PR departments are under increasing pressure to provide “hard” evidence of their activities for corporations, governments and non-profit organizations. C-Level executives are asking what the dollar value is in a communications department. For the most part, these measurements have been done via clipping services and click analysis on stories. This hasn’t been quite enough. Just as marketers are having to show Return On Marketing Investment (ROMI) now public relations practitioners are having to show Return On Communications Investment (ROCI). Online Reputation Management tools may offer the start of a solution.
The initial assumption of most communications departments and PR agencies we’ve spoken with are that Online Reputation Management (ORM) is about “online” or “Web-related” stories and blogger only. It’s far more than that. Almost all major media, and many local professional media outlets have a Web presence and provide online content. Most major stories are distributed via the Website as well. Press releases today end up on the Web as well as editors desks. Then there’s the pick up by social media on blogs, vlogs and social networking sites. While clipping services are reasonably good, as most stories reach the Web in the same way, ORM solutions can help and reduce costs.
Interestingly, the USC Annenburg School of Communications released a study on PR metrics. Even though PR managers, agencies and departments are being pushed to provide better metrics, they aren’t devoting much time to this activity. Granted, part of this problem is that the percentage of PR budgets assigned to evaluation aren’t very significant. Most PR departments just concentrate on clippings and top tier media coverage analysis. Not enough for any true sense of contribution to key measurables such as contribution to market share or profitability or influence on stakeholder awareness. All measurements that can be very cost-effectively measured and reported through most ORM solutions.
The downside of ORM solutions however, is that there are very few of them out there. This will change as we launch our MediaBadger service in August, and change radically. There are few ORM solutions in the market, and what there are usually involve a significant amount of “human” time and consultation. In large part this is because it is a very early market space, the metrics and processes are evolving. Much like Web Analytics about 5 years ago. But ORM solutions could provide an excellent opportunity for PR professionals to develop and execute on truly measurable metrics. And that can only make the C-Suite happy.