#31 How To Future-Proof Your PR Reporting with Stella Bayles

Steve:

We are delighted to be joined today by Stella Bayles, the co-founder of PR Tool CoverageBook, and the author of PR Digital Resolution, an ebook on using SEO in PR measurement. Prior to working in PR technology, Stella spent 14 years agency side. First in traditional PR, then specialising in digital PR for major European brands. Her unique approach in using SEO techniques to build PR campaigns and measure success led client growth and multiple award wins. And Stella now shares her knowledge with the PR industry through university lectures and industry talks in the UK and US through the PR resolution blog and newsletter, and her very own podcast. Stella, it’s a pleasure to have you on. Thanks so much for joining us.

Stella:

Thank you for having me.

Louise:

Hi, Stella. Before we like crack on with the the big questions, would you mind just giving us a little overview of you and your career to date?

Stella:

Yeah, I mean, some of the things that Steve just said I’d almost forgotten about. No, I mean, that book was a long time ago now, it’d be interesting to get your view and see whether it’s been updated or not. If it has changed. It was actually 2015 when I released that book, wow. PR really needed to take this opportunity to start bringing SEO in into PR practices. I think some are starting to get there now, so, so that’s good. A decade later. So yeah, as you mentioned, I did start off in what you’d call traditional PR. I started off at Hill and Nolton, which is now Burson, in 2003. So it’s been quite some time. But now I just really love the development of how we have all evolved as people consuming media, and then also how that relates back to how we measure the success of how people are trying to communicate with the public. So it’s always changing, which means that my role is always changing, which is fantastic. I’m in a really fortunate position now with CoverageBook where I get to speak to all sorts of different sizes and shapes of communications teams from agencies to in-house teams, from, you know, people like ESPN, HBO, Nike, but then through to agencies that may be like a very small startup with five people right through to global agencies like Weber and Burson who have multi offices and are doing all sorts of different types of measurements. So it’s so interesting to hear what’s going on on all levels in my role.

Steve:

So on coverage book itself, we, me and Lou obviously know why because we use it and it is a brilliant tool. And you’ve kind of highlighted that it’s used by all different sizes and, and shapes of teams, but can you tell us in your own words why coverage book. Was created and the kind of specific problem it solves for PR professionals.

Stella:

Yeah, I mean, it was created 10 years ago to save PR people time and to eliminate a really manual process of collating screenshots of coverage, and then going to find metrics and then putting that into what was happening, going into a PowerPoint presentation. That was it. It’s really simple just to save people time to not only free up time for, you know. Maybe you can bank that, that fee and that and that time. But, but really we were encouraging people to then use that time to go on and do further evaluation, further measurement, we’ve never tried to say we are the one-stop shop for all of your communications measurement. It’s one element and it. And it automates that manual process. And even though we’ve added lots of features and developed, and we’ve got way more metrics, we’ve got 65 different metrics in the tool now and different types of formats, it still is about saving people time. And as I say, like now I’m seeing when it’s used on a large scale what that time sort of equates to in terms of financials is, is quite unbelievable. We had one, customer where all of their office was using coverage book for all of their client reports, and they saved $1.1 million in in fee time. And obviously it doesn’t cost that to use coverage books. So, you know, that is incredible. So that’s aside from, oh, the metrics are pretty cool for different reasons, but for me it’s like, that’s amazing because actually PR people are really talented and they shouldn’t be sitting there going to collect data and copying and pasting.

Lousie:

Well, I was just thinking also like on a re on a smaller, like macro level there, or is it micro level? I dunno. There’s probably interns and execs out there whose like PR careers are so much more interesting at the beginning because they’re not spending loads of time like perfectly cropping something or even like cutting something out and using pritt stick and stuff like that. Like, so it’s probably changed what it’s like to join the industry because you’re taking out a large chunk of the kind of admin work that was normally just given to junior people.

Stella:

Definitely. When we first started, I remember, this wasn’t just one person. I had quite a few people saying. Yeah, but what are the AEs going to do then? It’s like, they did not go in, they did not study, get into debt due and loans to copy and paste. But that was what it was. You know, it was a, a rite of passage. You had to spend a number of years building reports all week. And now you don’t.

