'm like there's a bunch of students out there, but they're not in the communications department, they're in the.

00:21:51,616 --> 00:21:59,950
You know, they're graduating from data analytics and math and IT and places like that.

00:21:59,950 --> 00:22:02,795
They're not going to be in the communications schools.

00:22:03,015 --> 00:22:21,541
You know, I did an interview, probably sometime late last year, with a professor I think it was from the University of Utah, and what they looked at was how some companies are using the terms that they use data in their everyday operations, and how they measured.

00:22:21,561 --> 00:22:39,567
That was, they looked at where this information was coming from and then looked at the companies and what they found out was that there are some companies yes, we actually do have a data person here and we use it, and so forth and so on and there are a few other companies that just say that we use data to do A, B, C and D.

00:22:39,567 --> 00:22:45,143
So somehow you've got to find out who knows what they're doing.

00:22:45,143 --> 00:22:51,824
So, from the PR firm, yes, I think what you've just said we have someone on staff who knows how to do it.

00:22:51,824 --> 00:22:53,039
That's what they do.

00:22:53,039 --> 00:22:59,241
So we can be sure that we're accurate and can give you accurate information and results about the projects we're involved in.

00:22:59,382 --> 00:23:03,202
Yeah, oh, trust me, I love it when there's a data person in the room.

00:23:03,202 --> 00:23:09,757
It's like, oh, you actually know how to analyze data, and it does.

00:23:09,757 --> 00:23:30,346
I mean, and I just I think it's the reason why, you know, McMaster University years ago combined, had a combined program with a business school and the communication school at Syracuse, and I was like that's brilliant, because you understand business, you understand how to analyze data and you understand how to communicate.

00:23:30,346 --> 00:23:32,522
You know you're the perfect employee.

00:23:33,035 --> 00:23:35,724
Well, you know, and that, of course, is very, very important.

00:23:35,724 --> 00:23:47,287
I use data here because obviously I look at how many people download individual episodes and over the year, I mean, did my downloads increase over the past year?

00:23:47,287 --> 00:23:50,884
And most of the time the answer to that is yes, uh.

00:23:50,884 --> 00:23:56,519
What I also know is that, uh, somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of my audience are female.

00:23:56,519 --> 00:23:58,904
Uh, so, uh, you know I have to.

00:23:58,904 --> 00:24:00,248
How do I address that one?

00:24:00,248 --> 00:24:03,538
Is that by I have female guests to have them on?

00:24:03,538 --> 00:24:05,741
Yeah, but it's also content.

00:24:05,741 --> 00:24:07,325
So, yes, I do use it.

00:24:07,325 --> 00:24:11,109
I might not go as deep because I mean, there's only so much I can do.

00:24:11,109 --> 00:24:18,395
I can have people on to talk about certain topics and, you know, go from there, but at least I have some data to decide.

00:24:18,395 --> 00:24:19,576
Am I doing the right thing, the right way?

00:24:20,196 --> 00:24:21,617
Exactly, exactly.

00:24:22,219 --> 00:24:23,578
Well, I tell you this, I mean, this has now what is?

00:24:23,578 --> 00:24:25,180
Well, I tell you, this has Now, what is it?

00:24:25,180 --> 00:24:34,786
I think that, as you think about PR people, that we make the biggest mistake in measuring stuff, have you run across anything like that yet?

00:24:35,226 --> 00:24:39,367
Yep, the biggest thing is well, it's kind of combined.

00:24:39,367 --> 00:24:47,492
One is being convinced that getting a placement is the equivalent of success.

00:24:47,492 --> 00:24:57,809
Just because something gets placed, it does not necessarily mean that anybody in your target audience sees it or cares about it Okay, right, I got you.

00:25:00,182 --> 00:25:11,105
That's the first thing that makes me crazy, and too many agencies in particular suffer from that, because they think they're getting paid to do placements and they're not.

00:25:11,105 --> 00:25:25,117
They're getting paid to get messages out to a target audience on a particular topic, and so it's adding those qualifying factors as in did you reach the target audience with the right message at the right time?

00:25:25,117 --> 00:25:31,102
That's success, and so placements, impressions, add value.

00:25:31,102 --> 00:25:34,763
Equivalency, all those awful old metrics are.

00:25:34,763 --> 00:25:42,509
The biggest mistake they make is that if that's what you're counting, you have no idea whether in fact you're achieving your goals.

00:25:43,089 --> 00:25:45,192
And I think that's something that needs to be clarified.

00:25:45,192 --> 00:25:51,077
Then those agencies need to say make sure that.

00:25:51,077 --> 00:25:57,944
How are we measuring that ordinance to make sure our message got through or did it get through, and if not, what was missing in the delivery of it or the content of it?

00:25:58,306 --> 00:26:15,163
Yeah, one of the one of the easiest fixes for that is to is to throw out the concept of placements and looking at what percentage of all your coverage appeared in your top tier media and things like share a voice.

00:26:15,163 --> 00:26:20,907
We get too locked into our own little perspective and we forget that other things happen.

00:26:20,907 --> 00:26:34,563
There's a rest of the world going on around there that may derail your plans and I think if you don't look at the competition or your peers or some kind of a benchmark, you have no idea what's really going on.

00:26:35,375 --> 00:26:46,363
Well, I tell you, this is and I think we've hit on some very, very important things here and that is, you know, having people to understand how data works, making sure it's going to the right audience.

00:26:46,363 --> 00:26:52,827
How do we ascertain if the results are what we want it to and, if not, why not?

00:26:52,827 --> 00:27:00,481
Those kinds of things have to take place to make sure that data is actually serving the purpose that it was designed to serve.

00:27:01,934 --> 00:27:06,255
Yeah, and I think I'm going to add one thing to that, which is, I think, what, what?

