On Wednesday, July 27, Public Policy Communicators NYC members met to focus on the topic “Making the Most of Google Analytics.”  The session was billed as an opportunity to go beyond the basic mechanics of using this essential tool to how communicators can utilize its functions to better understand target audiences and the messages that appeal to them.  We definitely went beyond Analytics 101 to the next stage of learning, and many came away saying they had lots of new information with which to experiment.

Our discussion leader Greg Olson, an AdWords account manager at Google, working out of the Cambridge office and a member of the Google Analytics specialist team that trains and supports this office, was joined by Jai Sen, a digital media strategy consultant who has worked with several PPC-NYC members in developing their online strategies, to extend the scope of the conversation.

Olson started with a brief overview to make sure we were all on the same page.  In a show of hands, almost all in the room were using Google Analytics already, almost everyone in the room raised their hands to indicate that they were doing the analytics themselves (as opposed to being fed reports by I.T. staff), but only a small number had gone beyond the basic reports of number of page views for each URL on their site.

He said the Google Analytics platform can be used to:

-       Measure the engagement of users on the site

-       Make marketing campaigns more effective and accountable

-       Help determine if the content you’re creating is effective

-       Develop better awareness of when and why visitors are entering and leaving your site

-       Use Google Analytics to compare response to different versions of content, for example sending two different versions of an email and measuring which one got a better response

-       Improve audience interaction with your organization on the site

He started by encouraging nonprofits and foundations to take a step back and focus first on their organizations’ objectives and really question how the website is supposed to support the mission of the organization.  He used the example of PPC member Connecticut Health Foundation, which has the mission of improving the health status of everyone in the state by focusing on children’s mental health, health policy and advocacy, oral health and racial and ethnic health disparities.  CT Health Foundation’s Jenn Whinnem added that their primary audiences are grant seekers and health policy professionals in the state who work on those issues.  She said that her organization was happy with the numbers of grant seekers coming to the site and the information they were accessing, but wanted to bring more policy information seekers to the site and extend their time on site.  Olson said that there were many tools associated with Google Analytics that could help in better understanding how they are doing in reaching that objective and how effective the organization’s communications are in contributing to it.

Sen agreed with Olson’s point that the most important thing to do is make sure there is a clear discussion of overall communications strategy in order to get to a good plan for measurement. Strategy and measurement should function as a loop, with measurement leading to optimization and vice versa. An analytics snapshot can give an organization a sense of what users are actually consuming, providing insight into where the focus should be on content creation.

Olson said that an important step in that process is to really set key performance indicators for the organization’s objectives. Organizations should ask themselves what would be an actual measure of success.  For example with CT Health Foundation, what is the size and scope of the health policy professional community and what numbers or types of those coming to the site would constitute progress? And, since the organization is already happy with the number of grant applicants, the focus of the Google Analytics work would focus on URLs that were NOT associated with the  /grants/how-to-apply/ subdirectory where grant application information resides.

The next thing to do, Olson said, was to set defined targets, within a concrete timeframe, for example “to increase page views from ‘information seeker’ visits by X% in the third quarter of this year.” Once your organization has gained clarity about the types and number of visitors you aim to bring to your site and what you want them to do there, you can much better utilize Google Analytics to guide your work.

There are four basic categories of questions about visitors and related analytics measures to apply, he said. They are:

1. Where do they come from? — Traffic sources
2. Where do they spend their time? — Content reports
3. Are they taking the right actions? — Goal tracking
4. Is visitor behavior changing? — Alerts and intelligence

Olson showed two different reports that spoke to the “where do they come from?” question. The first showed an “All Traffic” report, the one which most of those just getting started with Google Analytics are familiar. This report shows the sources from which visitors came to a given page on your site. In the example shown, the most number of visitors came to a home page from Google, from a specific blog, from YouTube and direct (no referral – visitors may have typed URL or had it bookmarked, etc.). The “All Traffic” report gives you a sense of how visitors come to your site and, said Olson, may alert you to sources you may not have known about. For example, maybe a particular blogger has written about your work, which produced many visits. Perhaps that blogger should receive more attention from your organization and might be a good partner in communications. The second report he showed provided a different take on “where do they come from?” and might be less familiar to Analytics users. It is the “Location” report. The report Olson showed displayed a map of the United States with the states color-coded by number of visitors to the site. He said this report can be drilled down to the city level, or you can enlarge it to the international level. He said the location report can be especially useful in understanding where the people are who are really interested in what you have to say. You might find, for example, that an unusually large number of visitors are located in an unexpected small corner of the state, which might prompt some important questions about why that is.

Olson and the group next spent a good chunk of time exploring a tool called the Google Analytics URL Builder.  This is a tool that you can use to get a better handle on how effective certain planned communications mechanisms are in driving people to your site and – importantly and different from other tools – how they proceed through the site once there. The URL builder works by adding additional data (called a “query string”) to the end of a normal link that is tracked specially by Google Analytics. He showed how you can use the tool to create a specific URL, say for an eNewsletter, to see if that communication tool gets people to click on a particular story and then moves them toward donating, clicking a link to contact a congressmen, reading other reports or whatever actions you would ideally like your visitors to take. The URL created through the URL Builder allows the Google Analytics system to track how many visitors come to the site through specific links and associate those visitors with all of the other types of information reports.