Steve:

That’s exactly like my first job in PR was exactly that. And it was like, day one was quite fun because it was, you know, it it, it sort of, uh, appealed to my crafty side, you know, cutting out bit of pritt stick, all of that. But then day two, day three and you’re like, is it they’re paying for a week of my time to cut and stick in a book, like this is absurd. So yeah, I think it’s brilliant. And um, it definitely, that 1.1 million stats amazing because like the scale of it, if you’re scaling it like that, incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Stella:

I do encourage people to look at their, like, the time that they’ve saved and then like what it equates to with fee as well. And not just with coverage book and reporting like across the board. It’s really interesting, especially I know that we’re gonna maybe come onto this just like how we are automating different parts of the workflow, but actually looking at what time has been saved and what that means to a day rate and the team. It’s, yeah, it’s a really interesting time that we’re in.

Lousie:

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. That’s a sneak peek of what is to come, because we will be talking about that in a, in a little bit. In terms of what you’ve seen in the industry and how PR measurement has evolved, what have been the biggest changes that you’ve seen in the last, I guess, 10 years since you’ve been working at coverage book?

Stella:

The biggest change has been in the, just people adopting, being comfortable with automating, which is great, because as I say, when we first started, uh, there was quite a few teams who were nervous to move away from a manual process, which I know seems crazy. But that’s just been the best thing that now people have a suite of tools and have a tool stack, and that’s all very normal. So that’s great. What I do find is, is a bit tricky is that we are now in a. Sea of data and actually it has become quite confusing for lots of people and they’re not being consistent with the metrics that they’re using and they’re sort of flipping, and it’s sort of that kind of, um, sparkly new thing over there. And so I, I do see people sort of moving between different tools, which means that they’re not getting consistency of like their measurement. Um, so that is a bit of a downfall with people using more technology and more data. But I mean I could answer this question for a long time. Uh, less people using a AVE, which is good. I can’t believe that we’re still talking about it in 2025. But yeah, I mean, I know that’s not so much in a digital PR space, but definitely we’ve just still normal PR. I mean, I had a call from a very well respected agency in the US two days ago, and they said, I’m not sure if we can use CoverageBook, but because you don’t have an a AVE value. And it’s because they’re getting pressure still from their clients and they’re not educating. So there is still some work that needs to be done in terms of like finding a financial value in communications for people. But it is moving ahead. I think the thing that a lot of PR needs to do now is really start to work more in, in an integrated way of the rest of marketing. And I know that. It’s easier to do, or you’ve already done the hard work when you’re in digital PR because you have to, you can’t, you can’t just sit in a silo and only work into the PR team. But I think that there’s a lot of PR agencies that still need to do that, and then their, and then their measurement will become better and and easier to do when they’ve made those relationships.

Steve:

You’ve mentioned one thing already, which is that kind of lack of consistency, which obviously would agree with, because we now have so many, I mean, you’ve mentioned you’ve got 65 metrics. It was 65 wasn’t it, on CoverageBook? So there’s a lot for PR professionals to kind of to take in, but I was quite keen to get your take on what are the kind of common mistakes you think PR pros are making when it comes to measuring their results? Like what kind of advice would you give to simplify it to be more consistent? Because it is, it is difficult out there. It’s changed a lot.

Stella:

