Every investor desires to see concrete outcomes when they put their hard-earned money into a venture. However, in the realm of public relations, we are dealing with concepts and persuasion rather than tangible products. The challenge in the communications industry is to demonstrate that a significant PR campaign, say worth $50,000, has generated an equivalent or higher value in terms of business-building media. Here's a method to obtain a measurable evaluation of your media relations initiatives.
Content analysis is a term used to describe the quantitative and qualitative value of news stories produced by an organization's PR department. This method goes beyond determining the "equivalent advertising value" - the cost of the coverage if it were bought as advertising - to ascertain the impact of specific messages on reporters during a media campaign.
While it's satisfying to learn that the equivalent ad value of your campaign is significantly higher than your initial budget, delving deeper into the details can reveal whether your messages are hitting their target and how a campaign can be fine-tuned to enhance its effectiveness.
In a comprehensive content analysis, every news story is tabulated and tracked to determine how positively or negatively news items about your organization are being covered.
Organizations seeking media coverage understand the power of key messages – the three succinct media lines that are woven into interviews, releases, and other interactions with the media. Content analysis can reveal whether these messages are getting out and the specific issues the media is focusing on.
Content analysis can tabulate what third-party commentators are saying about you and your organization, providing insights into how supporters and critics are reacting to your news.
In newspapers, for instance, most readers look at pictures, captions, headlines, and other "display" copy. They tend to read the first few paragraphs of a story rather than the whole story. They tend to spend more time with the front page than other sections. Consequently, your story has more impact if it has more prominence or if it comes with a picture. It has much less impact if it is buried. Similarly, if your organization's name is in the lead of a story, the coverage is more valuable than if you are mentioned at the end of a story. Comprehensive content analysis will assess the impact you carry with the story.
Although content analysis can't tell you who read your article, it can tell you media outlet-by-media outlet which audiences were exposed to your message.
Content analysis not only assists you in objectively assessing your campaigns, but it can also highlight other communications issues that need to be addressed. Organizations that are sensitive to developing issues – nascent stories that are gathering steam and will need to be dealt with in the future – find that continual analysis of their news coverage helps them manage, defuse or deflect problems before they become problems. Alternatively, content analysis helps organizations identify new opportunities that they would not otherwise see.
Of course, there is a cost to doing comprehensive content analysis. Depending on the volume of news items, it may cost $2,000 to $5,000 per month. But organizations that make content analysis an integral part of their communications strategy report that they can, based on the hard evidence, make decisions about and refinements to campaigns that yield a high return on that investment.
