01/30/2020

How Real-time Public Relations Analysis May Help Associations

Evaluating campaign messaging with key stakeholders

How members and the public perceive your association is key to its brand. And while association marketers prioritize managing their brand, there’s often less time spent on measuring member perception and what’s influencing it—especially true when staff and budget allocated to them are small.

However, new research published in in the Journal of Applied Communication Research contends there’s a way for marketers to better gauge key stakeholders’ perception. Researchers looked at the Red Cross in China during a period when the public increasingly had a negative view of the organization and donations plummeted. After studying what happened, Yang Cheng, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, and Glen Cameron, a colleague at the University of Missouri, developed an approach that can give real-time insight into public perceptions.

I spoke with Cheng about their research into Contingent Organization Public Relations (COPR). This technique is designed to more accurately measure the relationship between an organization and what Cheng describes at its “key public,” which would include interested stakeholders like members, prospects, partners, and sponsors.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.