Mastering Data-Driven Public Relations: Insights with Measurement Expert Katie Paine

Unlock the secrets to turning data into action as host Peter Woolfolk welcomes Katie Paine, the esteemed 'Measurement Queen,' back to the Public Relations Review Podcast. This episode is a treasure trove of insights, where Katie and I cut through the digital data deluge, stressing the importance of aligning PR measurement strategies with business objectives. Expect to be enlightened on how to navigate the complex terrain of popular measurement platforms, grasp the subtleties of sentiment analysis across diverse audiences, and uncover the human touch essential for transforming raw data into meaningful strategies.

As our conversation unfolds, we delve into the gritty details of what metrics truly move the needle in the PR world. We discuss the power of Google Analytics as an 'acceptable proxy' for unraveling the digital trails that lead to tangible goal conversions and revenue. The discussion further pivots to the challenges of gaining senior leadership buy-in for these metrics and how they lend credibility to PR initiatives. From Boeing's reputation management woes to the transformative potential of AI in data management, including tools like ChatGPT4, this episode is a can't-miss for anyone looking to future-proof their communication efforts. Join us as we also take a moment to extend our heartfelt thanks to our contributors and listeners – you're the heartbeat of this podcast.

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Transcript

Announcer: 1:11

Welcome. This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others. Now here is your host, Peter Woolfolk.

Peter Woolfolk: 1:31

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world. This podcast is now ranked by Apple as being among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide, so thank you to all of our guests and listeners for being the basis for this accomplishment. Now question as PR people data is very important for us to validate the effectiveness of our programs for our clients or our employers. With the digital age firmly upon us, are we now in a better position to provide more and better data to support our outcomes? Well, my guest today, perhaps, is the most prominent person in the PR measurement arena. Frequently called the measurement queen, she is our go-to person for all public relations measurement information, so I am very pleased to announce her second visit to the podcast. Katie Paine, our measurement queen, thank you for joining us today.

Katie Paine: 2:28

Thank you so much. I am so honored to be on this podcast. It's so much fun and I love, as you know, talking about measurement.

Peter Woolfolk: 2:34

Well, very good. Well, now that the public relations has really become awash with digital platforms, will our measurement performance become better? Let's talk about that.

Katie Paine: 2:47

Listen. No, here's the problem. I have literally talked to clients who have 10 different platforms that they are using to collect data and they're using, you know, seven different platforms to communicate to the world, and they come to me because nothing is getting. Either nothing is working or they don't know what it means, or they're just overwhelmed with the amount of data. And that's part of the challenge of the digital age is that it's very easy to get so much data that you feel very overwhelmed. And most of the communications people I know did not major in math and they are not in the business because they love numbers, you know. I mean Excel, spreadsheets and pivot tables are not their favorite tools or what they like to be able to. You know what they like to spend their Friday afternoons in or working with. So the answer is is that we are overwhelmed with data. The good news is that there are two or three major developments that are going to help us deal better with the sort of onslaught of data that we're in.

Peter Woolfolk: 4:03

Okay, well, let's begin to talk about that, because one of the things that I understand is that people need to set their goals, to identify what they're going to measure and what would success look like, and perhaps that will help refine, if you will, the instruments they might need to use in their individual projects.

Katie Paine: 4:25

Absolutely. I mean you cannot talk about platforms or tools or anything. It's literally when I give speeches I always say it's the second to least important thing that you're going to hear about today. It's probably the least important thing you're going to hear about today in terms of the actual tools, because if you go into, you know I go into corporations and clients and nonprofits and I say what's the business goal?

Katie Paine: 4:51

And it's you know, make more money, sell more stuff, bigger market share, get more donations, whatever it happens to be. And then I say you know, how does communications contribute to that? And they say well, our job is to raise awareness or protect the brand or reduce risk or any of those things. And I can promise you, and we'll bet you a lobster dinner, that you cannot use any of the more popular platforms out there, be it Muckrack or Scission or Meltwater or whoever it happens to be, to measure any. You can't measure any of those things, those big, important communications objectives. You can't measure any of those things, those big, important communication objectives. You can't measure them just with a media platform. And even if it's a media and a digital platform or a social media platform, or even if it's integrated, unless it ties back to the business priorities or the organizational priorities, you're measuring the wrong things.

