How PR pros can measure ROI online
Though public relations efforts can sometimes be hard to quantify, using Google Analytics and Klout for social media will help show the effectiveness of your work.
PR pros once tried to meet the demand for measurement through convoluted attempts to demonstrate their worth. Clippings were counted, column inches were compared to advertising and magazine circulation was boosted by “pass-along” circulation to inflate the number of readers.
However, the online revolution changed everything. Public relations is no longer just unpaid publicity, but now includes social media, corporate blogs and website development.
PR pros can use the following two measurements to quantify the benefits of their efforts.:
Google Analytics and website measurement
The strength of a company’s website—the anchor of online publicity—can be measured with two different parameters: traffic and engagement.
Traffic is measured by how many unique visitors come to your website in any given month. That number provides a bottom-line measurement for the success of any SEO campaign. Measuring engagement is more complex. It provides a picture of what people do when they actually get to your site. How many pages do they visit? How long do they stay?
You can attract enormous amounts of traffic, but if visitors aren’t intrigued and don’t make any purchases, it won’t do you any good.
Become a Ragan Insider member to read this article and all other archived content.
Sign up today
Already a member? Log in here.
Learn more about Ragan Insider.
