Action Learning Project: I ncrease engagement through our blog

1. Action Learning Project: Increase engagement through our blog Organization Name: Community Foundation Santa Cruz County Action Learning Project: Philanthropy 831 Blog Action Learning Project Overview

2. Describe your action learning project. To increase engagement through our website’s blog. We set up data collection grids to measure traffic, comments and subscribers and identified tasks to help us reach goals and KPIs. We tapped four staff bloggers as our first team for this project. We chose to focus on our blog as it was a feature of our redesigned website launched in 2012. The page got immediate traffic and attention and we saw it as a good place to start.

3. How did you develop your KPIs (organizational process?) We settled on three KPIs—unique visitors, subscribers and comments—to measure the success of our blog. We had to do research to identify and customize our tools, but got some great help. It took several tries during the data collection process to get to our final KPI baseline and goal numbers. It was a learn-as-you-go type of process for us! What measurement tools did you use? Google Analytics Feedburner Our website

4. Action Learning Project: • Describe you data collection process? What worked, didn’t work? • At the start of the month, we crunched numbers from the previous one. Data is entered into a spreadsheet. We created a high level dashboard, with graph charts and summary analysis to use as a reporting and planning tool. • What worked: • Google Analytics—Making annotations of blog posts and related activity is helping us see patterns over time. • Excel—Letting go of idea of having all data on one worksheet. Referencing data and formulas make it possible to have lots of worksheets in same workbook. Data from various sheets feed into our dashboard—all in one Excel workbook. • Sharing PDFs of dashboard reports at staff meetings. • What didn’t work: • Figuring out exactly what we wanted before data collection began. Some of it just didn’t become all clear to us until after we started collecting data. And that’s okay, minor tweaks were made along the way that got us on a good track.

9. Action Learning Project: • Describe your sense-making process? What worked, didn’t work? • What worked: • Weekly meetings communications team. • Integrating project into larger communications strategy. • Creating tactical actions to reach objectives. • Getting help customizing Google Analytics. • Sharing developments with staff. • Blogging about it. • Focusing less on the data on more on better engagement. • What didn’t work (so well): • Getting 100% buy-in and participation from 3 other staff bloggers. • Spent more time setting up the tool and haven’t gotten to chewing on so what? did we learn.

10. Action Learning Project: • What insights did you gain from measurement? • We moved beyond guessing to actually tracking results over time.

11. Action Learning Project: • What are your top three insights about improving your organization’s measurement practices? • We can be data informed not data consumed and still lead productive lives. • Our friends and colleagues will help us. • Our measuring supports intentional actions, generates respect and buzz, and (we hope) leads to real and consistent engagement.