The rules of PR measurement are changing - drastically.

In 2010, public relations professionals from around the world came together to set new standards for measuring PR effectiveness called the Barcelona Principles.

Among other things, these new standards heavily emphasize the process of measurement from beginning to end. Specifically, they outline 3 distinct groups of measurable metrics that require different types of evaluation.

These newly defined focus points - the 3 O's - can help your garden business optimize your measuring practices.

Keep reading to learn how the 3 O's of the Barcelona Principles can help you evaluate where your garden business stands.

When considering public relations as a marketing tool, many garden businesses struggle with answers to two basic questions:

1. Is public relations worth the investment?

2. How will I know?

The nature of public relations makes these questions difficult to answer. Calculating ROI in a monetary sense is a fluid science, and nailing down perfectly precise numbers is akin to capturing lightning in a bottle.

However, there are some strategies and metrics your garden business can use to measure the potential of a new publicity campaign.

Check out these tips and tricks for projecting the success of your garden business' public relations campaign after taking the jump!

Contrary to popular belief, the most important commodity to a garden business isn't money.

The mysterious asset we're talking about has nothing to do with the monetary economy.

What is it?

Your brand's reputation.

You need to understand where your gardening business stands in the marketplace in order to continually improve your position.

To do this, you'll first need to measure your reputation.

Keep reading to learn 3 ways you can measure public opinion about your garden business.

Garden business owners know that a solid business plan is essential for success.

Business plans are how you communicate your vision when breaking into the field, and it's also the blueprint for maintaining success after you've gotten there.

But how can you measure success, and how do you know when you've reached it?

Any good garden business wants to answer these questions, but most of them ask a bit too late.

The best measurement strategies begin before your garden business even gets off the ground.

Keep reading to learn how to plan for your garden business' success with measurement metrics in mind.

Return on investment (ROI) is the ultimate goal of public relations for garden businesses. Everyone wants to see tangible results. 

PR firms gather data to demonstrate their ROI using many variables. Measuring PR's effects can often be quantified with hard data. Sometimes, however, it cannot.

Gardening public relations is all about getting the word out about your product or service. Green PR pros are always looking for great people to help them do this.

Bloggers are one of the newest and most powerful media outlets, especially since they have such devout readers. However, measuring the public relations success of a blog hit can be tricky.

How do we deduce how influential specific bloggers are? It's not an exact science, but there are a few tricks.

Keep reading to learn 3 creative ways your gardening business can measure blogger influence. 

Quantifying public relations provides valuable insight into the effectiveness of specific PR strategies, campaigns and tactics.

There are many ways to analyze the same set of data.

For example, looking at PR measurements and analytics through the lens of sports statistics develops an interesting, new perspective. 

Keep reading to learn how you can use sports to better understand the impact of public relations on your gardening business.

Public relations pros are always looking for ways to prove the effectiveness of their strategies.

There are a number of ways to do this, but because businesses are chiefly concerned with the bottom line, finding ways to measure the monetary impact of gardening PR efforts is typically most effective.

However, assigning dollar values with measurement metrics can be complicated.

Communicating positive results is great, but the way those numbers are calculated is just as important!        

Keep reading to learn how to take the complex issue of measuring gardening communication success and make it a bit simpler.