Communications

TweetYou might have heard about the Detroit Symphony Orchestra labor dispute. It’s not going particularly well. In fact, it’s getting downright ugly. Violinist Sarah Chang—originally scheduled to appear with the orchestra before it went on strike—backed out of a replacement recital after allegedly receiving threatening messages for crossing the picket line. This post is...
Read more »

TweetOne of the key elements of social media is “the community.” Without a community, there wouldn’t be a social in social media. But what exactly is this community? In my post on a fictional online community manager position on the Orchestra Revolution blog, Jean Shirk, public relations manager at the San Francisco Symphony, posed...
Read more »

TweetI just returned from San Francisco, where I presented in a seminar on social media at the annual conference of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras. I was invited by seminar moderator Oliver Theil, public relations director at the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. My co-presenter was–and I still get goose bumps saying this–the venerable...
Read more »

TweetI’ve been an avid fan of Beth Kanter’s blog for the past few years. It might come as no surprise that I pre-ordered her, and co-author Allison Fine’s, book The Networked Nonprofit. And if you’re a reader of their blogs, it might also come as no surprise that the book fully lived up to...
Read more »

TweetLast Wednesday, I had my whirlwind trip to Los Angeles to speak at the Opera America 2010 Conference. I arrived in L.A. Tuesday night—and was amazed at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra mural during my cab ride to downtown—but I had to leave again shortly after noon on Wednesday. That meant unfortunately missing two...
Read more »

TweetJust a couple of days ago, I marked my seven-year anniversary of living in the United States. That is more than a quarter of my life. Nearly five of those seven years, I have been blogging (I launched the first version of Dutch Perspective in September 2005). The first three years weren’t focused. I...
Read more »

TweetIn the last nine steps, I have walked through Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide by the Communications Network. It started with figuring out what to evaluate and establishing an overarching goal. The central question was: how are your communications efforts creating a change; more specifically, a change in behavior. The central...
Read more »

TweetThis is not an estimation of you complete communications plan budget. That said, you should budget for evaluation within your communications plan. The authors advise that a good rule of thumb is that “the evaluation budget should be at least five to seven percent of the total budget of your communication program.” You should...
Read more »

TweetThe authors list several evaluation tools, including interviews, focus groups, surveys, observation, quantitative data collection and analysis, and content analysis. Interviews, focus groups are pretty straightforward qualitative techniques. Surveys can be used to track qualitative, and in a lesser degree quantitative, changes over time. Observation can perhaps best be translated into the listening skill...
Read more »

TweetYou should now be clear on what your communications efforts are expected to achieve. You know your goal, objectives, audience, baseline and evaluation questions; the next step is to develop specific metrics to answer your evaluation questions. The authors introduce milestones at this point of the evaluation. If objectives are intermediate markers toward your...
Read more »