"Half of PR pros admitted to presenting a metric they didn't understand." 😱

A new survey from CoverageBook (and 12 Chat GPT prompts)

A new data literacy survey of more than 400 PR pros from CoverageBook showed, "over half of PRs lack confidence in their data literacy skills.

This isn't meant to shame or otherwise make #PR pros look bad. But, it should spark conversations and an opportunity for improvement.

Where is the disconnect? What are the root causes? How can we do better? (I also wrote more about how this is an issue in the tech industry, here.)

The positive news is that almost ALL in-house professionals are willing to invest more in PR if they had more confidence in agency data capability.

If you work with or run an agency, this is a HUGE area of opportunity. It’s one of the reasons we implemented Reputation+.

WHERE THE DISCONNECT HAPPENS & ROOT CAUSES

📊 Poor Initial Goal Communication
If PR teams don’t have a clear understanding of what to track initially, it starts a cascading issue long-term. While most teams track “traditional” metrics, they may not add in unique brand metrics or may be asked to track something that is not possible.

📊 Training and Education
"Classically" trained public relations professionals often come from a humanities background which does not inherently have a data component. That signals a few things -- core data literacy programs within PR programs, in-house or in-agency training and development around metrics.

📊 Afraid to ask for Clarification
Internal culture may prevent teams from asking for help, training or clarification. This is absolutely a brutal fact that should be considered if you’re doing an internal review on data literacy. Do team members feel like they can ask for help, feedback, tools, or training?

📊 Lack of Tools and Resources
Monitoring a brand's reputation, share of voice, even media mentions across all corners of the web is quite costly. When budgets don't allow for accurate infrastructure, much of this is left to manual work. That encompasses a level of unintentional human error or inability to "locate" all necessary data points.

📊 Timing
When a PR team is coordinating crisis management, media relations, content creation, etc. Time doesn't always permit a significant data deep dive. As mentioned above, if much of this work is manual, it would then detract from achieving the core deliverables.

📊 Not in Alignment
When CEOs, CMOs and CFOs are not part of the PR metrics conversation, therein lies one of the essential problems. There needs to be understanding around which activities sit "on top of," or "above" the funnel (similar to branding exercises) and which have direct and measurable impact.

Before you present something that you don’t understand, think about where you can learn or get additional context:

OPPORTUNITES

While Chat GPT won’t solve data literacy (at least right now), here are 12 prompts you can use to get started and then dive deeper:

1. Audience Data: "Can you provide a breakdown of how to analyze demographic data for our audience?"

2. Sentiment Analysis: "How can I use sentiment analysis to understand public perception of our brand?"

3. Social Media Metrics: "What are key social media metrics we should be tracking for our PR campaigns?"

4. Media Coverage Analysis: "How can we effectively measure the reach and impact of our media coverage?"

5. Campaign Performance: "What metrics should I consider to evaluate the success of our PR campaign?"

6. Competitor Analysis: "What are some strategies for monitoring and analyzing our competitors' PR activities?"

7. Crisis Management: "What key indicators should we monitor to identify and mitigate a potential PR crisis?"

8. SEO PR: "How can SEO data be incorporated into our PR reporting?"

9. Press Release Performance: "How can we measure the impact of our press releases?"

10. PR Return on Investment (ROI): "How can we calculate the ROI of our PR efforts?"

11. Data Visualization: "Can you recommend some tools or methods for visualizing our PR data?"

12. Data-driven PR Strategy: "How can we use data to inform our future PR strategy?"

Thanks for reading! If you’re struggling with data literacy, feel free to drop me a line. I’m always happy to create resources and more to help my fellow professionals.

In service,

Sarah

p.s. My latest article in Entrepreneur went live today, “Why Local Media is the Secret to Getting Free PR”