How Should a City Communications Department Measure Performance?

By Levy Sun

Local government communications teams have never had more data.

We can measure social media impressions, video views, website traffic, email open rates, media mentions, follower growth and dozens of other statistics. Nearly every digital platform provides another dashboard.

The harder question is whether those numbers tell city leaders if their communications department is actually performing well.

A post reaching 100,000 people may be impressive. It may also accomplish very little. A notice reaching 2,000 residents could be highly successful if those are the 2,000 people who needed the information and took the desired action.

For municipal communications leaders, measurement should begin with a different question:

What outcome was the communication supposed to produce?

That distinction can transform how a communications department demonstrates its value to a city manager, elected officials and the organization it serves.

Move Beyond Counting Activity

Communications departments traditionally report what they produce.

How many news releases were issued? How many social media posts were published? How many videos were created? How many people visited the city's website?

These numbers have value. They show workload, reach and trends over time.

They primarily measure activity.

A high-performing communications operation should also measure effectiveness.

Consider a city launching a new bulky-item collection program.

The communications team could report that the campaign generated 250,000 impressions, 20,000 video views and 5,000 website visits.

Those numbers tell us how the campaign traveled.

They do not tell us whether residents understood the new program or used it correctly.

A stronger performance report might show that online appointment requests increased, calls asking basic questions decreased and improperly placed items declined after the campaign.

Now communications can demonstrate a relationship to an organizational outcome.

That is a much more meaningful conversation with executive management.

Start With the City's Objectives

Communications measurement should connect to the organization's priorities.

If a city's strategic objective is increasing participation in a program, communications should measure participation.

If the objective is improving awareness of an emergency resource, measure awareness.

If the objective is increasing attendance at community meetings, measure registrations and attendance.

If the objective is improving residents' understanding of a major infrastructure project, establish a way to measure understanding.

This creates a simple chain:

City priority → communications objective → communications strategy → performance measure → organizational outcome

The communications department becomes easier to evaluate because its work is connected directly to what the organization is trying to accomplish.

I Think About Measurement in Four Levels

A practical municipal communications dashboard does not need 50 KPIs.

I prefer organizing measures into four levels.

1. Output

What did we produce?

Examples include news releases, videos, graphics, campaigns, community notices and media responses.

Output measures help demonstrate workload and organizational demand.

2. Reach

Did people encounter the information?

Measures can include unique website visitors, email subscribers, impressions, media reach, video views and audience growth.

Reach tells us whether information had a reasonable opportunity to reach the intended audience.

3. Engagement

Did people interact with the information?

Examples include email click-through rates, website actions, event registrations, completed forms, comments, shares, inquiries and meeting participation.

Engagement begins moving measurement from exposure toward behavior.

4. Outcome

Did the communication contribute to the result the city wanted?

This is the most important level and often the most difficult to measure.

Possible outcomes include increased program participation, improved resident awareness, fewer avoidable inquiries, greater compliance, increased emergency notification enrollment or improved satisfaction with city communications.

Several municipalities are already moving in this direction. Coral Springs, for example, publicly tracks resident satisfaction with the effectiveness, clarity and frequency of city communications. Virginia Beach's communications performance framework includes measures ranging from earned versus reactive media to stakeholder engagement and internal communications satisfaction.

Measure Responsiveness, Too

There is another category that deserves attention in government communications: operational performance.

Communications departments are service organizations inside larger organizations.

Departments need information published. Reporters need responses. Residents need answers. Executives need communications counsel. Emergencies require rapid coordination.

That means communications leaders should consider measures such as:

• Average media inquiry response time

• Percentage of communications requests completed by deadline

• Emergency notification deployment time

• Website update turnaround time

• Internal client satisfaction

• Percentage of planned campaigns delivered on schedule

These measures reveal something social media analytics cannot: how effectively the communications operation itself functions.

Establish Baselines Before Setting Targets

One mistake organizations make with KPIs is choosing a target before understanding normal performance.

Start with a baseline.

Measure several months of activity and identify typical performance. Then examine which measures actually help management make decisions.

Suppose a city's email newsletter averages a 48% open rate.

The immediate goal does not necessarily need to be 55%.

The more useful questions might be:

Which subjects generate the most interest?

Which links generate action?

Which audiences are we reaching?

Which audiences are missing?

Does email traffic lead residents to complete important city transactions?

Performance measurement becomes valuable when it generates better management questions.

Some Things Should Be Measured Over Years

Public trust is one example.

A communications department cannot credibly claim that one campaign created trust.

Trust develops through repeated experiences with government. Residents observe whether information is accurate, whether officials communicate when circumstances are difficult, whether questions receive answers and whether government actions match what people were told.

Cities can still measure those perceptions.

Community surveys can periodically ask residents whether city information is timely, understandable, useful and trustworthy. Tracking those questions consistently creates a much more meaningful indicator than examining the sentiment surrounding a single social media post.

This approach is already appearing in municipal communications strategies. Shrewsbury's communications plan, for example, explicitly connects two-way engagement with building community confidence and trust.

Communications Leaders Need to Tell the Performance Story

Measurement also changes the conversation about the communications function itself.

A monthly report that says:

Facebook reach: 425,000

provides a number.

A report that says:

A targeted campaign reached 72% of the identified audience, generated 3,400 visits to the program page and contributed to a 24% increase in registrations

provides management information.

That distinction matters.

City managers and department directors operate in an environment of budgets, service levels, performance measures and organizational outcomes. Communications leaders should be capable of discussing their operations using the same management language.

The Goal Is Better Decisions

There is a temptation to build elaborate dashboards once communications teams begin measuring performance. I would resist it.

A KPI earns its place on a dashboard when someone can use it to make a decision.

If website analytics reveal that residents consistently abandon a page before finding an application, redesign the page.

If community surveys show residents do not know about a service, change the outreach strategy.

If one communications channel consistently produces registrations while another produces impressions without action, reconsider the allocation of resources.

If media response times are increasing because the communications team is overloaded, the data can help management identify the operational problem.

That is the real purpose of measurement.

Good communications measurement does more than prove that a department is busy. It helps an organization understand whether its communications are working and what it should do next.

For public agencies facing increasing demands for transparency, responsiveness and measurable performance, that is an important evolution for the profession.