Session 2: Communication Goals
Transcript
[First slide: title slide]
Robert Hornsby:
Hi. Welcome to Strategic Communications Planning. This is session number two. Today, we're going to talk about communications goals, but we will start with a quick review of last week's material led by Cassandra Nathan.
[Second slide: General discussion—Review of Session 1]
Cassandra? Can you hear me?
Cassandra Nathan:
Yes. So sorry.
Robert:
Go ahead.
Cassandra:
How's everybody doing? Let me just open this up.
[In a quiet voice] I can't open this up.
Robert:
So, there are three questions here. How did it go? What was the easiest piece to define or explain? What was the hardest piece? I'm going to unshare for a second so I can see all of you, and then we will do a quick lightning round to see who has some comments.
[Screen share stops]
So, who had an easy time with the situation analysis? Anyone? No one. [Laughs.] Okay. Okay, so what is one of the stumbling blocks that happened? Anybody? What threw you for a loop?
Kristina Hernandez:
Besides picking– [Laughs] Besides picking a situation? That was probably my biggest hurdle.
Robert:
Anybody else have that issue, like deciding what to focus on? Chris. Anyone else? Yeah, Brandon. Okay.
So, that goes to sort of the scope of your project. And as we said at the outset, the scope of your project could be something that involves your entire school or department, or it could be a project-based thing. It's sometimes good to put some parameters on it so that it's, you know, the next three months or the next six months, or it's just the website, or it's just the social media, or it's just the media relations part. So make your plan manageable, and if it helps to be specific to one area of your work, then do that.
Anyone else? Did anybody else have trouble with, for example, defining institutional goals? So, you all were able to identify the institutional goals [snaps his fingers] just like that. Right?
Carol Cotterill:
No. [Laughs]
Robert:
Okay. No, it's okay. So, we're going to talk more about that. Any other general comments?
Michele Hoos:
My biggest question was about—and I haven't finished my analysis, I will admit it to you all—but my biggest question is about the outcomes. Like you were talking last time about, you know, you don't want to just be building reputation. But then also, you know, if our primary audience at the Engineering School through one lens is master’s students. Right? We want more master's applications. Do I really want to link my communications efforts, which are not marketing efforts, to increasing enrollment? I don't think so, but I'm not sure what the right outcome statement is for something like that. Or maybe it is that we're trying– You know, I think–
[Carol’s phone makes an alert noise]
–there's a difficult dance between communications and marketing.
Robert:
Absolutely, and this is worth discussing. We'll talk about this a little bit more as we move along. The distinction is—and I tried to make that in my little anecdote yesterday—that sometimes we as communicators get asked to deliver on things that are sort of outside of our domain or that there are barriers of some kind to achieving what your unit or school is trying to accomplish, and it can't all be on your shoulders.
You can contribute by coming up with a communications program that's geared toward applicants, but you can't deliver applicants on your own. But you can come up with messaging for applicants, you can come up with platforms and formats and different kinds of communication to go to applicants, and that would be your part in it.
Michele:
Okay.
Robert:
So for Michele, I mean, what you would want to do is maybe talk to the dean or the deans of admissions and then sort of come up with like, “Okay, I have a general sense we want more applicants, but do we want more numbers or do we want a higher caliber of applicants?”
A quick anecdote from my own life: Years ago before I was a communications professional, I was an admissions officer, and I was assigned to increase enrollment for a Midwest art college from the New England region to stabilize and increase enrollment. So in six months, I increased the applicant pool by 25%. The college that I worked for found that an unexpected outcome. I was very successful in increasing applicants. Turns out they didn't accept a larger number of applicants, which resulted in 96% of people being turned away, which then changed the perception of what the college was about.
And we face the same kind of pressure here at Columbia where we're very selective. We turn away 94% of people that apply, so increasing the applicant pool may bring in higher caliber applicants, but you also have to cope with that large number of applicants to process, for example. Does your admissions officer want that or not? And is communications a way to achieve that?
Okay, so those are two examples. That was a very good point to bring up, Michele.
Michele:
Thanks, that’s great.
Robert:
Does anybody else have general comments before we move on? Anything you want to share? Okay. So, I'm going to go back to screen share and we'll move on into content.
[Screen share begins]
[Second slide: General discussion—Review of Session 1]
[Third slide: Refresher: Elements of a Communications Plan]
Okay. So, quick review. The elements of your communications plan. There are six of them. Today, we're going to talk about goals, and goals are the “why.” Why are you doing what you're doing? Strategy is the “what” you're doing, and tactics are the “how” you're doing it. These are important distinctions to remember because a lot of people get muddled in the difference between a goal and a strategy, and a strategy and a tactic, but we're going to try to help you sort through that.
[Fourth slide: Communications Goals]
So, in your situation analysis section, you considered the general institutional goals. In communications goals section, you want to show how your communications integrate, serve, and support the institutional goals. So, we're going to break that down.
[Fifth slide: Review: Institutional Goals]
What are a few examples of the institutional goals from within this class? So, I'm going to pause share, stop share for a second.
[Screen share stops]
So, there are a group of people here. You all work for different groups. You all work for different parts of the university. What is the institutional goal of one of your areas? I'll take a volunteer. If not, I'm gonna start calling on people.
Kristina, go ahead.
Kristina:
I said don't call on me. I missed last week's session, so admittedly when I was working on my analysis for this week, there were parts that I, like, I readily knew how to answer. But this was one. I'm glad you brought it up. Like in this case, you know, if I support department communications, is my department the institution, or is it all about how we're laddering back up to, like, a Columbia goal?
Robert:
Good question. For the purpose of this class, it's your department, your office or unit. Whatever school, institute, center, office, unit that you support. So Kristina, what would you– For the benefit of the class, since you weren't here last time, define your department for us.
Kristina:
Yeah. The one that I've arrived at is, I support communications for campus services, and one of the departments is Columbia Dining. And so I'm doing a project for that. Their overarching goal as a department is, you know, to be perceived as a quality food provider for the students. And then the situation is specific to meal delivery during quarantine periods.
Robert:
Okay. So, this is a reputational goal. You know, sentiment. How the audience perceives you.
Kristina:
Yes. Although as you start to get into the deeper layers, it does become more– There are more, you know, tactical, tangible, [indiscernible].
Robert:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Sure. But as a sort of overarching thing, you want people to have a positive view of what Dining is doing. Okay, so that's a perfectly reasonable institutional goal. So what we're going to do in the class is try to understand how communications can support that goal.
So, let's hear from someone else. Counting down. Two. Three. Go ahead, Jamie.
Jamie Nash:
I'll do it, yeah. I'm maybe not gonna answer this correctly, but I'm supporting Sustainable Columbia, and their institutional goal is to foster a culture change at the university in favor of a more sustainable way of working and being at Columbia. So, I think the communication goal is maybe twofold. It would be educational but then also reputational because we also want Sustainable Columbia to be perceived as, you know, Columbia is a place that is green and sustainable, and we're working towards this culture change.
Robert:
Great.
Jamie:
Does that make sense?
Robert:
Yeah it does. It does. So, in your plan you're going to think about what kind of communications, what strategy makes sense to deliver on that, what key messages can support that, and then how you deliver those key messages in your tactics.