Yeah. I just really, I think simplify is, is the best word. Put yourself in the shoes of the target audience that you’re trying to reach and understand the, the process of how you might be, interacting with them and then relay that into your measurement is what I would say because there is no silver bullet with measurement. It has to change depending on the client, the target audience, the time of year you’re doing it. However, you do need some consistency, but I’ll come back to that. It really do need to just sit, sort of think about how you’re reaching and I think the biggest mistake that people make is just stop at. Oh, we made a big splash and we, we shouted, and then, so there might be an increase in awareness. So what was that biggest reach number? Because then that will prove that we really shouted loudly because we may have reached all of these people. And still it’s a bit of a shame because it’s been going for years and years and years, but it really does need to change now that bigger doesn’t mean better in numbers and metrics. And that is the biggest mistake because people just try and they stop at the awareness part and the outputs part of their PR campaign, and they just go for the biggest number. Whereas that number, if you’re being more realistic of like, okay, well how many people would’ve actually seen that, that piece of those pieces of coverage, what engagements did it have? Did it make anyone do anything? When they, when they read that, did they, they’re like it, did they share it? Did they then go on and search for that campaign name or that spokesperson name or whatever? And actually, you might have a story of smaller numbers, but it is building a story. And I think that the trouble is with a lot, and especially when you’re not working with the rest of marketing and you are just going into PR and you are getting RFPs where it says build awareness. People just stop at that outputs number and then just go big as possible. And that’s the biggest mistake I think.

Louise:

It is interesting because even in digital PR specifically, where one of the great benefits of digital PR is that, or the one, the type of digital PR we do at Propellernet, which is where you kind of link it to SEO gains and you can talk about increase in organic rankings, then traffic, then revenue. Even in that, where we have that ability, there’s been such a focus for quite a while on just numbers of links. So it’s like this, like you have this ability to get to that, the actual data, the actual revenue, but still people are drawn to say, yeah, but I got a hundred links, and that’s really, really good. It does seem like actually in the last year or so. People are talking a bit more about the deeper stats, so not even just revenue, but the relevancy. Who are you targeting? Like bringing in more of the traditional PR aspects, I guess, and layering it onto the, the SEO ones. But it’s just interesting, like psychology wise, how like we’re just drawn to talking about big numbers because it makes you feel like you’ve done a good job and it’s, yeah, just harder I guess to, to dig into the more specific, so I guess it makes sense why. It’s lesser done. It just takes more effort and it’s a bit more bespoke. The story of numbers is so important because I am starting to see, especially when you look at PR rewards, whether it’s AMEC or, or some of the others, like PR moment or PRSA, PRCA, there’s many awards. People are looking at outcomes, so that, that’s great. They are saying, you know. X amount of people voted for this in the result of this PR campaign or bought this product or whatever it might be. So they are looking at outcomes, but often there isn’t like the whole story. There’s just a ‘we did a PR campaign and this happened’, and I think it might have made a do, might have been because of pr, but you know that not if you’re not sort of just focused on reach and go, oh, what, get curious about all of those other elements in between and you can be more comfortable with the, with the smaller number. I think.

Steve:

Yeah, I think it, those larger numbers are, uh, we are drawn to them in PR because they’re so instantly gratifying as well. As you said, look, it’s like, it, it shows that, or it feels like it shows we’ve done a good job, but actually it is all the other things and it is thankfully it feels like it’s changing a bit more. Like this year, certainly a bit like last year because some of the best campaigns I’ve worked on, like the link numbers haven’t been great. But the impact in terms of people, I dunno, buying the product or searching for it or establishing a brand in connection with something like standing for something is, is, is way more meaningful. So it’s going beyond that. But I love what you say, stir about. Telling a story, it’s kind of telling the right story. Like what kind of story do you want to tell when you have started a campaign? Like maybe think of that in advance rather than just, we want to get some coverage. Like, why do you want to get coverage? What do you wanna do with it? So an interesting time.

Stella:

Yeah. I think your point is about saying the difference with digital PR is that you. You, you are looking at more of a long term as well impact. So you’re building those links because you know that eventually over time you will make a difference to those search positions, whether it’s trying to get a website forever up or trying to change what the results look like. But I think when it’s a straightforward PR brief. And raise awareness is in, is in the brief. Unfortunately, people just then report straight away after that short term burst of coverage and that short term project, and actually, like you say, they probably would be making quite a big difference to that brand, whether it’s to their site, their traffic, or just the way that people think about the brand much further down the line. And unfortunately they’re missing out on finding that out for their own self-worth, but also to let them know, the brand know, and there is a decline of retainers and there is an increase in more project work now in, in the PR space. And, and it’s a shame. So, but it might well be worth people checking in on this kind of thing if they did a really big, impactful project over a, a number of months, at the beginning of one year. Go and check in on it. Be curious about what happens, like a year later, because you never know you could go and win that client again by letting them know what’s actually happened a year later.

