I have a secret. I am a numbers and science geek.
by Laurel Chilcot Smithson
As a self-confessed lover of the written word from as far back as I can remember, it took me by surprise too. But I think it all stems from when I realised how powerful insight can be in strengthening your comms.
When I worked in the press team at UK Trade and Investment (now Department for International Trade) and we were trying to encourage more businesses to export, I found out that businesses trusted their accountants. I then made it my mission to target titles for accountants with features on the importance of exporting. Why? Because I wanted to do comms that resonated, to make my comms count and spread the word on what UKTI did in the most effective way I knew how.
But I also learnt an important lesson in those days – you have to do evaluation and keep doing evaluation to keep generating that kind of insight and keep it up-to-date and accurate of your audience. And, in a quickly-evolving industry like the media, you can’t stand still by assuming it will stay the same.
Since working in policing comms, central government and local government, I’ve picked up a few tips that should help make the task easier and keep you focussed, as well as sharing back your insight with your wider teams to use. Here goes with my six tips!
1) STRUCTURE - Use the GCS model to give you some structure – Inputs, Outputs, Outtakes, Outcomes. You could also add a ‘lessons learnt’ section at the end to spell out to your team and those in your organisation what insight might be useful for them going forward – things that worked and things that didn’t, which you’d do differently. You don’t need to do this for every piece of work you do – just the bigger campaigns.
2) BE SMART - Set your SMART KPIs at the start of your campaign, so you know what success looks like and how you will measure it. But also ‘be smart’ by basing these on the outputs, outtakes and outcomes model so there is a direct link to the end evaluation. Making sure you have a few for each area also ensures you don’t over-focus on the outputs, and neglect the outtakes and crucial outcomes – an easy trap to fall into.
3) SURVEY - Do regular audience surveying to help develop benchmarks for success and potential ways to measure your comms. An annual survey to understand what they are reading, where, digital trends, who they trust and what they think of your organisation is a really important place to start. The LGA have some great tips on what kinds of questions to ask, if this is something your organisation isn’t already doing. You could even consider teaming up with another department in your organisation to share the work and/or cost.
But you could also consider briefer quarterly/bi-annual ‘temperature checks’ to see who is seeing what news stories or campaigns. Sometimes a survey at the start of a campaign and at the end, on the bigger pieces, can really help focus your work further.
4) TRACK – Make trackable links for as many of the touchpoints for your audiences as you can. Not only does this provide a really good way of checking how your comms is doing throughout its run, but it gives you some excellent metrics to see how your campaign has done at the end and learning on what areas your audiences are seeing your messages.
5) TEMPLATISE – Develop a template to do the evaluation on, so it looks consistent each time, but keep it colourful and visual too by including images of particular successes. And make sure you are a ‘starter finisher’ by always completing this part of the process at the end of a big campaign/piece of work. It’s the best way to keep your comms relevant and keep learning.
6) SHARE, SHARE, SHARE – Don’t forget to share your evaluation document at the end so your colleagues can benefit and it shows colleagues in your wider organisation the power of comms. We can often be quite shy about showing off what we have done to others in comms, but consequently many of those not in comms don’t know what we do or have a chance to develop an appreciation for it. This is your hard work, so go ahead and ‘work it’.
All this sounds obvious, right? But, sometimes in our fast-paced environment and under pressure to just ‘do comms’ for whatever area we work in and whichever industry, sometimes it’s really easy to fall into the trap of doing comms for comms’ sake. Yet the dividends it pays to be more strategic and focussed on the goal, both for you professionally and for your organisation in achieving their ends, are unquantifiable. And the sense of job satisfaction
Laurel Chilcot Smithson is strategic communications manager at Hertfordshire County Council
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