Conducting a Comprehensive Communications Audit
By Barbie E. Keiser and Pamela H. Stein
Organizations recognize the benefit of keeping their customers, clients, investors, partners, and/or members aware of happenings both within their organization and in the field, profession, industry sector, or subject area of interest. The techniques they choose are varied, ranging from the “tried and true,’’ such as direct mailings, to both “push” (e.g., e-mailings) and “pull” (e.g., Website postings) variants of high tech tools. Technology has enabled organizations to customize the communications vehicles, permitting targeted content while respecting personal preferences concerning format and frequency of notification. As users become more comfortable with technology, the ways in which they get information from organizations (and how they expect to receive and retrieve information) change, so the vehicles utilized must be modified accordingly.
Today, many organizations find that they make use of too many vehicles to communicate with their varied customerbases, partners, memberships, and other constituencies, and that these vehicles consume much time and effort to maintain and update with any meaningful frequency or regularity. Often, it is not clear which vehicle is most effective, whether there is a differentiation among types of users as to which is consulted most regularly (if at all), or even what information is needed most from your group. (For the purposes of this document, we will refer to members as the group that needs to be contacted for their opinions, but if not apropos for your organization, please think of your clients, partners, affiliates, investors, patrons, staff, board of directors, or other groups that receive your communications vehicles.)
A comprehensive Communications Audit—an in-depth analysis of all communications vehicles—allows an organization to determine how it can best provide the information needed by its members. The findings of a comprehensive Communications Audit enable an organization to eliminate superfluous vehicles—streamlining communication with members without compromising efficiency and reach—redesigning the communication vehicles around the needs of the membership for which it exists to support and encourage.
This article will take readers through a set of integrated activities that will allow an organization to accomplish the objectives of a Communications Audit, including conducting (1) a comprehensive survey of members designed to assess how they use the organization’s communications vehicles, both in terms of content present and needed information that is absent; (2) focus group discussions with membersthat delve more deeply into existing challenges and point toward potential solutions; (3) interviews with selected members via telephone, verifying findings through actual observation on-site (because what people say they do and how they use the organization’s Website may not be entirely accurate); and (4) objective reviews of marketing and promotional efforts, including any newsletters/e-newsletters and Websites, through observation and analysis of extant data (e.g., Website statistics and metatags).
Determining the Need
Communications vehicles employed by organizations today range from the traditional (e.g., telephone conversations and in-person meetings; direct mailings; print newsletters) to newer initiatives, such as Communities of Practice (CoPs), with a wealth of options in-between: Websites and portals, enewsletters, bulletin boards, listserves, email discussion groups, and other online fora; webcasts; instant messaging; and blogging (text and video). Newer tools are being developed every day. All of these techniques require considerable effort on the part of the producers (in order to reach its targeted user market) and have an impact on the way users interact with the organization and others. While efforts to measure“user satisfaction” may be undertaken, and ad-hoc improvements to existing communications vehicles occur (such as adding graphics to an e-newsletter or revamping a Website), a comprehensive Communications Audit will help you:
n Present the information you wish to convey to targeted audiences, assuring that it is useful, and reinforced through a variety of means
n Avoid overloading your members with too much information for them to absorb and use
n Present information to members in the way that they seek it or expect to find it
n Minimize the workload of your staff as they increase the types of communications vehicles employed, frequency in which they are delivered, and the customization of messages to target user groups with related information needs and concerns.
To accomplish these goals requires that you understand what your users seek from your organization, where they go to find information when it’s not from you (the type of information and the organizations that succeed in getting the information to your members, i.e., your competition), what drives your members to other groups before your own, and how you might better serve them, encouraging interactivity through the sharing and exchange of knowledge, stories, ideas, and best practices.
Six Steps for Conducting a Comprehensive Communications Audit
A comprehensive Communications Audit consists of six major activities: Orientation, Survey, Focus groups, Website usability testing, Audit and benchmarking, and Synthesis of data for final reporting. Each activity is designed to augment the others in order to produce recommendations that are congruously revealed by two or more activities. The following paragraphs describe the importance of each activity to the Audit.
Orientation. Perhaps the most important element of a Communications Audit is the way that it is introduced into and shepherded through the organization. Explaining the importance of staff and member participation at the outset, and continuous communication about progress being made, is essential to retaining cooperation with the various aspects of the Audit that require participation of staff and users as well as patience as you implement the various recommendations that are a result of the Audit.