Katie Paine: 5:53

So the first step is to identify how communications contributes to those organizational priorities, and it may be as simple as you know building the brand or protecting the brand Well, that's great.

Katie Paine: 6:08

But then you need some brand research and that's not necessarily only going to come from your, you know, sprout Social account or your Meltwater account or whatever it happens to be, and the mistake that everybody makes in addition to saying oh you know, let's just buy a platform that's going to solve all our problems. But the mistake people make is the importance of human understanding in order to draw recommendations and conclusions. I just spent the last week analyzing, measuring a crisis for a client. You know 809 articles that I had to skim through and look at and code, and you know, figure out what messages were coming across and what issues and themes and who was being quoted. All the rest of the stuff is very easy to measure, but it doesn't mean anything unless you can say in fact, during the course of this communications crisis, the theme switched from individual X, y, z, harm to a global political dogfight. You know you have to look at the stuff and use your gut feelings and your instincts to understand what's really going on.

Peter Woolfolk: 7:30

Now, when you just described looking at people's feelings, is that part of what we would call sentiment gauging, sentiment? And there are programs to do that sort of thing.

Katie Paine: 7:41

Here's the problem with sentiment I mean especially automated sentiment is the fact that it's much subtler than that, if you think about it. First of all, all measurement needs to start with the audience you're talking to. So if you say I'm a big, solid corporation with deep pockets and therefore I can protect you from harm and I couldn't possibly be involved in whatever is that you know you're accusing me of or whatever that might resonate with my dad you know he's dead, but he was, you know, editor of fortune and in those days that made a difference it's not going to resonate with a 25 year old person in somewhere in the midwest who probably spends too much time online and you know, maybe hating all corporations, or they're a farmer and it has nothing to do with them, or you know it's irrelevant. And what people and this is where we all have to take a big fat lesson from politics what people care about are their dogs and their children and their neighbors, and what happens, you know, outside their windows and inside their cars. And so when people hand me a here's my top tier media list and I'm like that's great, how much do your, the stakeholders in your audience, actually trust any of these publications, because if you read Pew Research right, people don't trust the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. They trust Nextdoor and their friends on Facebook and their pickleball group. And so it's all of this data is. You know, I can I can a little challenging to get you know chat data from pickleball groups, but, but you can ask people, you can still survey them and say where do you get your information and what sources do you trust. But it's really much more it's not about. So back to your sentiment question. Back to your sentiment question.

Katie Paine: 9:59

Sentiment is an algorithm that is applied to a bucket of words that you hope is correct. But I use this example all the time when I was measuring a major pharmaceutical company that had teamed up with Google to cure death, ie prolong life. But their phrase was you know, we're teaming up to cure death. Well, every single article came back negative because some sentiment analysis machine decided the death was negative. On the other hand, if I'm trying to prevent it or I've saved a life and stopped somebody from dying, you know all of those trigger words that algorithms pop up and sort of go for you have to go in there and fix, and so you know what is.

Katie Paine: 10:39

Spend a lot of time these days helping people figure out how to measure. You know sort of issues and crisis, because that seems to be what PR is for these days, and you know you're not going to get positive coverage in a crisis, and so what you're going to get is a report that says everything's negative. Well, no, not everything's negative. A lot of the stuff might be balanced, and in a crisis, that's wonderful. Right, that's a 10. You get your message across once every 20 articles, and you might get a nice quote from your CEO once every 50 articles in a crisis, and you're doing well. So it's all about making sure that your tools and your metrics are appropriate to whatever you're measuring. You know and again, the thing that's very top of mind is this analysis I just did, where the top 10 list is your typical top 10 list, your top 10,.

