#measurePR Recap (May 2017): From Cadillacs to Shoestrings

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In May, we saw a fab team from Mississippi State University Extension Service take their seats at the #measurePR “table.”

You see, my friend Elizabeth Gregory North had been telling me of how they’ve been doing a lot of research with both small and large budgets recently.

For example when evaluating their weekly video news feature series, The Food Factor, and their PSA campaign promoting colorectal cancer screening featuring Dak Prescott (#getscreened4dak), they didn’t have a lot of resources at hand.

Which meant they got very resourceful. ;) Ha!

So of course, I immediately asked them to be guests on an upcoming Twitter chat … and that happened to be last month.

Here’s who was there from Extension:

Elizabeth Gregory North, Head of Agricultural Communications
Ellen Graves, Social Media Strategist, and
Quisto Settle, Assistant Professor.

Here’s some of what we talked about:

On the existence of a perfect PR measurement strategy:

A2: No ONE perfect strategy. Best PR, comms grow from target audience. Every campaign is different, so every meas strat is diff. #measurepr

A2. There’s no such thing as perfect research, so there’s no such thing as perfect PR measurement IMO #measurepr

@shonali A2: Don’t believe in perfect! My goal is to learn from each campaign. What worked?? What didn’t?? #measurepr

Kristie Aylett chimed in:

A2: Considering objectives as Pass/Fail leads to a lot of disappointments. I describe them as milestones, not finish lines #measurepr

Next, we discussed common hurdles to research and how PR pros can overcome them:

A3 You need to plan your PR activities with measurement in mind (or how can you know it worked?) #measurepr

A3: Small budget = ppl have to add on to other work, takes more time. The good news: the research can be just as good #measurepr

@shonali A3: A common hurdle everybody faces at some point is budget!! Silver lining–Can produce creativity! #measurepr

On the metrics they look at when they measuring PR for MSU Extension:

A5: We look at likes, click thrus, shares, comments in social, placements in traditional media, sentiment in both #measurepr

A5: Outcomes, Action–Did they take what they learned from us & use it??, Clicks, shares, etc. Social media analytics can change! #measurepr

A5 I look more at if they’re taking that next step beyond clicking links, seeing messages, etc. #measurepr

As you can see, this chat was chock full of information, so the hour flew by. If you missed it or would like to relive the magic, check out the #measurePR transcript for May 11.

ICYMI, #measurePR took a summer holiday in June (hopefully you’ve been getting a bit of down time too).

But we’re back in July with a really cool duo of high profile editors from major media outlets, who’ll be “talking” about how they measure the success of their content initiatives.

They include: