Do you have time to check everything on your to-do list at work? I doubt it. Time is the only thing that has remained constant over the past few years. A day was 24 hours long before Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. And, still is.
While your work day might have expanded outside of the office with the help of your smartphone, this increase in your working hours hasn’t been enough to get everything covered.
When I attend higher ed conferences or take part in the class discussions of the course I teach on social media marketing for higher ed, I often hear marketing and communication professionals admit they don’t measure the impact of their initiatives. All of them would love to measure, but they just can’t find the time to do it as they already struggle to get everything else done.
My standard reply is always: “take the time to measure to find out what you should keep…. and stop doing.”
When I studied communication and public relations in graduate school 20 years ago, I was also told that measurement should be done after everything is done, at the end of the campaign — just before switching the light off and going back home. And, technically, it is true. You can’t measure something that hasn’t happened yet, right?
Right, but you need to define what you want to measure before planning to do anything.
Can you see the popular “Goals before Tools” mantra coming?
It’s been repeated ad-nauseam at so many higher education conferences, because we all collectively suffer from the new shiny object syndrome (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but also MySpace, SecondLife or Foursquare, remember these guys?) One of our top audiences in higher education, students, are known to be early adopters and often trend-setters when it comes to digital technology. So, it’s natural to be compulsive about making sure we don’t miss THE. NEXT. BIG. THING.
Anybody has tried SnapChat or What’sApp to reach out to students yet? ;-)
But, let’s go back to the “Goals before Tools” mantra for now.
I’d like to propose a simple edit to help all the higher ed marketing and communications pros find back some of our missing time.
How about we start using “Measurable Goals before Tools” instead?
By tying measurement to goals there is no room left for interpretation.
Let’s agree that we can’t pick a goal for our next campaign, project or engagement initiative if it can’t be measured. Period.
Can you see all the time we are going to save collectively by adopting a strategic approach to measurement?
So, everybody, please together now: “Measurable Goals before Tools.”
Love this piece, Karine. Preaching to the choir!
When people tell me they don’t have time to measure, I always follow up with, “do you know how to measure?” Usually the answer is no. I totally agree that learning to measure will save you long-run time. I also believe in the GOST method of goal setting for campaigns that insures you set measurable goals. Good piece here on the basics: http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2009/12/how-to-create-measurable-objectives/. I’ve started people out with this process and pretty soon they do it by habit. I think you hit it: we really need a new habit that includes measurement in the whole process.
Thanks, Chris!
It is actually not THAT difficult to set up measurable goals aligned with institutional or departemental priorities. Not difficult, but somehow scary.
I’m wondering if it’s not related to the fear of being held accountable if you don’t meet your measurable goal. I can totally understand it:failure is still seen as a negative outcome. Well, success does always feel better, but failure is also part of the learning and improvement process.
In my 8-week online course on social media marketing for higher ed, the professionals working in universities and colleges who took it all end up setting these measurable goals for their campaign in a week’s time. It’s actually part of their homework with a set deadline :-) And, everybody always manages to set these goals — sometimes with help from my individualized feedback, but often right from the start. :-)
I think this is a symptom of busy – a condition incredibly prevalent in higher education, and directly related to ‘how we’ve always done it’ syndrome. Measurement threatens to uncover the lack of value of sacred cow activities. I often tell people who indicate they’re unable to make time to measure, that measurement is how time is made. It provides data to combat HIPPOs and start allowing the organization to focus on initiatives that actually provide needed outcomes rather than simply appeasing someone of a higher pay grade who believes something has (often anecdotal) value. Without measurement, without data, all you can do is what you’ve always done and hope for the best.
I love how you say it, Shelley: “measurement is how time is made.”
Thanks Karine, for the new mantra!
And thanks, Chris,for that VERY helpful link!
For the past three years I have been working to get the campus community onboard with the concept that we build web pages for specific AUDIENCES with specific GOALS in mind. (rocket science!) Now I can finally say that process of clearly defining the purpose is fairly well ingrained into our new project start up procedure I’m setting my sights higher – at the start of every web project we will now be creating a plan for MEASURING how well those goals will be met!
I will say this process is much easier to tackle in bits. I get overwhelmed when I think about objectives, metrics and conversions for the site at large, but when I just incorporate it into the startup for a small section redesign or new minisite, suddenly it’s doable, I learn a lot I can apply to larger projects, and I can point at some real ROI data almost immediately.