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The role of a PR professional has come a long way since the days of faxing press releases to national news desks in hopes of securing coverage. While media relations is still a major part of our day-to-day jobs, these days PR folks can find themselves doing everything from monitoring social and traditional media trends, managing our clients’ social media handles or handling reporting, analytics and measurement.

What we have found is that there are many tools out there that can 1) Make your lives easier and 2) demonstrate ROI for brands. But finding the right tool the job can be a task in itself. In 2013, PAN launched PANoptic – our holistic approach to measuring success, analyzing conversations and packing data up for our clients – in an effort to identify valuable measurement tools that provide actionable insights.

Many traditional approaches to technology PR have been supplanted by newer, faster tactics, and PR pros now possess more tools and channels to elevate a brand’s visibility. What’s really changed, however, is the willingness of tech companies to think differently and empower their agency partners to bring their brand to life. It’s as if business-to-business tech marketers now need to act as if they’re promoting a consumer company.

It’s a great time to be in technology PR, and sure, these new tactics, tools and technologies are valuable, but when it comes to 99% of the tech world — the B2Bs — who face small budgets, limited resources and a dogfight to gain visibility in a crowded space, the basics appear to remain the same. Or do they?

Author Joe Pulizzi was in town yesterday. Pulizzi is founder of the Content Marketing Institute and spoke at Smartling’s Content Marketing and Scalability breakfast event at the Beacon Hotel in Boston. He is also an author and wrote the wonderfully helpful and recent Epic Content Marketing. Joined by Smartling’s Nataly Kelly, both offered insights and tips on how to be a more effective and mindful content marketer. An eye-opening stats from Pulizzi: in a recent survey of more than 5000 marketers, only 38 percent said they felt their content marketing was effective. You could perhaps assume that those 38 percent are either very proud of their work or perhaps are successful, but I have a feeling the “effectiveness” quotient of most marketers when it comes to content, might even be lower. Marketers know the impact of a great content marketing program on the “buyer’s journey.” But execution is often another story, says Pulizzi. Getting people to “care” about your content and act because of it, can be a vexing challenge.

How is it done? Pulizzi says it starts with goals. Though nine out of 10 marketing programs now have content marketing components to them, most do not have a plan. If you don’t have goals that are measurable, you cannot be fully effective with your content marketing program. Create a strategy and a structure he says, and then provide budget and resources to carry out your plan.

We’ve always taken PR measurement seriously here at PAN, applying the PANoptic method to all of our programs. That commitment doesn’t end with the fancy title or simply lie with a few individuals who happen to understand particular measurement tools. We believe every employee should be empowered not just with the right tools to measure PR programs, but also the ability to glean actionable insights.

To that end, last week I had the pleasure of sitting down with a group of colleagues who are as passionate about measurement as I am—well, if they weren’t before, they certainly are now—as part of the launch of our PANopticMVP training program. The certification program follows our philosophy that training individuals on how a single measurement tool works simply isn’t going to cut it. We as PR practitioners need to understand more than how to pull the data. We need to know what to do with the data once we get it, and more importantly, how to take a step back and analyze how that data fits into the bigger picture. That’s the key to discovering valuable insights that fuel PR strategy and drive continuous improvement.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending Bio IT World, a conference that unites life sciences, pharmaceutical, clinical, healthcare, and IT professionals from around the globe. One of the hottest topics discussed was big data and all of the different ways that it can impact the healthcare space. Insights from big data are being leveraged by many different groups within the industry, including physicians, pharmaceutical companies, payers and providers. For example, physicians can analyze big data to help predict patient adherence patterns and hospital readmissions.