A communications strategy can be challenging to measure. If it’s hard to measure, it’s hard to show the value.
This is why creating tangible KPIs (key performance indicators) is critical to creating (and measuring) communications efforts.
KPIs are a great way to help make goals more tangible and quantify what might seem unquantifiable.
If your reporting is only focusing on brand mentions and social validation, a need for a communications strategy (or budget) will be considered a “nice to have” rather than a valuable driver of business growth.
Breaking down KPIs by what area of your communications plan, your building will help keep you on track and focused. Always begin with the items that drive the most significant impact on your business.
Coverage: coverage secured by the PR team. Focus on your industry and the key publications you NEED to be featured in.
Potential reach: add up the total viewership for publications, broadcasts, and websites where you have coverage.
Share of voice: percentage of coverage for your brand or product compared to competitors. Include the brands identified in a competitive analysis to gauge your place in your industry.
Social engagement: how many shares and comments your coverage generates.
Sentiment: the tone of the coverage mentioning your brand or product.
Earned traffic: the number of visitors driven to your website as a result of your earned coverage and link placement.
Unique visitors to blog: how many people visited original content posted in a given time period.
Social shares of web content: how many times content was shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
Average time on page for blog posts: find this in Google Analytics – it tracks the time people send on a page. This can help you drill down further than page visits by monitoring if people are engaging with your content or simply visiting it.
Blog traffic vs. site traffic: how are you acquiring web traffic, and how are they spending their time? Are they coming to your original content first or visiting your site on different pages?
Return visitors to blog: who is looking to you as an industry resource by repeatedly visiting your website to learn about your business or product?
Unique visitors: what is the number of people who visited content posted over a given time?
Social shares of content: how many times was your content shared on social platforms?
Social audience: What is your number of followers, both per channel and overall?
Total engagement: how many shares, comments, likes, retweets, replies, direct messages, etc. did your post receive?
Engagement rate: number of people who actively engaged with your posts (RTs, likes, etc.) divided by your total number of followers per channel
Average engagement per post: the number of times a random post will be shared, on average
If you are interested in learning more about KPIs and how they can help you track your communications efforts and show value, contact Nicole Becker Public Relations today. In every plan we build, we include specific, tangible, and realistic KPI’s.
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Mindful, intentional and straight forward public relations for doers and risk-takers ready to ambitiously elevate their presence, tell a compelling story, and feel confident that their brand attracts their ideal clients.