Chances are, if you’re working in a nonprofit or campaign you’re spending a good chunk of time writing, editing, shooting photos and video, or maybe commenting on ad copy or Facebook post language. Maybe you’re putting together language for the next email newsletter, activist alert or infographic for that new report your research team put together.
All that content we’re putting out in the world are the atoms of advocacy — they’re the bits and pieces that form the dots, build the networks and create change.
Take The Content Survey
from Bright+3 and Echo & Co.
But are we able to make sense of how all the blog posts, reports, emails, videos, infographics and (of course) clever animated gifs are advancing our work? That’s a question we’re continually wrestling with in our research and client work.
We wanted to dig a little deeper and last month released a small query for the community — The (mini) Content Survey. It was a (very) brief questionnaire to get a sense of how effective people felt their content was and how they assess that effectiveness. The most valuable information came as open-ended responses to the question “What’s the one thing you wish you knew about your content (but don’t)?”
Are we smart enough about psychology to have the right context when creating content?
And another:
The extent to which people are learning from content. It’s hard to measure the impact of “educational” content.
Most boiled down to how we know if content is motivating action:
What is the reader’s emotional reaction and what does that move them to do?
These are difficult metrics to gather and evaluate (but it can be done). The question is – do these metrics help (and do we have the resources to learn and act on them)?
Now we’re taking The Content Survey a step further. We teamed up with Echo & Co. to launch and analyze a more complete set of questions – though just 10 questions in all. Next month, we’ll begin reporting back on our findings to the community at NTC in Austin (and for anyone who asks and wants to learn more).
To be clear, we’re looking for feedback from anyone involved in the content creation process so if you’re a digital strategist, fundraiser, organizer or leader, please take a few minutes to take the survey here: http://thecontentsurvey.com/
We’d love it if you would take The Content Survey. Ten questions. Thanks!