Louise:

You touched on it before and like it would be remiss to not talk about AI, in any marketing podcast. How are you finding that that is changing the way PR professionals are measuring their success and kind of other forms of automation as well? Or do you think it’s the, the real benefits haven’t quite hit yet?

Stella:

I think there are some benefits, obviously, you know, whether it’s adding some commentary to the reports that people were doing and like that, that’s getting more and more impressive. I think. Like that’s another I’m interested in. People saving time so they can use their, you know, human time on more important jobs. So like that for example, is really interesting. You know, it’s really, it’s been quite some time now that we can get all of our data analysis. Um, automated and brought back to us, but now to be able to use AI to actually write up some of these elements is fantastic. So it is definitely made a big impact just in, at least with that. But I do think that it’s interesting to see how it’s gonna develop for sure. I mean, there’s I know that there’s PR teams who are using AI to build their own measurement suite of tools,  because you know, you can create basic tools now without a team of developers. That’s really interesting times to be in. Not anything that you’d be able to, you know, sell back or use on a mass scale, but for a small team you can do that. And that is really interesting, especially when you’ve got curious people who are thinking and especially when you’ve got an agency where we have a very specific offering and you need to change the way that you are measuring for different clients, then that’s really cool because you can’t always just use the same suite and the same setup every single time. So yeah, I’m always curious to keep hearing about that and seeing how it develops. But yeah, I also think though that it’s what people don’t realise is that automation and time save has just been going on for a long time just with technology, but it’s not just subtly here because of AI and machine learning. I think a lot of people will probably think that CoverageBook is AI, but it’s actually built by developers, you know? And it’s important that it is built by developers right now. It doesn’t mean to say that we don’t play with elements of AI, but it’s not, we all know it is not quite there yet to be completely trustworthy and in all areas. So it’s cool to, I definitely recommend teams to be exploring it and just you know, just to drawing up different parts of measurement, it can be really good and to bring back data in a quick way. I recommend people to play around with it, but I don’t think it’s the answer for, for all measurement.

Louise:

It’ll be interesting to see how, not so much using AI for measurement, but AI as a kind of a measure of measurement, as in we’re talking a lot about how our work can impact the AI results you get through like ChatGPT or on Google Gemini. And yeah, if you’re going out with your client and getting positive coverage and associating them with certain topics and products and things like that, how when then people search using AI, it can impact the results that come back from that. So that might be a whole new area in which people can show the value of their PR work in this different. Like, and obviously at the moment it’s kind of just like you are showing up, which is really valuable. And then there’s the, then what does that mean and why is that beneficial? So that’s like an area that’s really interesting. I think it was Rand Fishkin has done a number of videos and blog posts saying how important he feels PR is gonna be around that, which is really nice because you know, PR doesn’t always get kind of big up and said how key it will be in the marketing mix.

Steve:

God bless him. God bless Rand Fishkin.

Stella:

Yeah, I saw that video and it totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. It’s just a, a new step on from the traditional search results, but  I want, especially I know it is, you know, digital PR space is probably already on this in and tracking how their different clients or brands that they’re working on may be appearing for different types of searches. But that curiosity I think is lacking in, in, in traditional a PR I think that people are only just starting to use some teams, you know, there’s a scale of of ability, but some people are still, are only just starting to include Google trends, graphs, in reports, you know, and it’s that point that I mentioned right at the beginning, really think about how you, how you are affecting that target audience. Put yourself in the shoes of that person to, you know, how are you searching for something once you hear about something. And yeah, the AI results are, are definitely there and. We just need to track it.

Steve:

Yeah. Well, I’m keen to talk about other teams. Obviously not expecting you to name names at all. But for complete transparency at Propellernet we use coverage book in our like award entries. So we will kind of reference some of the metrics in there and even link to coverage books to sort of show that. We’ve definitely done what we’ve done. Really keen to hear if you can share any standout examples of kind of PR teams using coverage book to demonstrate great results and, and kind of how they’re doing it.

