There has been a rapid growth in available communications channels in the last couple years. This channel explosion places an unprecedented pressure on the communications function to design a strong channel strategy to use these efficiently and effectively. All of these new channels present an opportunity for communicators to reach out to large audiences and spread information and messages with rapid speed. But it also takes lots of more of communicator’s time to navigate these channels and measure and evaluate how effective they are in their usage.
While many communications teams have a dedicated channel and/or social media person on the team, every communications professional (regardless of your specialization) needs to have a good grasp of channel management. As part of my new project focused on designing a channel audit diagnostic, I have spoke to several of our members to figure out what types of channel related metrics (data) would help communicators use channels in more efficient and effective way. Here are some of the challenges faced by our members that we are hoping to help them solve with the new channel audit diagnostic:
1. Tracking Usage
Most communicators I spoke to have a good idea about the overall channels usage in their company. They can tell what percentage of their mailing list typically opens their newsletter; how many people listen on to their webinars; or how many people showed up for their CEO/Employee roundtable. However, while lots of communicators know their absolute numbers, they can rarely benchmark themselves to other comms functions in other companies to see how well they are really doing in these metrics.
2. Measuring Comms Effectiveness
While usage numbers are important, high usage is not the same as high impact and effectiveness. At the end of the day, what really matters not how many people read your blog, but how many of them actually went and took action or modified their behavior because something you said really resonated with them. Many of the communicators I spoke to express a desire to be able to determine better which channels are more/less effective in helping them drive real behavioral change-related outcomes among different groups of stakeholders.
3. Impact of Channels on Employees’ Productivity
A big part of modern communicator’s job is not just to use channels effectively, but also to ensure an organization-wide efficiency in channel usage across the company. Not all channels are created equal when it comes to boosting employees’ productivity, and some can even be detrimental to it (30 Facebook updates a day, 20 corporate-wide emails in over-worked employee’s inbox). Consequently, communicators need to worry not only about their own channel effectiveness, but also focus on guiding the employees and other functions on how to use channels to their advantage in productive manner.
I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the new challenges you face due to the channel explosion, and what measures/metrics you have in place to track one (or all three) of the above. As well as how are you making all these new channels work for you!
And make sure to check out some of our great channel-related resources:



It’s baseball season in Chicago and hope springs eternal on the North Side. But as the Cubs chase the impossible dream of a World Series, communicators confront their own impossible dream – how do we measure the un-measureable: the value we create from all the stories that didn’t get written about us this year.