So, let's hear from one other person. How about Brandon?
Brandon Alexander:
Let's say–
Robert:
Tell us what your unit is and what your institutional goal is.
Brandon:
So, I'm with the School of Professional Studies, and I think I mentioned in my breakout group it's a little bit difficult to narrow it down to a specific institutional goal just because the school is so big.
Robert:
What's your area?
Brandon:
My area is media production, which includes course content as well as promotional materials and stuff like that. And so I guess when–
Robert:
So, let me ask you a question then. How did your boss decide if you're being a success or not?
Brandon:
I’ll be honest. It's just based on, like, are we producing video, and is it, you know, getting out there, I guess.
Robert:
Okay, so it's quantity and quality.
Brandon:
Yeah, exactly.
Robert:
Okay. How does he determine whether you're doing a good job or not?
Brandon:
That's what we're actually trying to determine right now in terms of as a team. Because of course if you get a video with a bunch of views, that doesn't mean it's successful; it just means a bunch of people watched it.
Robert:
Of course.
Brandon:
So it's hard. We're trying to figure that out to see how we can translate what we do to, you know, what we should use to measure our success by. And so that's what we've been dealing with, I guess.
Robert:
Brandon, this is an excellent point because one of the purposes of this class is to put you in the driver's seat about those decisions. So, you don't have to wait for someone to tell you what the institutional goal is or the communications goal. Even if it's not articulated in a mission statement or some sort of promotional materials or whatever, you can come up with what you think works.
You want to produce really excellent video. You want it to be of high caliber. It needs to satisfy you professionally that you're doing a great job. And you want to make sure it's getting to the right people and serving them. So, that could be a “self-defined” institutional goal that you could work on, Brandon. And then you'll work on a communication strategy, a communications goal that fulfills on that. And you can define the terms of this yourself. That's what this course is about.
So, let's help Brandon. Given that he wants to produce good video for School of Professional Studies and get that out there to the right people, what kind of communications do you think he would need? Not tactical stuff, but sort of what kind of communications goal is reasonable and achievable? More views? Better feedback? You know, audience development?
Go ahead.
Carol:
Could you do maybe a link in the video or under the video and then just monitor the number of clicks through to link to find out more information?
Robert:
Sure. So, that's a metric. So, what's the corresponding goal is to prove that you're creating engagement. So that's what we would– Carol's point is– So that's the tactical way of demonstrating engagement. So, your communications goal, Brandon, could be “demonstrate engagement as a way of defining audience.” How would we understand the audience perception or sentiment of your materials? Do they rank those when they do course evaluations, or–?
Brandon:
Mostly. I mean, it's hard to get into that level of detail just because it's like–
Robert:
No, no. It’s okay. This is a conceptual discussion.
Brandon:
[Laughs]. I think mostly in those instances since our client is the instructor, that's if it's meeting their learning goals.
Robert:
Fair enough. Fair enough. So, you want the instructors to be satisfied that the materials being produced are of the highest quality. So, that would be, like, a communications goal. Okay?
So, I'm going to go back to share for just a second.
[Screen share begins]
[Fifth slide: Review: Institutional Goals]
So, institutional goals. A quick review: They're usually about growth or increase. They could be about stability. They often deal with quantifiable attributes such as the number of students, faculty, funding, you know. So, we've just discussed about institutional goals from a few class members. So, let's talk about how communications goals are different from institutional goals.
[Sixth slide: Communications Goals]
So, here are a set of bullets, and I'll go through them, and we'll talk about them a little bit. Communications goals– And just for the purpose of, you know, trying to avoid acronyms, I’m just going to go with comms goals. Comms goals deal with information, news, persuasion, or conversion. They set a target that correlate to an institutional goal. So, it doesn't have to be one-to-one, but it has to be linked to something that you're trying to achieve. Communications goals are tied to your metrics. So, we gather and use data to judge the impact or success of a communications product. And here's a tip: Don't suggest a goal you can't quantify or that you can't measure. Conversely, we don't allow the data to limit our goals.
So, I'm going to start with that last one and work backwards. So, there is sort of a cheat here where people get themselves boxed in, and this is something I want you to avoid. So if you say, “My goal is to increase page views to a website.” So, you can do a variety of things to increase page views. But if page views alone don't help you understand that your audience reputation is improving, then that's not helpful. It's not a true reflection, and it doesn't contribute to your institutional goals. You may get people that are coming onto your page for a millisecond and then bailing because it's not useful. You've got a lot of page views, but they're coming away from it thinking, “Wow, that was useless.”
So if—take Kristina's example before—if she was able to drive a really ton of traffic to the Dining website but then people felt like, “Oh this is a waste of my time.” Like, “I get there; there's nothing I need.” And they're only there for like three seconds, and then they're out. Does that really help her? Does it demonstrate that Dining is doing its job? The answer is no. I mean, she can increase page views, and that can be done, you know, by a factor of 10 or more through a couple of, like, SEO techniques and some other things, but that doesn't reflect the audience sentiment once they get there. Okay?
So, you don't want to set up a kind of self-fulfilling goal that's based on a rudimentary metric. So the goals are more important. And you need to match up the metrics to the goals in a smarter way.
Chris Molinari:
Robert, can I ask a question about that?
Robert:
Sure.
Chris:
I think that your point there is very interesting. How exactly—it may be diving down a little bit too deep, and I know you're going kind of an overview—but if one of our goals is to increase page use, then the second step obviously is to measure if it actually does reflect audience sentiment. How do you go about measuring that type of thing?
Robert:
We'll talk more about that during the metrics class, but–
Chris:
Okay.
Robert:
One way is to do surveys and polls, look for click-throughs for links from one page to another page can often show. Also the, you know, how much time someone's spending on a page can often reflect. If they're on a page for more than 30 seconds, that means they're reading the page. Most people, when they go to a page that is useless, they bail in, like, two or three seconds. It doesn't take you very long.
Just think about your own Google searches. When you're searching for something and you put in some search terms and you get a list of results, and you look at that and go, “No this is not what I meant.” And then you have to change your search terms. Okay, same kind of thing applies. People are searching for something, they're arriving at a web page, or they're you know coming to the Global Centers page and they're not finding what they need and they bail within three seconds. You're getting a page view, but you're not getting engagement. Right? So that's what you're trying to do is develop engagement.
I don't want to spend a whole lot more time on this because we're coming up on the time to do breakout. But the basic concepts are here. Your communications goals aren't about, you know, fulfilling enrollment. They're not about, you know, showing big attendance to events or that kind of thing. That's not a communications goal. That is the proof of what you're doing; that's not a goal in itself. So resist going for a goal that's more tactically oriented.
[Fifth slide: Review: Institutional Goals]
[In a quiet voice] Okay. Looks like we're going backwards here [referring to the PowerPoint].
[Seventh slide: Communications Goals: Samples]
So here's a couple of examples of communications goals, and then we're going to do breakout. Here's a couple of simple, general goals that you can copy and apply to your own world. They're from different areas. So, increase subscriber growth to a newsletter. Stabilize applications. Strengthen the reputation. Communicate the opportunities.
