Emily White 
At Maven, creating impactful, integrated communication strategies relies on a results and data-driven approach. Tracking and utilizing media and social media metrics to inform strategy, measure success and showcase return on investment (ROI) is the key to ensuring our public relations initiatives are meeting clients’ business objectives.
Here are four ways Maven evaluates success and captures ROI for clients:
1) Share of voice
Share of voice (SOV) gauges brand visibility by measuring your brand’s share of media coverage compared to top peers and competitors. Maven will typically measure SOV at the onset of our client relationship as a benchmark so we can track increases throughout the lifespan of a campaign and/or evaluate year over year progress.
For example, an affordable housing development client was in the unique position to be an advocate for the need for more affordable housing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a few weeks, Maven secured more than 10 COVID-19-related media placements resulting in their brand retaining a 52% share of voice during a time when most of the industry remained silent.
2) Earned coverage breakdown
Tracking the number of earned media placements is important, but for more meaningful analysis, this data should be further evaluated to determine the quality of coverage. Here are a few ways Maven evaluates the quality of earned coverage:
- Placement type: feature story vs. company mention
- Performance metrics: High SEO impact mentions, top-tier readership mentions, headline mentions and social media amplification
- Coverage reach: national, local or trade media
- Sentiment: positive, negative or neutral
3) Key Message Inclusion
Another important metric to evaluate quality media coverage is key message inclusion. This goes one step beyond tracking overall article sentiment by monitoring the inclusion of company key messages, themes, products, spokespersons, etc. in media coverage.
For instance, Maven recently helped launch a local county health department. The campaign was successful, with a majority of earned media coverage including key messages, such as reliable (88%), improved outcomes (72%) and health equity (67%).
4) Digital Metrics
Monitoring the performance of organic (not paid) social media content across client platforms is also important to develop and maintain successful social media strategies and ensure clients reach their target audiences. A few common metrics (via sprout social) we analyze to track progress, make strategy adjustments and determine success includes:
- Impressions: The total number of times your post was displayed to a viewer
- Engagements: The total number of times users liked, commented or shared your content
- Engagement rate per impression: The total number of times users engaged with your post as a percentage of impressions
- Link clicks: The total number of times users clicked on the link in your post
For more information on how Maven measures ROI for clients, check out “How to Measure Digital ROI” on our blog
Posted In Measurement