He then moved on to the topic of “Where do they spend their time?” and content reports.  He showed an Analytics report of a landing page that displayed for each source (what previous site the visitor came from) the number of visits, the number of bounces and the bounce rate (see here for a discussion of bounce rate versus exit rate). This report helps you better understand what sources tend to bring you visitors that immediately leave the site or proceed through to take the actions you desire. Because this report also shows the bounce rate over a period that you specify, you can better understand if certain communications you sent out produced visits that resulted in immediate bounces or longer stays with concrete actions on the site. Sen and Olson were careful to mention that, for specific types of pages, a high bounce rate is not necessarily a bad thing—some sites, for example, surface essential content on the home page, so if the user enters and leaves on that page, it does not necessarily mean that the page was not “successful.” The time the user spends on a single page, however, cannot be measured by Google Analytics (which calculates the time spent on a page by the next click on that page), so the “time on page” metric is complicated by a high bounce rate.

Next, Olson looked at a report that could be immensely helpful in answering, “Where are they spending their time?” For a given page on the site (say, a blog post), the report displayed the total number of page views, unique page views, average time on the page, bounce rate and exit rate. It also displayed the page views over a given period and the bounce rate for various sources from which the visitors came. He then showed a different way of answering the “Where are they spending their time?” question with an Analytics report on search terms.  This report showed what visitors are looking for on the site. It showed the total number of searches, the percentage of times visitors had to refine their search, the time they spent on the site after the search, and the depth of their action after the search.  The report also shows the top search terms, the number of times those terms were searched, the percentage of those who left the site immediately after the search, etc. Olson noted that the site’s search mechanism does not have to be Google-based to be able to do run this analysis.

To get at the question “Are they taking the right actions?” Olson strongly encouraged users to take advantage of the “Goals” function in Google Analytics. A “goal” is a website page that serves as conversions for your site. Some examples of good conversion goals are:

• A ‘thank you’ page after a user has submitted information through a form. This can track newsletter signups, donation receipts, email list subscriptions, job application forms, or contact forms.
• An ‘About us’ page
• A particular report, press release, news article or blog post.
• A page that leads visitor to a “contact your congressman” function

(With some extra code, goals can even be file downloads or on-page actions).

Using the goals function allows you to track how far visitors move toward the actions you want them to take on your site – and let’s you know a lot about the characteristics of those visitors in terms of where they came from, how they proceeded through the site, etc.  Goals do not need to be static, in fact, they should change over time.

He then showed an example of a Goal Overview Report that displayed the goal conversions over a given period, the total number of goal conversions, the value of those conversions (for example the total dollar value of tickets sold or donations made), the goal conversion rate and the abandonment rate.  This report also showed the top sources from which visitors came and the total conversions and conversion rates for each.

Olson then moved to the question of “How do I identify traffic trends on my site?” He showed a “Daily Events” report. Event tracking is a relatively new (2009) function in Google Analytics.  Any significant marketing event should be tracked so you can identify correlating traffic trends. You might do this with, say, a new press release, a newly launched campaign, the beginning of utilizing online advertising, an important eNewsletter or a major capital campaign. You may have these dates noted elsewhere, but Google Analytics annotations makes it quick and easy to see how communications events overlap trends in your site metrics. You can even create annotations of key external condition. For example, a major debate in the media about your issue or a disaster in your service area. These external events could be just as important to explaining trends over time as your own marketing and web efforts.

In summarizing, Olson said that making all of these tools useful hinges upon proper tracking, advanced segmentation and micro-conversions.  He showed the “advanced segments” tab in Google Analytics and talked briefly about the choices you can make to designate key groups and what you want them to do, which can be a big help in better understanding how those groups are using your site.

A discussion of filters followed. It was noted that you might want, for example, to look at site traffic without employees’ usage of the site.  This is best accomplished using the filter feature. Click this link to learn more about using filters in Google Analytics. Olson also briefly touched on the difference between filters and advanced segments in Google Analytics. Advanced Segments provides a way for historical data to be grouped by your criteria to investigate differences between groups. Filters in Google Analytics, on the other hand, provide a way to process the raw data coming into your account before you even see it. This can be used to look at site traffic without employees’ usage. Filters are applied at the profile level. The data cannot be re-processed, and any information filtered out in this way cannot be recovered, and so it is important to maintain one unfiltered ‘master’ profile for your site.

You can also use Google analytics to better understand what types of platform users are accessing your site and what they’re doing on it. For example, are people who come to the site through iPhones and Blackberry phones exiting the site immediately because they have a hard time viewing it? Click on this link to learn more about what can be learned about various mobile platforms through Google Analytics.

Sen pointed out that Google Analytics is the best analytics tool out there and recommends it to all clients. However, because of the way it works, it does have one important limitation that he wanted the group to be aware of. Because Google Analytics tracking code is contained in web pages, it does not track downloads of files, for example PDFs. Properly configured, it can track clicks to download links or buttons, but often PDFs are linked from outside sites, and Google Analytics would not capture this data. Sen recommends using Google Analytics in tandem with a logs analysis tool (such as Webalizer or AWStats) that analyze the server’s record of downloads. Sen and Olson cautioned that logs analysis tools yield much less accurate metrics on all other data (like vista, visitors, and page views), so Google Analytics is the better tool for all metrics other than downloads.

Lastly, Olson made several recommendations for links to more information on various aspects of Google Analytics usage.  These included:

• Google Analytics main page: www.google.com/analytics
• Google Analytics blog: www.analytics.blogspot.com
• Google Conversion University: http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/
• Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: YouTube video series with 60-second videos focusing on different applications of Google Analytics. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=85CE2D27BC6FD84B

For me, one key take-away from the session was that getting your organization deeper into analytics can be a very productive way of clarifying what exactly you want your target audiences to do on your site and how your site should really function to move those visitors to specific actions that support your organizational mission.  In the past, many of us have just settled for basic numbers about how many site visitors we had and couldn’t really, or didn’t bother to, ask fundamental questions about how our constituencies were actually using the site.  Optimal utilization of Google Analytics will force your organization to confront challenging questions about what its priorities are for how visitors should move through the site and what should be the end result.

