Over the past two decades, the world has become noisier. Social media platforms have proliferated. Smartphones in our pockets provide endless distractions, shortening our attention spans. Publications have migrated online, and new blogs can be established in a handful of clicks. Discourse has become a heavily polarised shouting match.
Everyone – be it an individual or business – now has a platform. To make their voice heard, brands may feel that they must shout louder than the rest.
But that is not the case. Utilising cutting edge insights and analytics, brands can now develop communications strategies based on qualitative data that pinpoint exactly where they can own the conversation and control the narrative.
Our new analytics service – White Space Signals – does just that. Developed in partnership with Independent Marketing Sciences (IMS), White Space Signals helps clients identify and understand the gaps in the topics and conversations most relevant to them. In addition, the service can highlight exactly how clients are performing in the conversation and engage the right journalists, influencers and key stakeholders.
White Space Signals launches at a time when almost six in ten Corporate Affairs leaders say that data and insights as their number-one competency to strengthen, and further underlines our investment into planning, insights and analytics in the last 12 months.
Here’s how it works:
The input
White Space Signals applies AI and data science to digital publications and social media platforms to analyse and understand how media influence and search activity interplay.
The tool combines social media analysis, text-based analytics and our own algorithms to extrapolate the data. This then grants the team a bigger picture of the digital landscape, mapping audience online environments.
The output
Key clusters of conversation
White Space Signals can explore a mass of news articles within a specific category area. All mentions are then clustered into the different topics they cover, showing how those topics relate to each other and which ones are important for our clients to focus on. The tool also highlights exactly where clients are found within the space. The image below shows this map for Dementia in the UK.
Cluster map of conversation
Social traction
Once these clusters have been identified by White Space Signals, they can be ranked for published count and social traction. The tool also creates sentiment analysis for companies mentioned within the data. In the below example, again looking at Dementia in the UK, personal stories were the cluster that proved to have the best pickup and social traction, as evidenced by their central position.
Social traction
Top influencers, publications and journalists
Once White Space Signals has identified conversation clusters, the tool then ranks the top 20 journalists, influencers and publications within the space. These are ranked based on how many stories they publish, what the reach is, and whether their publications are well ranked.
White Space Signal then isolates the sentiment around the topic that the journalist has, allowing the agency to make informed decisions about how to engage them.
Top influencers, publications and journalists
If you’d like to find out how White Space Signals can help brand cut through the conversation, contact our team today.
About Missive
Missive is an independent communications & PR consultancy that specialises in technology. We work with B2B and B2C brands focused on digital transformation across multiple industry sectors including, enterprise tech, FinTech, EdTech, AdTech, HealthTech, Telecoms and SpaceTech. We are headquartered in London, with a global reach and mindset. Everyone at Missive shares a passion for delivering communications and PR that create impact.
