Last week, I came across an interesting question on Dave Fleet’s blog that his colleague at Edelman Rob Clark first raised, “Is Share of Voice a Useless PR Metric?” My initial reaction was that measuring a brand or company’s share of voice is still very much a valuable PR metric, especially given today’s competitive market place and the prominence of social media in driving awareness and shaping perceptions.
After further reading, Clark stresses that measuring a company’s share of voice is more than simply collecting and counting volume of clips or mentions, but rather a deeper analysis of understanding the “mindshare” or perception of a company in relation to its competitors, analyzing the tone, message pull through and quality of coverage. At Communiqué PR, we could not agree more with this philosophy.
When conducting research to measure our clients’ share of voice, we look beyond the metrics measuring the number of online mentions and total impressions to analyze the sentiment value not only for our clients, but that of their competitors as well. This insight enables us to modify components of a campaign or strategy to achieve a more advantageous outcome and match business goals.
We thought we would share some of our best practices when analyzing share of voice that may be helpful to you in your own analysis.
- Identify your top competitors. We recommend selecting two or three top competitors in the industry that closely matches your core business offerings. If you select more than this, or competitors who have a broader scope of services, your share of voice will be smaller as a result and much more difficult to monitor long-term.
- Identify the key messages. Presuming your company has developed effective key messages, measuring how often these messages percolate through your media coverage should be easy to quantify. If they are not being picked up, it is an indicator that either they are not resonating with media or perhaps the spokesperson may need a refresher on media training.
- Determine values for tone and types of coverage. Creating consistent values for measurement of tone are key to understanding sentiment. For instance, did the article position your company positively or negatively? It is also important to assign values to consistently rank the types of coverage. As an example, consider that a feature story will have more weight, especially if a third-party influencer is included in the coverage as compared to a re-posting of a press release. However, do not discount the value of re-posts of a press release as it can help to increase your search engine optimization.
- Determine your share of discussion. Finally, if the coverage features both you and a direct competitor, examine how much of the story focuses on your company and/or quotes from your company executive. If your competitor receives more air time, examine if it is because the piece is a sponsored post or perhaps a suggested topic your competitor presented to the reporter, a detail your PR partner may be able to identify when evaluating the media opportunity beforehand.
By establishing your parameters and metrics for evaluation at the onset, it will be easier to gather meaningful data to measure results for your company against your competitors, and also establish a consistent framework for the future. Be aware, however, that this analysis can be a time consuming task and depending upon your organization’s goals and budget, the analysis may only be needed at the onset and conclusion of a campaign, or perhaps in a long-term relationship with your agency to measure effectiveness.
Do you have any other tips or best practices to share? Leave us a comment.