Evaluating Communication Campaigns

    When running a business, most people think they understand how to advertise their product, track sales, and customer engagement. But do you know how to measure your communication strategies? When I say communication strategies, I mean how and if you're communicating effectively to and with your customers, employers, and shareholders. Not a lot of businesses are quick to hire a communications manager or team. We learned from Crisis, What Crisis? communication managers are essential. PR professionals serve multiple purposes that can help the validity of your brand. 

    We know several social media platforms exist, and consumers do not react the same across the board. The best way to start measuring this type of communication is to post the same content to every platform and evaluate its engagement and response. The evaluation of internal communication strategies is calculated in the same way. If you have three departments in your business, determine the best way to communicate with them; will it be videos, worded posts, images, or face-to-face meetings. If you have a Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, you'll quickly understand that 1000 follows on Twitter will not equate to 1000 likes on Facebook. Also, more followers do not mean more engagement. Any professional would understand the importance of posting relevant information so that bots do not spam your business pages. 

    The next step would be to analyze the engagement of your employers and consumers. What are the trends? Do they view content more on certain days, and how much time do they spend engaging with your content? By analyzing this content, you'll understand how to optimize each platform's content. As previously stated, more likes do not equal better engagement. It does increase the chances of more people engaging with your content, but numbers mean nothing if you don't have quality content. Your consumers will react according to what is posted on your pages.

    Having the right data allows you to increase effective internal communication and gain consumer followers across platforms, increasing team numbers, budget, and sales. Understanding how your content is performing internally and externally helps you think bigger. It would help if you never were afraid to evaluate what is or isn't working for your business. If you schedule all of your posts to publish at 9 AM on Monday - Friday, you only see the most likes on Tuesdays. Tuesdays should be the only day your scheduling to post at 9 AM. 

(Chow, C. (2020, August 10).)

    If you're thinking about hiring a PR professional, ask yourself, are you fully capable of running your business, analytics, and evaluating the outcome of campaigns successfully. If your answer is no or maybe, you should probably hire someone. Here's what you'll get from a PR professional; they'll start by introducing you to new tools 

• Online Listening Tools
• Web Traffic via Google Analytics
• Analytics from Social Media Platforms
• SEO Activities
• Integration with Sales Teams and Platforms

    PR professionals will begin by using online listening tools. This is not like listening with your ears, but more so of listening with your eyes. There is software available to monitor real conversations online about your business. Software like Talkwalker gives you the ability to track trends in discussions in your business to understand what consumers want. Your business keywords or hashtags will signal the online listening tool to alert when your business is increasing in the trends. 

    Analytics and algorithms are mentioned in previous blogs, Social Media Advertisement Strategies, and How are you Branding? You'll never get away from these terms when running a business. Web Traffic through Google Analytics is the best way to monitor your website's traffic. Tracking traffic trends can lead to increased sales, referrals to websites or products, and advertisements' success. Understanding social media algorithms help you know when the best time to post, and the analytics help you understand what to post.

    Link building is essential when measuring analytics. Be sure to use the right words when using SEO tactics. Once your website is running, you're going to choose keywords that will show up in consumers google searches. If you sell tumblers, your keyword would not be cups. Also, try linking your website from your social media pages, or make a unique link to track how your website is shared. Individual links will help you understand when your websites are shared and if certain products are referred, and how often.

(Black, C. (2018).)

    Your audience will sometimes change depending on your product; it is essential to understand how to adapt to your audience. You will also need to know which platform works best for your business. All social media platforms will not work for every company. I run a small travel advisor business; Snapchat and Instagram work best for engaging customers to ask about videos and pictures of places I've traveled or booked for travel. My Facebook group is a great tool to direct people to other platforms. Twitter does not work well for my business. I understand that travel needs change often. I can post about Spring Break and Birthday trips in January, Summer vacations in the spring, and winter getaways in the Fall. I follow a few travel blogs, and I post new places as often as I can. It can be tricky, and sometimes you'll miss the mark, but that's ok it's trial and error. Paying attention to your audience and how they react to your posts will help you understand their needs. You evaluate your strategies and adjust to the responses you receive. 

    Studies show that only 1 in 3 businesses have a communications strategy. Having a plan helps increase all stages of the company; productivity, engagement, and sales. There are multiple ways to run a successful PR campaign. PR professionals can assist and take some duties off your hands. Evaluating your business helps in every way possible and will always be beneficial to your business. 

-Jaleesa Diggins

Works Cited

Black, C. (2018). 4 Ways to Measure the Impact of Your PR Campaign. Retrieved December 06, 2020, from https://www.business2community.com/public-relations/4-ways-to-measure-the-impact-of-your-pr-campaign-02089960https://www.business2community.com/public-relations/4-ways-to-measure-the-impact-of-your-pr-campaign-02089960

Chow, C. (2020, August 10). Measuring Effective Communication in the Workplace - Strategies / Metrics. Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://socialchorus.com/blog/how-to-establish-successful-metrics-for-your-internal-communications-strategy/