Measuring Earned Media and Reputation

Placements, referral traffic, branded search, business profile insights, review velocity, rating trend, and sentiment.

Earned attention is the hardest kind to measure because nobody hands you a receipt. A reporter writes a paragraph about your floor. A host mentions your Thursday on the radio. Fifteen strangers write a review over a summer. None of it arrives with a bill or an invoice, and its effects scatter: a few extra searches, a handful of map views, a booker who says she saw the article. The temptation is to say it can’t be measured. It can, though not precisely, and not in one number. That feeling is understandable. Earned media and reputation work through other people’s choices, on other people’s schedules, and the effect often arrives weeks later in a form nobody connects back to the story.

This chapter teaches the ways a small room can see the effects of coverage and reputation: the log of placements, the traffic and searches that follow, the numbers on a business profile, and the steady record of reviews. Chapter 15 taught how to earn the coverage and Chapter 18 how to handle the reviews. Here you learn to count what came back. The aim is a modest one: to learn which outlets and angles work, to see whether your reputation is moving, and to notice early when it starts to turn. We’ll look at the press log, what follows coverage, the business profile, reviews, and how to put it all on one tracker.

The central rule is humility about cause. A bump after a story may be the story, or the weather, or a holiday. A rise in your rating may be real improvement or a change in who gets asked. We’ll use the baseline and the swing from Chapter 23 to keep ourselves honest, and the funnel from Chapter 25 to connect attention to the people who actually walk in. At the end you’ll have a press and review tracker, which is the simplest tool a small room can keep and one of the most revealing. It also explains why one popular way of valuing coverage, pricing it as if it were an ad, is widely rejected by measurement professionals, and what to do instead.

PR TACTIC: The Before-and-After Window

What it is: When coverage appears, write down your normal weekly searches, map views, and referral visits, then record the same numbers for the day, week, and month after.

Why it works: A bump is only meaningful against a normal, and a window of three comparisons shows whether the effect was a spike or something that stayed.

Try this: Look up this month’s normal numbers now, so that when the next piece of coverage lands you can compare the day after against a real baseline.

28.1 The Press Log: Counting Placements

The first measure is the simplest: a log of what you pitched and what ran. One line per pitch: the outlet, the person, the date, the angle, whether they replied, and what appeared, if anything. At the end of a quarter, divide replies by pitches and placements by replies. That gives you a small funnel for press, as Chapter 15 described. Over time the log shows which outlets say yes, which angles work, and which kinds of news are worth the effort. Most small rooms have no such record, and so they repeat the pitches that didn’t work. Add a column for the angle you used, in a few words, such as “anniversary,” “new teacher,” or “fundraiser.” After a year, sorting by angle shows which stories your local outlets want. Many rooms are surprised to find that one kind of story gets nearly every yes, and that’s the kind to look for next.

Count placements by kind, because they aren’t equal. A mention in a community newsletter, a feature in a weekly paper, a radio interview, a podcast, and a listing on a tourism page differ in reach and in credibility. Don’t assign a dollar value to them, as some firms do by comparing coverage to the cost of an ad. That convention, sometimes called advertising value equivalency, is widely criticized in the public relations field, because a story isn’t an ad and the comparison overstates what coverage is worth. A better measure is what the coverage did: who saw it, what they did, and how you used it afterward. The measurement association AMEC launched an effort in 2017 to retire advertising value equivalency, and the Barcelona Principles, a set of measurement guidelines adopted by PR professionals, also rejected it. The reasoning is simple: a story isn’t an ad, the reader trusts it differently, and the price of an ad of the same size says nothing about what the story did.

Also record how the coverage was useful beyond the day it ran. Did you add it to the one-sheet from Chapter 6? Share it with the list? Use it in your next pitch? A placement that becomes proof for ten later conversations is worth far more than one that was read once. Note the date you used each clip. Coverage is an asset, and the log is where you keep track of its value. Keep a copy or a screenshot, since links break and articles move behind paywalls. Keep the full text where you can, with the date, outlet, and writer, in the proof file from Chapter 6. A link that breaks in two years takes your evidence with it. Note who on your team did the pitching too. Over time, you may find that a particular person, often the one who knows the reporters, gets most of the yeses. A screenshot with the date in the file name is enough.

28.2 What Follows Coverage: Referral Traffic and Branded Search

The effects of coverage show up in a few places you can check. Referral traffic is visits to your website that came from a link in the article, which your analytics tool can show by source. Branded search is people searching your room’s name, or the name with a word like “tickets” or “hours,” which indicates that someone heard of you and went looking. Map views and direction requests from your business profile show people who found the listing and wanted to come. And first-timers who mention it are the most direct of all. Together they form a picture of what an article did. Branded searches, people searching for your room’s name, are a good sign of interest from people who already know you exist. Your business profile’s performance page and, if you have one, your website’s analytics usually show them. A story that makes people curious tends to show up there within a few days.