But also look at the back end of those things, like stabilize applications of grad students in the next admissions cycle. So, a goal has a target, and it has some parameters to it like a date or a way that you're going to sort of circle back and know whether you've achieved it or not. Strengthen the reputation in target audiences. We'll figure that part out later, like exactly how you're going to measure it and demonstrate that, but that's what you're shooting for. Communicate opportunities for the purpose of persuading donors to fund initiatives. And that would be—maybe if that's over the course of a year or two—pretty clear at the end of two years. You've been doing all this communicating. Do we get more money? Do we not get more money?
Note that these statements emphasize verbs—increase, stabilize, strengthen, communicate.
[Eighth slide: Communication Goals: Discussion Questions]
So, couple of discussion questions: Are there different goals for different audiences? Obviously. What goals are reasonable and achievable? And this is from a communications perspective. We're not talking about the institutional goals; these are communications goals. If you're saying you're going to increase your web traffic by 1,000 in the course of four months, you would better be doing something pretty amazing to achieve that. So you don't want to put a marker or a milestone so far out there that it's impossible for you to achieve. But also you don't want to box yourself in.
The light in my office is going off on its own, so I'm not spastic.
What communications can persuade your target audiences to help you? And this is a measure of engagement. Like, you want people to participate. That's what we're talking about with engagement. How can they participate? What are the different forms of participation? Coming to events, signing up for newsletters. You want your target audience to help the institutional goals of your unit, and you're going to communicate with them on that basis.
So again, what would be the best outcome for your work over the next four to six months? Think about your annual review. When you're filling in your annual review document and you want to show what results you've achieved, and you know, “I set out to do x, and then here's the result.” So that's what we're talking about when we're talking about outcomes.
And here's a final question. Is creating a website or newsletter really a communications goal? Why? Why not?
I’m going to stop share for just a second and then we'll do breakout.
[Screen share stops]
So on that last question, this is the kind of thing that happens all the time. Is creating a website or a newsletter a communications goal in and of itself? Kristina's shaking her head, “No.” So many people are shaking their head, “No.” But how many people have had their boss walk in and say, “I have a great idea. We're going to save our institution. We're going to create a newsletter.” Or “Our goal for the next six months is launch a website.”
Okay, is that strategic? Could be if you don't have a website; or if you have a really crappy website, upgrading it can be a strategic move to help your communications. But that's not a communications goal. Communications goal is more targeted to and concerns your audience, your purpose, and the outcomes. Everything else is just tactical.
So, we're going to try to make a distinction between strategy and tactics in the coming weeks. This throws a lot of people, but it's not that difficult. Tactics are things that you do, things that you produce, things that you write, things that you create, tangible things that get produced either in the physical world or in the online world. But a tactic is something that you make. So if you think of in terms of making, then if you have to go make something, that's tactical.
Strategy is an idea. Okay, there's a big difference between, like, slapping together a logo and then putting that logo on all your materials. That's not a strategy. Branding is a strategy. Branding is a more abstract concept. And so we'll come back and circle around this again, and we'll be talking about it more as the class goes on.
So now I'm gonna go back to share for just a minute and then we're gonna do breakout.
[Screen share begins]
[Eighth slide: Communication Goals: Discussion Questions]
[Ninth slide: Communication Goals: Breakout session]
So, Cassandra, lead us through the next part.
Cassandra:
Yes. So, to support you guys, we have a situation of the day. This is going to be customary for every—possibly every—session. We kind of go with the flow based on the needs of the group. But I want you guys to keep in mind that the situation of the day that we're utilizing, it may or may not apply to your work environment. If it does apply to your work environment, I would highly recommend that you pull and you glean from that. If not, feel free to think outside the box. These situations are just designed for you guys to 1) connect, network, and get the wheels in your mind working so that when you're alone again and you're working on your communications goals for your department, you're already kind of in the rhythm of it. Okay?
So, today's situation of the day is, “Your supervisor thinks your office needs a new and improved newsletter.” And, like, that's it. Just like go. Go for it.
So in this case, what I want you guys to do is a couple things. First, when you go into your breakout session, please assign someone who will be the note taker. Right? And feel free to kind of get things going. Sometimes what happens is people get to talking but they forget to write everything down, and then they're kind of stunned when we come back. We're going to come back as a group and you guys are going to share, so make sure at least one person is taking notes. The notes that you're going to take is you're going to define the institutional goal, and you're going to devise at least one communication goal about the newsletter. Okay? Again, define the institutional goal. Second, devise at least one communication goal about the newsletter.
Finally, we want you to remember, it's all about the audience, the purpose, and the outcomes.
[Screen share stops]
Okay. We pre-program the breakout sessions, and I'm going to launch that now. And we'll go at least 15 minutes. I'll give you a prompt. Takes about a minute for the breakout sessions to close down. There may be a few stragglers that get left behind, and we'll put you in your breakout sessions manually. That may take a minute or two, so bear with us on that. Zoom is a little bit quirky on this area.
So, what we've done is assign you to a breakout room based upon your teams, so you should be corresponding to your teams—apricot, kiwi, blueberry, and so on. And those are the people who you have a responsibility to. So, that responsibility is once the Google folders are populated, and many of them are already, for next class you will go into those folders and make at least one or more substantive comments on the draft plans that your teammates have written. Okay?
So, we're gonna launch breakout sessions, and we'll come back after at least 15 minutes.
[Time jump in the video]
Cassandra:
How was it?
Robert:
Good. How was yours?
Cassandra:
Pretty good. So real quick question before they come back: So for, like, Facilities, is that considered their institution? And then is that–
Robert:
For the purpose of their plan, an institutional goal is what their department or unit is trying to achieve.
Cassandra:
Okay.
Robert:
So we're not talking about, like, I work on internal communications for the entire university, so I'm aware of the sort of, you know, 10,000 foot goals, and that's what I work on. But in a department it's, you know, 5,000 feet. It needs to not conflict with the 10,000 foot goals, but, like, the goals of Facilities are going to be different than the goals of some, you know, the Earth Institute.
Cassandra:
Okay, great.
Robert:
Okay.
Cassandra:
How are you guys feeling? Anyone nervous?
Robert:
Okay. Let's real quickly go from group to group and get a quick summary of what you came up with or what your sticking point was. So apricot, breakout group one, go ahead.
Chris:
Okay. So we based our observations on the university institutional goals for the Columbia Global Centers. Both Seden and I work for the Global Centers. And the Global Centers, according to the mission statement, “promote and facilitate the collaborative and impactful engagement of the university's faculty, students, and alumni of the world to enhance understanding, address global challenges, and advance knowledge and exchange.” So within that, the institutional goal that we defined would be to engage different audiences beyond the faculty, students, and staff to make it more of a global issue with more people outside of the Columbia community.
Robert:
[Indiscernible]
Chris:
Our communications goal– Sorry?
Robert:
Good. Go ahead.
Chris:
Our communications goal is to increase the number of subscribers. The way we're going to measure that is when subscribing, we'll have a poll to ask whether the subscriber is currently a member of the community or other. The audience would be the decision makers outside of the Columbia community. And our purpose is to increase the amount of subscribers 15% in one year with the outcome of having a survey after each of our engagements, and then the best scenario to increase positive feedback in addition to the subscribers.
Robert:
Wow.
