PR measurement

Improve participation in online employee surveys

Traditionally, communication to promote participation in online employee surveys has been a weak area of public relations practice. For various reasons, many PR people haven’t often been included in the planning and management of such surveys. In this article, you can read how good communication improves participation in online employee surveys.

‘Snowball sampling’ helps you find and mobilize your unofficial opinion leaders

Senior insurance executive Rob Borden thought he had all the bases covered in his plan to make sweeping changes to his company’s health insurance policies and procedures. New legislation meant it was important to make the changes. He had carefully briefed all managers about the changes and had launched the program with a catchy slogan. But it became obvious a large number of employees were resisting change – the program was heading towards a ...

Quick tests to ensure the readability of your writing

Key measures of your writing quality include reader understanding and recall of your message. One of the ways to facilitate maximizing comprehension and recall is to write in easily understandable language. You can conduct quick tests to check your readability and find out how well your audience understands your messages. Most of the tests are short, simple and no-cost or low-cost to run. So there’s no excuse for not doing them! And the tests make you look competent to your peers and senior managers.

How to measure your communication gaps

You can find out how well you are currently communicating on important organizational subjects and whether you are using the channel preferred by your internal or external audience. This important information will help you to tailor your communication effectively. How to measure information gaps in your communication  You can use the information to strengthen your employee engagement levels and stakeholder relationships.

Content analysis will enable you to make the most of your important messages

Communicators are always under pressure to produce results despite limited resources. With a given budget, the best a communicator can do is to make the most effective use of available resources. One way to do this is to tightly target your information material. Content analysis is a simple, no-cost way to check that you are focusing on the messages that matter. This will enable you to make the most of your important messages.

Use ratings by staff to improve bosses’ communication skills

Surveys reveal that managers and supervisors think they are better communicators than they really are. Therefore asking managers and supervisors about their communication skills generally doesn't lead to much that's useful. However, by asking their direct reports to give anonymous feedback on the communication skills of their bosses is a different matter - there is a big disconnect between the bosses' self-assessments and the candid assessment of the people who report to them. The ...

Use source gap analysis to find out the best source of information for your employees

One of the contentious debates in the communication profession in recent years has been about the preferred source of information for employees. On one side of the debate is the view by TJ Larkin that supervisors and managers are the preferred source of most employee information. On the other side is the view that employees want different information from different sources. It's common sense - ask employees about their preferred sources of information One ...

Boost for measurement – the weakest area in communication

Three excellent initiatives strengthen the amount of information available on good measurement - the weakest area of professional communication activity: Integrated Evaluation Framework The Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) has produced a valuable resource - its Integrated Evaluation Framework. This free interactive tool shows you how to align communication objectives with organizational objectives; establish a plan; and measure the outputs, outtakes, outcomes and impact of your work. The process gives you ...

AVEs and multipliers are fake measures

A significant number of PR practitioners and others use techniques that purport to measure the dollar value of publicity and the way it is supposedly more effective than advertising. Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) AVEs are estimated by calculating the area of a printed news item or amount of air time on radio or television and multiplying the area or time by the advertising rate of the media in which the coverage appeared. A hypothetical ...

How to measure your PR team’s performance