The world is changing at a breakneck pace. With the democratization of media and the advent of digital transformation, we now live in an age where we have access to an endless amount of information.

Faced with this new reality and set of unknown challenges, many PR and communications professionals are asking themselves: What’s the best way to measure and prove the value of my work in the modern media landscape?

In this Metrics That Matter special report, we explore how transforming traditional metrics can help you embrace the future of measurement.

Facing Fears

As communications leaders begin to think about upgrading their organization’s measurement metrics, many face a similar challenge. While they can see the promise and benefits of modernizing their measurement framework, they are often met by resistance from stakeholders comfortable with well-ingrained and tested methods – it’s easy to become complacent and reliant on metrics that have supported a company’s growth for the last decade.

What’s more, by tweaking their measurement framework, many communications professionals worry that key indicators, such as year-over-year benchmarking, may become too confused, complicated or lost altogether.

The good news? Rethinking your measurement strategy doesn’t mean throwing away every metric or tool on which you’ve come to rely. Rather, by enhancing your current metrics with contextual layers of data-driven analysis and capabilities, you’ll find that extracting valuable insights from huge volumes of data more achievable than ever.

Digging In

This report examines four measurement metrics commonly used by today’s communications and PR leaders – mentions, impressions, share of voice (SOV) and sentiment – and discusses how those familiar metrics can be enhanced to keep pace with the modern media landscape and more efficiently drive meaningful business outcomes.

You’ll see one key theme that links together every transition: the importance of context. While all of the traditional metrics we are discussing provide value, they are also heavily reliant on one-dimensional volume – the more impressions, mentions, SOV and net positive sentiment, the better.

Let’s take a closer look into how you can transform your current measurement metrics into modern, contextual workhorses that power the future of your business.

Mentions → Business Impact

While measuring mentions can help you determine how much noise your brand is making, relying solely on this volume-driven metric makes it difficult to determine if your communications efforts are actually moving the needle in terms of overall impact on the business. As millions of mentions and data points start to pile up at a faster and faster rate, extracting relevant, timely and accurate insights from that data pool has become increasingly difficult.

By layering your mentions metric with data and analytics from various channels relevant to your business, such as Google Analytics, sales figures, site visitors, stock price, app downloads, etc., you’ll achieve a more nuanced picture of how your brand’s reach is driving critical business outcomes.

By transforming your quantity-driven mentions metric to a measurement of contextual business impact, you’re opening the aperture of your measurement strategy to align communications efforts with business goals, increase accountability and drive more impactful business outcomes.

Want to find out how you can leverage context to transform your Impressions, SOV and Sentiment metrics? Continue reading the full Metrics That Matter report here.