Why Should You Evaluate Your Communications Plan? The way your organization is portrayed in the media is likely how others learn about your organization and judge its actions. Too often, time pressures leave you with few opportunities to think about how effective your media campaign has been. It is vital that you make sure your communications timetable includes some way to measure your effectiveness. This will allow you to do even better with your planning the next time around. For example, if your goal is recruiting members, include benchmarks in your communications plan to assess your progress along the way - such as obtaining 25 new members in a two-month period. If you haven't reached the goal at the end of the first two-month period, you'll be prepared to redirect your campaign mid-stream if necessary and plan new directions. To evaluate your media campaign, monitor your coverage. Go here for a list of media monitoring sites. Did your campaign deliver the message you wanted - or were there consistent patterns in the coverage that differed from your goals? You want to make sure you develop an effective message. Always think about what you might change to avoid similar problems in the future. And don't forget to send copies of positive stories about your group or issues to members - and funders. Also put copies of the clips into your press packet for your next related media campaign. You may also want to post links to coverage in your online press room. Ask people outside your organization to evaluate your publicity, too. Have they gotten the image you want them to have of your members and their activities? Look back at your goals and benchmarks to see where you fell short. And always remember: you need to learn from your mistakes.
Conduct an Online Survey A great way to gather feedback about your media campaign is through an online survey. Send it out by email or post a link to it on your website. Through a survey, you can gather feedback from your members, people in your community or even the media about the effectiveness of your communications outreach and how other people view your organization. There are some great sites that can help you with crafting an online survey. Some of these services also provide the software for creating the survey and either posting it or sending it to your target audience:
* Survey Monkey
* Web Surveyor
* Zoomerang
* The Survey System
Check Out These Links For Tips on Evaluating Your Communications Plan The Benton Foundation offers several articles and links on evaluating the effectiveness of your communications effort. Conduct a Media Audit. This link can help you to understand how a media audit may be useful for your communications strategy. It can be beneficial to evaluate the amount and type of coverage a certain issue receives. The Harvard Family Research Project's paper titled "Public Communication Campaign Evaluation" examines the challenges of evaluating a communications campaign, the evaluation designs and methods that are used and what opportunities for evaluating lie ahead. This issue of Snapshots, a publication of the Nonprofit Sector Research Fund, highlights research done by the Fund on how non profits can create a more effective media campaign. The Communications Consortium Media Center has guidelines for evaluating non profit communications efforts. The organization's paper explains why you should conduct an evaluation and the challenges you may face. The Community for Creative Non Violence conducted an interview with a well respected newsman in the Washington area. The interview discusses everything from what attracts a reporter to a press event to what makes a good sound-bite. *prepared from materials produced by Resource Media*