Wouldn’t it be great to be able to communicate the success of your PR to internal and external stakeholders?
That’s the goal for most companies when they engage in PR measurement and analysis. Of course, ideally, PR measurement is as much about looking for insights into how to improve PR rather than solely justifying the PR budget. PR measurement products are important tools in any PR strategy. Public relations analytics software can help you measure the effectiveness of your PR campaigns.Whilst there is a range of PR software and media databases available choosing the best one for your needs can be tough. Two of the most recognized brands on the market are Cision and Meltwater. Both offer media monitoring and media intelligence tools. They allow you to track news and mentions of your company, competitors or other companies of interest on social or traditional media.There are several differences between these platforms in terms of available features, media database size, and pricing. For example, Cision has a considerably larger media database, a press release creator and an online newsroom. However, for media databases bigger is not always better – the quantity and quality of contacts will vary depending on the geography and news beat you’re looking for. If you need help selecting which PR monitoring and PR measurement tools are right for your business, take a look here.Be aware that to get the most from any platform, you’ll still need to manually check the accuracy of the search results and tag coverage – a time-consuming process that most companies don’t factor in when they sign up to tools like Cision, Meltwater, TalkWaker etc.Also, many monitoring platforms provide fancy-looking dashboards with charts and numbers, but little in the way of real insight. It’s the interpretation of the data that can provide the most actionable insights. If you’d like help making sense of the data you’re getting from your PR monitoring platforms see how we can help here.Whether you’ve got a measurement program in place or are considering setting something up, be sure to check out our guide to PR measurement best practices.