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FreshSpectrum Information Design
On a mission to make research and evaluation more accessible.
Chapter 3: Developing Your Modern Reporting Strategy
Rule #1 – Everyone is overwhelmed.
You have access to lots of information. Not only do you have the world at your fingertips, you also have constant buzzing, dinging, flashing, beeping, and ringing. Our devices are like 3 year olds that never nap, they’re constantly yelling, “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!”
And it’s not as though we didn’t have other things on our mind. You know, things like family, work, love, and loss.
In our modern digital world you have to assume that the person you are trying to reach is at least a little distracted, and at most, completely overwhelmed. It’s not an ideal situation. And no matter how important your message is to your audience, it’s still going to be hard for them to see or hear.
So how do you effectively report to a distracted audience?
Do you try to lure them in with interesting stories and illustrations?
DO YOU SHOUT?
Do you just keep talking, hoping someone will listen?
Do you wait to be noticed?
Do you try once and then give up?
Do you ask for help from someone they might trust?
There isn’t one easy answer. No single magic strategy that will always work for everyone. Your goal is to find something that might work for you and your audience. At least some of the time.
Activity: The Overwhelmed Reader
Find a report, it could be one you wrote. If you don’t have a report handy, just check your favorite nonprofit, government agency, or NGO and download one from their reports page. Don’t read it yet, just download it.
Now it’s time to do some acting.
Pretend that you’re super busy and that you have a lot on your mind (this will not be a hard role to play). Now pretend someone just sent you this report and asked you to give it a quick read.
Now open up the report and give it a 5 minute read.
Unless you downloaded a super short report, you can’t possibly read it all in 5 minutes. So what did you read, and how did you read? Did you just read the headers, look at the pictures, get stuck on a chart, read the intro, read the conclusion, or just skim through bits and pieces throughout.
This is likely how the bulk of your audience sees your work.
Any takeaways or lessons learned for the next time you go to create a report?
The Old Way to Report
The old reporting strategy used by many organizations is a resource library filled with PDFs. Every time a new report gets created, a new download page gets added to the library. Dissemination is then left to the organization’s communications team (or person).
It’s possible the research or evaluation team might schedule a briefing or two with important stakeholders. Their direct clients will also receive a copy of the report (often in advance with opportunities to provide edits). The research or evaluation team might also present findings at relevant conferences.
This is not really a strategy. It’s more a collection of reporting habits developed over decades. It may be sufficient to help you reach your high interest audience. Whether or not you reach your medium interest audience depends on the additional activities you undertake after publishing the report (i.e. conference talks, briefings, webinars, etc.). Whether or not you reach your casual interest audience depends almost entirely on how much your communications team shares your work.
The biggest problem I’ve seen is that after publishing the research and evaluation team quickly gives up ownership of the report. It’s written, so it is now in the hands of their client or their communications team.
While there are some amazing comms teams out in the world, they are not the ones who know the most about that report’s purpose, content, and audience. Plus, they have other priorities beyond your report. This is why so many reports simply get added to a repository then simply fade away.
Activity: What is Your Organization’s Reporting Strategy?
Think about a report you’ve written or helped to write.
How was that report shared?
Think about all the people who were given access to the report and how they were given that access. Your goal is to think through the different ways your reports have been shared in the past. Here are some prompts to help:
Were some of your target audience members involved in helping to write the report? Meaning they would have seen the report at different stages as it was developed.
Who was emailed directly with an attachment or link to the report? Was this a newsletter sent to an email list or just through individual emails with specific recipients?
Were there any presentations or webinars delivered to key stakeholders?
Was the report shared to a website page where a person can then find and download the report?
Did anyone share the report on social media? Was it shared by a communication’s team or just shared by individual members of the research and evaluation team?
Was there a press release that was released along with the report?
Were pieces of the report shared in articles or blog posts either on the organization’s website or on other organization’s websites?
After you’re done defining all the ways in which the report was shared, draw a little process diagram showing how all the different pieces fit together over time. Mark which of your big three audiences each piece would have likely reached.
Towards a Practical Strategy.
Reporting should be easy.
Do you really have trouble talking about your work with other people?
Over time we’ve taken the simple act of sharing what we’re doing (and what we’re learning) and turned it into one big boring document.
I’m going to give you just three different strategies. In the first edition I shared six strategies! It was overkill. After working with my own report design clients over the past few years, I know from experience that you can make any of these three work.
The Modern PDF Strategy is a simple update to the old way. I don’t think it goes far enough, but it might be an improvement to the way you report right now. It’s also the easiest change to make in slow-moving organizations.
The Web Report Strategy is essentially the digital equivalent to the old way. Simply switching from PDF-First to HTML-First can make a HUGE difference in terms of reach.
The Report Blogging Strategy is my favorite but it does require a change in mindset (product to process). That said, it’s ultimately easier, cheaper, and, I believe, far more effective.
The Modern PDF Strategy
I mentioned the 1:3:25 approach earlier in the book when talking about your 3 big audiences. It isn’t a new or modern strategy but if you are currently only creating and sharing one long PDF report it would be an improvement.
The 25 page report should be written with your highest interest audience in mind. The 3 page executive summary (or summaries) should be designed for your medium interest audiences. The one pagers are designed to really quickly share specific points or connect with specific members of your overall casual audience.
Most of the organizations that follow this strategy still default to PDF but might treat their reports like a bundled product.
