How Governments Can Leverage Data in Public Relations

Ernest Hemingway said it best: “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” For government agencies, this couldn’t be more true. We’re seeing that the need for listening is growing in importance every day. 

The vast majority of people in lower and middle income brackets say that the government isn’t doing enough to address major social problems according to Pew Research. Perhaps we can’t address every social ill as government communicators. But, we can start to gather the information needed to act and the information needed to tell us how to communicate what we’re doing. 

Gathering Data for Government Public Relations

Something is better than nothing, and one of the biggest challenges for government communicators is that we often start with nothing. It’s difficult to put together effective content that communicates essential information to the public without knowing how the public would want to see this information told. 

That’s why it’s great to start collecting information and data any chance you get. This can be simple things, such as messaging engaged followers on your social media platforms and asking them what they want to see from your organization on digital channels. Would it stand up in an academic paper? No, but that isn’t what we’re going for here. Getting the foundation of the data you want to inform your PR strategy is going to need to be small. 

Here are a few ideas for gathering this data:

• Focus groups: Ask coworkers who work in programmatic aspects of your organization if you can request time from clients for a focus group on how they’d like to receive information from your agency. 

• Giveaways for information: Offer something small but useful, like a water bottle branded with your organization’s logo, for filling out surveys that can better inform your agency’s public relations.

• Include the survey on your website: Making use of a short popup that contains information about filling out surveys or forms will drive some of your most direct traffic back to you to gather information. 

The ways to gather data informally are endless, and these kinds of budget-friendly approaches can help you better align your government communications strategy to build trust with people. So, what do you ask the people you survey? 

Asking the Right Questions 

Getting the right information is usually about knowing what you want to accomplish. In the case of surveying for information, it’s crucial to align this with organizational goals, which in turn will feed questions you ask, which then help you develop a strategy and tactics for the goals. The circle of life in PR truly is beautiful, isn’t it?

Let’s say that the goal is to connect residents to housing services who need it. So, you need to find out how to get that service to people, on top of that to people in a vulnerable position. So, map it out. 

You get the chance to gather information from people who are experiencing housing instability. Some of them may be lower income, meaning their means of accessing information can be more limited. So, ask them how they want to get this information. You might find a wealth of different answers and ways to form your strategy from there.

For example, let’s say most people you survey don’t have access to a phone, but can access computers at the local library for free. You might say that your strategy needs to be providing resource information on your website to residents. Some ways to accomplish this can be speeding up load times to accommodate the use of a slower WiFi network, including a popup with the information, or providing quick website access by a shorter URL that people can write down and keep on them if their housing situation becomes unstable.

Another example might be that people say that they do not have regular access to WiFi, but attend different locations for shelter, food, or other basic needs. Your strategy then needs to be to deliver this information in a low-tech way to residents, meeting the goal of connecting residents to services. You could implement this strategy by posting flyers that do not lead to an online link and instead a physical address. You could up it by including the easiest to access bus route to the location. Maybe you partner with that organization to create a community fair event that people can access. 

Creating the right questions and finding out how to act on data is crucial to using information to craft every aspect of your government communications strategy. So, let’s get to asking questions!