The Paine Of Measurement September 2019
Welcome to the Back to School issue of The Measurement Advisor. September for me will always be back to school time, even though everyone seems to go back to school in August now. To this day, I experience a sense of dread and unease whenever the nights get cooler and days get shorter. My inner child is still rebelling against the day that my father and I would have to pack up and leave Shankhassick Farm and return to the “city life” in New York.
Neither of us much liked the city. For all the work that life on the farm entailed, Shankhassick was always where my father and I were happiest. The city required a different type of “work”: living up to Mom’s expectations, dressing up, homework, and of course the dreaded try-outs for sports teams during which I was inevitably the last to get picked.
I can still remember my disastrous third grade “What I Did on Summer Vacation” presentation. I informed the teacher and the rest of my class that the highlight of the summer was when “…my father and my uncle and all his friends burned down a house and we all watched and had a picnic.” The teacher accused me of lying, (which I think was preferable to thinking my family were all arsonists.) She called my parents, who explained that it was an old abandoned house and it needed to be destroyed so no one would get injured playing around it. But still, it wasn’t a great start to the year.
Measurement = Back to School?
So how does this all tie into measurement, you might be wondering? My hunch is that most communications people feel about measurement the way my father and I felt about the city. It’s work, it’s boring, and we just want to go and do something more fun.
But school, like measurement has its benefits, which is why we’re combining the two in this issue about measuring communications results in higher education. Our goal is to help you feel a little less dread and a little more excitement when you tackle your measurement chores.
In this issue you’ll find:
- Why your job is so tough: “The Special Challenges and Opportunities of Communications Measurement for Higher Education.
- We then answer the most asked question in measurement: “How to Show Your Value 101: Lessons Every Communications Measurement Professional Needs to Learn.”
- If you are just starting to measure your higher ed comms, then read “4 Quick Tips for Getting Started Measuring Your Results in Higher Education Communications.”
- And for those of who are putting together a full blown higher ed comms measurement program, we have two articles to help you out:
- The very good news is that our Measurement Maven this month, Greg Jarboe, has demonstrated communications’ impact on university revenue. Get a taste of his most recent work at Rutgers here, or come to our 2019 Summit on the Future of Communications Measurement to hear him present the whole story.
- Our Measurement Menace this month is both topical and timely: “College Rankings Are the Measurement Menace of the Month.”
- For more tales of successful higher ed comms measurement, read: “4 Case Studies: How Measurement Makes the Grade in Higher Education Communications.”
- As always, we have Daphne Gray-Grant’s advice on better writing, “5 Steps to Beat Your Writing Procrastination.”
- And, finally, if you haven’t had enough measurement yet, here’s our list of what’s worth reading: “September 2019 Measurement Media Medley.”
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The image up top is based on an image by congerdesign from Pixabay.
