$ The first thing most Public Affairs professionals will tell you is that they aren’t selling anything, so standard metrics don’t apply. Of course, most Public Relations people are pretty far removed from the selling process as well. The real difference between PA and PR is in the primary stakeholders that they serve. Each requires different measurement approaches, tools, and techniques:

• When PR professionals think about their stakeholders, the first to come to mind is generally the media, and secondarily, customers and prospects.
• For PA professionals, the most important stakeholders are generally legislators, government officials, and voters — in a different order depending on the organization.

Nonetheless, measurement of public affairs still begins in the same place that all other measurement programs do: Goals and SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely). And, as with any communications measurement program, there are many different types of goals and objectives with which PA professionals are tasked.

Let’s look at a few different scenarios:

1. Measuring Success in Cause-Related Organizations

SMART objectives for this type of situation might include:

• Stop adverse legislation from passing within this legislative cycle.
• Get desired legislation passed within this legislative cycle.

Here at Paine Publishing, we consult with a number of nonprofits who are dedicated to advancing a variety of different issues from civil liberties to traffic safety to legislating drones. For all of them the ultimate outcome is to get bills passed or killed in local, state, or national legislatures. But passing or killing bills isn’t a valid metric, since it doesn’t tell you whether you’re making progress towards the outcome.

Instead these organizations track the progress they are making. For instance:

• Are bills making it into study committee?
• Are they being debated?
• Are they getting passed out of committee?
• What is the buzz about the legislation in the various media outlets and social platforms used by the legislators?

Many of them use sophisticated platforms like Trackbill, Capital Impact, or govtrack.us to track and manage bills going through various legislative bodies. Others do it manually. Nearly all of them use traditional and social monitoring to keep tabs on the buzz around the various pieces of legislation.

The key thing for all of them is an internal understanding of the process and the definitions of success along the way.

If you are faced with similar objectives, your key metrics might be:

• Percentage of desirable bills passing out of committee.
• Percentage of legislators opposed to an undesirable bill.
• Percentage share of voice for our side vs the opposition.

2. Measuring PR Efforts on Behalf of a Candidate

SMART objectives for this type of situation might include:

• Increase candidate’s share of favorable conversation in traditional and social media by the start of the final funding quarter.
• Decrease candidate’s share of undesirable conversation in traditional and social media by the start of the final funding quarter.
• Increase number of likely voters and donors by 1% by the start of the final funding quarter.
• Increase attendees at rallies by 20% in Q3.

Years ago, we measured political PR for one of the country’s best political PR pros, Doug Hattaway, former spokesperson for Al Gore and Tom Daschle (download a report here). Doug was working on Chellie Pingree’s effort to unseat Susan Collins as Senator from Maine. What Doug needed was a measurement system that would tell him which tactics were working or not working in a campaign. The challenge was to do it fast enough so the data would be useful, and cheap enough so the campaign could afford it.

The good news about working with political campaigns is that volunteers are generally plentiful, and in this case the volunteers were charged with collecting the clips from local publications. If you don’t have volunteers to do the clipping, you need to hire a local clipping company or someone like CyberAlert or BurrellesLuce to collect the clips for you. Small-town newspapers are just too important to miss.

Once we had the clips about both Pingree and Collins in hand, we analyzed them for positioning on key issues, tone of coverage, type of article, subject of the article, and who was quoted. Comparing our results to campaign activity enabled us to quickly identify the tactics that were most successful. For example, a visit by Hillary Clinton in support of Pingree was far more successful in garnering visibility for Pingree than any other action. Pingree’s visit to Washington in support of her health care reform legislation didn’t get anywhere near that visibility. However, it was more successful in positioning her as “the health care candidate.”

The analysis also revealed weaknesses in Pingree’s campaign and strengths in Collins’.  While Pingree was almost entirely focused on her health care message, Collins was making points with the voters on the environment and campaign finance reform. This single-focused approach eventually lost Pingree the race.

Additionally, the research enabled the campaign to track the correlation between visibility and contributions. By tracking Pingree’s share of exposure over time against the contributions over time, the campaign could determine the level of additional exposure necessary to generate the requisite contributions.

If you are faced with similar objectives, your key metrics might be:

• Share of desirable conversation (in both traditional and social media)  vs. the opponent.
• Share of undesirable conversation vs. the opponent.
• Increase in percentage of likely voters who say they will vote for the candidate relative to share of desirable vs. undesirable conversation.
• Percentage increase in attendance at rallies relative to share of desirable vs. undesirable coverage.

