Cleaning out my inbox and came across an email from one of our team on measuring strategic media coverage… In short, based on studying the impact of certain news articles on business results and in stock price you standardize on a definition of stories that have the most impact — call them “Top Stories”.  The performance of these stories then flow into core business metrics… A definition of a Top Story might include that it is proactively driven media coverage — in a strategic outlet — designed to change perception with target audience.  And they might contain the elements below:

• Proactive
• On Theme
• On Target 
• On Message
• Third-Party Validated
• Company spokesperson
• OTS reach
• Images

Having a simple but powerful metric in an executive scorecard enforces PR as a key component in the business success mix.  I really like the idea of this particular metric.

Are you working or using anything similar?