“Just tell me what to put in my measurement dashboard!” This is the cry for help I hear most often when I talk to communications and social media pros who are struggling with their metrics. They want to develop systems that show both their value to senior leadership and provide actionable information so their teams can make better decisions.
No two organizations are the same, so the answer isn’t simple. But there are a few standard metrics that I recommend:
For Earned Media
• Net increase in share of desirable media coverage
The operative word in this metric is “share.” Which means you need to be tracking your peers and/or competitors. This metric tells you how you’re doing in the marketplace, not in isolation. What you should be measuring is all of the conversations about your brand, products, or organization (social, online, traditional, broadcast, or wherever your brand gets mentioned.) Judge them either desirable (as in they leave the reader more likely to support or do business with you) or undesirable (leaving the reader less likely to support or do business with you).
• Net quality score
You may need to talk to your sales or marketing team to determine what elements (or specific messages) are most likely to persuade people to buy your product, idea, or do business with you. Once you’ve identified those elements, write them down, and give each a weighting. Just make sure that the total for the perfect story adds up to 10. Then do the same to the negative elements that might show up in a story (your worst nightmare), and make sure they add up to -10. Evaluate all stories that are in the media most likely to influence your key stakeholders on those criteria that will make them purchase or act. (See this article for more on how to develop an Net Quality Score.)
• Percentage of conversations that contain one or more key messages
Regardless of how you define “message” (might be an initiative, campaign, new product, or actual message—whatever is your top communications priority), you need to be tracking what percentage of items contain it.
• Percentage of conversions generated by earned media
First, make sure that tagging and conversions are set up in whatever you are using to track the performance of your website. Then look at the percentage of conversions each month that comes from the content that you’ve gotten published.
Conversions can be defined as traffic to a specific URL (for instance the “Thank You For Subscribing” page), behavior on the site, registrations, purchases, or another action that advance your organization’s mission. The point is to define them, set them up, and then measure all your content based on the extent to which it has driven conversions. If you’re measuring an online newsroom, for example, you might want to track the percentage increase in pieces of content used. If you’re managing media outreach, then increase in requests for more information might be your key conversion metric.
For Owned Social Media
• Top five performing pieces of content measured by conversion
Force rank the various forms of outreach by the extent to which they’ve generated conversions. This will quickly tell you what’s working and what isn’t.
• Percentage increase in conversions from social
Once you have conversion behavior established, goal conversions become a key metric that tells you how well your efforts are inspiring your stakeholders to act. If you’re managing social media’s impact on the business then you will want to keep a close watch on the percentage of conversions coming from social media channels.
• Percentage increase in engagement index
Measure the percentage of all your followers that are engaged, not just the number of likes or followers. (Read here how to create a custom engagement index.) Since less than three percent of all Facebook and Twitter content is actually seen by anyone, you only want to track the content for which there is some evidence that a human being actually interacted with it.
• Net growth in high-quality engagement
With the arrival of Facebook Reactions, evaluating the quality of your engagement in social media is more critical than ever. Likes tell you very little. On the other hand, comments that contain your key messages are meaningful. They reveal which messages resonate with your target audiences and which do not. Retweets and shares that contain personal endorsements carry far more weight. Develop your own custom engagement index that weighs each user action based on your goals and track it over time.
For Internal Communications
• Percentage increase or decrease in engagement over time
Most organizations have standard definitions of employee engagement, such as “willing to invest discretionary time,” or “eligible for reward recognition.” These are typically tracked annually, but for the purpose of a dashboard, we recommend quarterly pulse checks.
Put the results on your dashboard along with definitions of communications engagement, such as email opens, blog comments, etc. Presumably, the more employees receive, open, and engage with your communications, the more emotionally engaged they are with your organization.
• Tone of comment
Tracking the sentiment of comments on your internal blogs and/or on Glassdoor is another good gauge of employee overall attitude toward the organization.
For Public Affairs
When the goal is to stay out of the press or exercise influence indirectly, the metrics on your dashboard need to focus on the degree to which you have changed minds or influenced the direction of legislation. Possible metrics are:
• Net desirable progress on legislation
For instance, number of undesirable bills tabled or killed vs. number of desirable bills moving forward into committee or study.
• Net change in opinion on the issues that matter to your business
Set up your social listening to track the issues and then code the posts and comments as “expressing support” or “expressing opposition.” Report the change in ratio between support and opposition.
For Corporate Communications
• Cost effectiveness comparison
The most important analysis on your dashboard is the chart that shows the correlation between all the above metrics and your budget. Rank order all the functions based on the degree to which they’ve contributed to your goals. Then assign a “Resource Intensity” value to them. Don’t worry about actual dollars, but assign a score from 10 (total pain in the arse) to 1 (easy peasy). You’ll end up with a chart on your dashboard like the one pictured below. It will enable you to determine which is the most effective use of budget dollars, and which is the least effective.
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Need help with designing or implementing a dashboard or developing custom metrics? Katie Paine consults with companies and organizations of all sizes. Check out 10 ways Katie can help you and your organization, or call her to chat 603-682-0735.
