Vertical study of online reputation tools to measure public relations and communication activity

Abstract

Since the 1960s the inte-rest in measuring the function of public relations and corporate communication has noticeably increased, thus the emer-gence of proposals for measurement indi-cators simply followed suit. Some models that explored this activity have focused on analyzing the relationships established between an organization and its publics, while others have explored the concept of corporate reputation. Currently, this function is also monitored in social networks. Method and Analysis: The present study has delved into the structure of online re-putation metrics listed by famous market research company Forrester that regularly publishes the state of the art for these types of tools (Liu, 2020; 2021). Delving fur-ther into previous descriptive research (Cuenca Fontbona, Matilla & Compte-Pujol, 2016), a descriptive study has been carried out of the websites of the organisations offering these metrics or “social listening platforms”. Additional primary data has been collected through qualitative semi-structured interviews with communication profes-sionals (N=180) from Lithuania in organizations of various sectors, in order to explore the level of awareness, adoption and usefulness of these online measurement tools for strategic decision making