Work in Communication/PR and frightened by numbers? Keep reading

Here’s a fun little quiz for you. What scares you most from the options listed below?

A: Watching a horror movie alone in pitch darkness on Friday the 13th
B: Discovering a big, hairy, creepy crawly scurrying across your hand while driving
C: Numbers – cold, hard numbers

More than six decades’ combined industry experience tells us that a lot of Communication/PR professionals will choose option C from the above choices. It’s not hard to see why – people drawn to either the Communication or PR field enjoy a great love affair with words. Their idea of a blissful Sunday afternoon is sitting by a fireplace and reading a good book and the thought of an Excel spreadsheet with complicated calculations is enough to see them breaking out in a sweat.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a solution that helped those who struggle with numbers to measure and evaluate the work they do? After all, you can send out as many media releases, blogs, videos and social media posts as you like, but unless you can prove your Communication/PR Strategy is linked to and adding value to the overall Business Strategy, you’re likely to always be that overlooked and under-valued employee. And we don’t need to tell you the business world works on tangibles and more directly, numbers. So what’s the solution?

Enter The Communication Dividend. It’s the first measurement approach of its kind in Australia and it allows people who are not great with numbers to measure and evaluate SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) objectives. The key to this solution is that it’s been designed by Communication professionals for Communication professionals, which is why the information produced is easy for anyone to understand. Among a range of other things, the solution’s dashboards allow you to:

• Provide real-time accurate data for reporting, enabling you to make better decisions.
• Be proactive in the business environment as opposed to being reactive.
• Save time while increasing your productivity and efficiency levels.

Regardless of what industry you work in, we all want to be acknowledged for the hard work we do and what we accomplish. Over the years, we’ve seen way too many Communication/PR Managers being undervalued and taken for granted simply because they can’t prove their profitability to a company using the metrics internal decision makers use: numbers.

From where we are sitting, there are three big C’s in life: choices, chances and changes.

If we’ve just described how you feel, make a commitment to yourself and your career by finding out more about how The Communication Dividend can help you. 

By Deb Camden and Paul Cheal