Why Superficial Statistics Are Important But Not Enough

A word on volumetrics

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  • Email / newsletter open rates
  • Email / newsletter click-throughs
  • Average video watch times
  • Intranet stories published
  • Podcasts recorded
  • Video views
  • Sign-ups as a result of XYZ communication
  • Employee generated submissions
  • Content published to digital signage
  • Different readers (employees) that engage with a piece of content
  • Retweets
  • Likes and ratings
  • Comments
  • Shares and reposts
  • To make the business case for internal comms, you must include both volumetrics and behavior metrics. (Related article)

Two Simple Examples

  • It may very well be human error (you forgot to add an audience to the distribution list) or a technical error (the third-party software went down overnight).
  • If you weren’t paying attention to the volumetrics, you wouldn’t have been able to jump in and fix the problem.
  • Could it be that you had a catchy subject line? Or that you sent it at noon on Wednesday instead of Friday at 4 p.m.?
  • If you weren’t paying attention to the volumetrics, you wouldn’t spot an opportunity to repeat success.
  • But again, an 80% open rate on your email does not equal improved retention rates, or any other business outcome metric.
  • The number of people contributing to the platform
  • The number of channels each piece is published to
  • Routine activity handed off to people outside your team
  • Which specific audiences you are reaching
  • The ratio of men to women featured in your content
  • The number of times different departments are covered/mentioned
  • The number of times different offices/locations are featured

Accounting for Your Work

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  • Automation could be one way to boost your output (Related article)
  • Templates for content contributors could decrease the time to publication
  • At this point your team needs to have a reckoning to determine which other areas your team could be working to help improve employee engagement.
  • Or you need to consider whether new tools and resources need to be incorporated to boost output.

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Many internal comms teams don’t have an editorial strategy. I’m here to fix that. Newsletter: https://mistereditorial.substack.com/.

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Mister Editorial

Many internal comms teams don’t have an editorial strategy. I’m here to fix that. Newsletter: https://mistereditorial.substack.com/.