How do you measure media impact on your organization?

1 Define your goals and objectives

Before you start measuring media impact, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your media relations and how you will align them with your organization's goals and objectives. For example, do you want to increase awareness, generate leads, improve reputation, or influence behavior? How will you measure these outcomes? What are your key performance indicators (KPIs) and how will you track them? Having SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals and objectives will help you focus your media relations efforts and measure your media impact more effectively.

2 Choose your media channels and sources

The next step is to decide which media channels and sources you will use to communicate your messages and reach your target audiences. Media channels can include traditional media (such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV), online media (such as websites, blogs, podcasts, and social media), and owned media (such as newsletters, reports, and webinars). Media sources can include journalists, influencers, bloggers, analysts, and experts. You need to research and select the most relevant and credible media channels and sources for your organization and your goals, and monitor them regularly for mentions, coverage, and feedback.

3 Use quantitative and qualitative metrics

To measure media impact, you need to use both quantitative and qualitative metrics that capture the reach, engagement, sentiment, and outcomes of your media relations. Quantitative metrics are numerical data that can be easily measured and compared, such as impressions, views, clicks, shares, likes, comments, mentions, backlinks, leads, conversions, and sales. Qualitative metrics are descriptive data that can provide more insight and context, such as tone, message, reputation, trust, loyalty, satisfaction, and advocacy. You need to use a combination of both types of metrics to get a holistic and accurate picture of your media impact.

4 Use media monitoring and analytics tools

To collect and analyze your media impact data, you need to use media monitoring and analytics tools that can help you track, measure, and report on your media relations performance. Media monitoring tools can help you scan and filter the media landscape for relevant mentions, coverage, and feedback on your organization, your competitors, and your industry. Media analytics tools can help you measure and visualize the quantitative and qualitative metrics that matter to you and your organization. Some examples of media monitoring and analytics tools are Meltwater, Cision, Brandwatch, Google Analytics, and Hootsuite.

5 Benchmark and adjust your strategy

The final step is to benchmark and adjust your media relations strategy based on your media impact results. Benchmarking means comparing your performance against your goals, objectives, KPIs, and industry standards. It can help you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and evaluate your return on investment (ROI) and return on objectives (ROO). Adjusting means making changes to your strategy based on your findings and insights. It can help you improve your media relations tactics, optimize your media channels and sources, refine your messages, and enhance your media impact.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?