Cassandra:
Right. [Laughter]
Robert:
Okay. Let's go to the next group—breakout group two, kiwi.
Katie McCluskey:
Sure. So we chose to focus on Columbia Dining as one of our group members—that's who she's representing. So, you know, we looked first at the institutional goal: “Columbia seeks to attract a diverse group of students and faculty.” And so the departmental goal is to fuel that group. So that's part of what we do is supporting the functions of the university by being a quality food provider and helping to sort of support the function of the university by being a part of the draw for the rest of those who belong to the community.
And so one of our communications goals related to the newsletter was to inform the subscribers of special offerings and events. And one of the ways that we plan to track this was click-throughs to specific sections. And even on when we do certain menus, to look at the swipes for those dining halls when those menus were in place to see if they were greater because we've been advertising them in our newsletter. If we wanted to feature one of our specific retail outlets, it would be to track if sales increased at that retail outlet following the advertisement in our newsletter.
Robert:
Oh, excellent.
Cassandra:
Very nice.
Robert:
Let's go to apple group, breakout session three.
Apple group?
Michele:
I don’t know what group I was in.
Robert:
Hang on.
Unidentified attendee #1:
We were blueberry, y’all.
Robert:
Apple group is Traci Rosenthal, Lindsey Schram, Nadine, and Kristina Hernandez.
Cassandra:
I think that was the group that I ended up mixing up because Nadine left, so they had one person in there.
Robert:
Oh okay, okay. So Kristina, were you in the last group? Okay, okay.
So then let's go to lemon, breakout group four.
Jamie:
Okay. So we talked about University Life because Ramona works with University Life, and she actually was saying that they are doing this exact test. They're revamping the newsletter and making it not only more well-designed but also easier to get metrics from.
So, the institutional goal we talked about was to help students feel more connected to each other as a community and then also as a university as a whole. And so one of the communications goals was to increase readership of the newsletter as compared to the old newsletter by theoretically making it more eye-catching and nice to look at. People will read it. We can measure that through open rates. Now with the new platform, they'll be able to measure it relative to, like, when they first start with this new platform. Ongoing, they'll have to look at some standard goals based on, like, other peer institutions and see if they improve. But then overall this first goal would lead to theoretically more people showing up at their events that are advertised in the newsletter, and so that's another metric they can look at as compared to before event attendance and new event attendance.
Robert:
Great. Great.
Jamie:
Ramona, if I missed anything, feel free to add.
Ramona King:
That was great. Thank you.
Robert:
Plum group, break out session five.
Carol:
Yep. So Angela and I both work for the United States Science Support Program which supports—mainly supports—scientists in the International Ocean Discovery Scientific Drilling Program. But we are currently discussing a newsletter anyway, adding in a new newsletter that is targeted towards educators because we produce a lot of educational science communication material.
So the institutional goal that we have been set is to grow the education audience and improve the traffic to all the existing resources that we currently have for educators or, you know, interested members of the public who want to do activities with their kids or learn how to knit a microfossil or something. The communications goal we've got—two main communications goal—one is to sort of reinforce and stabilize the relationship with people who already know about us and use our material. But we also want to seek new users, especially within the K-12 educational environment by highlighting existing materials with click-through links. So from the newsletter you have click-through links, and we would then use before and after analytics that sit behind the website to monitor the success and impact. And we would like to see increased engagement within the next 6 to 12 months.
Robert:
Great. So final group is blueberry group, breakout room six.
Robert Tulman:
Sure. Michele, just stop me if I'm missing anything. But we chose to go with an example from one of our teammates in the Engineering School. A big topic of discussion was for the newsletter in general—the format. And we all agreed moving away from print, moving towards digital as a way to measure. Better measure, better customize the content, and have it better suit what Michele's needs were, which were a goal being cultivating more industry partnerships.
These partnerships would drive research partnerships. I think the example used was partnership with Amazon for some of their warehouses and to better facilitate partnerships that fund work in that space. The audience was another sort of topic of discussion for us. Until those industry partnerships are built—you know, corporations and figures within that space would be the ideal audience, but until that audience is built—it may have to be in a section of a general newsletter. Sorry, or a digital newsletter.
Robert:
Okay.
Robert T.:
Yes. And the purpose mentioned would be to increase industry partnerships. And the outcome would be, you know, hopefully to increase it by one or two each year but more so also to add more, I guess, figureheads and more co-sponsors that would give, you know, sort of credence to the program.
Robert:
Right. Right. That's very excellent. You guys did great work in this breakout. It was very focused, and it gives you a sort of a real world scenario that can help these plans be more based in reality so that they're not so amorphous and they're not so abstract as– You know, you're talking about the things that you actually do week to week, day to day, month to month, and that's what these plans that you're writing are going to help support.
And even if the plan is only for yourself and it never sees the light of day and you never present it in public, it can help guide your work. It can help give your work purpose. And it also give you a framework to judge where you are, where you're going, and did you meet your objectives or not. Those are all things that are to the benefit of both you and your organization.
And being able to walk in at any moment to your boss's office and say—when your boss says, “Well, how's that new newsletter going?” You can say, “Well, our goal is to increase traffic by x percent over whatever years, and we've been collecting that data for the last six months and here's what we're doing.”
Or, you know, “Our goal was to have our newsletter look better than it did before and people to like it more and spend more time on it. Here's the old newsletter and here's the new newsletter, and we can show from our Google Analytics that people are spending– In our old newsletter, they used to spend, you know, less than five minutes, and now people spend 15 or 20 minutes looking at the newsletter. Plus, they click through from article to article.”
That's what you want to be able to say because you're making your work more tangible, based in reality with facts and data to back up any assertions about the quality and the quantity of your work.
We're coming up on three o'clock. Is there a last question anyone wants to ask?
So, last screen share. Go back to the PowerPoint.
[Screen share begins]
[Tenth slide: Communication Goals: Breakout review]
Your homework—so, you're going to go into the Google folder to your assigned team. You're going to make substantive comments about the situation analysis just on the ones by your teammates. So your teams are no more than four people, so you're going to read three other documents, and you're going to make one substantive comment. Not just the word, “Great,” but something more, “Understand this. Really helpful to me. Understand your unit better.” Or you ask a question: “Hey, don't understand this. Could you expand it?” Or “I'd love to steal this. Tell me more about it.” That's a substantive comment.
Then also you're going to—in the next week—write a one-page communications goal draft, and you're going to load that up to the Google folder or the LabArchive folder by end of day next Thursday. So don't get too hung up on the communications goal bit. It can just be three big bullets or two big bullets. It doesn't have to be a page long. And it doesn't need to be, you know, several pages-long discourse of narrative. You know, keep it simple, but make it be on point.
[Ninth slide: Communication Goals: Breakout session]
[Screen share stops]
So final thought? Anyone? Okay. Thanks so much for a great session today. We will look forward to seeing you next week. If you have questions or comments, please do email me or Cassandra. If it would help to meet with Cassandra during her office hours, shoot her an email and she'd be happy to sit down and talk with you individually or with a team.
Cassandra:
Yes.
Robert:
Great. All right, thanks so much, everyone.
Angela Slagle:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #2:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #3:
Bye.
