When it comes to public relations, being data-driven is about more than just collecting data. It's about knowing how to analyze it properly, how to surface what’s relevant from the noise and how to take action to realize tangible business benefits.
On October 7, 2021 Notified hosted a live webinar in partnership with PRWeek which brought together a panel of PR leaders to discuss what's next for PR data, its increasing importance in driving value and how to leverage this data to create impactful communications.
Read on to learn the main takeaways from our webinar and to better understand the future of PR data.
How Can PR Data Inform and Enhance Brand Storytelling?
Data is a powerful tool that allows brands to make informed business decisions and better engage audiences through brand storytelling.
Data allows PR professionals to optimize communications in real time and legitimize their brand’s communications. The combination of numeric data and relationship data empowers organizations to take these insights to the next level. In speaking with consumers or reporters, you can go to your audience and gain feedback on what they want to see more of or what resonates with them. Practices like customer surveys allow you to pull together insights from these audiences to determine how to move forward with information.
One thing every brand should be doing is social listening and media monitoring. These tools give organizations the power to know what people are saying about their products or services.
Although the insights gathered through social listening and media monitoring might not necessarily be about your brand, and instead could be about competitors or the industry, they provide you with the ability to join the conversation.
According to our panel of experts, social listening and media monitoring are the easiest ways to know how your brand or story resonates with your audience.
How Can Data Drive Purposeful PR Communications?
Purpose is becoming the true north of financial performance and we are living in a time where consumers do make purchase decisions based on a company’s values. Business and purpose are interconnected, resulting in organizations focusing on projects and strategic decisions that make a difference in society.
Data drives purposeful campaigns because it allows communicators to support and measure their efforts while giving them the ability to validate or refine their messaging.
When delivering a purposeful message, it is necessary to audit the landscape for the buzz on a particular issue, look for efficiencies or advocates and then monitor campaigns. Once a message is shared, it is necessary to identify gaps in the communication and measure the impact. Data from a social listening or media monitoring platform allows communicators view coverage and conversations and proactively correct misconceptions or errors.
How Has Artificial Intelligence Reshaped the Future of Communications?
A challenge that many communicators face is working with unstructured data, language, and content. Artificial intelligence (AI) has helped to start making sense of that data at scale and in a way that communicators weren’t able to before. Additionally, AI has expedited the ability to measure insights and use predictive analytics on gathered data.
AI is an empowering tool. It is another vehicle to help validate insights and make strategic decisions. If you are a communications professional, platforms that use AI can not only help you collect data, but can also help you present it in a user-friendly way.
However, human curation will also be a crucial part of the puzzle when it comes to AI. AI will not replace PR jobs, but will help PR pros do their jobs better.
Overall, it is best to use AI in a hybrid model where AI can inform, customize, and drive ideas in a basic understanding. From there, an individual can take the insights a step further to execute them.
Why Is the “Art and Science” Partnership of PR and Marketing Vital?
Building a close relationship between the PR and marketing disciplines is increasingly critical to successful communications. It is necessary to have alignment across all channels, and communications are front and center to that. Now is the time for PR professionals to steer their focus away from vanity metrics and use data to drive sales and communications.
Although communications aren’t always designed to accomplish the same outcomes as marketing, it is necessary to understand how PR can best support marketing and sales. Professionals can consider how the stories told in PR help to nurture marketing relationships.
One way to do so is to examine the purpose of your PR and marketing communications. You can then apply measurements to show how both of your efforts connect to the journey you are taking your audiences on.
What Are the Most Important Metrics for Brands to Track?
Here are some of the metrics our experts highlighted:
- Share of Voice: It is critical to measure and monitor how you perform compared to competitors. You can look at this nationally and then segment this information market by market. When you analyze individual segments, you may notice that each market is very nuanced. This insight indicates adjusting your message based on what audience you are targeting. Customizing your data ensures that the information is relevant to your audience and allows you to build a stronger relationship with them.
- Engagement: It is vital to understand what people are investing in or taking the time to like, share, comment on, which signals content that drives interest. The measurement of engagement is key to indicating this information, especially when working on influencer campaigns.
- Sentiment: Sentiment tells you how your efforts resonated with your audience. Sentiment of your communications often gets overlooked, but this insight provides you with the ability to take the opinions of an audience and determine how to respond.
- Velocity: This metric allows you to indicate how fast information is traveling and the speed at which it is doing so. In measuring whether it is accelerating or slowing down, you can analyze your next steps.
Thanks for reading our recap blog! To view the entire panel discussion and learn even more, watch the full broadcast on demand.
About the Notified PR Platform
There is an evolution happening in the world of PR where single platforms can help PR pros expand their use of data and make more strategic decisions.
The Notified PR platform helps you manage your entire public relations workflow in one place, without disconnected systems and logins. The tools you need to be successful are now at your fingertips and include everything you need to execute and measure a strategic communications program.
Learn more about our integrated and easy-to-use platform for social listening, media monitoring, media contacts database, press release distribution, newsroom publishing and PR measurement.