Website Impact Without Redesign – How can you introduce functional elements that drive traffic to your website and increase audience interaction  without an expensive, time-consuming redesign?

We’ll be going beyond obvious enhancements like video, links to social media presences and recordings of webinars, and think creatively about functionality that enhances the unique mission of each of our organizations.

We have a great discussion leader who will help kick our thinking into high gear:

Jai Sen is a digital communications consultant with deep experience in interactive media, website and application development, and user experience design. He has led a wide variety of projects in the commercial and nonprofit sectors, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation site redesign, and has most recently been an integral part of the team that relaunched the Atlantic Philanthropies website. He is currently working on the digital presence for the D5 coalition, an organization formed by grantmakers promoting diversity in philanthropy.

Here are the specifics on the next PPC-NYC meeting:

What:  Brown-bag lunch (that means bring your own lunch!)

When:  Wednesday, March 23, 2011; 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. (informal networking from 12:00-12:30, program begins at 12:30)

Where:  Ford Foundation, 320 East 43^rd Street (between 1^st & 2^nd Ave), New York, NY

Topic:  Website Impact Without Redesign. Jai Sen will lead our group discussion.

RSVP:  Space is limited and our last several sessions had waiting lists, so please let me know that you are coming by emailing me at mremaley [at] ppcnyc [dot] org

-       Is your contacts database a mess or just not as good at segmenting target audiences as you’d like?

-       Do you feel like you spend too much time cutting and pasting information and formatting across different communications tools and wish there were a better way to manage your eNewsletters, direct email communications and social media efforts?

-       Are you interested in learning about ways your peers are using new technologies to move their constituencies to action?

PPC members told us that they wanted the next learning session to focus on Communications Integration: What are the best methods and technologies to coordinate communications efforts so that work flow and content for website, e-newsletters and social media are seamless but not repetitive?

PPC is gathering representatives from the most prominent companies offering services in this area – Convio, Blackbaud and Network for Good – to answer your questions and get you thinking concretely about how to streamline your communications and marketing efforts.  Many of you are already using some of the services offered by these companies, so we hope you will bring your insights and experiences to share with the group.

Here is the summary information on the next PPC-NYC meeting:

What: Brown-bag lunch (that means bring your own lunch!)

When: Thursday, September 16, 2010; 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. (informal networking from 12:00-12:30, program begins at 12:30)

Where: Ford Foundation, 320 East 43^rd Street (between 1^st & 2^nd Ave), New York, NY

Topic: Communications Integration. What are the latest methods and technologies for coordinating communications efforts so that work flow and content for website, e-newsletters and social media are seamless but not repetitive?

RSVP: Space is limited.  Please let me know that you are coming by emailing me at mremaley [at] ppcnyc [dot] org

“Community Access to Information,” and why it matters.

Stehle began by saying that the communications landscape – how people get information and how people who create content and spread ideas – is changing dramatically and are deeply affected by policies that are taking shape in Washington.  Further, as communications professionals, we need to know what’s going on to inform our practice and to be active participants in ensuring that communities do indeed have maximal open access to information. He noted that this PPC-NYC session is a great follow-on to the previous day’s “Free Press Summit: Ideas to Action” at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy brought together a broad range of leaders from a wide spectrum of political perspectives.  Its report, he said, provides a particularly good overview of the larger issues involved and had extensive policy recommendations in the following areas:

-       Maximizing the availability of relevant and credible information
-       Enhancing the information capacity of individuals
-       Promoting public engagement

The report strongly supports the development of policies in the digital and media spheres that promote inclusion. It also makes the link between increased public access to broadband internet service and improved democratic functioning. Stehle said that the Knight Commission report lays out the issues extraordinarily well, but that we need to move forward and establish policies that make its concepts real. “Media companies have not and will not provide open access naturally, we have to hold their feet to the fire. Regulation is necessary,” he said.

He cited examples he also wrote about in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy piece in which Sprint threatened to block the Catholic Relief Service from contacting its supporters about relief efforts in Haiti and Verizon blocked content from NARAL to its supporters in an attempt to placate a larger block of anti-abortion customer base. “Sprint tried to get in the middle of the message,” he said.  Part of the problem is that telecom companies’ policies on how they decide what information they may block or slow are mostly opaque – they are also in many cases outdated, unevenly applied, nonexistent or simply hidden from public view.  “In trying to protect our free speech rights as nonprofit organizations with a clear interest in open public dialogue, we need open systems. To have meaningful rights, citizens need access to broadband.”

“The funny thing,” Stehle said, “is that it seems that the script is not being written by George Orwell, but more like by Larry David. The abuses are so outrageous, telecoms and media companies are bumbling, clumsy and ham-handed in a way that would be humorous if the implications weren’t so frightening. Stronger FCC intervention is needed.”

Tim Karr then talked about Free Press’s “Inside/Outside” strategy. They aim to translate the many “expert” voices that have been active on these issues into voices from average people who are deeply affected by communications policies. This is all to counter the special interests on the others side, which are exerting very strong voices and taking hold of the debate.  Those special interests on the other side are very similar in profit motive and tactics to those who have hijacked the global warming/”cap & trade” discussion.

He said that the previous day’s summit at the Newseum had deeply explored “the future of journalism and the great challenges being faced by investigative/public media” as well as “open access” issues. One good indication of how nonprofits are waking up to the implications of media policy is the fact that 450 nonprofit organizations signed a letter to the FCC as a result of an outreach initiative of the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) in conjunction with Free Press, Open Internet Coalition “Save the Internet” letter supporting strong FCC action to “stop internet blocking and censorship once and for all.”

