The 4th step of the public relations process is evaluation. In evaluating how a message that was delivered to an audience you must see if it was effective and how many it reached. After reading through chapter 8 in our text I thought one of the most important parts was the information on measurement of message exposure.
This is smart. Each firm can compare how they are doing in exposure compared to other firms. There are so many possibilities to reach out to your audience whether it be blogs or internet, web news sources, newspapers, magazines, trade journals, or TV. Another interesting topic was the discussion of audience and how to measure their attitudes and how much they are affected. Audiences awareness and understanding of a message are studied. The change that you observe can be looked at to see if it is attributed to public relations efforts.
Wilcox, D.L., & Cameron, G.T. (2009). Public relations: Strategies and tactics (9th Ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.