Measuring Event Content

When it comes to overall event data, we generally think of three types of data: performance data, impact data and value perception data.

Performance data covers a range of event elements that is useful to understand, including: 

  • What was the audience's movement throughout the event?

  • What interactions did the audience have with each other and with brand representatives?

  • What did the audience share from the event on social media?

Impact data is about how the event changed behaviors and perceptions.

  • What will the audience do differently as a result of the experience?

  • How has their perception of the brand / products they experienced changed?

Value data is about how people felt about the event or experience itself:

  • Did they consider the event a good use of their time?

It’s also useful to break down event elements into major buckets and measure them independently in each of these three areas. Of course one major bucket must be: Content

Let’s start with a clear definition so we know what we are measuring: What is event content?!?

Event content is what is being said and shown at an event. It can include things like signage, videos, speaker presentations, etc. It’s the stuff we want people to see, hear, understand and internalize.

Let’s consider how we might evaluate content in our three measurement areas.

Content Performance

In order to measure content performance, you need to identify key metrics to track. A few examples for consideration:

  • We want people to see our content

  • We want people to understand our content

  • We want people to share our content on social media

For each of these, you can capture data to understand your performance:

  • Number of impressions

  • Surveyed comprehension scores

  • Social media post tracking

It’s also helpful to assign goals to each key metric. This helps you understand if your content is performing as well as it should. Continuing this example, you might set as targets:

  • 1,000 unique impressions

  • 95% comprehension scores

  • 500 social media shares

Content Impact

The metrics for content impact tend to be very similar to overall event impact metrics: changing what people think and what they will do as a result.

You can poll people as soon as or just after they’ve experienced your content to get to impact data. Ask:

  • As a result of this content I feel differently about the brand/product being discussed (we’d recommend you ask about specific attributes you’d like to measure, like ‘this brand is approachable’ or ‘this product is a great value’, etc.)

  • As a result of this content I expect to behave differently (we’d suggest you identify what behaviors you’d like to impact and ask specifically about those behaviors, like ‘I expect to buy more from this brand’ or ‘I will tell my friends all about this’)

Because we work in the event space, we ask about how people expect to behave differently vs trying to monitor their actual behaviors over the long term, which can be challenging. This is why we focus on intent style survey questions - giving us an imperfect but useful predictive indicator of impact. However, when it comes to content, if you have access to your event audience post-event you might also ask them weeks later if they remember key messages or takeaways from your content efforts.

Content Value

Less tangible perhaps than impact scores is our desire as an industry to offer content that people really do value. We suggest a simple polling question at the conclusion of a content experience:

  • Rate the value of this content (1-5 stars)

You can ask other questions about the quality of content specific to the type of content and how it was delivered. But value perception is in the eye of the beholder, and we want people to feel like event content was of value!

Content drives event success. Measurement of event content helps us understand if it is indeed successful.

Dax Callner