Individuals can sign on to the “Save the Internet” letter here.

“The fight for open access is at a critical juncture,” Karr said.  The FCC is thinking critically about these issues and there is a lot of activity taking place in Washington, DC.  At the same time, vociferous folks like anti-government, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity and Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union have come together with their own sign-on campaign that is deeply deceptive and largely funded by the major telecoms. They are trying to frame the very necessary and reasonable FCC attempts to bring clarity, openness and transparency to internet policies and basic rules of the road as a “government takeover of the internet” and have started a petition at www.nointernettakeover.com.

“Follow the money behind the people who are against net neutrality – all roads lead to the telecom and cable companies,” Karr said.  “Telecoms control 96% of internet access.  And they are doing all they can to hold onto as much power over internet access as possible, which was made painfully clear in a recently leaked strategy document.” (discussed in a media story here.)

The corporate-funded activists working against FCC regulation are gearing up and massing their forces, so bringing real voices of nonprofits and small business who are greatly effected by telecoms limiting open access is extremely important.

Stehle then asked Jennifer Toomey, the Ford Foundation Program Officer charged with advancing media rights and access to talk a bit about the foundation’s efforts and what she sees as the critical issues.

She said the one thing she disagreed with in the opening statements on this subject was that the issues involved are complex.  That’s not so, she asserted.  It just needs to be explained simply in terms that average people can understand.  For one thing, “net neutrality” does not resonate with people, we need a new term. And we need more organizations doing work like Free Press that explain things plainly and the implications for normal people.

Toomey talked briefly about the early years of the telephone industry, when government set out basic rules for companies in the industry that encouraged competition but ensured user privacy and forced competing companies to share lines to maximize resource utilization. Those early telephone rules did not squelch profits, in fact they ensured competition and helped the industry to profit while making clear what rights users had to free access and freedom of speech on the lines.  Similar rules need to be laid out for the telecom industry today on access to the internet.  The current regulations do not provide any kind of the protections for the internet that those regulations back in the day did for telephone line usage.

She talked about the Comcast/BitTorrent case (in which Free Press was part of the complaint) where Comcast basically said that BitTorrent users were taking up too much broadband space (“in competition with Grandma’s e-birthday card”!) and that they should be able to limit BitTorrent users’ access.  It was presented as Comcast’s right to use its resources for the greater good of more of its customers, but the fact is that the BitTorrent service is a potential long-term competitor to Comcast’s other profit center: entertainment distribution.  Comcast’s limitation of BitTorrent users was patently self-serving.  Still, Comcast won in court, which was a major setback for open access. Now the FCC is essentially trying to re-regulate the internet to bring back full open access.  She said that if you left it up to a company like AT&T back when Google was being developed, you wouldn’t have that innovation. A giant company like that would have stifled it and tried to control it.  That’s what’s happening now with Comcast on the BitTorrent case.

One of the conversation participants who works on these issues noted that the Comcast ruling and other related developments are setting up the content of the internet to be controlled by giant telecom companies just the way they control cable TV, and if we don’t want our internet to become the same vast intellectual wasteland that cable TV is, we all (every nonprofit and small business has an interest in this) need to stand up and work for full open access.

Vince Stehle said that he wanted to praise Ford Foundation for investing $50 million to ensure open access.  Ford Foundation’s president Luis Urbinas has a opinion piece, originally published in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, detailing the foundation’s commitment and imploring Foundations of all kinds to promote internet access here. Toomey said that she hopes the Ford Foundation will be “one of the biggest cheerleaders for openness and net neutrality because it undergirds all the work we do.”

The discussion leaders then opened it up to the full group and an exceptionally open and fruitful discussion bloomed.

One participant noted that he had attended the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) annual conference and found that there was an extraordinarily strong presence there of groups working to get conservatives to rally around the anti-net-neutrality position.  They are trying to get the “government takeover of the internet” message to become a central anti-government tenant of the Right’s platform.

Another participant said she was sort of confused/curious about the political lines being drawn on this issue.  It seems, she said, that the people who care about issues on the Right have just as much to lose when corporations are in control of information dissemination as those on the Left.  This is true, it was noted, but because of the libertarian, anti-government regulation bent of the right, there is a strong chance that the “keep your government hands off my internet” message might prevail on the Right (even though the government essentially created the internet!)

We then discussed the use of China and Iran as metaphors.  These countries are broadly understood to be the most active and pervasive internet censors, and some open access proponents have likened the actions and opaqueness of the telecoms to those countries.  But disconcertingly, the “not government takeover of the internet” forces are likening potential FCC action to bring more policy clarity and greater openness to the actions taking by those nefarious nations.

One participant said that it is interesting that Apple, once considered the great rebel against corporate mind-control and groupthink has now become a major arbiter of media consumption. It not only makes moralistic decisions about what content it will allow on its App Store, but also self-serving choices aimed at freezing out competitors to its own products.

Another participant asked if, given the available “white space” on the internet and the fact that other countries are creating their own internets, is it possible to create “a new internet” outside of the telecoms that has full and unfettered open access? Karr said that is highly unlikely considering the current construction and reach of the current internet.

Stehle said that video on the internet is the area that telecoms are first going after to limit access and that nonprofit organizations should be especially concerned about. Telecoms will (and do) say that video takes up a great deal of bandwidth and that they must make choices about limiting access. But nonprofits should be in the forefront of those saying that open access to distribute video should not be compromised and corporate interests should not be allowed to dominate the transmission of video through the Internet.

Another participant said that he came away from this year’s Open Video Conference feeling much more encouraged about technology developments that will improve open access.  He noted that there will be a follow-up to that conference in October.

