 In a previous video, we discussed the RPIE model of public relations and the E as you may recall stands for evaluation, which is a very important aspect of public relations in the entire process that we evaluate things. And so in this video, I want to just talk briefly about some of the basics behind measurement and evaluation and the importance of those things and some of the things we might factor into those considerations when performing measurement and evaluation. So first of all, let's talk about the very basics, the goal of measurement. What are we doing here? What's the purpose of all this and what are we looking at really? So we start with the goal of measurement of we have to factor in our output, the output of ourselves individually and of our team and whatever's going into this campaign. What is the output? What is the efforts that are the efforts that have gone into creating this campaign and implementing this campaign? What is this cost that's not only in dollars but in people hours, the amount of work that we've had to put into it, and just the brain power and all that kind of stuff. And then so what has been the productivity and the cost of that productivity for our organization? So that's our output. What have we created? In other words, as a result of this campaign or for this campaign. Then we look at outcomes. What are our outcomes in this situation? What are we getting out of it in a very real sense, in a tangible sense? Are we seeing increased profits, increased awareness? Are we seeing any of these things? So what was the end result of that? Of that output? So we consider what was the output and what were the outcomes of that? And then we have to kind of then evaluate that and say, okay, considering the output that we put in, the things that we put into this and the output that we had, the productivity that we had, and the results of that, the outcomes that we had as a result of that output. Let's evaluate whether that was worth it, did it all balance out? Did it pay off in the end? Was it a worthwhile investment of our time and energy and mental focus and all those things factored into it? Were the outcomes sufficient to justify the output, in other words, and did it match up? Did our output match up what we hoped we would accomplish through those outcomes? Were we able to really achieve the goals that we set out to do? So we need to look at all of this and more as part of evaluation. It's really a holistic process. So then when we think about kind of the sources of measurement, how do we go about measuring these things and where does this information come from? Traditionally, we would look at things like mentions. In other words, just any time our organization or that idea, whatever it is we're trying to promote appeared in some sort of especially traditional media in a newspaper on a TV show or something like that. Anytime there was a mention, we would put a tick mark. And that's one mention. That's one thing towards a guy. And so people might have, we want 500 mentions or we want a thousand or whatever, they would have this goal in mind. Just to be mentioned, anytime your name appears, whether it had anything to do with that, really with what you were talking about or whether it really impacted and moved the needle towards positively or negatively. It didn't matter as long as you were mentioned. That's it. It was just a very strict policy of where you mentioned. We would look at airtime. What's the amount of airtime we're getting on media that measures things in that way, like radio and television? How much airtime are you being given by these things? Are they talking about you for five minutes or 20 minutes or whatever? So we would measure things through airtime as well. Again, it didn't matter if it was good or bad, it just was airtime. Impressions. Now impressions are how many people are getting eyeballs on this, on the different media. So an impression might be, you might be mentioned in a newspaper, right? Let's say your, your, your program or your company or whatever it is you're promoting is mentioned in a newspaper. So that's one impression. Somebody whoever gets that newspaper, that's one impression. They see it, they read it, but then maybe they pass it off to a friend. And that's another impression that we try and measure how many times, you know, not just was it printed in this many copies of the newspaper, but how many people would see those newspapers or that magazine because these things get passed around, right? You know, just one magazine in a dentist office may get a lot of looks as people are waiting in there. So, so impressions, how many impressions are we getting? Again, not measuring, you know, what were these impressions? Were they good or bad? Did it help us achieve our goals? Things like that. Just how many eyeballs we're on are the name of our organization or the program or whatever it is again that we're promoting. And then somebody came up with a sort of a complicated, you know, a more sophisticated way of measuring this called the advertising value equivalent, where AVE is it's known. And this basically measures how much would this cost if we were to buy, if we had to buy this kind of advertising number advertising, you're purchasing that space and you're purchasing those mentioned public relations. You're not, you're depending on, you know, the ability of these things to promote themselves and get out there because, you know, based on your work or the merits of the information and so forth. So in other words, the number of mentions, the amount of air time, the number of impressions, how much would that be worth if we calculated it as a paid cost through advertising and what's, so it's the advertising value equivalent of the work that we've gotten. Now, again, this just looking at strictly the number of mentions, air time impressions, things like that are calculated into this, not the quality, not the type of impression positive or negative or whatever. So we need to remember that this is strictly quantitative, right? And that's, that's sort of the problem that all of this, all of these traditional measurements, not only we're focused on traditional media, right, traditional media, meaning they were developed on the time, but you can measure these things fairly easily in newspapers and television and radio and so forth. It gets a little more complicated when you get into new media, to social media and things like that. It gets a little tougher to track these things. So that's one issue. But, but also we're looking strictly at these things. We're looking at quantity and not qualities we've discussed. It doesn't matter if these mentions are positive or negative or if they're, you know, really on a, on a, on a major platform or on a minor one, or it doesn't matter if it's mentioned, it's mentioned. And that's it, right? That counts. You put the tick mark up there and, and that counts just as much as it counts just as much as getting mentioned in your tiny little local papers. It would being on, you know, the NBC nightly news or whatever. Those are the