Things to measure

It is important to carefully evaluate your PR efforts to find out whether your campaign was a success. Items you should measure include:

1) The details of the newspaper/website/radio/tv including circulation and readership (usually 2.5 times the circulation), page views/followers for online or audience for radio and tv.
2) Size or length of article/clip
3) Whether the article/clip was positive or negative - measure the percentage if possible
4) Whether your key messages were featured in the article/clip
5) Whether your company was mentioned
6) Advertising value equivalent i.e. if you had paid for that space in the media how much would you have paid? A bit contentious BUT it adds a value to the campaign. This tends to work better for print, TV and radio and less so for online.

If you used a spokesperson or a celebrity in you PR campaign, it is important to measure how many times they were mentioned in the media. Measuring the celebrity mentions will help you to evaluate whether you should hire that celebrity again. If possible you should aim to do some market research first to find out the public's opinion on the celebrity before you invest in them..

All of these measurements will help you to evaluate the success of the campaign. They will also help you to set a benchmark for your next one.

I used to measure all of these factors, and this along with clear objectives and creative ideas, contributed to my campaigns winning awards from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.