The method is the before-and-after window. Before the coverage, note your normal for each number: an average week of branded searches, map views, and referral visits, ideally over the last several weeks. After the coverage, record the same numbers for the day, the week, and the month that follow. If searches jump on the day and fall back within a week, the story gave a short spike. If they stay higher for a month, it built something lasting. Compare the change with your normal swing. A move inside the swing may be nothing. A move well outside it, matched by guests who say they read the article, is a real result. Write down what you expect before the story runs. If you think a feature in the weekly paper will add ten branded searches a week and four first-timers, say so. Then compare. Over a few placements, your predictions will get better, and you’ll learn what a typical story does for your room. If you see nothing at all after a story, check that the article included your name, town, and a link.

Be careful with attribution. Coverage often coincides with other things: a post you made the same day, a holiday, a big night, good weather. If you can, note what else happened. If two things happened together, say so rather than assigning all the credit to either. And remember that coverage often works slowly: a booker who reads the article in June may call in September. That delayed effect won’t show in a three-window comparison, so keep the log going and ask people, over time, whether they’d seen the story. The log is a record of what you know, not a verdict on what coverage did. Ask at the door for a month after any significant story. Add a box to the how’d-you-hear card, such as “newspaper or radio,” and ask staff to note mentions. A small count of guests who name the story is often the clearest evidence you’ll get. If the count is zero, note that too. A story that brought nobody you could find is useful information for the next pitch.

QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK

“The paper ran a great story and nothing happened. Was it a waste?” Not necessarily. Coverage often works later, as proof in your next pitch, your one-sheet, and your sponsor conversations. Log it, use it, and judge press over a year, not a weekend.

“Should I respond to every review?” Respond to as many as you can, calmly and briefly. At minimum, answer every critical review within a few days.

28.3 Your Business Profile: What the Numbers Mean

Most rooms have a business profile on Google, and its performance page is one of the few free sources of real search data. According to Google’s own help page, the performance report can show interactions overall, the search terms people used to find you, views of your profile on Search and Maps, requests for directions, calls, website clicks, messages, bookings, and clicks on menus and offers, for verified profiles. Each has a definition worth reading. Views, for instance, are counted as unique visitors, with a person counted only once per day, so the figure is lower than the number of times your profile was displayed, and it understates total visits. Don’t compare profile numbers with numbers from other tools without checking the definitions. A view on the profile, a visit to your website, and a reach figure on social media are counted differently, and adding them together gives a number that means nothing.

Google’s page also lists caveats worth remembering. The search-terms data updates monthly and can take up to five days to appear. The figures include both organic results and paid ads, if you run any. Performance data is available only when you’re signed in to the account that manages the verified profile. These details mean you shouldn’t read daily changes closely. Look at monthly totals and trends, and compare a month with the same month a year earlier if you have the history. Platform definitions change, so check the help page again when something looks odd. Search terms are also a free survey. If people find you by searching for “two-step lessons near me,” that tells you what newcomers want. If they find you by searching for a band’s name, that tells you which acts bring curious strangers. Use the terms in your listing, your website, and your captions.

The numbers most useful for a honky tonk are direction requests and calls, which show intent to visit, and the search terms, which show how people phrase what they’re looking for. If people search “live music near me” and find you, that’s a different audience from those who search your name. Write the monthly figures in the tracker, and watch for a change after coverage, a new set of photos, or a stretch of reviews. Keep the profile accurate: wrong hours or a missing phone number can cost more visits than any coverage gains. The profile is also where reviews live, which leads to the next measure. Check the profile’s reported calls against what staff remember. If the profile shows forty calls a month and nobody remembers answering that many, either the phone isn’t being answered or calls are going to a number nobody checks. Both are worth fixing. Look at the photo views too, if your profile shows them. If guests look at photos of an empty room in daylight, replace them with photos of a real night.

TRY THIS WEEK

Open your business profile’s performance page. Write down this month’s direction requests, calls, and website clicks, and the top five search terms. Check that hours, phone, and photos are right. Put the date on the page.

