MEASURING THE
IMPACT OF
COMMUNICATION
ACTIVITY
ANDREW SMITH – MEDIA TRUST
WHAT’S THE PLAN?
If you are going to attempt to measure the impact of your
communication activity you must first develop or understand
what is the communications strategy?
Who says what to where.
It is easy to identify where you would like your message to be
seen or heard eg, local press, radio, TV and Online
But it can often be more difficult deciding how and who is
going to get it out there.
CAMPAIGN PLANNING
If you don’t already have a campaign plan, now is the time to
prepare one.
This will allow you to set out your campaign;
What resources you will use?
Which Media you are going to target?
What activities you will carry out?
Who will be assigned responsibility?
To decide how you will evaluate what is working and what
isn’t?
KEY MESSAGES
What do you want people to know about your organisation?
What do you want people to understand about your cause?
What do you want people to do?
CAMPAIGN
MILESTONES/EVENTS
The main points you need to keep in mind for your campaign.
This can also include any events that are taking place that
you may want to utilise during your campaign eg. County
show, trade events, large scale public gatherings…
These, too, are milestones you need to take advantage of to
let people know about your project.
MILESTONE DATES
When the identified ‘milestones’ will take place.
TASKS – RESOURCES
AND TARGET AUDIENCE
List the resources you have available and who you intend to
target eg. Press Release – local radio and newspapers;
Facebook and Newsletter – supporters and volunteers.
Think about how you may get your message out there in as
many ways as possible:
• Press Release – Minimum 4 paragraphs
• Facebook – Minimum 2 paragraphs
• Twitter – Max 140 characters (per tweet)
• Newsletters
RESPONSIBILITIES
Plan and assign exactly who will be responsible for what and
when.
Eg. John is responsible for Twitter, monitors account and
associated hashtags, engages and responds where
necessary, plans tweets and publishes them when required.
Eg. Lucy is responsible for Facebook, monitors and updates
account/page/groups, engages and responds where
neccesary, plans updates and publishes them when required.
EVALUATION
There are simple ways you can identify whether your
message is being heard, understood and acted upon.
For Social Media like Twitter, this can be as simple as
identifying how many Retweets/Favourites your Tweets have
had, but this can be extended to include the use and activity
of hashtags, number of click through from hyperlinks etc…
For Facebook this can mean monitoring the number of
Likes, Shares and Comments your pages/groups or updates
have received.
For conventional media this can include the number of
stories published in print/online or the total broadcast
appearances/mentions on Radio or Television