Mass_Transit_March_2020 - 40

BEST PRACTICES
Want to understand
public opinion? Here's
how data can help
By Scott G. Wilkinson
Founder, AlphaVu

WASHINGTON, D.C. * Public opinion

changes with lightning speed, so it's vital
you have access to data tools for understanding and affecting public perceptions
on a minute-by-minute basis. Fortunately, developments in the neuro and social
sciences have given us better insights into
human decision making than ever before.
This means we have quickly improving
measurements to reveal what the public
believes and why. Here are a few quick tips
to consider when making sure opinions in
your market are covered.
1. Pay attention to the non-representative groups. These are small, vocal and
active communities. Though often too
small to be picked up in a telephone poll,

these groups drive media narratives and
perceptions of elected officials and other
important community stakeholders. It's
a mistake to overlook or ignore them as
they're often indicators of nascent but
growing public opinion. You've no doubt
seen these groups online, where they
organize most often. You can use Social
Network Analysis (SNA) techniques to
measure their impact so you know how
best to inoculate the public at large from
their influence.
2. Use methods to accurately test
opinion and message receptivity in real
time. The ever-changing opinions and
media cycles make it imperative you
take the public's opinion temperature
on a day-to-day basis. A good place to
start is by integrating sentiment metrics
(machine learning based sentiment is
the best). Trends in positive or negative
sentiment among segments of the public who are engaging with you, or are
talking about relevant topics, will give
you a sense of what is trending over time.

3. Use data that reveals the realities of
human decision making. Like it or not,
emotion is the overwhelming driver of
decision making, no matter how rational
we think we are. Knowing this, we should
regularly incorporate metrics that reveal
what emotions our messages evoke. One
basic way to approach this is to normalize
your digital engagement metrics across ad
campaigns or organic posts. This means
dividing the metric of interest (direct
engagements, average sentiment, etc.)
by the number of people in the target
audience and then (if applicable) by the
budget of the ad campaign. This results in
an engagement metric you can compare
across messages, ad groups and time, thus
revealing how intensely one audience reacts compared to another. This is a good
first step in understanding the connection points between your content and the
emotional reactions of your audiences.
Read the complete response at
MassTransitmag.com/21127847

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