A PPC member asked what are artists and other content developer doing to ensure open access.  It was noted that some large content companies are working for open access, but many are deeply enmeshed or part of the telecoms and other media conglomerates that are seeking to control access. The content providers are terrified of losing revenue from piracy and see the telecoms as tightening the portal through which information flows, which helps them keep control of their revenue streams.  But many artists and small business are concerned and making their voices heard.

There is an important documentary on this topic, “Copyright Criminals” that is going to be screened as part of the Philanthropy New York film series at the Paley Center on May 21.  All Communications Network members are invited to attend. More information is available here.

As the discussion flowed, a major focus was on how best to frame the “open access / net neutrality” issues in ways that would resonate most strongly with the general public and potentially activate the nonprofits and small business that have so much to loose if telecoms exert even more control.  One person noted that a good argument goes something like, “Do we really want the same kind of corportate interests that brought you the Wall Street meltdown and the oil spill fiasco in the Gulf to be controlling the content you get to see on the internet?”

Another participant added that many of the nonprofits she works with are trying to improve conditions in the developing world and a message that might resonate there is that on things like women’s issues open access to information – like free access to reproductive health information and voting rights information – can literally save lives.  “It isn’t about the freedom to buy whatever pants you want over the internet, it’s about open access to information dissemination that deeply effects people’s freedom and quality of life.”

It was noted that Free Press has lots of materials to help people talk about these issues in ways that resonate with different audiences. Other organization doing great work in this area are the Alliance for Community Media and NTEN, the nonprofit technology network.  Also, Personal Democracy Forum is holding a conference on this topic on June 3-4, 2010 in New York City on this topic and  Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media is convening a group on a related topic titled “Funder Conversation: Media Grantmaking ─ The State and Future of the Field” taking place in New York on June 9 and 10, 2010.

Finally, one participant noted that there is a book coming out titled “FTW! Net Neutrality For The Win: How Entertainment and the Science of Influence Can Save Your Internet.” More information on the book here.

As always, we ended the session by distributing a short survey on possible topics for future meetings.  We’ll have more information on that soon.

We again live-tweeted the session from our official Twitter account: @PPCNYC.  It worked out really well.  Several people were following along from remote locations and re-tweeting key points from the presentation as well as points made by participants.

Thanks again to Vince Stehle for being a great discussion leader, to Tim Karr and Jennifer Toomey for their important ideas and to all the great thinkers who came and made the discussion so thought-provoking and informative.

Several major recent developments that have contributed to the fracturing landscape will be the jumping off point for discussion.  These include: the startling federal court ruling on “net neutrality” that may change how major media conglomerates package programming and freeze out competitors’ products; the release of The Knight Commission report “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age;” the diminution of influence newspapers and TV journalism and related decline in resources available for news gathering; and the vast growth of information dissemination on social networking and news aggregation sites.

For communications professionals, it may seem like the shaking ground is turning to quicksand.  This conversation will help us figure out just what the terrain is and how to find solid ground. So, here is the summary information on the next PPC-NYC meeting:

What:  Brown-bag lunch (that means bring your own lunch!)

When:  Wednesday, May 12, 2010; 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. (informal networking from 12:00-12:30, program begins at 12:30)

Where:  Ford Foundation, 320 East 43^rd Street (between 1^st & 2^nd Ave), New York, NY

Topic:  Navigating the Shifting Media Landscape. Vincent Stehle will lead off the discussion.

RSVP:  Space is limited.  Please let me know that you are coming by emailing me at mremaley at ppcnyc dot org

Vincent Stehle is a consultant to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. He was, from 1998 to 2009, the Program Director for Nonprofit Sector Support at the Surdna Foundation, a family foundation based in New York City with assets approaching $700 million. The Nonprofit Sector Support Program focused on strengthening the policy and advocacy role of nonprofits, their internal management, and their ability to adapt to changing political, economic, and technological environments. Under his direction, the NPS program became a leading force in support of nonprofit technology and public and independent media and spearheaded the practice of social enterprise and other new funding strategies for nonprofits. Before coming to Surdna, Stehle worked for ten years as a reporter for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where he covered a broad range of policy and management issues for the nonprofit sector. He has also written extensively for other publications, including The Washington Post, The Nation, and Symphony Magazine.  Stehle has served as Chairperson of Philanthropy New York (formerly the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers) and on the governing boards of YouthNoise, VolunteerMatch, and the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN). Currently he is a columnist for the Chronicle of Philanthropy and serves on the board of Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media.

Timothy Karr oversees all Free Press campaigns and online outreach efforts, including SavetheInternet.com and its work on public broadcasting, propaganda, and journalism. Before joining Free Press, Tim served as executive director of MediaChannel.org and vice president of Globalvision New Media and the Globalvision News Network. He has also worked extensively as an editor, reporter and photojournalist for the Associated Press, Time Inc., New York Times and Australia Consolidated Press. Tim critiques, analyzes and reports on media and media policy for the Huffington Post and on his personal blog, MediaCitizen.

We hope to see you on May 12.

Before going over the nine steps to evaluating communications programs outlined in Asibey’s “Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide,” I noted my own general take-aways, having read the report several times and created a presentation based on it:

-       Communications leaders should be thinking about and planning evaluation BEFORE starting an initiative, not part way through or at the end.

-       The point of evaluation is not to simply pass judgment on what happened, but to gather information as you go so you can adjust and improve.

-       While Asibey’s report touches on mechanisms to monitor: print, television, radio, websites, blogs, news aggregation sites, social media (especially Facebook, YouTube & Twitter), the real focus and hard work of evaluation planning is gaining clarity on what audiences you want to reach and figuring out how your communications efforts are actually effecting those target audiences.

