intelligent measurement

Evaluating communication – 2 of 4 key lessons

October 23, 2015 at 2:40 pm 2 comments

In my last post I wrote about the first of  four key lessons on evaluation for communicators.

My first lesson was “1. Planning is key”.

My second lesson was “2. Decide what and how you will measure”

If you have planned well your communication actions, then you should have clear and measurable objectives.  Your “what” to measure should normally  be based at the level of objectives and their outcomes – not at the level of activities. For example, if  you have set your objective as ” to put issue XY  on the agenda of AB organisation” you should be measuring this notion, that is, is the issue on the agenda of AB- and not the activities and their outputs to reach this, which could be a series of meetings,  events, etc.

So if you have a broad communication action you might have to narrow down the “what” you want to measure – of course, I’d recommend  going for the more significant – assessing if an issue is on the agenda is more significant than assessing how many people attended a given event contributing to this goal (the former being a “outcome” and the latter being an “output”).

The “how” to measure has perhaps attracted the most attention in communication evaluation. There are plenty of guides and handbooks available that focus on the methods and tools to use to measure, here is a list of several that I find good. Key is to finding the tool/method that suits what you want to measure. For the above example, how could you measure if “issue XY is on the agenda of AB”? This could be done by studying public statements by AB on the given issue and assessing to what extent it is on their agenda.

Next post, lesson 3!

Entry filed under: communicating evaluation results, PR evaluation. Tags: communication evaluation, pr evaluation.