PR Master Or Newbie?

1.

What is Advertising Value Equivalency?
- A.
  
  An increasingly important measure for evaluating the earned value of exposure across print, web and social media.
- B.
  
  A value that calculates the tone, or favorability, of a story.
- C.
  
  The amount of 'audience reach' that that a publication or website hits - equivalent to newspaper circulation.
- D.
  
  An increasingly irrelevant measure of PR performance, as its only really applicable to print media.
Correct Answer
D. An increasingly irrelevant measure of PR performance, as its only really applicable to print media.

Explanation
AVEs, or "advertising value equivalency", was a measure created to try and show a monetary value for the "free advertising" you in effect get through PR efforts. So, if a full page story appeared in The Wall Street Journal, you calculated that the story was "worth" the same amount as you would have paid for a full-page ad in the newspaper.

This measure of PR performance has always been dubious. First, large companies rarely paid the full advertising price that would known and listed publicly. Secondly, the measure did not make any distinction between a particularly positive or negative story (meaning, does one mention in a roundup about competitive products "count" the same as a feature on the CEO? Surely not!). Also, the measure has fallen into even more disrepute with the explosion of online and social media. The entire calculation falls apart online, where ads are not valued in size, but in "click-throughs" and in social media, which offer a completely different value proposition.

Increasingly useful measures of PR performance include tone/favorability, share of voice, message penetration, and influencer ranking.

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2.

What percentage of companies say that they have an executive or team responsible for public relations and/or corporate communications?
- A.
  
  55
- B.
  
  25
- C.
  
  95
- D.
  
  5
Correct Answer
C. 95

Explanation
According to research by the Corporate Executive Board, 95% of companies say they have an executive or team responsible for public relations and/or communications.

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3.

What does SME stand for?
- A.
  
  Social Measurement Experiment
- B.
  
  Social Media Executive
- C.
  
  Services and Measurement Executive
- D.
  
  Sample Measurement Experiment
Correct Answer
B. Social Media Executive

Explanation
A new position that many companies are creating is that of the Social Media Executive. This person is often a part of the PR and communications department, responsible for monitoring conversations in social media like Facebook and Twitter, responding to stakeholders via social media, and integrating social media into PR and marketing campaigns.

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4.

What kind of media are the most important for companies to monitor?
- A.
  
  Broadcast media
- B.
  
  Print publications
- C.
  
  Web news sites
- D.
  
  Social networks like Facebook and Twitter
- E.
  
  All of the above
Correct Answer
E. All of the above

Explanation
Depending on the type of company, any and all of the above media types can be valuable to monitor. Increasingly, individuals are getting their news and information from a variety of increasingly niche and segmented sources, and its important for companies to monitor a mix of media from the above groups.

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5.

How do companies measure the tone or favorability of coverage?
- A.
  
  Automated, artificial intelligence systems
- B.
  
  Humans, hand-coding articles for positive, negative, neutral, etc.
- C.
  
  A combination of A and B
- D.
  
  They don't, really - most companies don't try and evaluate this.
Correct Answer
C. A combination of A and B

Explanation
Most companies either make a choice between automated and hand-selection of stories for tonality, or use a combined approached. Automated systems have the ability to crawl through and immediately code thousands of stories, making them incredibly efficient. However, most find it necessary to have humans code a sample of important stories to get appropriate levels of accuracy.

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Pr Master Or Newbie?

What is Advertising Value Equivalency?

What percentage of companies say that they have an executive or team responsible for public relations and/or corporate communications?

What does SME stand for?

What kind of media are the most important for companies to monitor?

How do companies measure the tone or favorability of coverage?