Unidentified attendee #4:
Thank you.
Robert Hornsby:
Hi. Welcome to Strategic Communications Planning. This is session number two. Today, we're going to talk about communications goals, but we will start with a quick review of last week's material led by Cassandra Nathan.
[Second slide: General discussion—Review of Session 1]
Cassandra? Can you hear me?
Cassandra Nathan:
Yes. So sorry.
Robert:
Go ahead.
Cassandra:
How's everybody doing? Let me just open this up.
[In a quiet voice] I can't open this up.
Robert:
So, there are three questions here. How did it go? What was the easiest piece to define or explain? What was the hardest piece? I'm going to unshare for a second so I can see all of you, and then we will do a quick lightning round to see who has some comments.
[Screen share stops]
So, who had an easy time with the situation analysis? Anyone? No one. [Laughs.] Okay. Okay, so what is one of the stumbling blocks that happened? Anybody? What threw you for a loop?
Kristina Hernandez:
Besides picking– [Laughs] Besides picking a situation? That was probably my biggest hurdle.
Robert:
Anybody else have that issue, like deciding what to focus on? Chris. Anyone else? Yeah, Brandon. Okay.
So, that goes to sort of the scope of your project. And as we said at the outset, the scope of your project could be something that involves your entire school or department, or it could be a project-based thing. It's sometimes good to put some parameters on it so that it's, you know, the next three months or the next six months, or it's just the website, or it's just the social media, or it's just the media relations part. So make your plan manageable, and if it helps to be specific to one area of your work, then do that.
Anyone else? Did anybody else have trouble with, for example, defining institutional goals? So, you all were able to identify the institutional goals [snaps his fingers] just like that. Right?
Carol Cotterill:
No. [Laughs]
Robert:
Okay. No, it's okay. So, we're going to talk more about that. Any other general comments?
Michele Hoos:
My biggest question was about—and I haven't finished my analysis, I will admit it to you all—but my biggest question is about the outcomes. Like you were talking last time about, you know, you don't want to just be building reputation. But then also, you know, if our primary audience at the Engineering School through one lens is master’s students. Right? We want more master's applications. Do I really want to link my communications efforts, which are not marketing efforts, to increasing enrollment? I don't think so, but I'm not sure what the right outcome statement is for something like that. Or maybe it is that we're trying– You know, I think–
[Carol’s phone makes an alert noise]
–there's a difficult dance between communications and marketing.
Robert:
Absolutely, and this is worth discussing. We'll talk about this a little bit more as we move along. The distinction is—and I tried to make that in my little anecdote yesterday—that sometimes we as communicators get asked to deliver on things that are sort of outside of our domain or that there are barriers of some kind to achieving what your unit or school is trying to accomplish, and it can't all be on your shoulders.
You can contribute by coming up with a communications program that's geared toward applicants, but you can't deliver applicants on your own. But you can come up with messaging for applicants, you can come up with platforms and formats and different kinds of communication to go to applicants, and that would be your part in it.
Michele:
Okay.
Robert:
So for Michele, I mean, what you would want to do is maybe talk to the dean or the deans of admissions and then sort of come up with like, “Okay, I have a general sense we want more applicants, but do we want more numbers or do we want a higher caliber of applicants?”
A quick anecdote from my own life: Years ago before I was a communications professional, I was an admissions officer, and I was assigned to increase enrollment for a Midwest art college from the New England region to stabilize and increase enrollment. So in six months, I increased the applicant pool by 25%. The college that I worked for found that an unexpected outcome. I was very successful in increasing applicants. Turns out they didn't accept a larger number of applicants, which resulted in 96% of people being turned away, which then changed the perception of what the college was about.
And we face the same kind of pressure here at Columbia where we're very selective. We turn away 94% of people that apply, so increasing the applicant pool may bring in higher caliber applicants, but you also have to cope with that large number of applicants to process, for example. Does your admissions officer want that or not? And is communications a way to achieve that?
Okay, so those are two examples. That was a very good point to bring up, Michele.
Michele:
Thanks, that’s great.
Robert:
Does anybody else have general comments before we move on? Anything you want to share? Okay. So, I'm going to go back to screen share and we'll move on into content.
[Screen share begins]
[Second slide: General discussion—Review of Session 1]
[Third slide: Refresher: Elements of a Communications Plan]
Okay. So, quick review. The elements of your communications plan. There are six of them. Today, we're going to talk about goals, and goals are the “why.” Why are you doing what you're doing? Strategy is the “what” you're doing, and tactics are the “how” you're doing it. These are important distinctions to remember because a lot of people get muddled in the difference between a goal and a strategy, and a strategy and a tactic, but we're going to try to help you sort through that.
[Fourth slide: Communications Goals]
So, in your situation analysis section, you considered the general institutional goals. In communications goals section, you want to show how your communications integrate, serve, and support the institutional goals. So, we're going to break that down.
[Fifth slide: Review: Institutional Goals]
What are a few examples of the institutional goals from within this class? So, I'm going to pause share, stop share for a second.
[Screen share stops]
So, there are a group of people here. You all work for different groups. You all work for different parts of the university. What is the institutional goal of one of your areas? I'll take a volunteer. If not, I'm gonna start calling on people.
Kristina, go ahead.
Kristina:
I said don't call on me. I missed last week's session, so admittedly when I was working on my analysis for this week, there were parts that I, like, I readily knew how to answer. But this was one. I'm glad you brought it up. Like in this case, you know, if I support department communications, is my department the institution, or is it all about how we're laddering back up to, like, a Columbia goal?
Robert:
Good question. For the purpose of this class, it's your department, your office or unit. Whatever school, institute, center, office, unit that you support. So Kristina, what would you– For the benefit of the class, since you weren't here last time, define your department for us.
Kristina:
Yeah. The one that I've arrived at is, I support communications for campus services, and one of the departments is Columbia Dining. And so I'm doing a project for that. Their overarching goal as a department is, you know, to be perceived as a quality food provider for the students. And then the situation is specific to meal delivery during quarantine periods.
Robert:
Okay. So, this is a reputational goal. You know, sentiment. How the audience perceives you.
Kristina:
Yes. Although as you start to get into the deeper layers, it does become more– There are more, you know, tactical, tangible, [indiscernible].
Robert:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Sure. But as a sort of overarching thing, you want people to have a positive view of what Dining is doing. Okay, so that's a perfectly reasonable institutional goal. So what we're going to do in the class is try to understand how communications can support that goal.
So, let's hear from someone else. Counting down. Two. Three. Go ahead, Jamie.
Jamie Nash:
I'll do it, yeah. I'm maybe not gonna answer this correctly, but I'm supporting Sustainable Columbia, and their institutional goal is to foster a culture change at the university in favor of a more sustainable way of working and being at Columbia. So, I think the communication goal is maybe twofold. It would be educational but then also reputational because we also want Sustainable Columbia to be perceived as, you know, Columbia is a place that is green and sustainable, and we're working towards this culture change.
Robert:
Great.
Jamie:
Does that make sense?
Robert:
Yeah it does. It does. So, in your plan you're going to think about what kind of communications, what strategy makes sense to deliver on that, what key messages can support that, and then how you deliver those key messages in your tactics.
