6 ways to measure PR—and get that budget boost

Your bigwigs don’t care about your Klout score. They don’t care how many press releases you write. Instead, show them you’re responsible for that spike in sales.

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Say you want to get in shape.

You’ll impress nobody and probably won’t succeed if you set a mere goal (“lose weight”).

But if you set an objective—lose X pounds by June 2014—you’re far more likely to pull it off, says Sandra Fathi, founder and president of Affect, a New York public relations and social media firm.

Your leadership thinks in objectives, and you must track your progress toward their business targets if you want to measure successfully.

In her talk “How to develop an effective PR measurement strategy,” Fathi offers pointers for public relations measurement of a sort that can boost your budget and perhaps even get you promoted. Fail to do so, and you might find your budget trimmed or yourself filing for unemployment when times get hard.

“Will press release pick-up get you promoted?” Fathi asks. “Will ad equivalency equal more budget? Will 1,000 ‘likes’ make the CEO like you more?”

No. Every month when bigwigs get the invoice, they want to know what they are getting for the outlay, she says. “And we have to have a good answer.”

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