ImpactWatch Blog

You might think that your actions online would closely correlate to your actions in ‘the real world’ but the people at The Measurement Standard recently raised a new question about whether or not online activity draws a parallel with offline behavior.  In a recent interview, Katie Paine, founder of the KDPaine online campaigns measurement agency, claimed that online happenings did, in fact, liken themselves to offline behavior.  Essentially, she believes that the candidate for which you would vote online is the one for whom you would vote when it came time for the real polls to open.  Also, the items on Amazon.com at which I looked would be the items for which I’d ask in the shop down the street.  And the list goes on…

The good people at the HyveUp Blog mirror my opinion of Katie Paine’s statement in this quote:

“Our online life is often used as a frustration outlet… Sometimes, it just feels good to be somebody else online, or to support the candidate that it is taboo to support in your small town. Do stuff you’d never do in real life. The online world resembles a chimerical projection of our social fantasies.”

In my opinion, this goes for not only peoples’ political viewpoints, but also more mundane activities online.  I definitely shop in different stores than the ones that I can privately view online.  After all, I may go to the mall, but I have to deal with far less teenyboppers via the Internet.  I agree with one commenter on HyveUp that stated:

“My point – this actually was the subject of my bachelor degree’s final paper – is that our identities are way more loose online. There’s one phenomenon that I would call “online schizophrenia” that makes it real hard to measure opinions with certainty.”

I agree with this poster that there is an “invisible wall” when one is on the web.  After all, it’s only the computer screen and me.  This leads me to believe that Paine’s findings are not in tune with reality.  Much more study needs to be made on this topic, but suffice to say that I personally do not believe that much will be found to link our online or offline personas.

Television news coverage of the war in Iraq may have an effect on the amount of attacks by insurgents in that area, according to a recent study by researchers at Harvard.  They claim that there is a measurable “emboldenment effect” when doubts are publicly voiced about the US occupation of Iraq by politicians and other on-air personalities.  The abstract of the research paper states:

“Using data on attacks and variation in access to international news across Iraqi provinces, we identify an ‘emboldenment’ effect by comparing the rate of insurgent attacks in areas with higher and lower access to information about U.S news after public statements critical of the war. We find in periods after a spike in war-critical statements, insurgent attacks increases by 5-10 percent. The results suggest that insurgent groups respond rationally to expected probability of US withdrawal. As such counterinsurgency should consider deterrence and incapacitation rather than simply search and destroy missions.”

Basically, the researchers tracked what they deemed “anti-resolve statements” up to November, as well as reports of insurgent attacks.  They found that when there was a peak of anti-resolve statements on the air, that there was also an increase in the level of insurgent attacks.  Apparently, US news coverage is a more noteworthy part of the war than we once realized.

Erica Chenoweth, a postdoctoral research fellow studying terrorism and insurgency at the Belfer Center and a specialist in the statistical analysis of violent events in an interview with United Press International, claimed that it was a “good” study, but that she wanted it to be “more robust.”  To further the study, she suggests investigating “pro-resolve statements” as well, to control for the possibility that insurgent violent was provoked by frustration at US declarations to stay in Iraq.

For those still skeptical of the findings, researchers also claim to have found a greater amount of insurgent attacks in areas such as the Anbar province, where more households have satellite TV.  International news items are most likely watched in greater numbers in those areas.

These findings lead to some questions: If any information about the attitudes of the war can lead to a measurable (and violent) cost, should less be said about the war in public settings?  Should politicians lessen how often they discuss anti-resolve issues?  Should there be some form of censorship?

I personally hope that more is done to…well, embolden the study.  Findings like this should show people that everyone in the world is watching our attitude toward Iraq, and that perhaps we need to be more aware of the consequences when discussing such sensitive issues.

Phrenology is a somewhat dated idea whose believers claim to be able to determine character, personality traits, and even criminal intentions on the basis of the shape of the head. They do this by reading bumps (called “fissures”) on the person’s head. While this 19th-century idea may seem a little kooky, Public Relations measurement and marketing measurement often find themselves in a situation analogous to the practice. Back in the day, people thought that you could measure personality based on the shape of a skull, and it was an easy practice. So easy, in fact, that it was not challenged as the main means of measuring personality. Why change something that simple to learn and do?

