Jen Reay, insights training and learning manager at Cision, explains how Cision's Insights team goes about helping clients to discover what their coverage actually means.
What is public relations?
Every organisation, be it a charity, bank or even your local shop, relies on reputation. Reputation can be formed many ways with direct experience, reviews, word of mouth and social media naming a few.
Think of your own purchasing habits; perhaps you are interested in buying a new phone, how do you go about making that decision? In today’s media-rich world, reputation can help one organisation stand out from another.
According to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), public relations:
"Is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.
"Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”
What are media insights?
Public relations' primary role is to manage an organisation's reputation in the media. The current media landscape is more complex than ever, due to the breath of media we consume.
Think about how many different types of media you are exposed to in one day - television, radio, online news, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, banner ads etc - all of which can be both consciously and unconsciously consumed.
Communicators have traditionally struggled to measure their results and, therefore, quantify the contribution they have made to business performance. Only fifteen years ago, PR insights used to be formed from physically measuring pieces of coverage with a ruler.
Thankfully, the industry has drastically moved on.
Today, in an increasingly data-driven world, our clients need to understand and digest the busy media landscape so they can easily see the impact their organisation had in a given period. Our work allows clients to see this abstract view of their media presence, while we also advise on how best to maximise their impact.
Why do PR professionals need media insights?
Public relations specialists need to understand their media campaign effectiveness in an easily digestable format. At Cision Insights, we cut through the media noise to provide our clients with strategic guidance, enabling them to form better communications and business results.
We help to put the media into context. Demonstrating how an organisation is positioned in the media helps them to understand their impact and compare themselves to their competitors.
For PRs, being able to see clear results of their communication efforts - whether tracking the impact of a campaign, issue management or understanding overall media strategies – puts them in line with their marketing and advertising peers.
An insight into Cision Insights
Cision is a global provider of earned media software and services to public relations professionals. We have over 4,000 global employees, with 1,000 of those being insight professionals making up the global Cision Insights team.
As a global division, we use our natural curiosity and first-class insights technology to provide media insight to some of the biggest global organisations.
The UK team consists of 150 insight professionals who work across our London and Oxford offices to give strategic direction and guidance to our clients' communications programmes. We service businesses and organisations of all shapes and sizes to meet their domestic, regional or global communications requirements.
