A Tedtalk style presentation on the value of periodic surveys to local government communicators. By Will Hampton, Communications Director, City of Round Rock, Texas
5. Where do you get information about City?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
2014
6. Where do you get information about City?
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10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
TV news Metro daily Friends Local paper Radio Utility bill
newsletter
PEG channel City website
1998
7. Trend: City website as source of info about city
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10
20
30
40
50
60
70
% of respondents
1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014
8. Trend: Local paper as source of info about city
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10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
% of respondents
1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014
9. Trend: Community Impact as source of info about city
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10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
% of respondents
2008 2010 2012 2014
10. Trend: PEG Channel as source of info about city
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10
20
30
40
50
60
% of respondents
1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014
11.
12. Trend: City social media as source of info
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1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
% of respondents
2008 2010 2012 2014
13. Trend: How well is City keeping you informed?
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10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
% of respondents ranking excellent or good
1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014
I'm not a numbers guy … Acc'y test story
You're probably not either. That's why you got into this field, am I right? English or math.
Yet one of the most important aspects of my job involves numbers. The biennial survey.
So I suck it up every two years and get comfortable with numbers. Here’s why:
In RR, we have a reputation for doing really good work when it comes to communications. Occasionally great. Every now and again, dare I say, it’s even Inspired.
Two secrets to that:
Hire great people
We take the information from the survey every two years and are able to make informed decisions on what to do and where to do it.
So a little math is worth it to get to make art. Like this ….
Thursday preso: Meet Ron Pitchman. You’ll get a chance to get up close and personal with Ron at the TAMIO Film Festival next session.
Friday preso: Say hello again to Ron Pitchman. You got to meet him at the Film Festival yesterday.
So much of what we do is art and can be fun. Videos, website design, social media campaigns all call on our creative talents.
Doing that part of our jobs is fun. Who wouldn't want to dress up like this guy and dance around downtown?
But you must get comfortable with numbers, pie charts and bar graphs. And let's face it, there's no difficult math involved with survey analysis. Someone else does that for you!
Surveys are vital because we have limited resources to work with (let's face, police get all the money at budget time) and we need to know what's working and what's not. And we have more tools are our disposal today than we did 5, 10, 15 years ago, so we HAVE to know where to focus our efforts. What channels give us the best bang for our buck. And our bucks are usually our time.
When I was hired by City of RR, in 1998, the City was n the midst of conducting its first biennial survey. Since then, we've always hired a third-party firm conduct a statistically valid survey, sample size at least 400, +/- 5% margin of error, random sample of community that accurately reflects our demographics for gender, geography, race and ethnicity.
Now, our survey in RR is not just a comms survey. It’s a survey that covers Big Picture stuff like Right Track, Wrong Track, how we doing with Police, fire, parks, etc.
We have always asked this question, the KEY one for PIOs….
13 different sources listed here; respondents select as many sources as they use.
So here’s the rundown from our last survey, in 2014:
Community Impact – once a month print publication mailed to every household in town.
City newsletter that goes out in monthly utility bills.
Roundrocktexas.gov
TV News – actually tied for third.
NOW A DROPOFF TO 30 PERCENT AND UNDER
HOA newsletters
Friends
Local paper
Metro daily
Radio
City e-newsletter
PEG channel
City social media
Public meetings
SO what did it look like back in 1998?
Notice any differences?
Fewer channels – and three are accessed by more than 70 percent of respondents, whereas we had just one in 2014.
Look where City-controlled channels are – dead last!
SURVEYS GIVE YOU ACTIONABLE INFORMATION TO MAKE DECISIONS WITH. AGAIN, WHERE IS THE BEST PLACE TO ALLOCATE YOUR PRECIOUS TIME?
In 1998, when I started, I really wanted to upgrade the website – it was an in-house design with no Content Management System. But I couldn’t justify it – yet!
NOW TO SHOW YOU THE POWER OF TREND DATA
Again, in ‘98 less than 10 percent online. I know, hard to image life when the interwebs wasn’t king.
But once we got to 2004, once we got to 30 percent, solid tend upward, and we could justify getting a professionally designed website. Got sought and received $80K from Council, hired Vision Internet and away we went.
AGAIN, ACTIONABLE DATA.
You look at this trend today and go, no duh. Newspaper readership is in serious decline.
But from 2000 to 2008 – half our citizens were getting info from the Round Rock Leader. So we ran an newsletter style ad every couple of weeks there.
But in 2010, when it dropped to 30 percent, we killed it. Didn’t make sense to keep putting money and time there.
So when we do print advertising, where do we do it? Here’s where we run print advertising today. 4 out of 5 folks get info from there.
AND – we have a monthly meeting with the GM and Editor for their planning purposes. We nurture this relationship.
Our government access channel was rocking along at 50 percent from 1998 to 2006.
Now, obviously, people aren’t watching our PEG channel like they used to. Could run a slinky down that bar chart from 2006 and on. But why? Our video content has gotten better and better. What gives?
Advent of High Def TVs. People weren’t channel surfing around Channel 10 anymore and TW wasn’t and isn’t going to stick us on the High Def tier of channels even though we deliver an HD signal to them.
NFL Network was not available on TW and some Dallas Cowboys games were on that network and folks were upset they couldn’t see Tony Romo choke in the clutch.
There was this little site called YouTube that was starting to draw eyeballs – people were consuming video differently.
ACTIONABLE DATA: We quit taking the time to do a 15-minute, twice monthly video newsmagazine in 2012 and began producing shorter, web-friendly videos.
And thus was born …
Ron Pitchman!
This is actual footage of Ron coming down the Infomercial Host birth canal at our Play for All Park.
Social Media still less than 10 percent.
So what action should you take based on this info? Bag it, right? No, of course not. Though some days I’m tempted … I quit looking at FB as a primary communications channel, and now see it as more of an important branding tool. Twitter great for media relations and media alerts.
Now, our Parks and Police departments have had lots of success – and the main city account is doing just fine – but most folks aren’t on somed to connect with the government. They’re not. It’s cat videos and bragging on your kids.
Don’t put something on FB and think you’ve told the world about it – UNLESS your survey says you’ve got a significant chunk of folks getting info about city on FB.
But you’ve likely got Councilmembers and directors on FB. You need to have a strategy for the best way to use this unique tool.
FOR THURSDAY -- This is why you need to go to the What’s Working for You on Facebook session.
So how well has using the survey data worked for you, Will?
Glad you asked – we ask this question:
Tell story of 2000 survey and why you got clobbered.
But if you really want to know how you’re doing, make sure your survey company can give you BENCHMARK data to show how you stack up against your peers regionally and nationally.
We’re No. 1 among all city departments and city services in the benchmark comparison.
Is that because I’m just that good. NO!. There’s two reasons (remember?)
I hire great people
I act on survey data