Asibey makes clear that your starting point for evaluation should be the communications plan for your organization or for the specific communications initiative that you want to evaluate.  So, I asked for a show of hands among the participants how many had written communication plans in place.  Very few of these engaged communications professionals – only about four or five raised their hands – have communications plans in place.  I’m thinking that “Why & How to Develop a Communications Plan” might be a good topic for a future PPC meeting.

I also made Asibey’s arguments for building strong evaluation into communications plans:

-       Evaluation improves the effectiveness of your communications

-       Evaluation can help you effectively engage your audience

-       Situations change – strategies and tactics may need to change as well

-       Evaluation helps you allocate resources wisely

Here are the nine steps of planning an evaluation that we went over:

1. Determine what you will evaluate.

Evaluation requires financial and human resources, so evaluating your entire communications program may not be possible or even desirable. Consider focusing on one campaign or one strategic communications effort.

Be clear if you planning to evaluate Strategic Initiatives or Tactical Efforts.  Strategic initiatives include things like a communications initiative for behavior change (like encouraging communities to recycle); a communications initiative for policy change (like securing policymakers’ support for safer landfills); an organizational repositioning effort (like when a growing organization that had focused only on reducing water pollution wants to be known for working toward reducing air pollution as well); or a branding awareness effort (like earning the reputation of being the premier global warming think tank). Tactical efforts you might want to evaluate might include message dissemination (how well your messages are spread by the media or adopted by key audiences); media relations (frequency and quality of interactions with journalists, coverage in print and television, etc.); quality of direct communications with key constituencies (such as what individual donors or members really think of your organization); or the reach of print, video online and new media communications.

2. Define your goal

Communications goals should be long-term (what you want to ACHIEVE over at 5-10 year period through communications) and fall roughly into one of two categories: Policy goals or behavior goals. In communicating with government officials and other influencers of public policy, your goals could be to build awareness, increase numbers of champions/supporters, build constituencies, increase public will for policy change, or the ultimate policy change itself.  Obviously, realistic timeframes and goals are highly related.  In trying to change public behavior or a portion of the public’s behavior, you may be attempting to raise awareness, increase salience, change attitudes/beliefs, develop a sense of self-efficacy on the issue, change social norms on the issue, change behavioral intentions or make the ultimate change in behavior.  Again, being realistic about where your audience is at and your timeline is key in being clear about your goals for a given campaign.

3. State your objectives

Objectives are essentially interim results along the way to your goal.  There should be objectives all along the way – where you want your audience to be along the continuum of change at, say, year one, year three, year seven and year ten of your long-term communications plan.  Objectives should be very specific and Edith uses the very appropriate acronym S.M.A.R.T.: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-focused and Time-specific. For example, if you have a long-term goal that consumers in costal areas will demand and purchase sustainable seafood on a regular basis, intermediate objectives might be that (1) by the end of year one, there will be a 50% increase in the presence of messages about sustainable seafood choices in media outlets in costal states and (2) by the end of year two, there will be double the number of advocates for sustainable seafood choices in costal areas.

4. Identify your audience.

Here I want to directly quote Edith’s report: “Organizations often measure what’s easy to count, such as how many publications they have sent out or how many people have visited their website. However, most communications are ultimately trying to move an audience; therefore getting feedback from the right source is crucial.”  Again, specificity is very important.  It is not enough to say you want to reach “policymakers” or “young people.”  Narrow your targets.  For example, you may want to reach senior members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or 25-to-35-year-old Hispanic professional women living in the tri-state area. Really being crystal clear about your targets can go a long way toward prioritizing your communications plan as well as making the evaluation of it more focused.

5. Establish your baseline.

You can’t evaluate how successful your communications are if you don’t know where the target audience started out in their attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, etc.  Some of the areas of information you’ll want to collect to establish a baseline include: Audience knowledge of and attitudes toward your organization and/or issue; common misconceptions and misinformation about your issue; audience values that directly affect your issue and/or your communications efforts; what are the organizations, issues or messages that could compete with you for audience and media attention; how has your issue been presented or framed in the past by the media; and who are the ‘influentials’ who support or oppose your issue.

6. Clarify your evaluation inquiry areas

With clear thinking on your goals, objectives and audience – and where that audience is at now – it is time to formulate the questions that will guide the evaluation process.  You’ll be wanting to ask different sorts of questions along the way.  In the early stages of the communications initiative you’ll want to be asking questions that get at things like “Do the messages we’ve created say what we think they do? Do they resonate with the target audience?  Are they even breaking through all the noise?”  At the midpoint of your initiative, you’ll want to ask questions along the lines of “Is the audience gaining the information that I intended them to have? Has the coverage of the issue begun to change? Is my targeting on track? What sort of reaction is the audience having to the messages?” And in the advanced stages of the initiative, you’ll want to pursue questions like “Have my messages become part of the public discourse? Are there observable policy results? Do I have reliable data that can help me make the case for continued support for my activities? Does my data indicate that I need to change my communications strategy or tactics?”

7. Draft your measurements

Perhaps it won’t surprise you to hear me say that specificity is important here!  Write out the milestones you expect to see along the way for each of your objectives. Each objective should have three or more milestones associated with it that can be measured.  Milestones should: represent meaningful signs of progress; be stated as results; be realistically measurable; can be associated with an actual deadline by which they will occur; and help actually answer your evaluation questions.  A good example of a milestone that has these qualities is: “A 50% increase in the visibility of the term ‘undocumented immigrant’ instead of ‘illegal immigrant’ in the media within six months.”