I’m writing another book at the moment that I’m calling tentatively, “The PDF Must Die.” So if you’re wondering how I really feel, that’s it. That said, you can still make some usability improvements even if you do still default to a PDF.
Try landscape instead of profile (a.k.a. slide doc style).
Improve the graphic design.
Systematically illustrate.
Improve the readability.
Create some (non-PDF) digital products alongside your one-pagers & executive summaries.
The Web Report Strategy
I’ve seen this strategy being taken by several large NGOs. In a lot of ways it’s just a digital version of The Modern PDF Strategy.
Your big report (in place of the 25 pager) is a website report. It might include a downloadable PDF as well, but that’s secondary.
The report is written like a good website resource page, with good copy and lots of images. A data dashboard and other supporting content might also be made available through direct links from the main web report.
To help expand the distribution of the report there are often associated webinars or presentations, each linking back to the main web report. Internal organization influencers (such as an organization director or research lead) might also provide video overviews talking about specific aspects of the report.
Along with the web report you also find a supporting social media strategy. This might include social media infographics, videos, and coordinated hashtag use by the organization and a variety of stakeholders or audience influencers.
The web report strategy is less about over-time continuous reporting and more about making a big splash. It turns a simple report release into a virtual cross-platform event.
The Report Blogging Strategy
This strategy mimics modern digital marketing strategies.
Instead of a report, you have a blog (or an email newsletter). You write and share posts or emails when you have something to share.
A lot of our report content is known well before the end of an evaluation or research project. So in your posts you can talk through your goals, share your evaluation or research questions, and talk about your methods.
This strategy can really help you develop an audience, build a relationship with that audience, and get feedback that could influence future decisions.
Whether you center your strategy around a blog or email newsletter, there are lots of options, even if you have zero budget. WordPress.com, Substack, and Medium are all free, well known, and easy to use.
You will also have far better analytics than any PDF centered approach. From email open and click rates to page views and search engine stats, there is a lot you can learn about what’s working and what’s not.
You can also open up comments on a blog or ask for replies with an email newsletter.
Dissemination (The Sharing Part)
The three strategies I shared will guide the development of your reporting products. But just because you create a nice report, it doesn’t mean that report will fall into the hands of your readers.
Perhaps your organization has a really good comms team. But even if that’s true, I think it’s important for the people who know the content to play an active role in sharing the content.
And if you don’t have a clue about social media or audience building, no worries. I’ll give you a few simple dissemination tips to help you get going.
In the rest of the chapter I’ll show you.
A simple audience borrowing approach for when you don’t have one.
How to build a basic content calendar.
How to use webinars to amplify your audience building.
Why sometimes the best way to share your report is to teach your report.
And just know. If you find something that else works well in helping you to share data with your audiences, just do more of that. Trust yourself because you’re also a human being.
Audience Borrowing
You may not have direct access to your audience and it can take a lot of time to build one. But if others already have a connection with the people you want to reach, you may be able to borrow access.
Bloggers and podcasters who are just getting started often face the no audience challenge. On the web a guest blog posting strategy, or simply volunteering to be a podcast guest, is one of the quickest ways to reach an audience before you’ve built one of your own. We can do the same with our reporting.
Start by looking for the influencers that currently reach the audience you would like to reach, then collaborate. There are all sorts of ways to collaborate that could be in both of your best interests.
Virtual summits bringing together different community influencers.
Panel webinars and Q&As.
Guest blogs.
Coordinated social media posts.
Joining a relevant podcast as a guest.
Sponsoring digital content.
One tip, start by reaching out to existing connections. Cold emails asking for favors are not often that effective. If you do not know someone directly, try to find a common connection.
You also want to make sure you have a way to collect emails from people interested in following your reporting. This could be as simple as a landing page describing your work and offering a chance to join your newsletter.
Using a Content Calendar
If you already have emails for the majority of your target audiences, there is no need for any kind of expansive social media or blogging strategy. Just email them.
Social media marketers already know the power of an email list. But so many research and evaluation teams undervalue their current reach.
Start with your own email list and then drip your report out over time. Set a pace for your newsletters (weekly, biweekly, monthly, bimonthly, etc.) and stick to it. Share what you have to share when you have it ready. Keeping pace means creating internal deadlines that can help keep you on track.
Most email newsletter services also allow you to share a public html version for each email. This gives you something to share when an audience member comes late to your email list, or when you would like to reference a past newsletter.
Webinar Sharing
Human beings are funny creatures. Over the years I made a discovery. It’s easier to get a person to register and attend a 60 minute webinar than it is to get a person to read a PDF report for 20 minutes.
By sharing your report with a webinar series you claim space and time in your audience’s calendars to present your work and answer questions.
Advertising the webinar on social media, creating the webinar registration page, and connecting with your attendees before and after the webinar creates opportunities to share infographics and other reporting sound bytes. You can also adapt your webinar recordings into smaller length videos to share through YouTube.
Webinars are really useful for audience building as registering with an email address is expected and follow-up (with recordings and future webinar offerings) is often appreciated.
Teach Your Report
Trying to enhance organizational learning. Perhaps you have been evaluating the effectiveness of a model program. Or maybe you are undertaking a type of formative or developmental evaluation.
Why not turn all of your lessons learned into learning objectives. Then build it into an online learning community.
A good learning community will often mix self-paced modules, live office hours or Q&A sessions, webinar presentations, discussion groups, forums, and downloadable resources.
Think about it, offering a free course or learning community just feels more valuable compared to a regular report.
