Often times as marketers or communicators, we get so focused on telling the story of our product that we lose sight of another important story. Our story.
We excel at gathering all the minutia of a product, brand, or event and finding the most creative and effective way of sharing that information with our audience. We tell compelling stories with words, visuals, and sound. We share it in print, broadcast, and online. However, when it comes to the story of what we do as marketers and communicators, we often fall far short.
In reality, we have a compelling story of our own to tell. Not just, “We published a creative angle on a story, or produced a great ad.” Thanks to the beauty of metrics which are readily accessible for most if not all new media, we can identify what impact that story had, how many people it reached, how many clicks, actions, or sales it drove. Sure, we keep track of those, but they are boring, right? Wrong. This is our story.
At a time when especially smaller organizations and non-profits consider communications professionals an expensive item to be removed from the budget and replaced with volunteers or interns, this is our story that we need to sell with every bit as much gusto as we do the other stories that we tell.
True, we have the ability to collect an overwhelming sea of numbers – more than any sane person cares to review. We must ruthlessly edit in the same way that we ruthlessly edit every bit of copy that we use to create an ad, editorial, or feature piece.
What are the most compelling statistics and how can they be presented in the most cohesive persuasive way?
In a non-profit organization, I would argue that you should start with the strategic plan. Functionally, your communications should be working to advance the strategic plan, so what are some measurable outcomes that can support the goals of the strategic plan? This will drive what metrics you use to tell your story.
Admittedly, sometimes identifying the right metrics is the hardest part of the job. You might check out these articles here, here, and here that have different takes on the topic (from different industries, but the lessons are applicable). If you know me this is also something that I love to talk about so shoot me an email.
Once you’ve identified how you are advancing your organization’s goals, you have the metrics to demonstrate your success (or your lack of success and the strategic and tactical changes you are making as a result), what do you do with this information? If a Tweet fell in the forest would anyone hear it? You need to make sure that your management and or board can easily see the value that strategic communication plays in advancing organizational goals. You need to tell your story.
Memos, infographics, and short videos are all ways to imbue your metrics with meaning. I would argue that at least once per year it is important to report how effective your communications have been in advancing the larger organizational goals – tell your story.
I know you’re worried right now that you’ll find out that maybe some of your communications haven’t hit their mark. That is OKAY – as long as you have the data to know why so that you can adjust your tactics to more effective ones in the future. And that self-awareness and innovative vision is also part of your story.
MGetz 
Great reminder that I need to pay more attention to metrics. And figure out exactly where I should be telling those stories. Thanks!
good points. as we learned in redoing our website, the most hit page was the visitors’ page, a huge surprise to all of us as I expected people to access this info on a more local level so we beefed it up because of the analytics. too often we are afraid to illuminate the stats for fear what we are doing is falling short of the mark. none of this communications work should be undertaken without a strategic plan and the validity of any plan is supported by the numbers that show if it’s working (or not). thanks for the posting.
Carol – thanks for sharing your story of adjusting tactics based on what the metrics were telling you. I really believe in experimenting, but doing so in a controlled way so that we can see what works and what didn’t (and ideally why) so that we can improve future efforts.
Mary
Good points! Reminds me that I need to review my analytics for our site!
Great topic, Mary! Here, we’re operating without an overall strategic plan for the diocese, so my own informal plans are hit-or-miss. We’re starting the planning process this fall, so I look forward to finding the best way communications can inform and support the work we undertake together.
Yes, it can be a real challenge when there are no stated organizational big-picture goals. In the past when faced with a similar situation, I’ve done a year end report that highlighted the most and least successful tactics from the previous year and then use what we learned from them both to set some practical goals/guidelines for the coming year.
For example, if we discovered that our worst preforming emails all had more than 4 paragraphs and that all of our top preforming emails had graphics with people as opposed to objects or scenery, I’d then make the plan for the coming year to keep emails short and include photos with people when at all possible. Most importantly, I didn’t keep this information to myself. I shared it up the chain of command – how many contacts we’d made, how many placements we’d gotten, what worked, what didn’t, and how we were going to apply that knowledge gained to make the coming year (or quarter) even better.
Great idea to provide a report on the metrics once per year at least. I haven’t been doing that, and have yet to actually digest all the metrics on Google Analytics and Facebook. Measuring communication effectiveness is not my strong suit, but I can see the value in knowing where our tweets/comments/posts fall in the forest and being able to articulate their value to key decision makers. I could certainly use some help in figuring out what’s tangible and what’s leading to tangible success.
It is true that Google analytics provides an overwhelming amount of data. That is why it is important to align your critical measures with your business/strategic goals. This narrows your field of focus to the metrics that are really meaningful to you and your organization.