Taking stock of your year-long publishing

As an organisation, evaluating your publishing efforts throughout the year is crucial to determine whether you have missed out on great opportunities. Online publishing via your organisation’s website, social media, or hard copies of books, reports, newsletters, and other materials are all viable options.

The primary goal of publishing is to reach out to like-minded individuals for partnership opportunities and to attract new or existing clients. Also, use this to raise awareness about specific issues, advocate for a particular course of action, or fulfil legal or funding requirements. Therefore, as the year ends, it is essential to evaluate the success of your publishing goals.

Take a quantitative and qualitative approach to assess your year-long publishing endeavours. It is important to remember that publishing should not be considered an ad hoc activity. Instead, view it as a crucial aspect of your organisation’s communication strategy. Publishing serves to communicate your organisation’s successes, challenges, mission, and vision to various stakeholders. Therefore, it should be a core activity that anchors all other organisational activities.

The quantitative approach to analysing publishing endeavours focuses on statistics to determine the total output for the year. Further, it involves tracking the number of books printed and distributed and analytics of online and social media publishing campaigns through metrics such as reads, likes, and shares. Tracking physical publications is relatively straightforward, while monitoring online publishing may require social media training to harness the technology effectively.

Conversely, the qualitative approach assesses the impact of published content on the intended audience. Additionally, it enables organisations to plan and respond effectively to the concerns and interests of their audiences in subsequent publishing endeavours. Feedback such as readership rates, the number of shares, and comments on online publishing provide insights into the impact of the content.

By utilising quantitative and qualitative approaches, organisations can obtain a comprehensive picture of the return on investment for their publishing endeavours. They can leverage this information to create more impactful publishing campaigns and engage professional agencies, such as publishing firms, to generate engaging content and offer copyediting services to produce high-quality content that readers will enjoy. Organisations must remember that investing in quality services often yields better results in the long run.