8. Select your evaluation techniques

At this point in the conversation it became exceedingly clear why common communications “measures of effectiveness” like media hits and website visits don’t necessarily mean a whole lot when it comes to understanding how well your communications are actually effecting target audiences.

Evaluation techniques depend on the information you want to assess and budget.  It could be as simple as counting votes in Congress or it could be as complex a combined longitudinal survey research and public engagement project.  Some of the primary evaluation techniques include: Interviews with select individuals who represent the target audience; focus groups, surveys (both traditional phone or in-person and on-line); direct observation of the target audience; quantitative data collection; quantitative data analysis and content analysis.

9. Estimate your budget.

The general rule of thumb in the field is to devote five to ten percent of the communications budget to efforts to understanding just how well you’re doing.  So for example, if you are developing a 10-year, $10 million campaign to gain public and legislative support for locally grown food instead of gigantic agribusiness-produced products, it would not be unreasonable or unwise to devote $500K of the budget to understanding the public’s current thinking, how it and legislators progress over the course of time and, in the end, just how successful you’ve been in changing behavior during the 10-year period.  Costs associated with evaluation might include external consultants and the costs of the selected evaluation techniques, but also staff time, travel and incidentals and the costs of editing, designing, producing and disseminating information about the findings. This final point implies also that we should be sharing what we learn with the field rather than holding the information only for the organization.

At this point in the meeting, we took a step back from the core concepts presented in “Are We There Yet?” and talked about the real-world implications.  One participant said that all this was “more procedure than substance.”  Others in the group disagreed, saying that you need to go through this process of gaining clarity in order to gather the right information that is really meaningful.

Another participant said that, for many nonprofits, the measure of success is simple: the amount of donations coming into the organization.  While many in the room acknowledged that donations are an important measure and there is no escaping the reality that it is measure that many organizations use the most, very strong voices advocated for measures that really get at what effect the organization is having on achieving its mission – how it is actually impacting audiences.  One participant noted that “measuring organizational effectiveness is also an important way to attract and keep donors.”

The group talked for some time about applying this framework in the real world of nonprofit and foundation communications.  Not surprisingly, staff time and dollars devoted to evaluation were the biggest areas of concern.

Following that portion of the conversation, I presented a hypothetical case of a long-term, multi-million-dollar initiative to change the public’s perception of a health and fitness issue.  I walked the group through the 9 Steps for that example to provide more context for how an evaluation might play out in the real world.  The example further made the case for clarifying goals and specifying target audiences, but further demonstrated that evaluation has both costs and programmatic benefits.

After the in-depth example, we were approaching the end of the topic discussion time.  The group talked a bit more about examples from their own experiences and the areas where they wanted to learn more on practical methods of data collection.

At the outset of the session, it was our intention (given the intended presenter’s availability) to have this day be an “Evaluation 101” to establish an understanding of the basics and then have Edith Asibey come back for the next session to work closely with folks advising those who wanted to work through the evaluation planning worksheet contained in “Are We There Yet?”  It was not clear to me at the end of the session if another session on evaluation was warranted or desired. So, I said that I would raise the question to the larger group of nonprofit and foundation folks in our orbit to see what people are interested in exploring at the next PPC-NYC meeting…

Would you like to do another session on “Measuring Effectiveness” that goes more deeply into the mechanics of data collection and assessment?

OR

Would you like to move on to one of the other topics requested previously by PPC-NYC members, such as…

-       Communicating through the blogosphere – getting your message out/making the most of other organizations’ blogs

-       What does “branding” really mean for a nonprofit/foundation and how do you do it to maximize your message?

-       What is the best way to integrate your online efforts so that the work flow and content for website, e-newsletters and social media are seamless but not repetitive?

-       NEW: Why and how to develop a communications plan that improves your work?

Please email me and tell me what you think.

On a side note, we live-tweeted the session for the first time yesterday from our official Twitter account: @PPCNYC.  It worked out really well.  Several people were following along from remote locations and re-tweeting key points from the presentation as well as points made by participants.  Thanks again to all the great thinkers who came.  I look forward to hearing what you want to explore next.

The topic of the day was “How to Use Low-Cost Multi-Media to Maximal Effect,” which was chosen by members at the last PPC meeting before we went on hiatus. While many of our meetings rely simply on the experiences of our own members, this time we had an expert (even though she insisted that I not call her that) to help us think through the topic: Susan Herr, President of PhilanthroMedia.

Susan started with the core point that thinking about what is “low cost” should take a step back from the costs of relatively inexpensive items like video cameras and video editing software, and look more broadly at the many other cost elements associated with producing good multi-media.

Using the example of her work organizing the “Gorilla Engagement Squad” at The Communications Network annual conference, she talked about how inexperienced and experienced camerapersons using Flip Cams and Tweeters could use inexpensive technologies in combination to extend the reach of a conference outside those present, as well as develop relationships among those on-site. But she made clear that the real cost was not the video cameras, etc., but the human resources to plan the video capture strategy, corralling interviewers and interviewees, and putting the pieces together into a compelling story.  It takes a lot of time (and someone fairly experienced in pulling it all together). This link features some of the participants in that effort talking about how it worked: Gorilla Engagement Squad 2009 http://vimeo.com/8174186

Then she talked about Video Skype and using it to produce “Diavlogs,” which, for the uninitiated, are essentially synched video of two people doing an interview showing both on-screen (usually from separate remote locations). The point here was that doing interviews and putting them up online is exceptionally easy and a potentially great way to share ideas/information in a conversational format. But just like any other interview – it has to be interesting to the audience!  Two people talking is easy to produce, but to get people to watch, there has to be great content, on both the interview and interviewee sides.  Here is a link to some examples of diavlogs: Beyond Branding http://vimeo.com/8265230

Next, she explored an example where she herself was a one-person camera crew, working for the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, gathering footage for an effort to get Presidential candidates focused on urban issues.  As an admittedly only “moderately” experienced camera person and interviewer, but having access to a really well-connected producer and experienced logistical coordinator, she was able to interview 10 mayors of major American cities about the challenges facing urban centers and use that footage to produce a compelling, cohesive message, which was picked up by The Nation, netroots bloggers and many well-trafficked .org sites.  The point here was how key a well-connected producer and logistical-coordinator were, not the expense of the technology and other aspects of “video production.”

