Response to Conversation Impact

CI can be found here 

In looking at Conversation Impact I think – it’s simple and clear which is important for creating a KPI. More importantly CI can be applied

easily across numerous campaigns. I think the main thing that I would add to CI model is accounting for the message framing and looking at mediums as separate instruments. Much of my political work involves this since it can shape perception and offer insight to what type of conversation is going to have the best ROI per medium and influencer. Each tends to have a different pattern that can make it possible to measure CI more accurately. In short there’s a lot of information in each medium interaction and this needs to be clearly separated.

For Figure 1:

The survey instrument – do  surveys correlate to an accurate representation of sales and behavioural change? I’m always sceptical of asking for an opinion i.e. “would you now do x?” or “purchase intent”.

To gain insight I’ll look at online and offline (attending a conference or event) actions. The more complex the task the constituent is willing to go through the more important I’ll view the issue/policy (in a political context). Also If someone posts a comment – I value this more than a “like” or “Vote” or mentions put forth by media as it shows more effort. The question for us all is if this translates into a vote or purchase.

I tend not to rely on automated sentiment as much – in political post (generally negative) it makes it very hard. To counter this specifically in Radian 6 I’ll Boolean for negative terms. As long as it is consistent across everything (like in CI) it can none the less be a good measuring stick and I have done this before.

Figure 2

The graph which illustrates Influencers led to a 6.3:1 rise in network influence. The study that I read was about a 5:1 ratio – so in your case it was a bit higher. Was this sustainable past March 09? Also was the campaign coordinated on traditional mediums and perhaps cross referenced with something like Cision Point which accounts for traditional news? The data from this would be interesting. On and offline merging is what I tend to measure/compare the most.

Also in my work I tend to see exponential gains in sentiment/mentioned but it’s usually built off an off-line instance like a political speech/conference or elections (shown in my Political Intelligence presentation pg 20).
If they were measured what was the sentiment/mentions before after a main event (if there was) for “X” to happen – like a conference, election or product releases? What was the ratio in the gains?

I think the figuring out the market shares or volume is right on. I’ve looked at this extensively with political party mentions by share of seats in parliament across all mediums to measure under/over performance.

Some Thoughts:
I’ve always wanted to “gamify” a campaign to measure what options people choose with in a situation. As we funnel down the process/engagement from a click of an online advertisement, to downloads, to checking in to a place via foursquare etc. and or using an off/on line app like Layar; This could provide a good way to measure campaigns to see what way behaviour can be modified from the digital realm and how best to do it. This is why I love the study of Captology.

Ultimately while it’s easy to make things more accurate, but it also gets complex and becomes hard measure for a multitude of brands/products. I think Conversation impact does a good job of measuring specifically what it’s supposed to – conversation. My only suggestion would be to find a way to account for framing techniques on a per medium basis and what technique generates the most engagement (comments, likes, votes). If we as influence marketers can crack the cognitive and linguistic code would be the Holy Grail and I think looking at data is the first step.

Please feel free to ask any questions.