I find it hard to measure the real impact of my communications efforts. How can I track success more effectively?

Let’s save the easy stuff about open rates and surveys til last, because there’s something really important at play in communications that is much more difficult to measure: conversations.

As communicators, much of our jobs are done through verbal conversations where we are using our influence and leadership to support others in getting things done. How exactly are you supposed to measure that?

When I first started, I struggled to measure impact. How exactly does one measure the results of conversations? It wasn’t until I got my coaching certification through New Ventures West that I discovered how using plans and metrics determined in advance could be applied to conversations. It just takes some planning and thought, like any strategy.

For example, if I was speaking with someone with the goal of conveying what was important in an upcoming presentation they had, I could put as a metric whether or not they successfully conveyed that message. Or if I was coaching a team or individual to resolve an issue they were dealing with, how did they end up dealing with it? Did they deal with it at all? And did new behavior arise through their personal development that helped them make different decisions in the future? 

Measuring the impact of written communications

Stepping out of verbal comms into written, it becomes a little easier. We can measure engagement with written comms like email with data analysis, awareness and opinion through surveys, focus groups, and ad hoc temperature checks. Longterm, we can measure attitude and behavior shifts over time through surveying teams, gathering feedback, and experimenting with new techniques based on their needs. 

Building out my first three year strategic communications plan, I had three goals, each with its own set of measurable functions. These goals were:

1. Keeping the community informed and aligned
2. Building culture and community
3. Supporting productivity and development

These goals were chosen based on the needs of this particular group. It could be different for yours, but they are also general enough to be applied to most organizations beneficially. 

As communicators, much of our jobs are done through verbal conversations where we are using our influence and leadership to support others in getting things done. How exactly are you supposed to measure that?

For each goal, I had sets of tasks that could be measured. For example, under goal one of keeping the community informed and aligned, I implemented a casual weekly internal newsletter with relevant news, announcements, events, and community-based updates. I measured the efficacy of this through surveys where people rated their sense of awareness and provided feedback. I also asked people directly what they thought. Over the course of a year, people’s awareness and sense of connection to the community increased by 50% through this and other initiatives. I was only able to measure this because I took a baseline at the start and planned ahead. 

Measuring the impact of intangible communications

Let’s do one that’s a little more difficult to measure – building culture and community. I had a lot of fun with this because knitting teams together is something I get a lot of satisfaction from. For me, communication at its heart is about relationships and connection, so all comms strategies should have connection as a major goal. But how do you measure it?

This is absolutely a trickier one because it’s very much about vibes. But even attitudinal changes can be measured through behavior. Do people show up to optional events more often? Does productivity increase? Do teams experience less conflict or more amenability to figuring it out? Does your Glassdoor rating go up? Consider what ‘culture and community’ means to your organization and build backwards from there.

Tracking results is not just important from a KPI and performance perspective. For communicators, who do a lot of intangible work, it’s critical to track impact in order to communicate with ourselves how good a job we’re doing. Once I learned how to do this, I never had to question my own impact again – which ended up enabling me to show up with confidence in my own capabilities and, in turn, do an even better job. 

More to come on this topic and let me know in the comments what you want to see more of!