3. Measuring Lobbying Efforts on Behalf of a Company

SMART objectives for this type of situation might include:

• Ensure a majority of influencers support the legislation by the end of the first half of the legislative session.
• Persuade 25% of the opposition to change sides (or neutralize) by the end of the first half of the legislative session.

We ran into a government relations person for a major organization who wanted to know how to measure the impact of his efforts. He was trying to get a bill passed that would be highly advantageous to his company. We began to design his “dashboard,” and asked him what success meant. He got as far as, “If the bill passes, I’m successful.” We pointed out that if the bill failed it would be too late to do anything about it.

What he really needed was to monitor the progress of the tone of conversation around the bill in question, so he could tweak his efforts accordingly. We recommended that he establish a system that would give him feedback all along the way. We suggested that he track who is saying what to the media or in local speeches about the bill. We also helped him track the most influential leaders in the community on both sides of the issue. What were the co-signers saying about it, and was it enough? This approach enabled him to track whether the opposition was gaining or weakening on a weekly basis.

If you are faced with similar objectives, your key metrics might be:

• Percentage increase in number of influencers in favor vs. opposed.
• Percentage increase in co-signers quoted favorable in the media.

4. Measuring Relationships with Your Community

SMART objectives for this type of situation might include:

• Reduce the percentage of community opposed to us by 10% by the end of Q2.
• Increase supportive media coverage by 20% by the end of Q2.

For most organizations the local community never ranks very high on their stakeholder priority list. But in public affairs, especially for military organizations, it is crucial.

First there’s the issue of recruitment. The likelihood that a young man or woman will join one of the Armed Forces is heavily dependent on the people from whom that young person takes advice – typically teachers, coaches, mentors, family, and friends. So it is critical that the military maintain good relationships with community leaders.

Secondly there’s always the issue of funding. All military branches are ultimately dependent on Congress for budget approval. Which means that influential voters and organizations in the home districts of Senators and Congressmen on key committees are highly influential on the future of the military. So relationships with leaders in those districts are key.

At NATO for example, a large part of every Public Affairs Officer (PAO’s) job is making sure the communities around the NATO basis understand NATO’s role and purpose. Since a good part of the organizational funding comes from host countries, continued support is critical. So the little things that affect community attitudes, like garbage and water and local sports leagues, become a high priority of NATO PAOs in the field.

In order to measure this, NATO set up a measurement system that tracks coverage of NATO in local communities as well as throughout Europe. They developed a custom quality index that takes factors such as “desirable image or photo” messaging, the reach and importance of the media outlet, and whether the story leaves a reader more or less likely to support NATO and SHAPE’s mission. These quality factors can then be analyzed by program, campaign, and against specific spokespeople and outlets to determine what generates the coverage that gets the outcomes they want.

And, in fact, most corporations are slowly realizing that their success is very dependent on the attitudes of their neighbors. Thanks to social media, a “small” problem can grow to a major crisis with ease and speed. This remains top-of-mind for everyone I talk to in public affairs.

The best way to manage these relationships is to measure them on a regular basis. We recommend using the Grunig relationship model and instrument to test your relationships and in particular the level of trust that each public feels towards you. Trust is a key component of success in any political campaign. If it’s not there, or if it is recently lost, you will have a significantly harder time achieving success.

Alternatively, if your constituents trust you, as do those of Zappos or Trader Joe’s, you have a lot more leeway with those publics. Therefore it is critical to establish a benchmark level of trust to begin with. Subsequently you should conduct regular trust/relationship measurement studies to gauge the level of trust and engagement over time. Conduct these studies as often as possible so you can tie any changes in the trust and relationship scores to actual actions you may have taken.

If you are faced with similar objectives, your key metrics might be:

• Percentage reduction in media coverage that leaves the reader more likely to oppose.
• Percentage increase in media coverage that leaves the reader less likely to oppose.
• Percentage increase in share of favorable quotes from key influencers.
• Percentage increase in opportunities to see our messages in key geographies.
• Percentage increase in trust levels by community.

5. One last word: Timing

Because community issues can explode instantly and public opinion can be swayed so quickly, measurement must be an ongoing process. Probably the most important element in any political measurement program is to have the data on hand when you need it. And you need it whenever there’s a decision to be made about how much money to spend or what tactics to use. You don’t need it after the votes have been counted. ∞