00:27:06,255 --> 00:27:25,606
I think the mistake that a lot of people make is to think that the answers are in a tool, whether you know again, muckrack, meltwater, scission sprout, whatever it happens to be, if you, if you think that that tool is going to do that thing for you, you are very mistaken.

00:27:25,606 --> 00:27:38,567
Because, I mean, there's a reason why I break up my measurement course into eight sessions over, you know, hour and a half over eight weeks is because that's what communications measurement is all about.

00:27:38,567 --> 00:27:43,241
You can't just look at one aspect of it being.

00:27:43,241 --> 00:27:46,385
You know I get stuff out there, right, I mean it's.

00:27:47,267 --> 00:27:49,570
You know you may have to do surveys.

00:27:49,570 --> 00:27:51,575
You have to look at your Google Analytics.

00:27:51,575 --> 00:27:57,208
You, you know, need to be looking at combining different pieces of data.

00:27:57,208 --> 00:28:03,588
So you look at your Google Analytics over time and you see, well, did that press tour do anything?

00:28:03,588 --> 00:28:05,146
Did that press release do anything?

00:28:05,146 --> 00:28:06,095
Did that press release do anything?

00:28:06,095 --> 00:28:08,303
Did it drive people to my website?

00:28:08,303 --> 00:28:09,621
Did more people download?

00:28:09,621 --> 00:28:13,845
All of those things are braided together.

00:28:13,845 --> 00:28:29,628
Today, that's what the sort of bottom line of your digital world is is that you've got all these different pieces of data and you've got to braid them together so that they reflect your actual goals.

00:28:29,628 --> 00:28:33,325
You're measuring against what you're supposed to be doing.

00:28:35,178 --> 00:28:38,619
That's the target, right there, that is exactly it.

00:28:38,660 --> 00:28:44,039
That's what the problem is is, most people don't measure against what the actual goals are, or they're too vague.

00:28:44,039 --> 00:28:45,284
That's the other thing.

00:28:45,284 --> 00:28:54,720
If one more person tells me that their goal is to raise awareness, for you know, whatever it happens to be, I'm like no, you are.

00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:56,747
It's like I don't know.

00:28:56,747 --> 00:28:59,115
Boeing, I mean boeing doesn't need any more awareness.

00:28:59,115 --> 00:29:02,080
Everybody knows what boeing is, right.

00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:06,388
What you need to do is have people understand that they're fixing the problem.

00:29:06,388 --> 00:29:09,747
You know breast cancer awareness month.

00:29:09,747 --> 00:29:12,075
We don't need more awareness of breast cancer.

00:29:12,075 --> 00:29:19,076
So I mean that the term awareness is one of my triggers where I just say that's not your goal in life.

00:29:19,076 --> 00:29:22,384
Your goal in life is to generate awareness of a specific thing.

00:29:22,384 --> 00:29:30,323
I mean, sure, if you're launching your product, you probably want everybody to know the brand, but you also want them to know what it does.

00:29:30,423 --> 00:29:30,683
Right.

00:29:31,195 --> 00:29:32,421
You know what are the benefits.

00:29:33,815 --> 00:29:42,484
Well, katie, you know, as always, it is a joy to talk to you, because not only are you enjoyable to talk to, but the information delivered is so specific.

00:29:42,484 --> 00:29:51,241
It really helps people understand and think about what it is that they're trying to do and maybe how to better improve what it is that they want to get out of the exercise.

00:29:51,703 --> 00:29:52,025
Thank you.

00:29:52,025 --> 00:29:54,644
Thank you for doing this podcast for the same reason.

00:29:54,644 --> 00:30:02,365
You really are helping people understand aspects of the business that aren't necessarily touched upon that often.

00:30:03,217 --> 00:30:03,980
Well as always.

00:30:03,980 --> 00:30:07,323
I appreciate it and any closing remarks you have.

00:30:07,795 --> 00:30:12,259
Just if you want more information on measurement, go to painpublishingcom.

00:30:12,259 --> 00:30:24,528
We have courses, we have e-books, we have newsletters, we have memberships designed around nonprofits and educational institutions and solo practitioners.

00:30:24,528 --> 00:30:30,147
We can, you know, come to our site and we'll fix you up with a measurement solution.

00:30:30,494 --> 00:30:38,647
Well, katie thank you so, so, very, very much, as I told our audience that you are our go-to person when it comes to measurement information.

00:30:38,647 --> 00:30:45,942
So again, I really, really want to thank you for being our guest on the podcast again, well, you're very, very welcome.

00:30:45,942 --> 00:30:49,721
Well, it's people like you that help us to grow.

00:30:49,721 --> 00:30:57,820
As I tell you, I was shocked when I found out in September of last year that we were ranked by Apple as one of the top 1% of podcasts in the world.

00:30:57,820 --> 00:31:00,599
It didn't happen because of me.

00:31:00,619 --> 00:31:05,586
You had a big part to do with it.

00:31:05,625 --> 00:31:22,842
You asked the right question so thank you so very, very much, and I look forward to having you as our podcast again in the near future absolutely anytime thank you so very, very much thank you and to our podcast guests, let me say thank you for listening again.

00:31:22,974 --> 00:31:25,078
You're part of the reason that we continue to grow and we look forward to having you join us.

00:31:25,078 --> 00:31:30,730
You're part of the reason that we continue to grow and we look forward to having you join us for the next edition of the Public Relations Review Podcast.

00:31:30,730 --> 00:31:31,471
Have a great one.

00:31:34,738 --> 00:31:35,858
Thank you.

00:31:35,858 --> 00:31:46,191
This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.

00:31:46,191 --> 00:31:56,008
Thank you for joining us.