By Todd Murphy, Vice President, Universal Information ServicesUniversal Information Services is participating in an awareness and education campaign organized by AMEC, the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication. These events are sponsored by membership companies and work to better educate public relations professionals on reliable methodologies for measuring PR and media.Each day this week Universal has defined one of five key metrics important to public relations measurement. Yesterday we explored how the volume of Media Exposure alters the results of your analysis. In this last post of our five post series, we will look at our proprietary Impact Score.

The Impact Score takes into account the number of qualitative driver conditions met AND the media source. Points are given in two areas: 1-qualitative points and 2-media source points.

The Impact Score statistic unveils the true impact of a story; a weighted factor our clients can use to understand the impact from each news story and compare that value relative to other stories. The value of this metric is to remove the false value imparted by quantitative measures only, and deliver a weighted value you can use to compare stories across time. It’s particularly useful when used as part of an ongoing PR measurement program.Capturing both the qualitative and quantitative elements of media exposure has never been easy, nor an exact science. However, through a sound media measurement framework, like the approach used at Universal, we can evaluate what your media exposure means in terms of impact, value, tone, focus, and a variety of other user-defined parameters. Those who need to understand the ROI and impact of their outreach efforts can get truly actionable data when following a reliable methodology.As this post is the last in our five-part series on Metrics that Matter, we hope you’ve found these posts informational if not enlightening. We recognize that a few paragraphs can’t do justice to the broad topic of reliable media measurement. And although we’ve tried to be concise with our definitions, there is always more to the story. We encourage you to contact your professional media measurement service or reach out to us for additional information. We would be happy to expand on the topics briefly covered this week.It would also be improper for us to not recognize the research and work AMEC has put forth in raising awareness for media measurement at a global level. We look forward to our continued collaboration with them and our partner company members. If you have additional questions we have more information on our public relations tools at Universal-info.com.