So every September we are fortunate enough to help the Heinz Family Foundation release the Heinz Awards.  We have a long-standing relationship with the Foundation and have helped raise the stature of the Awards over the years though national media relations.

This year our media targets were some of the same, The New York Times, USA Today, NPR, etc.  In addition, we focus on the local markets of the recipients, their school and trade affiliations etc.

In the past, our success was primarily judged by the standard media relations measurement stats — impressions.

This year, the game changed dramatically mainly because of the growth of social media in the past year.  Here’s why:

• Much of the media we pitch to with some exceptions have moved from print to online.  The focus of the Awards this year was environmental reporters.  Most of the high-level targets while still writing for print outlets are featured more prominently in blogs where they have more time and space to tell their stories.  Case in point, the stories written by Bryan Walsh of Time.com and Beth Weise of USAToday.com.

• The use of Twitter and Facebook by the media themselves to promote their stories.  Once written, most news outlets now post and tweet their stories to their social media audiences.  This is not only the big boys, but the countless trade publication, college and university sites, bloggers, etc. who promote their stories through social media platforms. 

• The viral nature of these platforms then go into warp-speed action has friends, colleagues and those who admired the recipients’ work, then re-post and re-tweet the good news to all their friends, fans and followers.  This is where the magic really happens and the news is spread geometrically in ways that media relations folks can only dream about.

• Finally in true social media fashion the surprising things happen.  In our case, Chip Giller of Grist, one of the recipients, and his staff produce a short, irreverent video thanking the Heinz Awards folks for the Award.  That video also spreads virally and the magic happens all over again.

So the question for the media relations pro is how do you “count” all the success.  Frankly, I’m tempted to count the followers for all the folks who tweeted and re-tweeted in a way similar to counting standard media impressions.  But the social media soul inside of me knows that those numbers would only be scratching the surface.  Other than copying and pasting the tweets into a series of emails for my client to see, it is hard to quantify the total reach.

However for a brand that through the years has struggled to be relevant especially with a younger audience, this level of social media activity is success unto itself.  A week later the Awards are still be promoted and tweeted.

For media relations people these are good problems to have.  We always knew that social media can help amplify media relations success.  For me, this project amplifies how dramatically things have changed in the space of one year,

Would love to hear your thoughts on how to quantify social media “impressions” even beyond the use of services like Radian 6 and SM2.  Thanks.