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PR Metrics (Reach, Social Echo, Sentiment, AVE, Custom Scoring)
PR Metrics (Reach, Social Echo, Sentiment, AVE, Custom Scoring)

Learn about the different PR Metrics and their definitions.

Cheyenne V. avatar
Written by Cheyenne V.
Updated this week

Several metrics are available in Meltwater designed to assist Public Relations and Communications professionals in measuring the impact of earned media. These metrics are essential for evaluating the effectiveness of PR efforts.

This article will cover:

Estimated Views

Estimated Views is a metric that approximates the number of times an average article from a publication has been viewed. This is accomplished by dividing a publication’s monthly page views by the number of articles it published in a given month. Additional logic is applied to eliminate outliers.

Learn more about Estimated Views.

Reach

Reach estimates the potential viewership of a specific article based on the number of monthly unique visitors to the source. This metric is powered by our partnership with SimilarWeb, a leading internet technology company specializing in marketing data and analytics.

Meltwater has multiple views where you can find Reach metrics to an article, such as Explore, Monitor, and Analyze dashboards. To find the reach of an article in Explore, follow these steps:

  1. Click Explore in the left-hand navigation bar

  2. Open an existing saved search or create a new search

  3. Click Reach in the bottom left-hand corner of an article in Meltwater

  4. A breakdown of desktop reach and mobile reach will be loaded below

  5. Click on reach numbers to access detailed information on that specific document.

  6. Here, you will discover Global, Country, and Category Rank.

    Example: See the reach of The Washington Post's online publication: https://www.similarweb.com/website/washingtonpost.com

  7. View how the reach of the source compares to competitors on a global, country, and category scale:

  8. Track traffic changes over time and traffic sources.

Social Echo

Social Echo helps you understand the vitality of news coverage (i.e., the extent to which a story resonates with its audience). It’s computed by aggregating the number of posts, shares, reposts, and other engagement indicators.

Social Echo can be a very valuable metric when determining a campaign's impact. High Social Echo is a proxy for a successful campaign (a desirable outcome). Similarly, when determining the impact of an issue you’re tracking, a high Social Echo would indicate a high impact (an undesirable outcome).

Meltwater has multiple views where you can find Reach metrics to an article, such as Explore, Monitor, and Analyze dashboards. To find the reach of an article in Explore, follow these steps:

  1. Click Explore in the left-hand navigation bar

  2. Open an existing saved search or create a new search

  3. Select the Social Echo hyperlink on articles in the Explore search results

Note: The initial update takes 6 hours after publication.

Social_Echo.jpg

Engagement Metrics:

  • Facebook - Total number of Posts, Likes, and Comments.

  • X (formerly Twitter)- Amount of times content has been Posted or Reposted*.

  • Reddit - Total number of shares across the top 17,000 most popular sub-reddits. (From Oct 2019 onwards)

Note: X does not provide access to all of their data. There might be slight differences between the metrics displayed in Meltwater and those on X. The X API is focused on relevance and not completeness, which means that X only sends us the data it deems to be most relevant. Therefore, some of the Post and Repost metrics may differ when displayed inside Meltwater.

Unfortunately, there may be some instances you do not see Social Echo included under an article. Some articles see less social engagement than you would hope and expect. If an article has little or no social engagement, time would be better spent focusing on the content or publications that do drive audience engagement. These metrics, or lack thereof, help you refine and improve your PR strategy.

Sentiment

Sentiment assesses the opinion expressed in a body of a text, categorizing it as Positive, Negative, or Neutral.

You can view Sentiment in both Explore and Monitor results. To do so, follow these steps:

  1. Click Explore or Monitor in the left-hand navigation bar

  2. Navigate to the article you want to find the sentiment for

  3. Sentiment is located in the bottom right-hand corner of the article

Examples of each sentiment type with real-world examples:

Positive - a user is exclaiming love for a Coca-Cola campaign.

Negative - a user displaying negative emotion towards the taste of a Coca-Cola product.

Neutral - this user is simply stating a fact about a Coca-Cola collectable, with no emotion implied.

Learn more about Sentiment.

Advertising Value Equivalency

AVE approximates the monetary value of earned media efforts (e.g. a PR Campaign) by comparing them to the equivalent cost of placing advertisements. While controversial, it provides insights into potential PR value instead of actual.

