Kira always knew that she’d end up in a creative field, but it was her passion for storytelling that naturally led her toward communications and public relations. With over 15 years in the industry, she has witnessed its transformation—but data has always played a pivotal part in her journey. Named as one of the “Top Women in Public Relations” by PR News, Kira is a data-first communications professional who believes in showcasing business value brought in by communications and public relations. In this episode, she talks about how she uses data to drive her decision-making in communications and as the head of strategic communications at Instawork.
Video Transcription (AUTO-GENERATED)
0:18 My background has been traditionally in marketing and so you know up to all the way through college I knew I wanted to be in advertising or marketing or some sort of creative career journey, and I started in marketing. I went back and got my masters in marketing management. I’ve worked for startups throughout my entire career—usually as the first marketing person to come into an organization and that usually is comprised of multiple facets. So, I might do comms, you know, marketing, bridging that gap between sales, whatever the company needed, especially being the only person in that function. Eventually, at some point in my career, I realized that I really enjoyed the communications part of my job. I loved working with media, I love telling the story of a business and our users and I naturally started to gravitate more towards those types of responsibilities even when I was a catch-all for a lot of marketing or communication functions. And eventually I just slowly started to creep in and work in strategic communications, which still kind of bridges that gap. Strategic communications in particular is a way to work across the organization to make sure that everything is kind of lined up– everything from messaging to deliverables. You also get to tell these really great stories with the media or just the public and so that’s kind of how I fell into it. I wasn’t a communications major in college. It’s something that I’ve just gotten in doing over several years, almost a decade and a half at this point. I think you learn a lot by doing. So, that experience has been really invaluable to me.
Understanding Data
2:14 Data has always been a really important part of communications, particularly when I’ve been the only person within a startup or a company in that function. I use data to figure out what initiatives are working– that maybe we should be doubling down on as a company. And also, what are the things that just don’t seem to be resonating the way that we thought that they would and maybe we need to dial back those initiatives. So it’s some of your basic data analytics, website traffic, blog post engagement, open rates for emails–those are pretty industry standards. But when you have the opportunity to also look at attribution, which is an age-old problem in PR specifically— like how is all this press actually moving the needle– if you can start to harness that kind of data, it opens up a whole world of insight that you may not get otherwise. So then based on that, you know what kind of media, what kind of stories, what kind of audience is really engaged with your product or company, and then you can start to leverage this to make more educative decisions.
Integrating Data into Stories
3.24: There are multiple ways that you can use data. I encourage everyone in communications to use data to help tell your story when you can harness that data. So for things like Instawork or other companies that I’ve worked for, it has been about what kind of data do we have as an organization that can help our customers or our users or the industry that we’re serving to either have some critical conversation around the problem that we’re trying to solve or just providing organizations with insight that they need to make educative decisions going forward. And so a lot of that is around data insights, industry reports that we can generate and that will also help you from a communications perspective to tell your story. One of the key things about comms and pr is being able to tell a unique or original story that nobody else is telling and I think that data is a way that you can easily tap into. On the other end, data is critically important, like I mentioned to being able to figure out what campaigns are actually working and where you need to go deep in some initiatives and dial back on others and that is also going to be really important to figure out where your audience is and you know where you need to be as an organization to move that needle and continue your growth.
Solving Challenges with Data
4:45 It depends on the industry that you’re in and the problem that you’re trying to solve. A few years ago I worked for a healthcare company and we worked in data privacy and security and the big problem in that industry is exactly that– there’s a lot of very personal information that you disclose when you’re seeking care either with your doctor or in a hospital, whatever the setting may be and how do you make sure that that information is kept private. So, we developed a report then to talk about data breaches in healthcare and the scope of those problems to encourage critical conversation within the industry, but also at a policy level to start figuring out what we needed to do to better protect people’s privacy. It was just something that everybody kind of knew was a problem but wasn’t talking about because they didn’t have the data to start having those conversations. At a company like Instawork, we’re using data to help talk about the labor market and what we’re seeing from an hourly workforce. Again, you know, we’re having a lot of conversations as an industry and as a country about what the future of work looks like for this side of employees, but what’s not being talked about is the hourly workforce, which is over half of the million of the American workforce and what they need to be successful. So, we’re starting to equip our customers and the industry with data to start having some of those critical conversations and make great choices.
The Go-To Metric
6:18 Depends on what I am trying to do. Usually, if I can get attribution on what is moving the needle from a press perspective, in particular, that is usually the first thing when we start a campaign or we’re doing a press push, that is when I’m gonna go to see if the message that we’re trying to drive is really resonating with our audience. And, that’s a great way because it’s a direct correlation with what we’re talking about or what kind of engagement we’re having down to a product level. The other thing that we look for in terms of engagement is website traffic, blog post engagement–to see again if you know, at that top of the funnel type perspective, if the topics that we’re discussing are resonating and are they encouraging people to maybe look a little bit deeper into the future of work for the hourly workforce or, you know, different aspects locally versus a national campaign. There are a lot of ways you can slice and dice that information and data is going to be really key in seeing what’s working and what’s not.
Tools for Data Insights
7:23 There are a lot of tools out there that are similar in scope. I’ve always gravitated towards tools like Hubspot for looking at email traffic if your websites and HubSpot you can look at website engagement. I also use tools like Muck Rack or Cision, which is a journalist database. You can see what kind of volume or engagement you’re getting through your press initiatives from a PR perspective. If you don’t have access to those things, especially if you’re in an early stage company, you can use things like google analytics which are free tools for the most part, where you can start to see some of that engagement and you can see where your traffic is coming from to know what’s working the best.
My Wishlist
8:07 In public relations, I think I haven’t been to a conference yet where attribution has not been a keynote or a key topic of discussion. Everybody is trying to figure out how you can tie your press hits and your overall brand exposure to revenue. And, if we could solve that, that would be a game changer for the pr and comms industry. As I mentioned, you know, it depends on the company— you can start to try to get some attribution, but it’s really just going to show the tip of the iceberg, it’s not going to give you a full picture as to what is really moving the needle, and usually, it’s like a homegrown attribution. So, if somebody was onboarding to a product of some sort, it would be, how did you hear about us? Again, it’s going to be a small sliver. What we really need in the comms and PR industry is a way to have true attribution to figure out what’s moving the needle, particularly around the press.
My two Cents
9:05 My advice would be—-you have to try a lot of different things in strategic comms or pr. It can be sliced and diced in 1000 different ways, depending on how the organization you’re working for is set up. I think it’s important to try a lot of different areas to find out the areas that you’re really excited about and maybe even that you’re really good at and then kind of going deep in those areas. Working for startups is a great way to do that because it is boots on the ground. There’s a direct correlation with what you’re doing and the growth of the company, which is also really rewarding for me as a professional to see that impact. When you work for an early-stage company, you get to touch all of these different areas where maybe working for larger corporations you may just be handling press and not also content and social media and all these other things. So, I really encourage people, my the interns that I have every summer to try a lot of different things and be willing to be a little bit risky and try something you haven’t tried before and see how it lands. You may find something that you really love and you’re really good at, that you have never been exposed to otherwise.