November 30, 2015
CEOs represent many things to an organization. They provide leadership, and they are often the face and voice of the company. They communicate the company’s key messages to a variety of audiences and serve as thought leaders in their respective industry. With one person holding so much clout for your company, how can you effectively measure his/her influence and positioning in the marketplace?
One place to start is with an executive positioning audit. This includes assessing and analyzing media coverage, social media and other activities to measure how your CEO, or other executives or subject matter experts, are represented in the marketplace.
There are a number of instances when you may consider an executive positioning audit. Perhaps you are developing a thought leadership strategy. Or maybe your CEO has asked for your thoughts on creating a professional profile for a particular social media channel. Whatever the reason, the results can be highly valuable to your organization.
We’ll look at the elements of an audit in this two-part series, beginning with how to measure and analyze media coverage:
Media coverage analysis
Media coverage can help build your CEO’s credibility and is of value to your organization when the right messages are conveyed. So taking both a quantitative and qualitative look at your CEO’s presence in the media will give you the insight into third-party opinions at the local, national and trade media levels.
Quantitative analysis: Media coverage is not always easily quantifiable. That’s why we developed a scorecard to give a quantitative measurement to something that is typically qualitative. Using the scorecard, you can score a piece of media coverage based on a number of factors, from tier and type of placement to tone and messaging. While the scorecard is a flexible tool that can be customized to measure various characteristics, the structure allows for a more analytical approach.
In the example above, each piece of coverage receives a score of one to four for each of five categories, resulting in a total possible score of five to 20. Keep in mind that assessing a good mix of local, national and trade media will give you a better picture of your CEO’s position in the marketplace.
Qualitative analysis: Once you have ranked your CEO’s media coverage, it’s time to take a qualitative look at the data you’ve produced, including identifying why articles ranked higher or lower. Did higher-ranked media coverage have stronger messaging or thought leadership? Were lower-ranked stories primarily from trade or local media? No matter the outcome, this analysis will give you insight into what topics resonate with media, as well as what key messages and thought leadership themes your CEO is able to deliver effectively. The qualitative analysis will also help you identify areas for improvement or opportunities where your CEO can have a stronger voice.
In the second blog in this series, we explore how to measure social media and other personal branding activities. If you’d like to chat about executive positioning audits, please feel free to contact me at aalmasy@dix-eaton.com or tweet me at @angelaalmasy.