Stella:

Yeah, I can name names. Oh, amazing. Actually, just to reassure any coverage book customers, I wouldn’t normally, it’s only this one particular one I can, I don’t talk about our customers work willy-nilly. Gary will be pleased that I’ve got willy-nilly into this interview actually. It’s a term that he loves to use, which does make you laugh. It doesn’t make any sense to any of your US listeners.

Louise:

We’ll have a glossary at the end of, of terms used.

Stella:

Searches for willy-nilly up. So, uh, Diageo is a good one to talk about. It’s the large drinks organisation that has brands like Captain Morgan, Guinness, Smirnoff, many, drinks brands, biggest ones in the world under Diageo. So they, this was quite interesting. They actually only really use CoverageBook for the metric that we have, which is estimated coverage views. So we have lots of metrics and then we have a really lovely way that the reports are designed and there’s different formats in that, in those designs, they weren’t actually using that part of the, of the tool. They literally were just asking their agencies and their teams to go into the account, dropping all of the coverage, and then they were downloading the CSV files just to get all of the data on, on the coverage. And the reason why they were doing that is because they wanted to look at the estimated coverage views. And the reason for that is because they were using it as a proxy for impressions. And then there was a central person at Diageo, James Alexander at the time. He’s in a different role now, but at the time he was using that, as I say, as a proxy for impressions. And really simply, he needed some way to compare owned, earned, and paid for apples. For apples, he had, obviously there’s so much more measurement that goes, that’s involved in campaign pay debt campaigns, own campaigns, and earn campaigns for Diageo. But he was making budget decisions once a year and he really just needed to know simply in terms of impressions for campaigns. What was performing better across all of these different brands and across those different types of marketing. And what was the result from this? Very simple, and I mean I say a simple analysis. He had huge spreadsheet, which was, it was like a scoring system, so there was loads of different elements to it. But this estimated coverage views versus impressions for paid versus impressions for owned was one line of it and it showed PR and earned activity in a really positive light. Like they were getting way more impressions for the cost. So what they were doing is looking at impressions and estimated coverage views, and then calculating a CPM. So cost per a thousand impressions and earned was winning every single time. So they actually ended up getting more budget. Um, and in terms of awards we were like, that’s so interesting. And then James entered that measurement process into the AMEC Awards. So AMEC is the Association of Measurements and Evaluation for Communications. And they had, and that’s sort of global, and they have an award ceremony once a year, and he won the most amount of awards with that and has got like the Grand Prix Gold prize or whatever it’s called. Yeah, it was really interesting for us to see how valuable that one metric was to a brand like Diageo. And since then we’ve had more brands doing that, especially in-house teams because they just get, we, we talked about consistent metrics at the beginning. They’re just getting different metrics from. You know, where even if you say, oh, can you give us unique monthly uniques on your coverage, but even then, even just monthly uniques from the publishers can be different to the different tools that you use. So yeah, we are seeing now in-house teams, it’s like all of my agencies. Can you just use coverage book just so I have a point of consistency, and then are using that estimated coverage views figure.

Louise:

Nice. That’s such an amazing case study. Yeah, like, I mean, I was expecting a good case study, but that’s incredible. Like, and also it’s like it’s, it’s obviously it isn’t simple what he did, but when you explain it, you’re like, yeah, of course. Like of course you would want to do that, but it’s having the ability to be able to, like you said, have the consistency, have the right data, and that’s amazing that CoverageBook played such a big part in it.

Stella:

Yeah. It’s nice to be able to share that with other in-house teams because they were having the same problem. And I’m not, I’m just wanna be clear, I’m not suggesting that that is the only type of measurement that these brands are doing, or should do. There’s, you know, there are all sorts of different measurement in terms of how messages are landing and change of opinions and all of that stuff should totally still happen. But often you just need some kind of line of consistency through marketing and that’s a challenge. But it gives, it’s a little bit of a step forward. It gives a point of discussion at least.

Steve:

Well, that line of consistency in that example is really interesting as well because this is why I think PR professionals tend to keep going back or there’s people that want to go back to AVE because it gives you a clear, like you put in X amount and you get X out, which is sort of how paid operates, paid media, and that’s really compelling for the C-suite.