Katie Paine: 11:34

You know, media tier list is what you expect it, but where's all the coverage? Coming from Local newspapers? Because ultimately this thing happened in local communities and so local people covered it, and so the bulk of the coverage was in local papers, which local papers or local radio which you know, generally people don't have on their lists anymore, I mean, other than Burrell's and Nexus. It's hard to even get them you.

Katie Paine: 12:01

You know it's one of those challenges that it's not just the sentiment, it's where the sentiment is appearing. It's like who's talking about the things? Is it a trusted source? I mean, you know the, you know the political environment, right? I mean somebody could be sitting on my doorstep telling me that the water is coming up above my door because of the snowstorm and you know, storm yesterday or whatever, and I wouldn't believe them because you know they've got the wrong color hat on. So a lot of it still goes back to that human touch and the things that we, as communications professionals, know how to do. It's just that you know, a lot of it too is and I'll let you get into questions soon, I promise but a lot of it is just kind of understanding that the traditional ways we've thought about measurement as communications professionals have radically changed.

Peter Woolfolk: 12:59

You know, the big question, the big thing that I've just gotten from this, is that something I think was what salespeople will say. If you want to know what people think, ask them. So, that means you need to go directly, identify who your audience, who is your audience, and go directly to them, rather than taking a shotgun approach to trying to ascertain how they feel, how they respond to things. But you just need to ask them directly how they feel, how they respond to things.

Peter Woolfolk: 13:24

but you just need to answer them directly and that way you can be more specific in what they feel want, need and those sort of things.

Katie Paine: 13:30

Well, you know, the great example is Microsoft. That did some research. They've. You know, if you think Microsoft Enterprise software, who do you think buys it right? I have in my mind a 50-year-old white guy who's been in the job for 20 years. Guess what it's? 30-somethings, vastly diverse. And guess what they think about when they hear Microsoft, they think it's the Xbox company. So if your audience thinks of you as a game company and you're trying to sell them enterprise software, you might need to do a little shifting of your brand or your messages.

Katie Paine: 14:12

You know, it's absolutely so. What do people? And nobody is not nobody. There's a lot of stuff out there about how the buyers are changing in Gen Z and, you know, millennials and everybody else is all going to be that different. Yeah, but if you haven't done a survey of your audience for the last three years, you have no clue what's happened, because everything changed with COVID for starters, and then everybody changed in the post-COVID world too. World too, and so what your audience feels, thinks and believes today is nothing like what it was feeling, thinking and believing in 2020 or 2021. And these people? I'll get on one minor thought box.

Katie Paine: 14:56

If you are doing brand studies or surveys of some sort of your customers only once every two years, you are wasting every single penny you're spending on it. Things happen faster than that and what you should do is be doing it every quarter. If you can afford it, do a small survey every quarter or at least do a decent, sizable study every six months so that you know what's going on, what are the trends and where people are getting information. The other big thing is you can also, with all this digital stuff, it is a lot easier to, at least depending upon what systems you have and depending upon what marketing tools you happen to be using. But it is a lot easier to figure out what your audience is doing and if you have a database of customers, it's pretty easy to figure out how often they go to your website or how often they visit your catalog or whatever it happens to be.

Katie Paine: 15:56

I mean, there's a lot more of that kind of data around that we didn't used to have and I'm not dismissing that at all. You have to ask them. But you could also look at their behavior. If you have a lot of customers or if you have an online store or anything. People were saying to me the other day well, what am I going to learn from looking at my website traffic? I'm like, how about if they're coming in from I don't know social media? You know a referral from. You know some publication or a speech that you did? You know it's like yeah, you can learn a lot from some of this digital data that's out there if you use it correctly.

Peter Woolfolk: 16:36

And you know that's the thing I was going to focus on, because measurement also depends upon what your project is or what it is you're trying to measure. The measurement also depends upon what your project is or what it is you're trying to measure Click-throughs how many people have gone to the website, how many people responded to our email, outreach or newsletter, those kind of things. So that portion of it again, I guess has to be defined clearly and that will help identify what the tools are that can be more specific and accurate in terms of getting that data.

