The final item listed in a good communication concept is EVALUATION. Be it through assessments, survey, interviews, benchmarking etc. We want to know if we have reached our target audience, if the message arrived at the receiving end and if the money spent on the respective communication measures turned out to be a fruitful investment.
How will we know? And how can we evaluate the use of a webcast? As soon as your video is published on the Internet, be it Live or on Demand, your external streaming provider can begin logging the traffic generated, as well as the hits and clicks of the webcast watched.
Facts and figures
The good news is, you don’t have to do anything. Take a live webcast, for example. Instantaneously you can track the users on your webpage anonymously and report back what peaks, highs and lows there were during a specific time period. The tracking tools are so sophisticated, that you yourself don’t even need to install expensive software yourself. Leave it to those in charge on the technical side and they will deliver the results first hand while the event is ongoing or immediately thereafter. What more do you want?
Do statistics really tell the truth?
If you are working with an experienced and reliable streaming partner, such as Solutionpark, you can only expect top notch reporting on the facts and figures of your webcast. Every aspect is measured and recorded, tracked and identified – if you so wish. It actually is their general working procedure to observe the user’s movements on the Internet while one of their clients’ webcasts is taking place.
From a communication perspective such statistical information can only be helpful. How many people watched the webcast? At what time? For how long? All good information not simply for justifying the costs but also for explaining their necessity. Look at the cost per user: One can calculate that for an event with a live audience, for the extra cost of a webcast, up to double the number of people will watch it in the following month compared with the number of participants that attended the actual event. Imagine, double!! Most probably the extra cost for producing the webcast was a fraction of what the event cost anyway.
Feel at ease
I always found it helpful to know how many viewers had attended a live webcast session online and was always grateful for the respective evaluation and interpretation provided by Solutionpark. One thing I do want to add is that the technical support throughout the entire project is just as important as the analysis thereafter. I was definitely never left hanging throughout the whole communication-webcast process. And that was much appreciated.
Compared with traditional communication (print) tools, and don’t get me wrong, I have had great experiences working with ad agencies and producing plenty of print material, the cost of webcasts on average is often lower and the impact so much greater. Assume you are using a webcast for a message from the CEO, an update on the business strategy and your are introducing a new Executive Team member, that is three in one right there. Don’t have to bother writing individual pieces including a speech, a presentation, an internal announcement etc. No need trying to copy all different user groups into the ‘To:’ field of your E-mail. As soon as you have the video up on the Internet a broad audience can view it as much and as long as they want. And, you can even track the traffic.
I grew up being exposed to new technologies and computers from an early age onwards. Then at university in the USA we were required to e-mail our research papers or hand them in on a disk, which seemed quite revolutionary at the time. Later on, in my professional communication career, somehow, I got stuck with different sorts of web projects mostly from an internal communications perspective. Colleagues say I inspire them and as I enjoy working in interdisciplinary teams and on technical topics, communication and PR on the one hand and IT-related activities on the other, make up an ideal mix for me.
As a communication professional I know what it’s like struggling for attention and budget as well as the Executives’ time to get involved in communication activities. Therefore you need to drive for an effective approach with new technologies that makes them easy to use widely and distribute your communication message to a broad audience quickly: E-mail, intranet, Internet with all its reader-/viewer-friendly news-oriented features available at their fingertips.