Finally, she showed a new website that she has created as an example of how easy it is to do man/woman-on-the-street interviews on a Flip Cam, along with Flickr to host picture slide shows.  She also talked about the social networking aspect (in this case Facebook) of quickly building an audience when you have simple but compelling content.  This is the site (which is based on a $69 template) that she used as an example: http://www.dapperq.com/

As we opened the conversation up to the group, I added a few thoughts of my own.  First, I made the point that, while everyone wants to produce a “message” video that is witty and gets people’s attention so much so that it goes VIRAL and everyone is convinced of your point, there are lots of other possible uses of video.

This is a classic example of a “message” video (we didn’t show it at the meeting because the video didn’t show well on the projection screen): Lost Generation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA&feature=player_embedded

But you can do lots of other stuff with videos and other forms of multi-media, like…

–Highlighting organizational programs showing the programs in action.  Here’s a great teaser from the Anaheim Ballet that meeting participants loved: Anaheim Ballet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2XmRzaCFFY&feature=player_embedded  This is obviously great for arts organizations, but you can do it with panel discussions and other events relevant to policy-related organizations.

–Using multi-media to extend the reach of conferences/panel discussions, etc. (i.e. Philanthromedia’s work on Comnet09, Public Agenda’s policy breakfast series online videos, TED Talks)  Here is one example of a Public Agenda video highlighting programming: America\’s Financial Future http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mapR6TK8_Fo&feature=player_embedded

– To tell an organization’s history (for fundraising purposes)

– To take on powerful interests, critique leaders in a witty way

This is one that participant Michael Falco of Pro-Media Communications offered: ABA Showdown http://www.youtube.com/user/ABAShowdown  It is a great example of “taking it to the streets” and then taking the street online to spread virally.  It got a lot of hits.

– “instructional” : telling people what you want them to do and how to do it, for example: The World Sucks: Help it Suck Less http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAUQslfFP4&feature=player_embedded

– To recruit volunteers For example: Into Darfur: A Young American\’s Journey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BQcSyG7bOQ&feature=player_embedded

– To sell a policy direction For example: A New Sound: Green For All http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNszFwmSg2Y&feature=player_embedded

The conversation ranged over a lot of territory after that and people talked about their own experiences producing multi-media, including best ways to produce slideshows.  Fenton Communications’ Lisa Witter offered that the organization Duarte is amazing at producing such multi-media slide shows and maintains a blog called “Slide:ology” at http://blog.duarte.com/

She also shared this very inexpensive, provocative video called Milking Cancer http://vimeo.com/6675967 It was produced for $5,000 – which included the actors and editor.

It was noted by several participants that every organization should have a YouTube channel by now, but that Vimeo is also quite valuable because of the cleanliness of the presentation.

Lots of folks offered other examples.  I apologize that I didn’t catch who offered what.  This one is a good example of using lots of forms of media capture and putting it all together on one cohesive piece: MQ2 http://mq2.org/

The conversation ranged across many of the challenges of utilizing multi-media, but several themes kept reoccurring:

1. The importance of investing wisely in human resources, and knowing what you can do in-house and what you need to pay an expert for.

2. The ultimate fact that you need to start with interesting content or a compelling story.  You can throw lots of stuff up on a website, but if it isn’t witty or emotionally compelling, no one is going to watch it.

3. Dissemination is not to be overlooked.  We only touched on this topic, which should perhaps be revisited in a future session.  But we did talk about how the first step of getting something to “go viral” (after producing something interesting) is to start with your core audience and creating incentives for them to re-post and share through social networking sites.

I hope these notes are helpful.  They capture only a small part of what I learned from my colleagues at the session.  Another thing I learned is that I need to have someone dedicated to taking notes at the session.  Next time.

Over the course of late 2008 and the first half of 2009, PPC-NYC bloomed and its networking and discussions of key communications topics went deeper than even I expected.  We were meeting every other month and seemed to be building a strong community of shared learning.  But our planned summer hiatus extended through the fall when we lost our donated space in The New York Times building.

I am very excited to announce that the Ford Foundation, with its beautiful, centrally located facilities, has stepped up and offered to host the PPC-NYC brown bag lunch series starting this January.

Here is the information on the next PPC-NYC meeting:

What:               Brown-bag lunch (that means bring your own lunch!)

When:              Thursday, January 21, 2010 12:00 – 2:00 p.m.
(informal networking from 12:00-12:30, program begins at 12:30)

Where:            Ford Foundation – 320 East 43^rd Street (between 1^st & 2^nd Ave), New York, NY

Topic:              Utilizing low-cost multi-media in creative ways to maximize communications impact. Susan Herr of Philanthromedia will lead off the discussion.

RSVP:             Space is limited.  Please let me know that you are coming by emailing me at mremaley at ppcnyc dot org

I would like to thank the Ford Foundation – and especially PPC-NYC regular attendees Fiona Guthrie and Alfred Ironside — for helping make this learning series happen.  They’ve been exceptionally supportive and we are extremely grateful. Also, the Communications Network’s Bruce Trachtenberg has been essential to this organization’s success from the very beginning.

I hope to see you on January 21.