RIJ Communications Audit
with Lisa Brown, Director of Digital Ministry, Membership Vision in Ventura, CA and Steve Haal, Director of Communications, Saint Michael and All Angels in Dallas, TX.
IN GENERAL, before one can communicate, one must...
- know who they are
- know their messages
- be passionate
- be able to articulate why someone should care about their message
WHY AN AUDIT?
The purpose of the audit is to strategize and build a plan that details out the big facts of who you are, who your demographic(s) are, what your message(s), and identify the tools needed for the job. It should provide answers to the timeless questions: who, what, when, where, and how.
Going a little deeper...
WHAT DOES AN AUDIT COVER? The Communications audit is the information and data-gathering stage of a larger process, the communications STRATEGY & PLAN. At a macro level that plan should involve the following steps:
1. THE COMMUNICATIONS AUDIT (a.k.a. Due Diligence or Discovery)
This is the audit--the research stage. No real action or decision happens during this period. This is data-gathering. This is the time to answer important discovery questions like:
- MESSAGING
- What does your church do well?
- What are we saying? (messaging)
- Why should others care about what is being said?
- What resonates with you? Are they the same things that move the audience?
- What excites them?
- CULTURE (Describe US)
- As Christians & Episcopalians
- How would you describe the prevailing culture?
- Does culture inform your communication efforts and style?
- What is your parish/diocese core values? How do they impact communications?
- Who are we spiritually?
- Who are we philanthropically? (Engagement of time and/or money)
- PLATFORMS & PUBLICATIONS
What forms of communication exist?
Are all those form types effective? Are they each getting traction, resonating with your demographics?- People as a communications channel (word of mouth/social sharing)
- Digital
- Support
- Mediums
- AUDIENCE (Demographics)
- Demographic study of the audience
- Internal
- Regulars
- Occasionals
- Frequents
- Newcomers
- External
- Surrounding community/Diocese
- Needs, Wants and Concerns
- Preferred Communication Channels/Mediums
Do they prefer Internet? Newspaper? Radio?
-
PROCESSES, TOOLS & ANALYTICS
What was done before? Did it work?
What tools are needed to support the communication effort?- What best practices are there surrounding the channels pursued?
- Have I met with all of the people I should?
- Editorial Calendars
- Social Media (FB, FB events, Instagram, Twitter)
- Email Marketing
- Analytics (Google etc.)
- As efforts are measured, when do you adjust?
- Note: Analytics simply measure the engagement--they are not the engagement.
- SWOT as a tool
- Starter toolkit is in the sidebar
2. FOLLOW THE DATA (OF THE AUDIT)
Begin to pull your communication plan together based on your findings in step 1
3. STAKEHOLDER VERIFICATION
Assemble your stakeholders/committee members and vet your plan, for completeness and accuracy.
4. DEPLOY & ENGAGE
This is the beginning of real action--thoughtful, methodical action based on meaningful data.
5. RESULTS TRACKING
Get constant feedback from everyone--the more data you receive back the more objective is should be. For online efforts check google and social analytics to see what the real story is with how people are engaging you and the subsequent traction level
6. ITERATE
Don't change willy-nilly. But if analytics and personal feedback suggest something isn't working then iterate and re-measure.
SWOT ANALYSIS
A SWOT analysis is just one tool, a templated exercise designed to coach you through important perspectives and questions to help exhaustively answer many questions like the ones above.
It's important to note that this is not usually a siloed exercise, but one that connects you with colleagues, leaders, parishioners, vestry and others. It is the gathering of data from different perspectives that offers the greatest insight in to the informed audit.
These are at first blush very general questions, but you consider applying them to topics like all the individual forms of communications, design quality, writing style, is the work compelling and engaging, do all the forms resonate with the demographics--suddenly it will become clear that this is a formidable exercise covering many facets and perspectives.
- Strength: What works?
- Weakness: What needs to change?
- Opportunities: Opportunities you can leverage to improve communications with target demographics
- Threat: what threatens your communications effectiveness?