The Four Stalwarts of Communication Analytics

While the measurement movement among communicators continues to evolve and accelerate with greater rates of adoption and the introduction of dozens of do-it-yourself media analysis platforms, almost all of this activity focuses on what happened. Everything analyzed represents the past.

Despite an emphasis on real-time solutions, there are cases when even the near-past is too old. Knowing what happened always is valuable, of course. It helps inform current thinking. Yet it's not a complete picture for effective diagnostics and decision-making. Here, we discuss the four stalwarts of communication research and analysis: Descriptive, Diagnostic, Predictive and Prescriptive.

In modern communication, predictive analytics is most commonly overlooked because it’s still an emerging science. Until now, predicting the future has been beyond communicators’ reach. But mixing optimized AI, human expertise and accurate data now let the communicator foresee the emergence of a crisis, the battle plans of a competitor and more.

With this additional insight, communicators can simultaneously answer questions related to what’s happening, how long it will last, what will happen next and how to prepare for it.

The communicator can craft a message and identify the journalist/influencer most likely to cover the developing theme.