So, let's hear from one other person. How about Brandon?
Brandon Alexander:
Let's say–
Robert:
Tell us what your unit is and what your institutional goal is.
Brandon:
So, I'm with the School of Professional Studies, and I think I mentioned in my breakout group it's a little bit difficult to narrow it down to a specific institutional goal just because the school is so big.
Robert:
What's your area?
Brandon:
My area is media production, which includes course content as well as promotional materials and stuff like that. And so I guess when–
Robert:
So, let me ask you a question then. How did your boss decide if you're being a success or not?
Brandon:
I’ll be honest. It's just based on, like, are we producing video, and is it, you know, getting out there, I guess.
Robert:
Okay, so it's quantity and quality.
Brandon:
Yeah, exactly.
Robert:
Okay. How does he determine whether you're doing a good job or not?
Brandon:
That's what we're actually trying to determine right now in terms of as a team. Because of course if you get a video with a bunch of views, that doesn't mean it's successful; it just means a bunch of people watched it.
Robert:
Of course.
Brandon:
So it's hard. We're trying to figure that out to see how we can translate what we do to, you know, what we should use to measure our success by. And so that's what we've been dealing with, I guess.
Robert:
Brandon, this is an excellent point because one of the purposes of this class is to put you in the driver's seat about those decisions. So, you don't have to wait for someone to tell you what the institutional goal is or the communications goal. Even if it's not articulated in a mission statement or some sort of promotional materials or whatever, you can come up with what you think works.
You want to produce really excellent video. You want it to be of high caliber. It needs to satisfy you professionally that you're doing a great job. And you want to make sure it's getting to the right people and serving them. So, that could be a “self-defined” institutional goal that you could work on, Brandon. And then you'll work on a communication strategy, a communications goal that fulfills on that. And you can define the terms of this yourself. That's what this course is about.
So, let's help Brandon. Given that he wants to produce good video for School of Professional Studies and get that out there to the right people, what kind of communications do you think he would need? Not tactical stuff, but sort of what kind of communications goal is reasonable and achievable? More views? Better feedback? You know, audience development?
Go ahead.
Carol:
Could you do maybe a link in the video or under the video and then just monitor the number of clicks through to link to find out more information?
Robert:
Sure. So, that's a metric. So, what's the corresponding goal is to prove that you're creating engagement. So that's what we would– Carol's point is– So that's the tactical way of demonstrating engagement. So, your communications goal, Brandon, could be “demonstrate engagement as a way of defining audience.” How would we understand the audience perception or sentiment of your materials? Do they rank those when they do course evaluations, or–?
Brandon:
Mostly. I mean, it's hard to get into that level of detail just because it's like–
Robert:
No, no. It’s okay. This is a conceptual discussion.
Brandon:
[Laughs]. I think mostly in those instances since our client is the instructor, that's if it's meeting their learning goals.
Robert:
Fair enough. Fair enough. So, you want the instructors to be satisfied that the materials being produced are of the highest quality. So, that would be, like, a communications goal. Okay?
So, I'm going to go back to share for just a second.
[Screen share begins]
[Fifth slide: Review: Institutional Goals]
So, institutional goals. A quick review: They're usually about growth or increase. They could be about stability. They often deal with quantifiable attributes such as the number of students, faculty, funding, you know. So, we've just discussed about institutional goals from a few class members. So, let's talk about how communications goals are different from institutional goals.
[Sixth slide: Communications Goals]
So, here are a set of bullets, and I'll go through them, and we'll talk about them a little bit. Communications goals– And just for the purpose of, you know, trying to avoid acronyms, I’m just going to go with comms goals. Comms goals deal with information, news, persuasion, or conversion. They set a target that correlate to an institutional goal. So, it doesn't have to be one-to-one, but it has to be linked to something that you're trying to achieve. Communications goals are tied to your metrics. So, we gather and use data to judge the impact or success of a communications product. And here's a tip: Don't suggest a goal you can't quantify or that you can't measure. Conversely, we don't allow the data to limit our goals.
So, I'm going to start with that last one and work backwards. So, there is sort of a cheat here where people get themselves boxed in, and this is something I want you to avoid. So if you say, “My goal is to increase page views to a website.” So, you can do a variety of things to increase page views. But if page views alone don't help you understand that your audience reputation is improving, then that's not helpful. It's not a true reflection, and it doesn't contribute to your institutional goals. You may get people that are coming onto your page for a millisecond and then bailing because it's not useful. You've got a lot of page views, but they're coming away from it thinking, “Wow, that was useless.”
So if—take Kristina's example before—if she was able to drive a really ton of traffic to the Dining website but then people felt like, “Oh this is a waste of my time.” Like, “I get there; there's nothing I need.” And they're only there for like three seconds, and then they're out. Does that really help her? Does it demonstrate that Dining is doing its job? The answer is no. I mean, she can increase page views, and that can be done, you know, by a factor of 10 or more through a couple of, like, SEO techniques and some other things, but that doesn't reflect the audience sentiment once they get there. Okay?
So, you don't want to set up a kind of self-fulfilling goal that's based on a rudimentary metric. So the goals are more important. And you need to match up the metrics to the goals in a smarter way.
Chris Molinari:
Robert, can I ask a question about that?
Robert:
Sure.
Chris:
I think that your point there is very interesting. How exactly—it may be diving down a little bit too deep, and I know you're going kind of an overview—but if one of our goals is to increase page use, then the second step obviously is to measure if it actually does reflect audience sentiment. How do you go about measuring that type of thing?
Robert:
We'll talk more about that during the metrics class, but–
Chris:
Okay.
Robert:
One way is to do surveys and polls, look for click-throughs for links from one page to another page can often show. Also the, you know, how much time someone's spending on a page can often reflect. If they're on a page for more than 30 seconds, that means they're reading the page. Most people, when they go to a page that is useless, they bail in, like, two or three seconds. It doesn't take you very long.
Just think about your own Google searches. When you're searching for something and you put in some search terms and you get a list of results, and you look at that and go, “No this is not what I meant.” And then you have to change your search terms. Okay, same kind of thing applies. People are searching for something, they're arriving at a web page, or they're you know coming to the Global Centers page and they're not finding what they need and they bail within three seconds. You're getting a page view, but you're not getting engagement. Right? So that's what you're trying to do is develop engagement.
I don't want to spend a whole lot more time on this because we're coming up on the time to do breakout. But the basic concepts are here. Your communications goals aren't about, you know, fulfilling enrollment. They're not about, you know, showing big attendance to events or that kind of thing. That's not a communications goal. That is the proof of what you're doing; that's not a goal in itself. So resist going for a goal that's more tactically oriented.
[Fifth slide: Review: Institutional Goals]
[In a quiet voice] Okay. Looks like we're going backwards here [referring to the PowerPoint].
[Seventh slide: Communications Goals: Samples]
So here's a couple of examples of communications goals, and then we're going to do breakout. Here's a couple of simple, general goals that you can copy and apply to your own world. They're from different areas. So, increase subscriber growth to a newsletter. Stabilize applications. Strengthen the reputation. Communicate the opportunities.