Katie Paine: 17:05

Yeah, it's what I call the acceptable. You have to find the acceptable proxies right. So I'm not going to necessarily know. If somebody comes to my website just totally randomly and wanders around and eventually ends up buying an e-book from me or a class from me, I'm going to know where that person came from. If it's in MailChimp, if I put a tag on it when I put it out there. If I put it on LinkedIn, I know where they're coming from and I know that they're reading it, and then I know where they're going. I can figure out what they're doing at my site and I can create an event, a goal conversion in Google Analytics and get you know know exactly how much that post in LinkedIn you know brought in in terms of revenue.

Katie Paine: 17:57

So there's ways today that earned media can fact track their digital footprints. The big thing is you have to get agreement from your senior leadership and your bosses and everybody else who's going to see your metrics that this is the acceptable proxy. I mean, one of the most eye-opening conversations I had was with a bank, and one of the most eye-opening conversations I had was with a bank, a government bank, and their goal in life was to be the most credible source of financial information. And I said, great, we can measure that. And they said how can you measure that?

Katie Paine: 18:36

You know, obviously you could do a survey, an indicator that somebody might find your content, your financial information, credible. And they thought about it for a minute and they said, oh, obviously, if they follow us on social media, they must find us credible. And if they download this white paper that we just wrote, that's a sign of credibility, because obviously they seem to think it's most, it's important enough. And if they read to the bottom, or they watch all of our videos, or if they consume all of our content in its entirety and I can be wasting time if they don't find us credible. So those are all indicators of credibility. So one way to measure things would be to survey their audience and say do you find us credible? On other ways to say, okay, here are people doing these things. If those downloads, or whatever they happen to be, go up, it must mean that more people are finding you credible.

Peter Woolfolk: 19:36

You know again I get back to it because I'm looking at what you pointed out earlier is you know, what is it that you're trying to measure and then finding the proper tool to use it, because there's so many different things, you know.

Peter Woolfolk: 19:50

Corporate reputation, for instance, is another one. Boeing is having a heck of a time out there now and I don't think it's too difficult for them to measure. But you know, they made some missteps a long time ago but never made any preparations or took serious action to correct it. And internally, people are continuing because they find out that some internal measurements or activities have not been applied because they're still having problems. So people have to look at exactly what it is and what process, and maybe also even who's doing the measurement, because if some folks don't know how to do it, the fact that they're trying to do it, you know, again comes out with the same result, which is not good well, some of the smartest people that I've ever worked with, you know, have been made.

Katie Paine: 20:41

May I'm not saying they did, but they may have been doing measurement all wrong for quite a while, you know. I mean, that's kind of why I talked to them. It's why they come to me is that they've been measuring one way because that's the way their predecessor did it and that's the way everybody's always done it. And guess what? Maybe it's not the best way to measure in 2024. It might have been the best way to measure things in 1919, but not necessarily today.

Katie Paine: 21:13

We haven't said the AI word yet, but that's another thing that is going to radically change things very quickly is that you're going to be able to put and I've seen this done you're going to be able to put all your content into Gemini or ChatGPT4 and say analyze this, tell me how often this guy was quoted, tell me how many times this phrase appeared, tell me what the gist of it is, you know, and you'll get an answer. That's the other advantage of having everything be digitized these days. You couldn't do that with the old New York Times print copies, you know Well, you know and again.

Peter Woolfolk: 21:55

I guess it's a combination of knowing exactly what it is you want to measure then, knowing that you identify the proper tools to measure it and also find competent people to know how to use those tools. So I think it's a combination of all three of those things. So people first have to say, well, what are we trying to find out here? And then you know the best way of doing it to getting the results that we feel will accurately give us the information we're looking for.

