Analytics for nonprofit public campaigns — part 4 (end): what to check
If you are a communications officer in an organization but almost never check digital media analytics, then this article is for you.
By Paramita Mohamad
March 31, 2021
March 31, 2021
In the first article we discussed the importance of checking site and social media analytics for the public campaigns we run. By analogy, writing reports is like cooking, while analytics is like the market. Just as it is important to shop at the market before cooking, it is also important for us to visit analytics to collect data that we will process into reports that are interesting, meaningful, and contextualized.
Still using the cooking analogy, there are three things we need to pay attention to when checking analytics, namely determining the cooking menu, making shopping notes, and exploring while still limiting ourselves. The first point has been discussed in the second article, and the second point has been discussed in the third article. In this article, we will discuss exploring while still limiting ourselves in shopping.
When shopping with notes, we can miss ingredients that could make our dish tastier. But there still need to be limits, such as if you want to cook capcay, of course you don't need to go to the European herbs aisle .
Likewise, when collecting analytical data, sometimes we can miss important points if we only focus on the framework of the report that has been prepared. It could be that there are things that we didn't think of when writing the framework, or maybe we don't know that these things can be measured. But make sure we have clear boundaries so we don't get confused. Consider the following example.
In order not to get lost in reading the site analytics, Golongan Hutan collaborated with Change.org in its campaign, although not with a petition. Change.org helped send out several email blasts to people in their database. As a result, it can be seen that there was a day where the number of visitors to the Golongan Hutan site increased drastically and the acquisition came from Change.org. To this extent, we can draw the conclusion that email blasts from Change.org are a good way to attract an audience.
However, at that time we carried out further investigations by asking Change.org about the email blast . From there, we found out that the number of targets for the email blast was so large that the click-through rate was actually not as high as initially thought. Apart from that, it turned out that the email blast had also been sent several times, while the drastic increase in the number of visitors only occurred once. So we can draw the conclusion that the Change.org email blast is indeed profitable for the campaign, but it is not a guarantee of achieving the campaign's goals.
Frontiers of social media analytics exploration
When I create an end-of-year report for Latih Logika donors, donors naturally want to know what impact they have made with the funds they gave. So I will focus on data that shows whether there is a more rapid expansion of Latih Logika's audience, for example an increase in followers, impressions, reach and engagement from donor-funded advertising. I also looked at how organic content performed in the donor funding period, as the report wanted to see whether paid advertising was more effective at growing Latih Logika's audience than organic content.
But then I also tried to explore other data that might be useful, for example the number of times the Train Logic module was downloaded. From there I discovered that the Logic Training module was very rarely downloaded on Youtube and much more often downloaded on the site. In addition, even though their numbers are much larger, YouTube audiences generally do not watch videos until the end. With these two data plus several other facts, we can finally strengthen the argument that if Latih Logika wants to focus on education, then a site specifically designed for online learning is a more appropriate platform than YouTube.
Interesting, right? If you're not familiar with analytics, you can try taking a peek at the platform first, while making sure that analytics is activated. For example, for Google Analytics, you have to activate it first, then it starts recording site data. You can also browse on Google or YouTube to find out how to activate and operate analytics, as well as what data can be seen there. There are many credible sources that can help you, starting from instructions from direct platform providers such as Google and Twitter , to third parties such as Niagahoster and Wordstream. So, happy adventure!
Still using the cooking analogy, there are three things we need to pay attention to when checking analytics, namely determining the cooking menu, making shopping notes, and exploring while still limiting ourselves. The first point has been discussed in the second article, and the second point has been discussed in the third article. In this article, we will discuss exploring while still limiting ourselves in shopping.
When shopping with notes, we can miss ingredients that could make our dish tastier. But there still need to be limits, such as if you want to cook capcay, of course you don't need to go to the European herbs aisle .
Likewise, when collecting analytical data, sometimes we can miss important points if we only focus on the framework of the report that has been prepared. It could be that there are things that we didn't think of when writing the framework, or maybe we don't know that these things can be measured. But make sure we have clear boundaries so we don't get confused. Consider the following example.
In order not to get lost in reading the site analytics, Golongan Hutan collaborated with Change.org in its campaign, although not with a petition. Change.org helped send out several email blasts to people in their database. As a result, it can be seen that there was a day where the number of visitors to the Golongan Hutan site increased drastically and the acquisition came from Change.org. To this extent, we can draw the conclusion that email blasts from Change.org are a good way to attract an audience.
However, at that time we carried out further investigations by asking Change.org about the email blast . From there, we found out that the number of targets for the email blast was so large that the click-through rate was actually not as high as initially thought. Apart from that, it turned out that the email blast had also been sent several times, while the drastic increase in the number of visitors only occurred once. So we can draw the conclusion that the Change.org email blast is indeed profitable for the campaign, but it is not a guarantee of achieving the campaign's goals.
Frontiers of social media analytics exploration
When I create an end-of-year report for Latih Logika donors, donors naturally want to know what impact they have made with the funds they gave. So I will focus on data that shows whether there is a more rapid expansion of Latih Logika's audience, for example an increase in followers, impressions, reach and engagement from donor-funded advertising. I also looked at how organic content performed in the donor funding period, as the report wanted to see whether paid advertising was more effective at growing Latih Logika's audience than organic content.
But then I also tried to explore other data that might be useful, for example the number of times the Train Logic module was downloaded. From there I discovered that the Logic Training module was very rarely downloaded on Youtube and much more often downloaded on the site. In addition, even though their numbers are much larger, YouTube audiences generally do not watch videos until the end. With these two data plus several other facts, we can finally strengthen the argument that if Latih Logika wants to focus on education, then a site specifically designed for online learning is a more appropriate platform than YouTube.
Interesting, right? If you're not familiar with analytics, you can try taking a peek at the platform first, while making sure that analytics is activated. For example, for Google Analytics, you have to activate it first, then it starts recording site data. You can also browse on Google or YouTube to find out how to activate and operate analytics, as well as what data can be seen there. There are many credible sources that can help you, starting from instructions from direct platform providers such as Google and Twitter , to third parties such as Niagahoster and Wordstream. So, happy adventure!
Paramita Mohamad
Written by
CEO and Principal Consultant of Communication for Change. We work with those who want to make Indonesia suck less, by helping them get buy-in and make changes.
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