Audience data will give you insights into your target audience and show what they are interested in, what they are getting involved with, and what impact your communication is having.

As I learned the hard way as a physiotherapist, every organization is ultimately a business with a reason for being. If it isn’t a government organization or a not-for-profit, then the reason is profit for the financial stakeholders. The purpose of your communication is to support the goals of your business, monetary or otherwise. Great measurement makes for a more effective success report that you can share with these stakeholders and gives you confidence that you are spending resources wisely.

If you’d like to brush up on your measurement, my favorite model is by fellow Australian Jim Macnamara, who is internationally recognized as a leader in the evaluation of communication and has published an Integrated Planning and Evaluation Model. It serves as the basis of evidence-based planning as well as evaluation. Integration across the process is essential, rather than trying to tack on evaluation at the end. For example, Jim always emphasizes that “early planning should include collecting baseline data (existing levels of knowledge, awareness, etc.) as well as attitudes, and so on.”

I first came across this model when I met Jim at a conference in Canberra. It was one of my first speaking gigs, and I joined his preconference workshop, late from the airport, sheepishly sliding into a chair. Not only is he an excellent teacher and very generous with his ideas but his model also is highly comprehensive, taking you through looking at inputs (precomms) to measuring activities, outputs, outcomes, and impact. The idea is that you work from the left to the right, measuring inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and ultimately the impact of communication. Stopping measurement at vanity metrics such as follows and likes or simply measuring outputs, such as media impressions or publication circulation, robs you of pursuing the direct link to results from communication efforts.

I walked away with an A3 printout of the model, knowledge on how these areas could most effectively be measured, and a headful of ideas on how to do things better.

If you ever come across Jim’s Pink Sari case study from the Multicultural Health Communication Service (MHCS), read it. It’s a beautiful example of community engagement, codesign, and evaluation that achieved outstanding results. The campaign aimed to encourage older Indian and Sri Lankan women living in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, to get mammograms to detect breast cancer early.

There were several challenges, and previous advertising and media campaigns had failed. It was a community-involved campaign that included a champion network and partnerships. These techniques will be covered in the next chapter on the network effect. Outcomes of the Pink Sari campaign included an extraordinary 39 percent increase in the number of Indian and Sri Lankan women between 50 and 69 years old living in NSW having a breast screen for the first time. Health officials predicted that the impact of such increases would lead to more effective treatment of breast cancer and save lives. Through measurement across

the project, we can show and know the campaign’s success compared to previous attempts.

Jim has also done a lot of work on organizational listening and misinformation. His 2020 book Beyond Post-Communication: Challenging Disinformation, Deception, and Manipulation was timely, admittedly hefty, and well worth the read.

Zytnik, Monique. Internal communication in the age of Artificial Intelligence. New York: Business Expert Press, 2024.pp 49 to 52