I read something the other day that prompted me to write this: if your communications isn’t directly serving your business goals then you’re doing it wrong.

At busy nonprofits, I know how easy it can be to lose sight of this. There’s so much going on -- requests from the leadership team, events, media requests -- I could go on and on. And with all of those daily tasks we can get bogged down and lose perspective.

Let’s take a look at some accessible and simple ways you can start measuring the impact of your work as a nonprofit communications professional. Seeing your accomplishments through sound metrics will remind you exactly why you do this and provide evidence as to your worth to your organization.

UTMs

Use them. UTM codes are a tag-on to a link that you can use to track a campaign, source, and medium. It's an easy way to measure the effectiveness of your work. For your next launch, event, fundraising campaign (you name it!) take some time to set UTM codes and assign them to each source and medium. Assign a source for each of your promotional channels and you can now easily report on the efficacy of partnerships, promotional channels, etc. Google has a great tool where you can put in your details and it will spit out the correct UTM code for your use. Below you'll find a breakdown of each element and how to use it. Thank you, Google!

Name your campaign. Set up a report in Google Analytics. Watch the results pour in and share them with your team.

If you are new to UTM codes, Buffer has an amazing guide to using UTMs to get you started.

I recently used UTMs to track the effectiveness of partner referrals to an event. I was able to come back to each referring organization and tell them how many people they referred to the event. And on my side, I was able to see who had the most referring traffic to determine who I would like to include as a referral partner for future events. Sharing your metrics with partners is a good feedback loop and occasion to thank them for being part of your event.

See how you rank on Google for what you’re good at

Using Google Search Console, look at how pages on your website rank on Google. Look for pages that are not performing as well as you'd like. Perhaps you have a page that's JUST missing page one ranking on Google. Or an important page could be boosted a bit higher on page one of the search engine results page. Take note of that ranking.

If you’re not number one then take steps to improve that. Are there ways you can optimize opening paragraphs to better incorporate top-ranking keywords for your business? Bring in your web developer to see if there are steps you can take on the back-end. Simple things like ensuring your page descriptions are accurate can go a long way. Give it some time (30 days) and see where you rank on Google again. Start with a benchmark; build from there.

See how you stack up against similar organizations

Both Facebook and LinkedIn have built-in features for page administrators to see how they stack up against similar organizations. Take note and build a plan to improve your ranking against the competition. Perhaps this takes a little more lead time. Give yourself six months to concentrate on curating engaging content.

Maybe a Facebook Live event would resonate well with your community! Lose the jargon of engagement, reach, fans, etc. Focus on being more social. Have a conversation with your community. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised as to the results when you check those rankings again. Perhaps you have out-ranked your competition. Good for you! That’s a win.

These things will remind you of why you do what you do on a daily basis, but also give you something to brag about next time you need to present to the leadership team or board of directors as to what the communications team has been up to.

Tracking measurements and results will give you ammunition the next time you want to pitch something new to your team. A successful track record will boost your credibility and build trust with your internal stakeholders.

Good luck. Reach out if you want some help in setting up metrics to prove your worth.