The Society for New Communications has issued an executive summary of a forthcoming study, the "ROI of Press Releases."   The study results state the obvious -- the terrain and tactics of press release distribution have changed.  But some of the legacy requirements remain.

PR professionals stick with their traditional goals of announcing news and increasing thought leadership.  Marketers view SEO and reaching consumers as the most important tactics in this case.  Small business owners position online press releases as business development tools and potential profit centres. 

What struck me most about the survey results was the lack of a clear winner in criteria for measuring the success of online press releases… regardless of your profession. As seen by the clustering of the survey responses (multiple selections allowed), those who rely on PR remain unclear about the best metrics: 

• Online press release republished on websites (79.6%)
• # times online press release viewed online (76.8%)
• Articles generated from the online press release (75.4%)
• Media interview requests (74.2%)
• Traffic to organization’s website (~73%)

What do these results say to me?  First, more must be done to prove the value of an online PR function.  Second, traditional press release success criteria, such as distribution and exposure, remain the default metrics for PR success, whether online or offline.  What this study fails to engage with (and the study authors note this limitation) is that we need to move to more robust models of capturing larger indicators of success, such as product sales from online articles and related behavioural shifts that result from online and offline PR).    

Granted, it is early days in developing metrics for an emerging media relations tool.  However, PR metrics must not only measure reaching the media but reaching the public directly.  Perhaps charities, such as one mentioned in a recent Metrica blog post, hold the key to proposing commercial angle metrics structure to how best to measure the success of our evaluation criteria.