Katie Paine: 22:24

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it, and the truth is is the fact that a lot of communications departments in larger corporations these days are hiring data analysts. They've decided that it's easier to teach a data analyst about PR than it is to teach a PR person how to analyze data.

Peter Woolfolk: 22:44

Right, I've noticed that happening.

Katie Paine: 22:47

Yeah, and you know it's funny because I get the request. I'm like, do you know anybody who can do this? I'm like there's a bunch of students out there, but they're not in the communications department, they're in the. You know, they're graduating from data analytics and math and IT and places like that. They're not going to be in the communications schools.

Peter Woolfolk: 23:10

You know, I did an interview, probably sometime late last year, with a professor I think it was from the University of Utah, and what they looked at was how some companies are using the terms that they use data in their everyday operations, and how they measured.

Peter Woolfolk: 23:29

That was, they looked at where this information was coming from and then looked at the companies and what they found out was that there are some companies yes, we actually do have a data person here and we use it, and so forth and so on and there are a few other companies that just say that we use data to do A, B, C and D. So somehow you've got to find out who knows what they're doing. So, from the PR firm, yes, I think what you've just said we have someone on staff who knows how to do it. That's what they do. So we can be sure that we're accurate and can give you accurate information and results about the projects we're involved in.

Katie Paine: 24:06

Yeah, oh, trust me, I love it when there's a data person in the room. It's like, oh, you actually know how to analyze data, and it does. I mean, and I just I think it's the reason why, you know, McMaster University years ago combined, had a combined program with a business school and the communication school at Syracuse, and I was like that's brilliant, because you understand business, you understand how to analyze data and you understand how to communicate. You know you're the perfect employee.

Peter Woolfolk: 24:40

Well, you know, and that, of course, is very, very important. I use data here because obviously I look at how many people download individual episodes and over the year, I mean, did my downloads increase over the past year? And most of the time the answer to that is yes, uh. What I also know is that, uh, somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of my audience are female. Uh, so, uh, you know I have to. How do I address that one? Is that by I have female guests to have them on? Yeah, but it's also content. So, yes, I do use it. I might not go as deep because I mean, there's only so much I can do. I can have people on to talk about certain topics and, you know, go from there, but at least I have some data to decide. Am I doing the right thing, the right way?

Katie Paine: 25:27

Exactly, exactly.

Peter Woolfolk: 25:29

Well, I tell you this, I mean, this has now what is? Well, I tell you, this has Now, what is it? I think that, as you think about PR people, that we make the biggest mistake in measuring stuff, have you run across anything like that yet?

Katie Paine: 25:42

Yep, the biggest thing is well, it's kind of combined. One is being convinced that getting a placement is the equivalent of success. Just because something gets placed, it does not necessarily mean that anybody in your target audience sees it or cares about it Okay, right, I got you.

Katie Paine: 26:07

That's the first thing that makes me crazy, and too many agencies in particular suffer from that, because they think they're getting paid to do placements and they're not. They're getting paid to get messages out to a target audience on a particular topic, and so it's adding those qualifying factors as in did you reach the target audience with the right message at the right time? That's success, and so placements, impressions, add value. Equivalency, all those awful old metrics are. The biggest mistake they make is that if that's what you're counting, you have no idea whether in fact you're achieving your goals.

Peter Woolfolk: 26:50

And I think that's something that needs to be clarified. Then those agencies need to say make sure that. How are we measuring that ordinance to make sure our message got through or did it get through, and if not, what was missing in the delivery of it or the content of it?

Katie Paine: 27:05

Yeah, one of the one of the easiest fixes for that is to is to throw out the concept of placements and looking at what percentage of all your coverage appeared in your top tier media and things like share a voice. We get too locked into our own little perspective and we forget that other things happen. There's a rest of the world going on around there that may derail your plans and I think if you don't look at the competition or your peers or some kind of a benchmark, you have no idea what's really going on.

