7 new PR measurements for a new age

At the Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles, it was agreed, according to Gorkana that Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) – the  main PR measuring stick in use for decades has now been rejected by delegates from 33 countries.

Well we always knew it was a bit iffy, not least because the well known phrase ‘you can’t buy coverage like this’  is literally true – you can’t buy advertising in many of the editorial situations the PR industry gets clients onto, plus AVE massively undervalues the longtail benefits of positive coverage.

While Barcelona has put it’s foot down on AVE, the great and good of PR haven’t yet proposed an alternative. Offline they may continue to struggle but happily online we’re got plenty of options, here’s a few off the bat:

1) The number of new links to your site/blog – good for reputation, SEO and reach

2) The increase in the number of mentions on Google your brand gets.

3) Website grade – use one of the online tools to measure how well your website scores before and after a campaign.

4) How many new visitors to your blog/website generated.

5) Increase in Twitter followers/Facebook fans/LinkedIn connections.

6) How many results your online press release generates on other blogs/websites.

7) How much money it makes you – assuming you have end to end analytics.