Stella:

Do you know what with the CPM, calculation, I was like, this is amazing. I need to just let everyone know about this. And I did get quite a few comments back when I started to talk about it from PR people saying, but isn’t that just the same as AVE? It’s like, no, no, it’s not equivalent. Advertising value is just saying what it might cost to just place something on a website and, and actually that looks like an advert, and this is a PA PR piece. It’s completely different. And also the CPM is about how much went into the campaign, so how much you’re actually paying for the campaign. And then the performance of the earned campaign is about how many people may have seen it and engaged with it. So it is still talking about the value of PR as AV doesn’t it’s completely different. But yeah, we’ve got a free calculator if anyone wants to have a play around.

Lousie:

Nice. Is there a name that you can drop or what do people need to search to find the calculator?

Stella:

Oh, it’s on the coverage book website. If you go scroll the way down to the bottom where I think it might be in resources, I can share a link in the, if you guys have notes as well. It’s a free calculator. You don’t have to be a customer, although it is easier to use estimated coverage views, trying to work that out yourself is almost impossible.

Steve:

That’s one of the many benefits of CoverageBook you’ve done that for, for everyone. Nice.

Louise:

I guess people listening to this, I’d imagine a lot of people are digital PR people, although there probably are some what we, what’s known as traditional PR. I know it’s a horrible cringey phrase, but, you know, I would be intrigued to know if from a digital PR perspective, what would be the kind of traditional PR methods that you think you would advise someone to just look into, maybe it’s just like one and then vice versa. Like if you are a more kind of classic consumer PR person and you want to start thinking about the measurement that maybe digital PRs use, like what would be your first port of call? Like where do you advise people look?

Stella:

Mm. Yeah, I like this. Um, so I guess from the digital PR perspective, I’m not, again, I don’t wanna make a generalisation because everyone has different kind of practices, but I felt like some of the measurement in terms of how message lands or sentiment or like the messaging into your campaigns and how that associates to the brand and the target audience that element is sometimes missed because it’s so focused on the DA of the site or the link and then the effect that it’s had on the website. But actually I think you mentioned it was that. It is starting to change now in terms of AI, and it’s not all just about the links. It is about the content of the coverage to then see what kind of results are coming back. And especially in those AI results, it is about the, the how the message is landing. The spokesperson that you might have used. It is joining up more and more. So it isn’t just about some random piece of coverage, but it’s got a link back to the site. It is about all elements all being totally integrated. So I would say for digital PRs to start to learn or really go into that area a little bit more about the sort of coverage and branding and messaging analysis as well in, in their measurement. Yeah, that would be from that side. And then flip my head around to the other side. I think I mentioned this already in terms of like the measurement sort of sequence for PRs. I do see sort of like, and AMEC do a great job in sort of educating people in the fact that you need to report on your outputs and then you look at your outcome. And so that’s like some kind of organisational impact of some kind, and that’s great. People talk about the output, so that could be like, this is the number pieces of coverage, the reach, and then this happens. And so we think that it might have been to do with PR and there’s often like a bit of a gap. And so I’ve already talked about it. I think it’s really important. It’s like what’s going on in that gap between like what are those bridges between that or that customer journey between? I think that digital PR is really good at this. But being more comfortable in using search tools to tell that story. So it’s not just about, and I think there’s still a bit of confusion when people say search. People think it’s just SEO and SEO is about a website. It’s not, it’s about really exploring how your target audience searches, because that shows that they’ve been affected in some way by your communication, your target audience is, is making action because of how you’ve communicated to them. So that is like the most important thing I think that, PR people need to explore and to learn from digital PRs. Like how do you tell that story of searches of your. Brand product campaign name that you might have made up. The spokesperson, the celebrity, the timings of that. And then how did it change? That’s like the biggest area, I would say is because it will join the dots and tell your story better.