28.4 Reviews: Velocity, Trend, and Sentiment

Reviews have three useful measures. Review velocity is the number of new reviews per month, a sign of how many guests are moved to write. Rating trend compares the average of your newest reviews, say the last twenty, with the average of the older ones, to see whether things are improving, holding, or slipping. A room can have a 4.4 average built over five years and a recent run of 3.9s that the old reviews are hiding. And response time is the number of days between a review and your reply, which Chapter 18 treated as a form of hospitality. All three are easy to track from a platform’s page. Write all three down monthly. Velocity tells you whether guests are moved to write at all. The trend tells you whether recent experiences are better or worse than older ones, which the overall average hides. Response time tells you whether anyone is minding the page.

A fourth measure, sentiment, looks at what the reviews say rather than how many stars they give. You don’t need software. Read the last thirty reviews and tally the things people mention: the music, the staff, the sound, the floor, the prices, the wait, the crowd. For each, mark whether the mention was positive, mixed, or negative. Over a few months you’ll see which strengths people keep naming, and which complaints repeat. A single harsh review is a story. The same complaint in six of thirty is a pattern, and a pattern is a number you can act on. Do the tally the same way each month, with the same short list of themes, such as music, welcome, floor, drinks, price, wait, parking, safety, and staff. Add a theme only when it appears several times. Comparing tallies over months shows whether a fix you made actually changed what people write about.

Treat review numbers with caution. The Federal Trade Commission’s rule on reviews and testimonials, as summarized by Kelley Drye, prohibits fake reviews, incentives conditioned on positive sentiment, undisclosed insider reviews, and efforts to suppress negative ones, so never manage your numbers by those means. If you ask more often, velocity will rise, so note any change in how you ask. Small counts swing wildly, since one review changes a small average a lot. And remember that reviews come from people who felt strongly, either way. They tell you about the edges of your experience, and the middle is better reached by listening, which Chapter 33 covers. Kelley Drye’s summary also notes that the rule covers buying fake followers or views, and suppressing negative reviews through threats. A record of reviews that is honest, answered, and steadily improving is both lawful and convincing. Sort the themes by how often they appear and by how fixable they are. A frequent, fixable complaint is the best place to start.

THE MONTHLY REPUTATION ROW

New reviews this month: count. Recent average: last 30 reviews’ average rating, against the all-time average. Replies: share answered, and median days to reply. Top praise themes: three, with counts. Top complaint themes: three, with counts. Placements: count by kind (feature, brief, listing, interview). First-timers who named press or reviews: count, from the door card.

One row a month. After a year, the row tells the story of the room’s reputation better than any single review.

28.5 Putting It Together: The Press and Review Tracker

Keep two simple tables. The first is the press tracker: one line per pitch, with the outlet, date, angle, reply, result, and, for each placement, the normal and after-window numbers for searches, map views, and referrals, plus the number of guests who mentioned it. The second is the review tracker: one line per month, with new reviews, the average of the newest twenty, the number of complaints, the average response time, and the top three themes in the sentiment tally. Both fit on a single page each. Keep them in the same place as your baseline and cohort sheets, and review them monthly. The two tables can share one page if your room is small. One half for press, one half for reviews. What matters is that they’re updated on the same day each month and kept beside the other sheets, so that a rise in first-timers can be checked against a story or a change in reviews.

Use the trackers to decide, not to boast. If three of four placements came from the weekly paper and none from the daily, aim at the weekly. If placements that told a human story brought more searches than lineup announcements, write more human stories. If your rating trend is slipping and the same complaint keeps appearing, bring it to the Chapter 18 repair process and the Chapter 11 run of the night. And if nothing moves, don’t decide that reputation doesn’t matter. Often it means the numbers are too small to see, and the benefit is in the trust that’s harder to count. Also use them to decide what not to do. If pitches to a certain outlet have gone unanswered for a year, stop sending them and put the time into something else. If a review theme keeps appearing, the fix is in the room, not in the reply.

Be modest in how you describe results. “After the feature ran, branded searches rose from an average of 20 a week to 38 in the week after, and four first-timers mentioned it” is a fair statement. “The feature brought in a hundred new guests” is not, unless you counted them. Report what you saw, the baseline, and what else happened. Your next pitch, one-sheet, or sponsor conversation will carry more weight if you can state the numbers plainly and honestly. Chapter 34 shows how to put the key figures on the monthly scorecard. Keep the claims you make in public as careful as the ones you write in the tracker. If a sponsor asks how much press you got, give the count and kind of placements and what followed, not an ad-value figure. Show the tracker to the people who make the room what it is. A bartender who sees her name in four reviews this month knows her work is noticed.

COMMON MISTAKES WITH PRESS AND REVIEWS

Pricing stories as ads. Advertising value equivalency overstates what coverage did and has been rejected by measurement professionals.

Counting every mention as equal. A feature and a calendar listing are different results.

