What is Impact? The comprehensive metric for tracking reputational resilience
The world of communication is increasingly complex, and so is monitoring how your organisation is being perceived within this. Social listening is no longer a straightforward process, as each metric only leads you further down the rabbit hole. If you’ve received a mention alert; is it positive or negative? How many people have read the article? Do people consider the article trustworthy? Does the magazine’s audience align with our target audience? Are they discussing a topic that is core to our strategy? Quickly, understanding your corporate position on an issue or navigating the impact of your strategic communication plan becomes a maze of questions and influences. Polecat is leading the way in Reputational Resilience and Risk Management by answering all of these questions at once and in context, with a unique, consolidated and easy to interpret Impact score. Not all mentions are equal There’s a vast volume of information out there, and not all of it is relevant, and some is more relevant than others for varying reasons. Traditional tools only tend to look at the presence of a mention or it’s reach – without really evaluating the quality and nature of the mention in question. It doesn’t quantify the impact this mention has on your company’s reputation and strategy. For example, one article from the New York Times may have the same reach as hundreds of tweets from a single account. Which has more impact for your ESG strategy? The article mention may be standalone, but it may come from a much more credible, and therefore influential, source. Alternatively, the tweets may be creating a ripple of other mentions and conversations which is having a tangible impact on audience perception. This exploration already goes much further than simple metrics for mentions, and we haven’t even considered the sentiment of these mentions, how important the context of these mentions is to your organisations, or their share of the spotlight compared to other topics. For example, these seemingly important conversations may be discussing social governance, which is a low priority compared to climate impact within your current communications strategy. In short, there are so many more considerations than whether your organisation has been brought up in conversation which are largely ignored by social listening tools. Measuring Impact, not just mentions Polecat’s Impact measure cuts through the noise of countless conversations, articles, social posts, reports and more, to pinpoint the discussions that matter. It uses complex algorithms to look not just at mentions, but the significance of those mentions, across thousands upon thousands of sources and hundreds of different topics. This analysis takes into consideration several different factors regarding any given mention: Mentions Credibility of the source Audience reach Sentiment Volume of mentions Significance in context Quantity and quality of topics The output combines these elements to represent your organisational impact. Organisations can then easily drill down into the detail to see what has contributed to this impact – including sources, topics and keywords. Strategic monitoring made easy With a single score that combines all these influential metrics, it makes it much easier to understand your organisation’s position in the context of audience perception, market reputation, and strategic progress. Polecat can show you where one article has had an impact in the market because it’s mentioned multiple topics on your watch list, versus another which doesn’t. Or that your impact in greenwashing has been increasing, prompted by a series of social mentions across different platforms. This can be used to measure whether your strategies are moving the needle effectively, or to proactively identify any new risk areas, opportunities, or topics that you should monitor. Benchmark with intelligence in context Having a unified score makes it easier to benchmark your success in context. Organisations can use Impact to track performance over time, benchmark yourself against competitors, or A/B test different tactics. Not only can you better visualise market share of the conversation, but you can see how this changes through periodic analysis. This is a useful KPI that indicates the effectiveness of your ESG or communication strategies and how the focus on different market issues evolves over time. Polecat Polecat contextualises data from across the internet and social media, enabling global company leaders to manage reputational risk and build business resilience. Our unparalleled Impact metric gives organisations unparalleled insight into their performance and the true significance of every imperative, from standalone tweets to sweeping trends, in context.
