Bee Measure

Get Direction From Your Data

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Got a Government Contract for Public Education & Outreach? Five Ways to Measure Your Success

Most government contracts for public education and outreach contain an important clause: you must provide analysis and reporting. It’s part of your contract… and a big one. No matter how creative your message, compelling your graphics or innovative your approach, you need to show Uncle Sam the numbers (or the state or local government). Whether you are promoting smarter energy consumption, encouraging flu vaccines or touting local tourism, here are the must-dos for government public education campaign analysis.

Not into reading? Check out my webinar on the “Five Must Dos to Take Action from Your Digital Data,” which contains many of these same tips in webinar format.

spreadsheet with too many metricsMust Do #1: Stop Trying to Track Everything

First thing is first. Get get over your data FOMO (aka. fear of missing out). Many contract administrators and/or marketing firms make the mistake of tracking everything when trying to measure outreach effectiveness of a government contract. But just because you have a lot of stats and a large Excel spreadsheet, does not mean that you have true analysis and understanding of what worked and what didn’t.

The following steps will help you get clear about what’s important to track.  This will help you start recording data in a way that’s not overwhelming.

 

Must Do #2:  Get Clear on the Goal of Your Campaign

Ask yourself, “What is the point of this campaign?” The end goal isn’t likely to be driving video views, Facebook clicks or blog pageviews. Those are simply techniques. The reason you got the contract in the first place is to help you accomplish the broader goal of changing behavior or promoting public awareness. Start with that big picture and work backwards. We live in a society that’s so excited by tracking for tracking’s sake (Fitbit, anyone?) it’s easy to start recording data and lose sight of the “why.”

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Six Steps to Easy & Free SEO Keyword Research for Nonprofit Websites

SEO keyword research isn’t just for big, for profit companies.  It’s something that even small nonprofits can use to attract more visitors to their websites and gain more exposure for their mission.  When drafting a new blog post, press release or other website content, follow these six steps to find the right keyword phrase for your content.

Step One: Decide on your topic & audience location

Easy right?  Let’s say you want to write about your favorite day hikes for your organization’s blog. It will be mostly read by people in Virginia. Your audience could be national, several locations or just your town/city. It depends what people your organization serves.

Step Two: Figure out how people search for your topic

Your topic may be fascinating, but you need to write about it in the same terms people commonly use in search. How do you figure that out? Well, there’s a bit of an art to it. First, go to Google’s Keyword Planner. This is a free tool to research how often people are searching for keyword terms in your area. It’s mostly used for planning paid Ad Words campaigns. But you can use it for SEO keyword research too.

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Facebook’s Decline, Republican’s Demo Woes and Data Scientists for Nonprofits

What’s new this week? 
One Third Fewer Cat Pics
The average Facebook user posted a third less original content in 2016 than in 2015, reports Forbes (covering social media firm Mavrck’s new study). What’s behind the drop? Users aren’t leaving the platform, but they are using it “in different ways.” (Like arguing about politics with their relatives?)
What’s a Data Scientist, Anyway?
Fast Company named “data scientist” the #2 top job for non-profits in 2017. I think hiring a true “data scientist” (the kind that creates algorithms to, say, power Netflix’s recommendation engine) is out of reach for most non-profits. But knowing how to use data is a hot skill for any industry. <hint, hint>
Worst Week in Social Ads: Twitter or Facebook?
Not a good week for the social giants. So much for Twitter’s “Trump Bump.” This platform saw the first decline in ad revenue since the company went public in 2013, reports Fortune. And Facebook is facing an audit of its ad data after coming under fire in 2016 for misreporting metrics. Here’s the inside scoop on that mess. Oh, and Facebook announced that videos will play with the sound on. People aren’t happy.

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The Trouble with Too Much Data

Many non-profits have a giant spreadsheet. Every time staff send an email, post to social media or write a blog post, they record the key metrics in their enormous Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet.

This sounds like a good idea, right? This way, your organization has all the data staff need to gain vital insights into your communications work. Staff can look at the metrics and know exactly what content, messages and channels are most effective. They have all the data they need to make decisions.

Except it never works that way! Maybe, you make a few charts from the data for your annual report (Facebook likes are up this year!). But you never use it to make actual day-to-day choices about your website design, social media content or marketing strategy.

The top reasons to get rid of your giant spreadsheet:

  • It’s tedious: So many of us (especially in creative professions like communications) HATED math class. Don’t make yourself or your staff relive it with number-related busy work. Recording numbers in a spreadsheet that you never use makes data seem pointless and frustrating. This attitude will make it much harder to get everyone to embrace data-driven decision making later on. [Read more…]