Your nonprofit’s press results aren’t a trophy you set on the shelf. Instead, they should be a piñata bursting with impact that spreads.
Our first Mediamarks Study in 2016 showed nonprofits how to focus on the media outlets and outcomes that matter most to your organization. The 2017 study goes a step further and tries to answer the Mediamarks question we’ve been asked over and over this past year: “How can we measure and grow the real-world impact of a news story once it’s out there?”
It’s a good question. When the New York Times writes about an organization, some people read it, some people share it, and some people may even act on it.
For decades, the only way to count the people factor was to look at a newspaper’s circulation or TV show’s Nielsen scores. Those numbers are too generic to be useful. In this year’s study, we used our partner Muck Rack’s media database to finally find out how much the public is engaging with news stories online. In a world with Facebook and Twitter, media impact has the power to spread further than ever. And now we have the power to measure that spread and learn from it, too.
In our search for lessons in the 2017 Mediamarks Study, we’ve once again tallied the annual media hits of 50 nonprofits from 50 influential news outlets. The charts in the rest of this study are bursting with details. Here’s a sneak-peek at some of our favorite findings.
On average…
- Nonprofits got 2 press hits a week in major news outlets, keeping the same pace as we saw in the 2016 Mediamarks Study.
- In both the 2017 and 2016 Mediamarks, January remained the slowest month for nonprofit media coverage with only 4 press hits per month (compared to 10 hits in April and September).
- Health organizations overtook Environmental groups to earn the most Advocacy media.
- Cultural organizations (new to this year’s study!) got 18 times more media coverage than Social Service organizations in 2016.
- People shared one article 3,770 times on Facebook. News stories about Health organizations were shared twice as much on Facebook as articles about International organizations.
- On Twitter, 13 journalists shared an article about a nonprofit. News stories about International organizations and Health organizations were the most popular among journalists to share.
Download your free copy now to see how your nonprofit press results compare to your peers.