Steve:

So that’s, that’s measurement now, which you have answered. Brilliantly and like I think is gonna be so intriguing for our listeners. We pretty much ask all of our guests in their specific field to do a bit of future gazing. You’ve worked at coverage book 10 years since its inception. What do you think PR measurement is gonna look like in sort of five to 10 years time? What do you think is gonna change? Do you see anything significant changing?

Stella:

What do I think will happen or would I like to see happen?

Steve:

That’s a great follow up question. You can answer both. What do you think is gonna happen and what would you like to see happen? That’s a better question.

Stella:

I mean, and you look back, I’ve been in PR for 22 years. Not that much has actually changed. That sounds terrible, but I remember meeting Gary in 2008. It is 2025 now. And I remember saying to Gary Preston, founder of CoverageBook, we need to move fast because as soon as PR people start hearing about this SEO stuff, like it’s gonna change the whole industry. It’s moved on a bit. But you know, anyway, having said that, I’m not sure, but things have changed more in the digital space and people are using data more. And I would say in the last five years it has moved on a lot quicker than in the last 20. But what I think will happen is more of what we’ve said, really. I think people become more comfortable with playing around with different tools and being more curious if they are hiring data-curious people or working with more marketing teams, because unless they’re doing that, they are just gonna stay doing the same things. So that’s what I think that that will be interesting. I think they’ll start to use different tools and then joining them together in their own way and maybe using AI to, to create their own, their own stuff. That will be quite interesting. A space that I’m curious about and I don’t hear enough about in terms of digital PR and, and PR actually is. Reputation management is more important today than it ever has been. And it’s, and it’s an area that is worked on both sides. I don’t see much being talked about that in terms of reporting and measurement. There’s probably a good reason for that because it probably needs to be kept behind closed doors to a certain extent. But that’s an area that I would love to hear more about and see more because, you know, you’ve got agencies like. Burson, which are massive. It’s the biggest agency in the world, and it is all about reputation management and, and looking after reputation. So I’m keen to see how the measurement of that is going to going to evolve.

Louise:

Interesting.

Stella:

Yeah.

Louise:

When it comes to CoverageBook, yes. Talking about looking into the future. Have you got any little sneak peeks of what you guys are working on?

Stella:

Yeah, so we wanna stay with our whole theme of simplifying processes. A nice sort of surprise and delights along the way as well. So I guess if you, if people haven’t seen it, we released a free tool called CoverageBook, maybe a year ago. If you ever see us sort of talk about different areas or, you know, release new tools like that, it gives you an idea of the way that we are thinking, for our customers and the people that we’re, that we work with. We’re all about sort of making sure that you’re use, keeping consistent with metrics, but also how do you pull those insights out and demonstrate your results in the best way. So, I mean, coverage impact at the moment is. Is a free tool that people can go and use online. So just in case you haven’t seen it, it basically is very simply a graph generator because actually making graphs is quite difficult. You’ve got to know how to use pivot tables and fiddle around in, in, in sheets for quite some time. This really helps you just draw a line of coverage over time and then it provides a second line of impact. So some kind of organisational impact or outcome impact, or it could be, Google Trends. We are pulling Google trends there as well. So that kind of storytelling is the way that we will probably go with CoverageBook.

Steve:

Yeah. Excited for that because we, we’ve used coverage impact and I know others in other agencies have, but you’re great at like, not over complicating things, but just to sort of adding little elements over time that just make it even better and sort of more intuitive to use and, and being able to show that impact more consistently. So yeah, watch this space.

Stella: I guess just to be clear, we probably won’t be putting the hold of coverage impact into CoverageBook, but that my answer probably sounded like that, but it’s that kind of vibe of how else can you simply show the success of the coverage that you’re adding in.

Steve:

Yeah.

Stella:

So look out for little surprise and delights.

Steve:

Oh, lovely. We’ve got to our final question, which is not about measurement really at all, but we’re asking every guest this season the same question. You get a choice. Could you share a digital PR campaign? Or kind of story that you’ve loved recently, or which brand would you love to work with and why? And I’m aware, obviously you work with loads of brands at coverage books, so that might be a slightly left field question for you, but you still get the choice. We’re being fair and we’re eager to hear what you’ve gotta say.

