Prioritizing Reader Behavior: Secure Your Seat at the Decision-Making Table $$$
In today’s fast-paced digital world, effective communication is key to success. As a communication professional, you need to make data-driven decisions to stay ahead of the competition.
However, most PR analytics tools rely heavily on social media data, which may not provide the complete picture. That’s where ARKreach comes in. Our cutting-edge SaaS analytics product is specifically designed for communication professionals and focuses on reader-centric analysis. In this blog post, we’ll explore why prioritizing reader behavior is crucial for successful PR planning, and how ARK Score can help you achieve your goals.
The Problem with Social Media Data
Social media data is an important parameter to showcase the engagement levels off the news sources. However, relying solely on social media data can be misleading. Though many may participate in online conversations not enough share the content they read on social media. This means that social media metrics may not accurately reflect the readership of a particular publication.
Readers Should Be the Core Focus
Readers are the lifeblood of any news publication, and communication professionals need to focus on them to succeed. In recent years, we’ve seen a rise in news subscription levels, with online publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal leading the way. According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021, The New York Times has the highest number of digital news subscribers globally, with over 7 million subscribers. This shows that readers are willing to pay for high-quality content that meets their needs.
Why Social Media Mentions Aren’t Enough
While social media data can provide some valuable insights, it’s not enough to measure a brand’s strength in terms of the volume of article coverage, the sentiment of conversations around their content, or article volume-based comparison with the competition. For decision-makers sitting in brand/client teams, the importance of data-driven outreach and its impact is paramount. PR news value calculated based on overall news website domain hits and social media engagement gets arbitrary as it is assumption-based and not the real reader data.
Introducing ARK Score
To solve this problem, ARKreach has developed ARK Score, a unique metric that provides communication professionals with precise targeting based on the audience persona, content quality, and sub-section traffic. Let’s take a closer look at each of these parameters:
- Audience Persona: The Ark Score takes into account where people with a specific audience persona, such as age, gender, income, location, education, and household size, go to consume media category-specific content. For example, if you want to target readers consuming Health category articles who are in the age range of 19-25, female, middle income, graduate-level education, freelancer occupation, and household status of 4, you can do so with ARKreach’s media planning module through a custom created media list for this audience set.
- Content Quality: The Ark Score takes into consideration content publishing/news websites with the most relevant and high-quality media category content. For example, if you choose health or tech as your media category, then the data analyzed will be only for that specific category and not for every other topic in the news domain.
- Sub-Section Traffic: Sustained user traffic on specific content publishing/news website sections where readers visit to consume this content is also considered. For instance, if you want to read about health, you would visit a particular section on the website, such as https://www.nytimes.com/section/health. Overall domain traffic here is of no consequence, and precise relevancy-based analysis is required.
How ARK Score Can Help You?
By focusing on reader behavior and using ARK Score, communication professionals can make more accurate decisions about media outreach planning and come up with customized media lists. This, in turn, can lead to better outcomes for their clients and brands.
By understanding how readers engage with content, one can decipher how to optimize content and improve its reach. Also, identify which types of content are resonating with their target audience, and which are not, and adjust their strategy accordingly. With this kind of data, one can also more accurately forecast the potential reach of their content, giving them a better idea of how much budget to allocate towards earned news media activities.
Larger Share of Marketing Budgets towards PR Activities
When we have access to accurate data on content reach and consumption, we can make a stronger case for a larger share of client/brand’s marketing budgets towards PR activities. By demonstrating the impact that PR activities have on content performance, we can prove their ROI and gain a larger share of the marketing budget.
Moreover, ARKreach’s innovative suites – Media Planning, Content Optimisation, Measurement, and Crisis & Monitoring – offer next-generation AI and ML technology and frameworks to lead in their earned news media/PR journey from planning to outreach, and measurement. These modules have been specifically designed to empower brands to make data-driven decisions.