But also look at the back end of those things, like stabilize applications of grad students in the next admissions cycle. So, a goal has a target, and it has some parameters to it like a date or a way that you're going to sort of circle back and know whether you've achieved it or not. Strengthen the reputation in target audiences. We'll figure that part out later, like exactly how you're going to measure it and demonstrate that, but that's what you're shooting for. Communicate opportunities for the purpose of persuading donors to fund initiatives. And that would be—maybe if that's over the course of a year or two—pretty clear at the end of two years. You've been doing all this communicating. Do we get more money? Do we not get more money?
Note that these statements emphasize verbs—increase, stabilize, strengthen, communicate.
[Eighth slide: Communication Goals: Discussion Questions]
So, couple of discussion questions: Are there different goals for different audiences? Obviously. What goals are reasonable and achievable? And this is from a communications perspective. We're not talking about the institutional goals; these are communications goals. If you're saying you're going to increase your web traffic by 1,000 in the course of four months, you would better be doing something pretty amazing to achieve that. So you don't want to put a marker or a milestone so far out there that it's impossible for you to achieve. But also you don't want to box yourself in.
The light in my office is going off on its own, so I'm not spastic.
What communications can persuade your target audiences to help you? And this is a measure of engagement. Like, you want people to participate. That's what we're talking about with engagement. How can they participate? What are the different forms of participation? Coming to events, signing up for newsletters. You want your target audience to help the institutional goals of your unit, and you're going to communicate with them on that basis.
So again, what would be the best outcome for your work over the next four to six months? Think about your annual review. When you're filling in your annual review document and you want to show what results you've achieved, and you know, “I set out to do x, and then here's the result.” So that's what we're talking about when we're talking about outcomes.
And here's a final question. Is creating a website or newsletter really a communications goal? Why? Why not?
I’m going to stop share for just a second and then we'll do breakout.
[Screen share stops]
So on that last question, this is the kind of thing that happens all the time. Is creating a website or a newsletter a communications goal in and of itself? Kristina's shaking her head, “No.” So many people are shaking their head, “No.” But how many people have had their boss walk in and say, “I have a great idea. We're going to save our institution. We're going to create a newsletter.” Or “Our goal for the next six months is launch a website.”
Okay, is that strategic? Could be if you don't have a website; or if you have a really crappy website, upgrading it can be a strategic move to help your communications. But that's not a communications goal. Communications goal is more targeted to and concerns your audience, your purpose, and the outcomes. Everything else is just tactical.
So, we're going to try to make a distinction between strategy and tactics in the coming weeks. This throws a lot of people, but it's not that difficult. Tactics are things that you do, things that you produce, things that you write, things that you create, tangible things that get produced either in the physical world or in the online world. But a tactic is something that you make. So if you think of in terms of making, then if you have to go make something, that's tactical.
Strategy is an idea. Okay, there's a big difference between, like, slapping together a logo and then putting that logo on all your materials. That's not a strategy. Branding is a strategy. Branding is a more abstract concept. And so we'll come back and circle around this again, and we'll be talking about it more as the class goes on.
So now I'm gonna go back to share for just a minute and then we're gonna do breakout.
[Screen share begins]
[Eighth slide: Communication Goals: Discussion Questions]
[Ninth slide: Communication Goals: Breakout session]
So, Cassandra, lead us through the next part.
Cassandra:
Yes. So, to support you guys, we have a situation of the day. This is going to be customary for every—possibly every—session. We kind of go with the flow based on the needs of the group. But I want you guys to keep in mind that the situation of the day that we're utilizing, it may or may not apply to your work environment. If it does apply to your work environment, I would highly recommend that you pull and you glean from that. If not, feel free to think outside the box. These situations are just designed for you guys to 1) connect, network, and get the wheels in your mind working so that when you're alone again and you're working on your communications goals for your department, you're already kind of in the rhythm of it. Okay?
So, today's situation of the day is, “Your supervisor thinks your office needs a new and improved newsletter.” And, like, that's it. Just like go. Go for it.
So in this case, what I want you guys to do is a couple things. First, when you go into your breakout session, please assign someone who will be the note taker. Right? And feel free to kind of get things going. Sometimes what happens is people get to talking but they forget to write everything down, and then they're kind of stunned when we come back. We're going to come back as a group and you guys are going to share, so make sure at least one person is taking notes. The notes that you're going to take is you're going to define the institutional goal, and you're going to devise at least one communication goal about the newsletter. Okay? Again, define the institutional goal. Second, devise at least one communication goal about the newsletter.
Finally, we want you to remember, it's all about the audience, the purpose, and the outcomes.
[Screen share stops]
Okay. We pre-program the breakout sessions, and I'm going to launch that now. And we'll go at least 15 minutes. I'll give you a prompt. Takes about a minute for the breakout sessions to close down. There may be a few stragglers that get left behind, and we'll put you in your breakout sessions manually. That may take a minute or two, so bear with us on that. Zoom is a little bit quirky on this area.
So, what we've done is assign you to a breakout room based upon your teams, so you should be corresponding to your teams—apricot, kiwi, blueberry, and so on. And those are the people who you have a responsibility to. So, that responsibility is once the Google folders are populated, and many of them are already, for next class you will go into those folders and make at least one or more substantive comments on the draft plans that your teammates have written. Okay?
So, we're gonna launch breakout sessions, and we'll come back after at least 15 minutes.
[Time jump in the video]
Cassandra:
How was it?
Robert:
Good. How was yours?
Cassandra:
Pretty good. So real quick question before they come back: So for, like, Facilities, is that considered their institution? And then is that–
Robert:
For the purpose of their plan, an institutional goal is what their department or unit is trying to achieve.
Cassandra:
Okay.
Robert:
So we're not talking about, like, I work on internal communications for the entire university, so I'm aware of the sort of, you know, 10,000 foot goals, and that's what I work on. But in a department it's, you know, 5,000 feet. It needs to not conflict with the 10,000 foot goals, but, like, the goals of Facilities are going to be different than the goals of some, you know, the Earth Institute.
Cassandra:
Okay, great.
Robert:
Okay.
Cassandra:
How are you guys feeling? Anyone nervous?
Robert:
Okay. Let's real quickly go from group to group and get a quick summary of what you came up with or what your sticking point was. So apricot, breakout group one, go ahead.
Chris:
Okay. So we based our observations on the university institutional goals for the Columbia Global Centers. Both Seden and I work for the Global Centers. And the Global Centers, according to the mission statement, “promote and facilitate the collaborative and impactful engagement of the university's faculty, students, and alumni of the world to enhance understanding, address global challenges, and advance knowledge and exchange.” So within that, the institutional goal that we defined would be to engage different audiences beyond the faculty, students, and staff to make it more of a global issue with more people outside of the Columbia community.
Robert:
[Indiscernible]
Chris:
Our communications goal– Sorry?
Robert:
Good. Go ahead.
Chris:
Our communications goal is to increase the number of subscribers. The way we're going to measure that is when subscribing, we'll have a poll to ask whether the subscriber is currently a member of the community or other. The audience would be the decision makers outside of the Columbia community. And our purpose is to increase the amount of subscribers 15% in one year with the outcome of having a survey after each of our engagements, and then the best scenario to increase positive feedback in addition to the subscribers.
Robert:
Wow.