Judging a story by one night’s door. Look at the week and the month, and ask guests.

Watching only the overall rating. The recent trend and the themes tell you much more.

Answering only bad reviews. Thank the good ones too.

Asking only happy guests for reviews. Ask everyone the same way.

CASE STUDY

A Rating That Hid a Slide

Hugo owns a dancehall with a 4.4 average from 180 reviews. He starts a review tracker. Over the last twenty reviews, the ratings are: 5, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 5, 3, 4, 3, 5, 2, 4, 3, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 4. He also tallies what the last thirty reviews mention. Sound: 11 mentions, 3 positive, 2 mixed, 6 negative. Staff: 9 mentions, 8 positive, 1 mixed, 0 negative. Floor: 7 mentions, 7 positive.

Step 1 — The newest twenty. 5 + 4 = 9, plus 5 is 14, plus 3 is 17, plus 4 is 21, plus 2 is 23, plus 5 is 28, plus 3 is 31, plus 4 is 35, plus 3 is 38, plus 5 is 43, plus 2 is 45, plus 4 is 49, plus 3 is 52, plus 4 is 56, plus 5 is 61, plus 3 is 64, plus 4 is 68, plus 2 is 70, plus 4 is 74. 74 ÷ 20 = 3.7.

Step 2 — The trend. The overall average is 4.4, the newest twenty average 3.7, a gap of 0.7. The headline rating hides a recent slide.

Step 3 — Sentiment. Sound has 6 negatives of 11 mentions, which is 6 ÷ 11 = 55%, and sound accounts for 11 of 30 reviews, which is 37%. Staff and floor are consistently positive. The complaint is specific, so she knows where to look.

Step 4 — Action and next check. He applies Chapter 11’s sound reputation: asks a regular and a musician for feedback and fixes one repeat problem, a dead spot by the bar. Review velocity before the fix is 5 a month. He sets the next check for 60 days, noting that a handful of reviews can swing a small average. All figures are illustrative.

REAL TALK

From the booking desk:

The coverage ran on a Tuesday. By Thursday I’d seen it in a text from my aunt, two phone calls, and a stranger at the door. Our map views doubled for three days. Then it settled. The point wasn’t that week. It was that I could say “we were in the paper” for a year.

HEADS UP

Reputation numbers carry legal limits. The Federal Trade Commission’s rule on reviews and testimonials bans fake reviews, incentives tied to positive sentiment, undisclosed insider reviews, and review suppression. Quoting or reposting reviews and press may involve copyright and the platform’s terms, and statements about named people may raise defamation concerns. This is general information, not legal advice. Don’t pay for or script reviews, and ask a licensed Texas attorney before quoting reviews in advertising or responding to a review that names someone, and see Chapters 18 and 35 and Appendix J.

PRESS AND REVIEW TRACKER

Part A: one line per placement. Part B: one line per month. Note what else happened the same week.

Fill in: Year.

Columns to fill in: Placement or month, Normal searches / map views, Day after, Week after, Month after, Guests who mentioned it, New reviews / newest-20 average. Copy as many rows as you need.

Review velocity = new reviews per month. Rating trend = average of the newest 20 minus the average of the older ones. Platforms define views differently, so compare a number only with itself.

MEASURE IT

The number: Placements and the change in searches, map views, and referrals after each; review velocity, rating trend, response time, and the share of complaints that repeat.

By hand: For each placement, record your normal week, then the day, week, and month after. Each month, count new reviews, average the newest twenty, and tally themes in the last thirty. Example: newest twenty average 3.7 against an overall 4.4 is a gap of 0.7.

Watch out: Coverage coincides with other events, so compare with your normal swing and note anything else. Small review counts swing a lot. Never buy or script reviews.

Go deeper: Chapter 15 (earned media and press), Chapter 18 (reputation and repair), and Chapter 33 (measuring by listening).

ROLE BOX

• Owner: Keep the press and review trackers on one page each, review them monthly, and check your business profile’s performance page.
• Booker: Log pitches and replies, and save coverage for the one-sheet. Note when a booker or sponsor says they saw it.
• Musician: Log placements and the bookings that followed, and track reviews of your shows on the room’s page.
• Bartender: Log any outlet that picks up your angle, and watch branded searches and visits after each.
• Dance Teacher: Log placements and reviews of your class, and track how many students mention them at sign-in.

TALK ABOUT IT

• What do you do the day after you get coverage? Do you know what your normal week looks like?
• If you read your last thirty reviews, what complaint would show up most often?
• Which would you rather have: a perfect rating you can’t trust, or a 4.3 with honest replies?