Peter Woolfolk: 27:42

Well, I tell you, this is and I think we've hit on some very, very important things here and that is, you know, having people to understand how data works, making sure it's going to the right audience. How do we ascertain if the results are what we want it to and, if not, why not? Those kinds of things have to take place to make sure that data is actually serving the purpose that it was designed to serve.

Katie Paine: 28:09

Yeah, and I think I'm going to add one thing to that, which is, I think, what, what? I think the mistake that a lot of people make is to think that the answers are in a tool, whether you know again, muckrack, meltwater, scission sprout, whatever it happens to be, if you, if you think that that tool is going to do that thing for you, you are very mistaken. Because, I mean, there's a reason why I break up my measurement course into eight sessions over, you know, hour and a half over eight weeks is because that's what communications measurement is all about. You can't just look at one aspect of it being. You know I get stuff out there, right, I mean it's.

Katie Paine: 28:54

You know you may have to do surveys. You have to look at your Google Analytics. You, you know, need to be looking at combining different pieces of data. So you look at your Google Analytics over time and you see, well, did that press tour do anything? Did that press release do anything? Did that press release do anything? Did it drive people to my website? Did more people download? All of those things are braided together. Today, that's what the sort of bottom line of your digital world is is that you've got all these different pieces of data and you've got to braid them together so that they reflect your actual goals. You're measuring against what you're supposed to be doing.

Peter Woolfolk: 29:42

That's the target, right there, that is exactly it.

Katie Paine: 29:46

That's what the problem is is, most people don't measure against what the actual goals are, or they're too vague. That's the other thing. If one more person tells me that their goal is to raise awareness, for you know, whatever it happens to be, I'm like no, you are. It's like I don't know. Boeing, I mean boeing doesn't need any more awareness. Everybody knows what boeing is, right. What you need to do is have people understand that they're fixing the problem. You know breast cancer awareness month. We don't need more awareness of breast cancer. So I mean that the term awareness is one of my triggers where I just say that's not your goal in life. Your goal in life is to generate awareness of a specific thing. I mean, sure, if you're launching your product, you probably want everybody to know the brand, but you also want them to know what it does.

Peter Woolfolk: 30:37

Right.

Katie Paine: 30:38

You know what are the benefits.

Peter Woolfolk: 30:41

Well, katie, you know, as always, it is a joy to talk to you, because not only are you enjoyable to talk to, but the information delivered is so specific. It really helps people understand and think about what it is that they're trying to do and maybe how to better improve what it is that they want to get out of the exercise.

Katie Paine: 30:59

Thank you. Thank you for doing this podcast for the same reason. You really are helping people understand aspects of the business that aren't necessarily touched upon that often.

Peter Woolfolk: 31:10

Well as always. I appreciate it and any closing remarks you have.

Katie Paine: 31:15

Just if you want more information on measurement, go to painpublishingcom. We have courses, we have e-books, we have newsletters, we have memberships designed around nonprofits and educational institutions and solo practitioners. We can, you know, come to our site and we'll fix you up with a measurement solution.

Peter Woolfolk: 31:38

Well, katie thank you so, so, very, very much, as I told our audience that you are our go-to person when it comes to measurement information. So again, I really, really want to thank you for being our guest on the podcast again, well, you're very, very welcome. Well, it's people like you that help us to grow. As I tell you, I was shocked when I found out in September of last year that we were ranked by Apple as one of the top 1% of podcasts in the world. It didn't happen because of me.

Katie Paine: 32:08

You had a big part to do with it.

Peter Woolfolk: 32:13

You asked the right question so thank you so very, very much, and I look forward to having you as our podcast again in the near future absolutely anytime thank you so very, very much thank you and to our podcast guests, let me say thank you for listening again.

Peter Woolfolk: 32:30

You're part of the reason that we continue to grow and we look forward to having you join us. You're part of the reason that we continue to grow and we look forward to having you join us for the next edition of the Public Relations Review Podcast. Have a great one.

Announcer: 32:42

Thank you. This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Thank you for joining us.