Editor’s note: PRSay today begins a series of guest posts from PRSA 2011 Leadership Assembly Delegates focusing on five key strategic areas within the public relations profession. Today’s post focuses on the business value of public relations.

This year at the PRSA Leadership Assembly in Orlando, Fla., teams of professionals met to discuss a variety of topics, including the value of public relations. As leaders in our field, we often have to justify our roles to our bosses and clients. Given the recent advocacy by PRSA surrounding its “Business Case for Public Relations™” initiative, the conversation regarding the value of public relations was rich.

One of our key conversations centered on public relations’ value to corporate reputation, employee morale, customer loyalty — all of which benefit the bottom line. When part of top leadership, public relations professionals serve as a strong compass with respect to business ethics.

Here is a running list of the value of the public relations function:

• Advocates on behalf of companies, products and services.
• Helps to educate citizens about important social issues, including healthcare reform.
• Supports efforts in raising money for worthy projects and societal needs.
• Through effective communications during times of crisis, maintains relationships with stakeholders and, therefore, helps to preserve and enhance a company’s reputation.
• Helps companies and organizations achieve a variety of business goals.

Opinions on the value of public relations widely vary, depending on who you ask. For example, because of publicity surrounding famous celebrities and our industry’s long-standing association with media relations, the general public’s perceptions of the industry can sometimes be skewed, and descriptive words such spin, flack, fluff and exaggeration come into play. Undoubtedly, cynicism toward the profession exists.

During the PRSA 2011 Leadership Assembly, we agree that one of the most important steps PR leaders can take to elevate the profession is to demonstrate to business leaders that public relations creates more than outputs such as news placements and Web hits. Through effective research and evaluation, we can also demonstrate the outcomes of our efforts — the bottom-line impacts. This requires us to have business literacy. It requires us to understand measurement tools and advocate for necessary resources — financial and otherwise — to effectively evaluate our work.

Continue reading " Business Knowledge Key to Enhancing PR Professionals’ Value "

Editor’s note: This is the seventh in a series of 12 guest posts from industry executives predicting key trends that will impact the public relations industry in 2012. Hosted under the hashtag #PRin2012, the series began Dec. 19, 2011, with a compilation post previewing all 12 predictions.

Both a challenge and opportunity for public relations professionals in 2012 is to have more data-driven decision-making processes. I truly believe that PR will never be 100-percent science. It is, and always will be, both art and science.

However, especially for those of us focusing primarily on digital, identifying the right data that can inform our decisions, and then integrating across all channels will position us for success. There are number of new fascinating technologies out there that are taking things to a new level in terms of content optimization and syndication. It’s an exciting time to be in digital communications.

Joe Ciarallo(@JoeCiarallo) is vice president of communications at social enterprise software company Buddy Media. He is also a founding editor of mediabistro.com’s public relations blog, PRNewser.

Continue reading " #PRin2012: A Year of Shifting Metrics and Integration "

The recent announcement by Ogilvy PR that it is abandoning the use of Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) in favor of value metrics is only the latest in a movement across the global public relations industry to refine and improve measurement standards.

As PRSA recently wrote in response to a Wall Street Journal article exploring progress being made to measure the value of PR, “[The global public relations industry is] beginning to devise relevant, credible and valuable global measurement standards that will help us move well beyond AVEs, which were never a very good value indicator to begin with, and have held back reforming measurement standards for a number of years.”

That’s the good news. But public relations practitioners, anxious to pursue the brave new world of better, more relevant, more valuable metrics, may nevertheless be struggling with how to find a better way. Now that public relations has pulled up anchor and is sailing briskly away from the Island of Misfit Measurements, where is it going? When we move beyond AVEs, where are we moving to … and what are the alternatives?

Here are some thoughts on where to start if we’re trying to break the AVE habit:

Link measures to business objectives. A wise PR practitioner, whether agency or company-side, will also make sure when designing measurements that the communications objectives are tied to the organization’s objectives. We can often gain management support for new ways of measuring — and for moving away from AVEs — if we can reassure management that the purpose of the measurement process is to help achieve company goals.

Continue reading " Kicking the AVE Habit: Where We Go from Here "

Once upon a time there was a shiny new object called the telephone, and the first person to manage the telephone in an organization was probably the CEO. Then, sales and customer service and marketing and everyone else started clamoring for this shiny new object, and management was very scared. They worried about who would control communications management, or if the function would become too fragmented. Eventually, they looked around and realized that companies with telephones were growing faster and making more money than their unconnected counterparts.

And there is no longer any discussion about why we need to measure the effectiveness of a telephone.

A few decades later, there was another shiny new object called the computer. Originally, the computer sciences managed all things computer. Then sales and marketing and customer service and all the different divisions who needed business intelligence started clamoring for computers. And Management was very scared.

They worried about who would control the proliferation of all these new objects and who would decide who would or would not have access to these newfangled computer things. A few years later, CEOs and CFOs realized that departments with computers were more efficient and more profitable than ones without them, and soon everyone in the company was online, using computers to facilitate work flow, manufacturing, customer service, sales, HR and marketing.

Continue reading " Eight Great Myths of Social Media Measurement "

Public relations executives fought for years to earn their place in the C-suite. That fight for credibility and respect has taken on a new dimension, as advertising and marketing — two disciplines long grounded in measurement — are converging with public relations through the “integrated” approach to communications that is increasingly common. Senior management speaks the language of metrics, and public relations professionals will need to be quantitative and measurement-savvy to remain vital for their organizations.

Continue reading " Measurement Standards at the Global Business Level "