EVALUATE PR INFLUENCE BY CRUNCHING A FEW NUMBERS

Everybody wants to see tangible results when they invest their hard- earned cash. But when it comes to public relations, we are dealing with ideas and persuasion rather than nuts and bolts. There is an ongoing challenge in the communications business to prove that a $50,000 PR campaign, for example, generated at least $50,000 worth of business-building media. Here's one way to get a quantifiable evaluation of your media relations programs. Content analysis is the rather dry term used to describe the quantitative and qualitative value of news stories generated by an organization's PR department. Content analysis goes beyond determining "equivalent advertising value" - what the coverage would cost if it were purchased as advertising