The calculation of AVE involves several key factors:

  • Unique Visitors: AVE starts with the unique visitor count for each source, which is based on monthly activity. This data is provided to us by our partner, SimilarWeb, a prominent internet technology company specializing in marketing data and analytics.

  • Calculation Formula: The formula used to calculate the online advertising value equivalency is as follows:

X * 0.025 * 0.37

Here's what each component represents:

  • X: This stands for the reach or unique visitor figure for a specific article or source.

  • 0.025: This represents the standard error, assuming that, on average, about 2.5% of the audience will view a particular article.

  • 0.37: This signifies the estimated value of 37 cents for each visitor. Keep in mind that this value can be adjusted to reflect your specific valuation of each viewer.

This calculation helps you estimate the potential advertising value of your earned media efforts based on reach and engagement metrics.

AVE Widgets are available in Analyze Dashboards to measure and report the potential worth of your media coverage.

  1. Click Analyze in the left-hand navigation bar

  2. Open an existing Dashboard or create a new one by clicking Get Started

  3. Select a Dashboard template

  4. Click Add Insights

  5. Select from one of the following insights:

Share of Voice by AVE

Shows a comparison of share of voice between multiple searches and tags, based upon AVE. AVE is calculated in USD.

Top Locations by AVE

Distribution of AVE by location. AVE is calculated in USD.

Top Publications by AVE

Shows the editorial publications with the largest AVE across your selected inputs. AVE is calculated in USD.

Keywords by AVE

Shows the most frequent keywords and phrases in the articles with the largest AVE across your selected inputs. AVE is calculated in USD.

AVE Trend

Shows AVE between your selected inputs, trended over time. AVE is calculated in USD.

Customizing Data Density

  1. In the settings side panel, select Date Density

  2. Choose from hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly

  3. Select Apply and you will see your settings reflected on the dashboard.

Customizing AVE

  1. Select any insight with AVE

  2. In the settings side panel, click the Configuration Settings dropdown

  3. Select AVE value or AVE currency

  4. Adjust these to your choice

  5. Click Apply to see the settings reflected on the dashboard

Custom Scoring Metrics

Note: This is no longer a feature we offer to new customers. If you would like to learn more about similar features, please contact your Meltwater Account team or inquire using the chat option in the bottom right-hand corner.

Custom Scoring allows you to define metrics tailored to your PR goals. Assign values to topics and placements that align with your brand's message and track performance over time.

Custom Scoring will enable a shared understanding across your team of what is being said about your brand or campaign, to help you optimize future initiatives and effectively prove the ROI of your efforts to key stakeholders

Setting up Custom Scoring

The below steps will help you select metrics relevant to your PR efforts. Once set up you will be able to apply your selections across other editorial searches and generate reports with one click.

You can view your reports on the Custom Scoring page and also download it as a csv file.

  1. Select the Reports dropdown in the left-hand navigation bar

  2. Select Custom Score Reports

  3. Select New Model

  4. You will now need to Select the metrics that align with your goals.

  5. Once you select to toggle on, configure options for each metric will load.

  6. Enter the details of importance into the fields

  7. Select OK

    Prominence.png
    define_custom_score.png

  8. Under Preview, select one of your current searches as an input. This will demonstrate how your score performs on articles while you can continue adjusting the metrics on the same page.

    Preview_3_.png

  9. Once all updates have been made to the score values, select Next

  10. Name your score model

    Note: If you don’t want to generate a report you can skip that with just saving the score. Select Save Score Model in the bottom right corner.

  11. Select your report settings

  12. Select Create Report

    This is how your report looks once it has been generated (it could take a few seconds or minutes depending on the date range and number of articles):

    overview_of_custom_scoring.png

    If you scroll down in this view we provide some insights into how articles perform over time:

    Viewing and Exporting Reports - You can download this report in the form of an editable CSV file. Your saved Custom Score and your reports will be available in the Custom Scoring page:

    saved_custom_score_reports.png

  13. Accessing Saved Customer Score Reports - Your saved report will be available on the Custom Score page.

    1. Via the tick box, Select the report

    2. The View Selected Report icon will the report page to view the scores and articles.

    3. The Export icon will download an Excel file for the report. The final columns within this report include the scores assigned to each article.

Custom_Scoring.png

Learn more about Custom Scoring.

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