same things. If it's a mention, it's a mention. But we know that those don't carry the same amount of quality. They don't necessarily came to carry the same amount of weight. One is not the same as the other. So these types of measurements do not measure quality. They're only measuring quantity. And that's an issue. So, so really we're moving away from these types of traditional measurement because they just don't provide us with the information that we need to know whether or not our efforts are really paying off. So we need to approach this with more of an aspect of a funnel, right? Thinking about a funnel where we just dump everything in there and then out the, out the bottom end, when it's all switched together and comes out at the bottom, then we have our evaluation. We pull in so much more information, not just a limited amount of information, but we pull in everything we can drop it into the funnel. So we're looking at not only here, we're not looking, not only quantitative, but quantitative and qualitative forms of measurement. Quantitative focused only on the numbers, of course. It's measuring numbers, which is good. That's good information to have. But we also need to look at the qualitative aspects of this. Is it reaching the right audience? That makes a difference. Is it, you know, what kind of mention is it? Are they making fun of us on a late night show? Or are they, are they talking positively about us on a, on a news segment or in a newspaper or whatever? So what's the trend there? Are we at joke or are we being taken seriously and getting some positive traction out of this? We need to factor those things in as well. So we need not just the numbers, but the qualitative perspective. So we need to dump all that in the funnel. Have all that go in our funnel. We need to know it's positive or negative. We need to weigh these things differently. We need to know both. We can't just ignore the negative and only present and follow the positive. We need to know about both, but we do need to measure their impact differently. We need to understand the impact that these things are having based on whether or not they're positive or negative mention or negative, you know, connection through, through this measurement. We need to look at things like social media engagement. How much are people engaging in this topic and engaging in our topic? The topic we want them focused on. And again, not just the number of mentions, but how deeply are they connected to this? Is this turning into a movement? Is it something that people are just throwing away as kind of a joke and mentioning it in that way? We need to have to measure those things, but we need to be aware of social media engagement and also how much are people engaging with us now? Are people engaging with our organization as a result of this? And are we seeing an increase in the amount of traffic that we're getting through that? So social media engagement is an important one. We can look at things like good information from search engine results. Again, not only the number of searches that we're seeing on this particular topic or on our organization, but what types are they? And what kind of results are they getting? And so we can, we can throw that in the funnel as well. Let that go into our funnel. Inquiries from the public and from media. Are we seeing an increase in that and what kind? And again, measuring not only the number, but also the qualitative aspects of that, are they positive or they negative? Are they seeking greater connection and greater understanding? Or they, uh, it is not quite so friendly toward us. And we can look at, of course, the bottom line, we can look at sales and or service activity, depending on what your organization does and what you're looking for, what you're hoping to, to push with this program. Do we see a bump in sales numbers? Do we see a bump in profit through our services or whatever in our requests for our services? Uh, and, and so do we see an impact in that way? Not just quantitatively, but qualitatively as well. So we throw all this in this and much more. And we put, we just have to let it all go in the funnel. And then again, consider it all through this, the systematic way process that we, we can develop. And then at the end, we have our evaluation. What comes out at the end, we can, we can assess more, uh, holistically and not just based on strict quantitative measures, but what's the, the quality, right? Sometimes you hear, uh, for people, especially in, for example, the podcasting world, say it's not a matter of how many downloads you have. It's not a matter of, you know, are you the most heard podcasts in the world? It's a matter of, are you reaching the right audience? Right? Are you having an impact on the audience that you want? And you're developing those kinds of connections, deeper connections. That's what we want in public relations really. It's not just about the numbers. It is about the numbers because we want more people to hear our message, but it's also then about the quality of those connections. And that's what these give us when we put it all in the funnel. Those are the things we ought to be evaluating. Now, of course, evaluation is a, is a much larger process in and of itself. We do this assessment and analysis. We, we then look at performance and how we can improve it. Then we gather the results and offer feedback to our, to both to ourselves and to anyone who is connected with the project and what we can do better, what we can change, if anything, what we need to shift. Right? So evaluation is much more than just determining where to get your information from. There's, there's a lot to it here. And then as I mentioned, developing that process, how is it that you are going to strategically evaluate and measure these things and do so consistently? So there's all kinds of things involved with evaluation. We've really just scratched the surface a little bit here to, to define the importance in a sense, but, but I do want you to bear in mind again, this is all part of the process. This is kind of the circular process. So once we do evaluate then, once we have our evaluation, then we can factor that into our next round of research and in preparation through our planning for implementation, which we will then evaluate again. And it just keeps going and going and going. We keep evaluating these things. And there's almost always something we can do to improve or adjust or evolve as things move along here. So we need to be continuously evaluating any effort, any public relations campaign or effort or, or proof or process or movement that we're, that we're involved in needs to have evaluation as a part of that to then feed into that research area and kick things off all over again. If you have questions about measurement and evaluation in a public relations campaign, please feel free to email me. I'd love to hear from you there. In the meantime, I hope that you do have a new appreciation and understanding for the role of measurement and evaluation in the success of any public relations effort.