The League of American Orchestras’ annual conference is just around the corner and this year, to my very pleasant surprise, they have set up a blog platform for (pre) conference discussion called “Orchestra R/Evolution.” I’m even more pleasantly surprised to see they have opened up posting to a broad host of people and inviting...
Read more »
In 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 »
You 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 »
The first question before posing your evaluation questions is: what stage is your communications effort in? The authors make a distinction between early, mid and advanced stages. Early Stage The early stage means the development or early implementation of a communications plan, where there is a degree of trial and error. The evaluation at...
Read more »
In order to evaluate your results, you have to know your starting point. You will have to compare your baseline data with the new data you are going to gather as you progress toward your goal. You need exactly the kind of baseline data that will be able to show you whether your communications...
Read more »
Organizations often take the easy way out and measure what’s easy to count, such as visitor numbers for their Web sites. But those numbers won’t tell you what those visitors did with the information or content they found. According to the authors of the guide, “you’re ultimately trying to move an audience; therefore, getting...
Read more »
The communications environment is in constant flux, which means that many things might change on the way to your goal. A typical communications plan looks ahead 12-18 months, which is a much shorter time frame than the five or ten year goal. However, a five or ten year goal informs your communications plan. The...
Read more »
This week, Drew McManus’ Take A Friend To the Orchestra 2010 kicked off on his Web site Adaptistration. I was invited to write a guest contribution this year and was immediately inspired by a book I was reading: Joseph Jaffe’s Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones. So, head...
Read more »
The March/April issue of Symphony Magazine takes a look at social media and how orchestras around the country are using it. I was flattered to be contacted due to the Orchestras and Social Media Survey that was published around the article deadline. The main point I was trying to get across was that orchestras...
Read more »
Last Friday, I introduced you to the Orchestras and Social Media Survey. Today, the full report is available for download. You can download the report from my Web site at mcmvanbree.com In short, the survey found that social media activities, familiarity and usage seem to be widespread among orchestras. Managers find social media important...
Read more »