Stella: I worked in reputation management a little bit. Um, a number of years ago, and I find that area really, really interesting. And I know that PR agencies work very closely with, whether it’s important spokespeople or brands on, on how they, their reputation is online. And because it is such an evolving area, I just really want to, I would love to work with. It’s hard to say an exact brand because it really kind of depends on what’s going on for them at that time in terms of what reputation they need to improve or work on. Yeah. I’m always curious to know like how, how that is working. So for example, you know, a number of years ago it would be, okay, what kind of media stories are going on for, for this leader of this business whilst their financial results are being announced? But then how are people searching for it and how is that changing around a certain time? So I’m always interested around like key political times, how search results change based on what news is happening. So that is like, I find that a really interesting, interesting point. So I think I would love to probably work with. Yeah, an organisation that has sort of a big announcement. There’s got that’s huge scale where you do see a change in results on like a day-to-day basis. That that’s what I find exciting and interesting. That doesn’t exactly answer your question, does it? You need one brand, but it’s more like an area. So if people are working in that kind of space. Come and find me on LinkedIn because I find it fascinating. And I always think that there’s, there’s new tools that and techniques that people can recommend to each other because it is still that. Going back to pr, how PR and search merges together, that is a particular area where I wonder how, how integrated is it? And if you, it is completely integrated and you are working on that kind of thing, come and chat to me because I’d love to chat.

Steve:

Yeah, no, that is a great answer. Definitely a fascinating area. I’ve always been really scared of the idea of being a spokesperson for a major brand. You know, when they’ve got something big to say and like if, if they get it wrong in any way, and then it’s like the next day the share price plummets or something like that, it’s genuinely terrifying. But behind all of that, there are seasoned PR professionals, like working extremely hard to kind of manage all of that. And it is a really, really intriguing area, which is very different to some of the things that we do and, and have done and, you know, all of that. So, yeah. Fascinating answer.

Louise:

I feel like, you know, if you worked with like the government, you know, like the, all the press offices of like, I don’t know, the home office and stuff like that, everything that comes out. The, you know, all the, the stories and the, the announcements that comes back, like that would just be fascinating to work from. Yeah. I’ve never really thought about it from that side. Like of a more public sector. I have seen,

Stella:

It’s still quite siloed, but correct. You know, if anyone’s listening to this and say, no, you’re wrong. We’ve got it in a completely integrated way. But I was talking to a, they don’t describe themselves as monitoring, but I think they kind of are monitoring. Pulling TV clips across the US and they were talking to me about, um, a possible partnership with CoverageBook. Because some of their, uh, they work with US government departments and yeah, it’s very, very busy. They, they have loads of different clips. You put your, you know, your spokesperson name in and they pull in all of the different clips but they don’t look at any kind of metrics or what happens after those clips have gone out. It’s very much a, well, that clip has, that news piece has happened, that speech has happened, and then it’s gone. It’s like, well, we know that there’s a lot more that happens after that. Like, let alone just the conversations on social media. Then how does this. Search results change off the back of that. Because they do for quite some time. So yeah, I just find it fascinating and yeah, if anyone is integrating all of that and bringing it together whilst advising key spokespeople, then yeah. Let’s chat.

Steve:

Well, talking about chatting, we’ve finished our conversation. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I mean that’s one of the most seamless outros I’m really chuffed with that. Well done. End of season out. I love that. How should people get in touch with you, Stella, whether it’s about reputation management or to find out more about CoverageBook or to work with you? Like what’s the best way of getting in touch with you?

Stella:

LinkedIn, just search Stella Bayles.

Steve:

Nice, lovely. Nice and easy like that. Yeah. We haven’t had one guest yet of, for obvious reasons, but often it’s LinkedIn. But I’d love it if a guest was like, just call me on a landline. Like really old school. Just get the landline number or write to me. Send an envelope. We’ve got a PO Box and LinkedIn, Stella Bayles, get in touch. It’s been such a pleasure to chat with you, Stella, like always fascinating. Thank you very much for closing the season off in style.

Stella:

Thank you for having me. It’s been lovely.

Louise:

Thanks Stella. Bye.