Katie Paine is not known as the “Measurement Queen” for mere pomp and circumstance. Throughout her illustrious career, she has been teaching PR practitioners of all tenures and stripes how to assess the value of their efforts so they can prove their worth to clients and blow their own horns in the C-suite—and how to do it like a pro.
Along the way, she has trashed the use of AVEs and hammered the proverbial last nail in that coffin—and then helped us figure out how to move beyond that most worthless of metrics to something far more meaningful.
She’s also helped us understand the only revolution that matters for measurement-minded PR, and done some serious research to help us keep pace with the lightspeed-like developments we’re expected to stay a step ahead of.
She’s written and presented for our audience prolifically, and remains our go-to source for anything you can put a tape or yardstick to. And lo and behold, she keeps teaching us new tricks.
So it’s no surprise that her latest series of posts for Agility, “How do you measure success,” is front-loaded with a plethora of profundity. Take a look at this trilogy—and prepare to have your mind immeasurably blown:
How do you measure success? 5 ways to put a value on your events
This first installment homes in on something that has baffled PR since the days of the buggy cart—determining the true value of an event. Here, Katie reveals how so many of us have been doing it so wrong for so long. We’ve always been accustomed to doing our measuring after the fact (when there’s more likely something to measure), but the Queen of Metrics explains how this doesn’t work with events—and why (and how) event measurement needs to be baked into the event itself. That’s right, the stuff you want to measure has to be set up ahead of time, along with your goals and objectives, and your definition of success and failure. Lots of great insights and examples in there, too.
How do you measure success? Assigning value to your coverage
We like to think we have a better handle on determining how successful our media placements are because… well, that’s what we do. But here Katie reminds us that it’s far from simply counting your clippings (and cyber-clippings). She gets down to serious business in this mini manifesto, explaining how “placements” are never an end in themselves, and how landed coverage—large or small—still has to be a viable business outcome that makes it fiscally worthwhile. Yeah, we were confused at first too, but as always, Katie breaks it down stepwise so your comms contributions are servicing the proxies that truly define success. A must read!
How do you measure success? 7 steps to valuating social impact
Oh yes, your success on social media beats to a whole different drummer. As Katie explains in this series finale, the traditional metric of “impressions” certainly doesn’t cut it here. So what are you after? More followers? More time spent on the page? Well, it’s complicated… There are too many content types, target audiences and marketing mix models to provide a simple answer. But no matter your goals, she serves up a winning formula in seven not-so-easy steps that can help you be more consistently successful—and know just how successful you’re being by showing you how to tabulate the metrics that matter. This post goes super-deep to corral all the right tips for this still-developing medium.