Lisa LaMotta has an article for Forbes on PR for startups (via Giovanni Rodriguez). Along with a look at how PR can benefit new companies (but "PR types often promise more than they can deliver, so manage your expectations"), she delivers a summary of PR measurement:
While PR remains a squishy science, there are ways to loosely measure progress. The most common is the number of media references to your company in a given month. But there are subtler metrics, too, such as how many of your "core messages" were expressed in each article.Interesting to see that description after working on the social media measurement post last night.
The other interesting data point from the article is pricing information:
Average monthly fees for an established U.S. shop are about $10,000, according to a recent survey of 100 firms around the country with revenues over $3 million. Some firms charge by the hour, and still others offer a la carte services—say, for running a special event or triaging a corporate snafu. Rodriguez charges start-ups a monthly retainer from $8,000 to $15,000. That's not chump change, but it's far less than many print ad campaigns.With an average budget of $10K/month, it must be interesting to try to fund social media monitoring and analysis. The money has to come from somewhere, and I suspect it's not from the existing PR budget. Maybe the budget issue explains the prominence of big clients at the social media analysis companies.
