Visualize value ace

Editor's Notes

• #3: As communicators, we tell great stories. And most of the stories revolve around faculty, Extension specialists and educators who do great work that has impact. Our administrators also need to hear great stories about us. Quality communications have never been more important and those in leadership positions in our colleges need to understand communications strategy and return on investment. Sometimes the best way to do that is to tell them a story.
• #4: Most administrators see themselves as good communicators – they wouldn’t be where they are if they weren’t they believe. And actually many are. However, identifying and using communications strategy is not necessarily a strongpoint for many and that is where we as communications professionals must sell them on both the need and the value of a strategy when it comes to communications resources. We all have fewer resources available to us than we would want. So making the most of them is key and that involves strategy. How many times has someone come to you and said “Wouldn’t it be neat if we had a (insert costly communication video, ad or billboard, etc.)? My administrators were recently forwarded a full-page ad from the NY Times that was purchased by another ag college. They thought it impressive. I pointed out that it was costly, seemed to be a one-off effort, relied on those to be influenced reading the NY Times on that given day, and did not seem to have an overall point. To me it was classic hype over substance. The NY Times is impressive, but if your target audience doesn’t see it, then you’ve wasted your money.
• #5: Most administrators want to keep down the number of complainers, so when a faculty member asks for a news release or a department head sees the need for a website, deans and assoc. deans are often quick to spend the communications staff’s time and energy. Even if this doesn’t happen to you, your college leadership needs to understand that not every communications opportunity is good – some are a lot better. And every communications effort has a cost – even if you do not charge a rate for your services, time spent on one effort is time taken from others. So one question I have of the audience is, do you have a good way of helping administrators understand the opportunity costs of communications?
• #6: No dean wants to tell a faculty member that their program is not important – so it turns out everything is important. So, how do you combat the “everything is important” mindset? With data. Now, from someone who has fought with faculty and administrators over data, it can be daunting as they are researchers and very aware of good data vs. bad data. Data alone can not be your strategy – telling them the significance of your data. For example, a few years ago I started pointing out to administrators how science/research news releases had the greatest success for our college. That was not popular with our Extension director, but as time has continued to verify the value of science news, he still wants stories about Extension, but It also turns out that the best way to tell an Extension story is to tie it to research.
• #7: If you want to be seen as a strategic communicator, be a strategic communicator. On my staff I created a position a couple years ago to help us with telling our value with data. One of the things that she hounds me about is the need to set goals. I don’t know about you, but strategy is something I’m comfortable with but setting goals makes me feel more vulnerable. Mostly I default to “What di we do last year and can we do better?’ What are realistic goals? Set too low, do you raise expectations for next time. Set too high and you don’t meet them – does that mean the strategy was bad? I admit my weakness here – so I’m putting this out to the audience, “Do you regularly set goals for your communications and how do you set them?
• #8: While using data is important, it can’t just be a data dump. We have had a dashboard for a few years that charts department activity. I noticed that administrators didn’t seem to check it, in fact no one on my staff even seemed to care about it. As I stated earlier, faculty are people who generate data regularly. Administrators are also busy – they do not want to wade through a lot of numbers and clip reports to find the significance you want to share. However most people have time for a good story. Tell them a story using the numbers. Don’t just assemble a clip report, tell them how you got the story in the media. Don’t just share the number of tweets from the past month, tell them how your tweets were shared/used and liked. Don’t just tell them web hits, but tell them what your most popular websites are and who is going there.
• #9: Joan Crow is the multimedia coordinator at Purdue. She uses many of these tools to help us tell our stories….
• #10: Both I and Suzanne brought along some examples to share with your all on how we tell the stories or our value…..
• #11: - The April Foolishness campaign was not as successful as others. I think this is because we were trying to supply information that people can get from other sources. The rare burger video was an exception. This video is in alignment with what our audience expects from us it's statistics prove this to be true.Suzanne Steel from Ohio State is going to share some of her approach to sharing data stories a little bit later, but this is one that I found quite compelling and not something that I had done before. Suzanne, will you share the story of your Foolishness campaign?