Cassandra:
Right. [Laughter]
Robert:
Okay. Let's go to the next group—breakout group two, kiwi.
Katie McCluskey:
Sure. So we chose to focus on Columbia Dining as one of our group members—that's who she's representing. So, you know, we looked first at the institutional goal: “Columbia seeks to attract a diverse group of students and faculty.” And so the departmental goal is to fuel that group. So that's part of what we do is supporting the functions of the university by being a quality food provider and helping to sort of support the function of the university by being a part of the draw for the rest of those who belong to the community.
And so one of our communications goals related to the newsletter was to inform the subscribers of special offerings and events. And one of the ways that we plan to track this was click-throughs to specific sections. And even on when we do certain menus, to look at the swipes for those dining halls when those menus were in place to see if they were greater because we've been advertising them in our newsletter. If we wanted to feature one of our specific retail outlets, it would be to track if sales increased at that retail outlet following the advertisement in our newsletter.
Robert:
Oh, excellent.
Cassandra:
Very nice.
Robert:
Let's go to apple group, breakout session three.
Apple group?
Michele:
I don’t know what group I was in.
Robert:
Hang on.
Unidentified attendee #1:
We were blueberry, y’all.
Robert:
Apple group is Traci Rosenthal, Lindsey Schram, Nadine, and Kristina Hernandez.
Cassandra:
I think that was the group that I ended up mixing up because Nadine left, so they had one person in there.
Robert:
Oh okay, okay. So Kristina, were you in the last group? Okay, okay.
So then let's go to lemon, breakout group four.
Jamie:
Okay. So we talked about University Life because Ramona works with University Life, and she actually was saying that they are doing this exact test. They're revamping the newsletter and making it not only more well-designed but also easier to get metrics from.
So, the institutional goal we talked about was to help students feel more connected to each other as a community and then also as a university as a whole. And so one of the communications goals was to increase readership of the newsletter as compared to the old newsletter by theoretically making it more eye-catching and nice to look at. People will read it. We can measure that through open rates. Now with the new platform, they'll be able to measure it relative to, like, when they first start with this new platform. Ongoing, they'll have to look at some standard goals based on, like, other peer institutions and see if they improve. But then overall this first goal would lead to theoretically more people showing up at their events that are advertised in the newsletter, and so that's another metric they can look at as compared to before event attendance and new event attendance.
Robert:
Great. Great.
Jamie:
Ramona, if I missed anything, feel free to add.
Ramona King:
That was great. Thank you.
Robert:
Plum group, break out session five.
Carol:
Yep. So Angela and I both work for the United States Science Support Program which supports—mainly supports—scientists in the International Ocean Discovery Scientific Drilling Program. But we are currently discussing a newsletter anyway, adding in a new newsletter that is targeted towards educators because we produce a lot of educational science communication material.
So the institutional goal that we have been set is to grow the education audience and improve the traffic to all the existing resources that we currently have for educators or, you know, interested members of the public who want to do activities with their kids or learn how to knit a microfossil or something. The communications goal we've got—two main communications goal—one is to sort of reinforce and stabilize the relationship with people who already know about us and use our material. But we also want to seek new users, especially within the K-12 educational environment by highlighting existing materials with click-through links. So from the newsletter you have click-through links, and we would then use before and after analytics that sit behind the website to monitor the success and impact. And we would like to see increased engagement within the next 6 to 12 months.
Robert:
Great. So final group is blueberry group, breakout room six.
Robert Tulman:
Sure. Michele, just stop me if I'm missing anything. But we chose to go with an example from one of our teammates in the Engineering School. A big topic of discussion was for the newsletter in general—the format. And we all agreed moving away from print, moving towards digital as a way to measure. Better measure, better customize the content, and have it better suit what Michele's needs were, which were a goal being cultivating more industry partnerships.
These partnerships would drive research partnerships. I think the example used was partnership with Amazon for some of their warehouses and to better facilitate partnerships that fund work in that space. The audience was another sort of topic of discussion for us. Until those industry partnerships are built—you know, corporations and figures within that space would be the ideal audience, but until that audience is built—it may have to be in a section of a general newsletter. Sorry, or a digital newsletter.
Robert:
Okay.
Robert T.:
Yes. And the purpose mentioned would be to increase industry partnerships. And the outcome would be, you know, hopefully to increase it by one or two each year but more so also to add more, I guess, figureheads and more co-sponsors that would give, you know, sort of credence to the program.
Robert:
Right. Right. That's very excellent. You guys did great work in this breakout. It was very focused, and it gives you a sort of a real world scenario that can help these plans be more based in reality so that they're not so amorphous and they're not so abstract as– You know, you're talking about the things that you actually do week to week, day to day, month to month, and that's what these plans that you're writing are going to help support.
And even if the plan is only for yourself and it never sees the light of day and you never present it in public, it can help guide your work. It can help give your work purpose. And it also give you a framework to judge where you are, where you're going, and did you meet your objectives or not. Those are all things that are to the benefit of both you and your organization.
And being able to walk in at any moment to your boss's office and say—when your boss says, “Well, how's that new newsletter going?” You can say, “Well, our goal is to increase traffic by x percent over whatever years, and we've been collecting that data for the last six months and here's what we're doing.”
Or, you know, “Our goal was to have our newsletter look better than it did before and people to like it more and spend more time on it. Here's the old newsletter and here's the new newsletter, and we can show from our Google Analytics that people are spending– In our old newsletter, they used to spend, you know, less than five minutes, and now people spend 15 or 20 minutes looking at the newsletter. Plus, they click through from article to article.”
That's what you want to be able to say because you're making your work more tangible, based in reality with facts and data to back up any assertions about the quality and the quantity of your work.
We're coming up on three o'clock. Is there a last question anyone wants to ask?
So, last screen share. Go back to the PowerPoint.
[Screen share begins]
[Tenth slide: Communication Goals: Breakout review]
Your homework—so, you're going to go into the Google folder to your assigned team. You're going to make substantive comments about the situation analysis just on the ones by your teammates. So your teams are no more than four people, so you're going to read three other documents, and you're going to make one substantive comment. Not just the word, “Great,” but something more, “Understand this. Really helpful to me. Understand your unit better.” Or you ask a question: “Hey, don't understand this. Could you expand it?” Or “I'd love to steal this. Tell me more about it.” That's a substantive comment.
Then also you're going to—in the next week—write a one-page communications goal draft, and you're going to load that up to the Google folder or the LabArchive folder by end of day next Thursday. So don't get too hung up on the communications goal bit. It can just be three big bullets or two big bullets. It doesn't have to be a page long. And it doesn't need to be, you know, several pages-long discourse of narrative. You know, keep it simple, but make it be on point.
[Ninth slide: Communication Goals: Breakout session]
[Screen share stops]
So final thought? Anyone? Okay. Thanks so much for a great session today. We will look forward to seeing you next week. If you have questions or comments, please do email me or Cassandra. If it would help to meet with Cassandra during her office hours, shoot her an email and she'd be happy to sit down and talk with you individually or with a team.
Cassandra:
Yes.
Robert:
Great. All right, thanks so much, everyone.
Angela Slagle:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #2:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #3:
Bye.
Unidentified attendee #4:
Thank you.