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Measuring Up – Why Views, Hits and Attendance Really Matter
By jrobertson | February 19, 2010
A lot of new thinking on communication measurement (including ROI’s) focuses on measuring the outcomes of communications. Specifically, did behavior or attitudes change? In the end, this is what matters, but it doesn’t mean we should abandon other important measurement activities which are still very useful for evaluating the overall effectiveness of a program.
Take a common internal communication practice, the all employee event. During these meetings the CEO and other executives will review the company’s performance, provide updates on the strategy and usually do some recognition. Pulling these off takes a lot of work. To evaluate the effectiveness, many companies will send out a participant survey to collect data on speakers, venue, overall satisfaction, and possibly ask if it increased their understanding of the strategy. Often, that feedback will deem the event a success.
However, how many people did this event really reach? The average attendance rate (live + replay) is typically somewhere between 15-40% of the total employee population of the company. This means the content had no impact on 60-85% of the audience because they didn’t see it! Knowing this, you can re-evaluate your approach to market, re-design or use a different method to reach those who didn’t attend.
Here’s another example, your CEO creates a great 30 minute video that articulates the company strategy beautifully. Anyone who watches it says they “get it” after viewing the full video. Mission accomplished… right?
Not so fast. When you review the “hit and view” duration statistics and find that a large group opened the video, but they start to drop off dramatically after 5 minutes. By the end only a small fraction of the users watched the entire video. By measuring the usage, you learn that your videos need to be much shorter to convey the content.
This same rule can be applied to intranet articles, magazines, speeches… really any communication.
The moral is: if it’s not being consumed, then it’s probably not producing the desired outcomes. And you won’t know, if you don’t measure.
Tags: John RobertsonTopics: Communication Measurement | No Comments »