The press release is an important tool for any public relations (PR) professional. A press release can help you get the word out about your brand and products. It can also spread important news about hirings and company information. Additionally, a release can help you control the narrative with crisis management. But how do you know if it’s actually achieving any of these goals? That’s where PR measurement and press release analytics come in.
What Is PR Measurement?
PR measurement, also called PR analytics, involves measuring and evaluating the effectiveness of your organisation’s public relations campaigns. It’s a broad category that might include data such as website traffic, media mentions, shares, likes and comments on social media, sentiment analysis and share of voice. Through this overall PR analysis, you can assess the reach and effectiveness of your campaigns.
What Are PR Analytics Tools?
PR analytics tools are software solutions that help PR professionals measure and analyse the effectiveness of their campaigns. These platforms offer comprehensive features and dashboards to analyse and report on campaign performance, helping you refine your strategies for better results. For example, media monitoring is an important PR measurement tool that tracks mentions of your brand or press release across different media outlets, including online news sites, print publications and broadcast channels.
Press release tracking is another key PR analytics tool that allows you to see where your press releases are being picked up and by whom. In this article, we’ll focus on these types of analytics that are specific to press releases.
What Is Press Release Analytics?
Press release analytics is a system for measuring and analysing various metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of a press release or news release. It’s an important part of your overall PR measurement, helping you understand how well your content is performing, for example, whether the right audience is seeing it and if it's generating reach and visibility that's on par with your campaign forecast. From there, you can identify areas for improvement and demonstrate the value of your efforts. Overall, press release analytics can maximise the impact of press releases and optimise future strategies.
Why Press Release Analytics Is Important
In today’s fast-paced media landscape, understanding the impact of your press releases is essential. Press release analytics provides valuable insights into how your content performs, helping you refine your PR strategies and achieve better results.
Target the Right Audience
Press release analytics helps you identify and engage with your target audience. By analysing data about media coverage and engagement, you can determine which demographics are most interested in your content. That helps you ensure you send newsworthy press releases to the right audience, so that your story gets noticed.
Manage PR Crises
Press releases are an important way to curate your brand’s reputation and manage crises. But promptly putting out a press release that responds to a crisis is only half the battle. You’ll also want to track it in real time, including on social media, to see who picks it up and how the media and the public react. Then you can quickly respond to any misinformation that’s going around. Press release analytics is essential to help you stay informed and manage a crisis.
Prove the ROI of Your Campaigns
As a PR professional, data is critical to proving ROI, and your press releases shouldn’t be any different. Don’t just distribute them to the world and then move on. Use press release analytics to demonstrate their reach, visibility and engagement. PR measurement tools can provide data on metrics that clearly show the value and impact of your PR activities.
How to Use Analytics to Improve Your Press Releases
You know that tracking and analysing your press releases can help you do your job better. But how do you get started? Follow these five steps.
Step 1: Set Clear Goals
Everything you do as a PR professional starts with defining clear, measurable objectives, and that includes press release analytics. So the first to do is determine what you aim to achieve with your press release, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, promoting a new product or even generating leads. By knowing what success looks like, you can better measure the impact of your press release.
Step 2: Choose the Right Tools
Look for press release analytics tools that offer comprehensive media distribution and analysis. Your analytics tools should provide important insights like who is seeing your press release, what media outlets are picking it up and how the release performs compared to other similar releases. Additionally, choose a partner who supports your goals and can help you understand what’s working and where you can improve your strategy.
Step 3: Get Your Results
The right analytics tools automatically collect and present the data you need to demonstrate the impact of your press releases, including:
- Views: The number of views your press release has, including the name of the media outlet or organisation and their industry.
- Traffic: The number of visitors to your release, including where they came from (e.g. direct, Google and so on).
- Engagement: Actions visitors took while viewing your release, including whether they clicked through to a link or shared it on social media.
Step 4: Analyse and Interpret Your Results
Press release analytics involves more than just looking at numbers. It requires interpreting the data to uncover insights and trends that inform your PR strategy. Compare your results against your objectives as well as other similar releases in your industry, and look for patterns to understand which publications and journalists are most receptive to your content. A partner who will walk you through the results and help you refine your strategies is key to successful analysis.
Step 5: Optimise Future Campaigns
In-depth PR analysis also helps you identify what worked and what didn’t, so you can optimise future press releases. If certain topics, headlines or distribution channels yielded better results, use those elements in your next campaign. Adjust your strategies to maximise engagement with your target audience. Continuously refining your approach based on data-driven insights will help you achieve better results over time.
Master Press Release Analytics with the Right Tools
Press release analytics is an area of PR measurement that’s getting more and more detailed every day. But with the right tools, it doesn’t have to be complicated.
PR Newswire offers strategic press release distribution and placement to hundreds of thousands of newsrooms, digital media outlets and journalists. From there, you can track views, engagement and traffic to demonstrate your press release’s effectiveness and optimise your next campaign. Start sending and tracking press releases today.
FAQs about Press Release Analytics
How do I track press release coverage?
Track press release coverage using media monitoring tools, which help you find mentions across online, print and broadcast media. Additionally, monitor social media platforms and track relevant hashtags to see how widely your press release is shared and discussed.
What are the most important metrics for press release performance?
Key metrics for press release performance include media coverage, audience reach, engagement and search engine rankings. These metrics help measure how widely your release is distributed, how many people it reaches, how the audience interacts with it and the impact on your website's visibility and authority.
What are the best PR measurement and analytics tools?
Finding the best PR measurement and analytics tools depends on your specific needs. Assess your requirements for media monitoring, social media engagement and website analytics. Look for tools that offer comprehensive features, user-friendly interfaces and integration capabilities. PR Newswire is a widely trusted choice for press release analytics and distribution
As a PR professional, you want your press release analytics to shine. The first step is to craft an engaging, personalised release that speaks to your target audience – and then ensuring it’s distributed to them.