PR needs to be more data-driven

Analyzing data and utilizing it is often tied to something tangible like leads, sales, number of likes and hits, etc. It’s hard to find how communication and public relations (PR) can be data-driven. But in reality, data plays a key role in both the functions of a brand or company. Here are the ways with which data can be better used to bring in benefits for the corporate communications and PR industry.

There is much more than coverage tracking:

In PR industry, mostly the PR professionals feel that the real data is restricted to getting a number of hits and pieces of coverage. While this is indeed an important part to look at, there are much more characteristics of real data that can be used by PR professionals for their benefit. With properly analyzed and verified data in hand PR professionals can more accurately predict the news cycles and interest of the audience. This can also help in better identifying and select the outlets to invest in relationship building. Hence, the data-driven approach in PR is not just limited to getting the measurable volume of coverage but is also helpful in better understanding the media landscape in order to gel up better with the media professionals.

The more you ask the more you gain:

When the data comes in hand one of the most important things to do is getting a thorough knowledge about what that is included inside it and drafting relevant questions that can find answers through the given data. For example, what would be the top publications preferring stories from the industry that a particular client specializes in. Or is there any new angle that can be pitched in for a particular story. There are much more options to it. Just give time and some creative thought to bring out some new and interesting insights to the client’s business and overall PR campaign.

Get clear with what’s needed and what’s not:

There are numerous of data available with us from several sources. But it is the PR professionals who need to judiciously select the data that would be benefitting for a particular client. Basically, it is the trends which we need to refer with the selected data in order to get a better sense of their efforts. When referring to what’s needed as a data and what not it is the context, relationships and question asking ability that would be benefitting.