For example, a Click Through Rate (CTR) is a popular way to measure the success of an online advertising campaign. It’s measured by dividing the number of people who actually click on an ad found on a web page divided by the number of times that the ad was delivered. This means that if one person clicks on an ad that was displayed for 100 people, then there is a CTR of .01 (or 1%).

A CTR is not quite as ridiculous as counting bumps on a noggin, but it still does not measure much. Despite some extensive research using Google and disclosure data from AOL, there is a common belief that CTRs may not measure what companies really want to know. A basic summary of the work is that while CTRs may measure something, it may not be something that is necessarily worth measuring. So, why aren’t we measuring what we would like to know?

My take on this is that people want what is fast and easy, but not necessarily what is the best measurement. People are willing to use easy measurement devices like CTRs because that is what technology drops in their laps. But do these CTRs, AVEs, and other devices let you know if the ad with more blue color resulted in my clicks by women in their mid-40s? I think not. Not using the correct metrics simply leaves the users scratching their heads, wondering why their simple idea did not help them.

Instead of doing what is easy and “been done” already, companies need to first ask themselves what it is that they would really like to measure about their consumers. Then they need to find a way to measure it. There’s a way to measure anything that a company would like to know, but sometimes it is not the easiest way.

Jeremiah Owyang of the always informative “Web Strategies by Jeremiah” blog had a great post recently titled “The 3 “Impossible” Conversations for Corporations.” Involvement with customers via social networking is quickly evolving from a possibility to a necessity (just ask Dell.) The part that stood out the most to me was his first point about corporations asking for feedback.

“#1: Asking for Feedback
It’s so hard for companies to ask for feedback. Take a look around, how many ‘corporate’ blogs ask for raw, unfiltered product feedback. It’s scary for a few reasons: 1) Most companies want to talk about how great they are, not expose themselves to weaknesses. 2) Most companies don’t have the appetite to listen to the feedback, then do anything with it. 3) Most companies don’t know how to respond to the feedback, they don’t want to promise it will happen, nor acknowledge a weakness.”

It may seem like a daunting task with no clear place to start, but there is a very simple way to start, the way that most good conversations begin. Start by listening.

Before jumping headfirst into a grand social networking strategy, the easiest thing to do is listen to what is already being said about you. Most likely you don’t have to ask for feedback, there’s already going to be some out there whether you like it or not. All of our ImpactWatch clients are currently monitoring Print and Online news for mentions about themselves and competitors. Those that are ahead of the curve are using ImpactWatch to do the same with Blogs.

Measurement needs metrics right? How do you determine what bloggers, blogs, and posts are more influential? Which is more important, a post with a hundred comments that started a heated conversation or a post that was read by 10,000 people who never made a comment? These are a few of the good questions, and the debates rage on, however I think the most important part of getting involved doesn’t require a magic metric, if there even is such a thing. Listen to what’s going on now, let that be the benchmark, and expand your strategy from there.

Corporate communications and PR professionals often find it useful to track what specific authors and publications are writing. Since ImpactWatch is a permanent archive of your business’ article information, it becomes the perfect tool to research these metrics.

From the main ImpactWatch dashboard, if you click on the Ranking menu you’ll be presented with a breakdown of “Leaders” and “Movers” for Publications. The Filters section allows you to change the date range you’d like to analyze, the default is the Last 7 days. ImpactWatch will use this date range and determine the Leaders. Leaders are publications which have published the most stories about you during that time frame. The little arrows indicate whether they are rising or falling in rank. ImpactWatch will also determine the Movers. Movers are publications which have published more articles about you during the specified date range compared the the same length of time just previous to it. The percentage shows how much more, or less, a publication is writing about you.

Similarly you can use the Choose menu to see the same metrics for Authors. (more…)