5 big metrics mistakes that communicators make

Measuring the impact of your message is imperative in communications, but what good is it if you’re doing it wrong?

“There are tons of mistakes communicators make in measurement,” says Angela Jeffrey, vice president of integrated media for VMS and a member of the Institute for Public Relations Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation.

Jeffrey and other experts told Ragan.com what they see as the most common and most detrimental communication measurement mistakes, along with tips for ensuring that the reader counts and that the survey data and sales figures actually mean something.

1. Not measuring enough.

Many communicators focus only on “counting the stuff we did,” says Ryan Williams, president of TWI Surveys. Or maybe they only take surveys or look at sales figures. “They’re not painting a full picture,” he says.

You’ve got to look at your outcomes—sales and conversions—in addition to your outputs—clippings, retweets, Facebook posts—Jeffrey says. “The real result of a PR campaign isn’t how many clips you get; it’s whether you moved the needle on outcomes like sales, survey scores, customer satisfaction,” she says.